Category: God

Family Roles

You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.–Desmond Tutu Click To Tweet

Each family member is important and each member has a role to play. The roles are important and valuable. A lot of the time we don’t think about what each person brings to the family unit as a whole. 

My parents got divorced when I was a young man and I remember the impact that it had on my family. It affects each person and there is a hole that is left in the family dynamic. It can be a lot to take in and process.

There is a picture online that I really like that pictures the dynamics of a family and the roles that everyone has. I want to break down the picture and talk about the roles of each. 

Biblical View of the Family

  1. Family: Christ 

This is the first umbrella. He covers the entire family. Everything centers on His Word. God’s love covers us and as it covers us individually it covers our family unit. His Word guides our steps and it protects us. 

  1. Family: The Husband

The husband is under Christ, because the husband should be looking to God for his family. In the picture you see that the husband’s role is to protect the family, lead the family and provide for the family. These are all great, but there is a way to do them that is true and genuine. 

Protecting the family is a physical, emotional, and spiritual responsibility. Abuse can happen in many forms and the husband’s role is to be be out front protecting the family. 

Leading the family is a great responsibility. Leading is never a “do as I say” thing. True leadership is servant leadership. Learning how to help your family achieve their dreams and goals. 

Providing for the family is something that we can automatically assume is a financial responsibility. 

  1. Family: The Wife

Following The Husband is The Wife. The wife’s role is to comfort, teach, and nurture. I think that the picture leaves a little to be desired about the role of the wife. While a wife does provide comfort, teach and nurture there is more that she does. 

Many of the things that the husband does for the entire family the wife does for the children. She does protect them, she also leads them and provides for them. 

There is a lot of fluidity between the husband and wife roleshusband and wife roles. You don’t have to look far to see how they can cover for each other. Every single parent household has a parent that is providing both roles for the family. 

  1. Family: The Children

The child’s role in the family is defined in the picture is to love the parents and obey the parents. While that is true, children should also be able to dream. Children should also challenge their parents, not in a disrespectful way, but in a way that should push the parents to be better. 

 

Discussion Question: 

What are your thoughts about the picture of the family?

 

Family is Important to God

Have you ever wondered why family is so important to God. From the beginning of the Bible, you can see that God wanted to be able to enjoy the benefits of family. Following God’s example, we should value it too. 

The family unit is a part of our lives that we don’t regularly attend to. While we plan for a lot of things when it comes to our social life and our career life, when it comes to our family there can be a lack of planning. 

In recent years there has been more of a push to have balance in life. People are recognizing the value of family. They don’t want to work 60 or 70 hours a week. There are too many stories out there of successful people who worked so hard, but in the process they lost their marriages, families, health or a combination of things. 

We can plan everything in our lives, but still leave our family out Click To Tweet

Why work so hard to achieve a financial or career status and get there not have anyone to enjoy it with?  The family unit is important for 3 reasons.

 

  1. The foundation

 

Our families are foundational to our lives. When everything can seem like it is going out of control, your family can serve as an anchor in the storm. Christians are often referred to as the Body of Christ. Showing that we are all connected. 

 

  1. Support & Celebrate

 

We know how valuable a support group can be. When we need support to get through a difficult situation our family members tend to be the ones to pick us up. The same can be said of when we celebrate significant moments in our life. Think of the milestone birthdays, the promotions, the bonuses, marriages, children being born and all the things that are important to us. Who are the people that are most likely to be there and celebrate with us? Family. 

 

  1. God at the Center

 

When it comes to organizing and evaluating our lives, it makes it easy to compartmentalize everything. We can treat our lives like rooms in a house. One room is our career.  A room for our family. The basement is where all the things we don’t want to deal with go. There’s a room for our emotions and there is a room for God. 

What we have failed to realize is that God is in every room. He is the foundation that our house is built on. God doesn’t want to be regulated to just one room. He wants to be involved in every area of life. 

 

Discussion Question:

Why is family important to you?

Family Foundation

A marriage with a strong foundation can stand against any storm that comes along! Click To Tweet

Foundations are important. That might be the understatement of the year, but while they are the most important part, they are also the most overlooked part. When it comes to foundations most people just assume that you’re talking about a home or other type of building. You might have even thought that is what I was referring to, but foundations are not exclusive to buildings. 

A Building Foundation

Looking for a Home

I remember this time when my wife and I were looking to buy our first home. We had looked at a couple of houses and couldn’t find what we were looking for. One house we looked at in particular was beautiful. It checked all the boxes that we would have wanted. When I asked about the price as we walked through, I was shocked. Why would it be so low? This house was a quarter of the price of any other house we had looked at. 

As we walked into the basement I could see why the price was so low. There was a floor to ceiling crack that ran along one of the walls. There was a crack in the foundation. Needless to say that we did not buy that house. It would have cost twice as much money to repair the foundation. 

Just like there are foundations to buildings, we have a foundation to our marriage that is just as important. Click To Tweet

While foundations are mostly associated with buildings we have foundations to our marriages and many other relationships. For the most part we just don’t think about our foundation. Many of us want a successful marriage. We want to have a marriage that is happy, successful and all the things that we want. The only way to get there is having the proper foundation set. Here are the 3 P’s of a solid marriage foundation:

 

  1. Plan

Having a plan isn’t a bad thing in a marriage. It should regularly be discussed and adapted as your life ages. The Bible says that without a vision people will perish. The same can be said of our marriages. A vision is just a written down plan. It can be hard to get anywhere if you don’t know where you’re going. 

 

  1. Prayer

Prayer is the foundation to everything that is important to us. When it comes to our marriage, prayer is a necessity. Marriage is more than just a contract. It’s binding two souls, two minds, it is the intertwining of two lives with God into this one thing called marriage. As much as there are two people involved, God is just as involved and it is through prayer that we involve Him. 

 

  1. Pursuit

Most men pursue their wives while dating and maybe a little at the beginning of marriage. As our marriages go along we tend to stop pursuing and get in a comfortable groove. Fight the comfort and continue to pursue your spouse. 

 

Discussion Question:

What are some of the foundations of your marriage?