Day 21: Building life-giving families

In God’s grand story, family is the finishing touch of Creation in the Garden of Eden. 

When God created Adam and Eve, He looked upon His creation and said it was very good. He designed them to be His image bearers, to reflect His likeness. 

The Bible also tells us that God ordained marriage to be a picture of the faithful love between Christ and His Bride, the Church.

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us, and His love is made complete in us. (1 John 4:11-12)

As God’s image bearers, our earthly family is intended to be the first place where we experience unconditional love. God’s intent is for children to enter the world receiving the love of God our Father in the context of a stable, secure and loving family. 

It is in the home environment where children and youths also learn to interact with people and learn how to love others.

Are our youths experiencing the love of God in our homes today? 

Growing up in a hyperconnected world, our youths are yearning for authentic relational connection. Parents – above all else, when we demonstrate commitment towards mutual love and submission in our marriage, our youths will witness first-hand the enduring nature of God’s sacrificial and longsuffering love in and through us. 

Parents and caregivers – let’s also be found to regularly assure our youths that they need not perform to earn our love. Instead, may we set up an environment that provides safety for vulnerability, models conflict resolution healthily and extends forgiveness proactively.

Families that reflect God’s heart

Building relationships is hard work and, left on our own, we will find it challenging to love one another. 

An important prelude to this passage reads: “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:9-10) 

Jesus’ finished work on the cross has atoned for our sins and holds the power to help us release familial hurts. It is the Lord who makes it possible to restore strained family relationships. 

God has given us the institution of the family to show us something about Himself. When family relationships are strong and visible within the Church and wider community, it reflects, however imperfectly, something about the Gospel.

This is life-giving and transformational to a world where many, especially youths, have no experience of a loving and functional family life.

Husbands and wives, parents, and children – since God so loved us, let us love one another. If we love one another, the world will know that we are His disciples.

May our family life make the love of our invisible God so attractive and undeniable to those around us that it will draw the next generation into an intimate relationship with the Father.  

Let us pray.

Heavenly Father, thank You for the privilege of identifying with Christ and being called Your sons and daughters. At the same time, thank You for giving us the gift of family – that we can be placed under the loving authority and care of our earthly father and mother. 

Help us, Lord, to recognise that Your design for family is good and life-giving. Pour out Your Spirit upon us and fill our hearts with Your love. We welcome You into our homes and our relationships, so that out of the overflow of Your love for us, we will demonstrate Your love to our family. May the love of Christ be the hallmark of every Christian marriage and household. 

In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Reflect

1. Have you seen God’s redemptive love in action? Why do you think the family unit is chosen by God to be a good setting for redemptive love?

2. Consider the characteristics of Christ. Which of these do you find hardest to embody? Will you commit these to the Lord today, in order to be a more loving parent/child/sibling/relative?

3. Are there youths in your life who have been hurt or neglected that you can show God’s grace to? How will you begin to do so?

Pray

1. Pray for the children and grandchildren you know who have Christian parents but are far from the heart of God. Pray for them to have a personal encounter with God and for their lives to be transformed by the love of Christ.

2. Lift up Christian parents whose children are living outside of God’s will. Their burden is heavy; pray for fellow believers and the Church to come alongside these parents to encourage, journey with and bless them in meaningful ways.

3. Pray for yourself and every believer to grow in the knowledge of God and flourish in His love as sons and daughters of the Most High.

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