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025: Your family IS the Church

INTRO AUDIO:

I’m about to say something that’s kind of a duh sort of a statement, but the Bible is full of instructions for Christians, people who want to follow after Christ. So doesn’t it make sense that if we are developing and growing Christian homes, then we should be applying the instructions Jesus gives to his church, to our families. This is God-fearing kids and the parents who raised them.

MINDI:

Welcome back fellow parents. I’m Mindi.

CAREY:

And I am Carey. We’re excited to have you here today because we are excited to let you know that your family is the church. That may sound like a funny thing because we think of church’s building, we inlet as a place we go. But the New Testament teaches the church is people, it’s people who place their faith in Jesus Christ. And if you are endeavoring to build a Christian family, you are part of that church. And so it’s a helpful thing for us to think of our families in the same way we think of the church in many ways. Jesus himself made this point in Matthew chapter 12, verses 46 through 50. Now to set this up, he’s been out doing ministry all the time. There’s people coming around and then this situation happens. It says, while he was still speaking to the people, behold his mother and his brothers stood outside asking to speak to him.

CAREY:

So this is Mary and Jesus brothers who were there waiting for him to be done. But he replied to the man who told him, who is my mother and who are my brothers? And stretching out his hand toward his disciples. He said, here are my mother and my brothers, for whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. Now this is a strange thing for us to hear Jesus kind of seeming like he’s dissing his mom and his brothers and doing that in favor of his disciples. But he’s trying to make a point for people to understand there is a bigger family than just earthly families. And that’s the family of God, that’s the church family. And as we are believers in Christ, we are part of that family. So since the family and the church are so similar in the New Testament and since we’re endeavoring to build Christian homes, it’s a good idea for us to use the New Testament teaching for the church as tools, as instruments of teaching, as opportunities for us to teach our families how Christians should look in the world.

CAREY:

We want to go about that in this episode by drawing your attention to 47 different times in the New Testament that Paul or Peter or John speaks to us in terms of what we’ve referred to often as one another. Statements where they say things like love one another or encourage one another and there’s a whole list of them, 47 of them as I said, and those statements can become a very powerful tool for us in our families. Now first off, I just want to point out a couple of really interesting observations about these. One another out of the 47, 1 third of them in some way deal with unity. And what does that tell you about the importance of unity to God? What would you say Mindi?

MINDI:

I’d say it’s huge. It’s important, it’s a

CAREY:

Big deal to him. I mean, let me give you a couple of examples here. Mark nine 50 says, be at peace with one another. That’s Jesus speaking. Galatians five 15, it says, don’t bite devour and consume one another. You see, we’re to be unified, we’re not to be at odds with each other. And so we can take these unity one another principles and apply them in our families mind. What imagery comes to your mind when you think of a family that’s living out these one another unity principles?

MINDI:

I think the first thing I think of is that they’re happy. Yeah. And they’re loving one another

CAREY:

And we all want a happy family. We all want a family that feels like a loving place and everybody’s for each other and these one another principles can help us in doing so. Now we’re going to give you some suggestions here toward the end about how you can apply these, but I just want to get your your mind around the concept here. Now, out of those 47 principles, there’s also a third of them that deal with the concept of love in some way. So again, a third, that’s 33% of all of them that deal with love. Here’s some examples. Galatians five 13 says, through love serve one another. So it’s using love as a motivation for our service toward one another. There’s another first Peter five 14 that says greet one another with a kiss of love. And so in the family that’s especially appropriate to kiss someone on the cheek or give them a kiss on the forehead, you know, as they’re going to bed or whatever. That kiss of love that that physical touch has that expresses love. Hugs is a part of that. Yeah. So again, love is a big category that these one another are put into. And then there’s another category that these fall into and that’s about 15% of them stress, humility in one way or another. So imagine your home, your household, your family with an underlying current of humility. What would a home like that look like to you? Mindi?

MINDI:

I would see the home probably being joyful again, peaceful and loving one another. I mean, I’d see the love again. Yeah,

CAREY:

The three of these kind of go together, don’t they? Unity, love, humility, they all kind of feed each other. And I think it’s that way on purpose because God wants people to live in unity. He wants love to permeate. He wants us to humbly serve each other as Jesus came to serve us. I mean, that’s what the Christian calling is all about. And so it makes sense that in our homes, those same things should be characteristics of what’s going on. Now the rest of the 47 that don’t fall into those three categories are just assorted encouragements or instructions about various things. Let me give you some examples. Husbands and wives have certain instructions. Uh, we’re instructed to bear one another’s burdens. I guess you could call that love as well. It might fit into that love category. We’re to speak the truth to one another.

CAREY:

I mean, all of these in some way are loving because they’re, they’re positive instructions in some way. But I think you get the point. Now, what ways can we use these kinds of things? Well, you could use this list of one another’s as a prayer list. First off, parents praying for your kids, all these things, praying in your family times for each other according to these things. And speaking of family times, which we’ve done an episode about, you could use this list of one anothers as a curriculum, so to speak, and every family night you’re going to talk about another one of the one anothers and read the, and discuss it with your kids on their level. What does this mean? How can we do this better in our family? How do you think Jesus would want you to do this toward your brother? You know, get real practical with it.

MINDI:

And I just love it because we as parents need clear instruction of how to raise our kids, how to train them in the way they should go. And this is a great place to start looking up the one another versus and seeing how we can apply it and how can we teach it and live it out with our kids from age two to age 20. <laugh>.

CAREY:

Yeah. Yeah, I mean as long as we have that kind of a, yeah, a context in which we’re discussing these kind of things. I mean we have family reunions, we try to do them every year, but it doesn’t always happen. And we always have a talking time, kind of a family time like we’ve described at those reunions where we’re encouraging each other and the Lord and we’re talking about spiritual issues like this. So you could continue this even well into the adult years. So I hope this idea of using these one another statements from the New Testament is helpful to you. And to make it easier for you, I’ve put together a PDF download of all 47 of them broken up into these categories so that you can look at them for yourself and you can use them however you’d like. It’s free of charge. You can go to god-fearing kids.com/two five for episode 25 and there will be a link there for you to download it to your computer and use it in one of those ways we’ve mentioned.

MINDI:

And just another thought about this is we’re talking about our family being the church. And Carey and I have always felt that, you know, the church has made up a lot of little families and God intends it to be that way. And in many times we struggle with the way our churches are being run or how people act in the church. And rightfully so. There are things that go on because the church struggles with sin. And so for you to encourage your family, to encourage your children, God wants all of his church to be this way. So let’s work really hard to make it happen in our home and teach your children that vision so that when they leave the home and they start their families, they’re going to be building little churches in their homes and hopefully your family tree will be a part of building the church as a whole. The big church.

CAREY:

Imagine if your kids are learning to be this way at home, where they’re usually more free to be themselves and be snarky or cutting to their brother or whatever manifestation of the flesh might happen. And they’re actually doing this. They’re learning to do these one another. How is it going to be when they actually go to a church meeting toward their friends, toward the adults in the room? They’re going to be transmitting these one another kind of through osmosis into the environment that they’re in and it’s going to help the church as a whole as well. So as we wrap up, let’s just spend some time together praying for ourselves about these issues. Lord God, we’re grateful that you’ve given us all these one another. It’s very clear that relationships matter to you and that healthy relationships matter to you. So Lord, we are looking to you to guide us in how we can help our families understand these points and apply them in ways that are empowered by your Holy Spirit and that bring unity and love and humility and all those other great characteristics into our homes so that we can be a representation of you in this world.

CAREY:

Lord, we pray that for our friends who are listening, we pray that for anybody who ever hears this episode, Lord, that you will guide them for wisely apply these one and others. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.