The Dysfunctional Family // Building a Godly Family, Part 2

It’s easy to look around at other people’s families and think “Boy – how come I didn’t get a normal family like them.” Truth is though, that no family’s perfect. And no matter how dysfunctional your family might be, God has a plan.

We don't have to look very far to see that, in society today, families are becoming more and more dysfunctional. It doesn't matter where we live, how wealthy, how poor. In the wealthy west, you know, teenagers have less and less contact with their parents. They use the internet and cable TV and their friends to tell them who they are and how they should dress.

In poorer nations, well actually I think that people in poorer nations do much better than in the west. Families are a matter of survival for many. But even there, I mean kids get AIDS. They're sold into slavery. They're orphans. All sorts of bad things happen there too.

But here's the thing. We know that there are a lot of dysfunctional families out there but somehow we imagine that, well, there's this perfect family out there. In fact, the perfect family is the norm and the dysfunction we see in our own families, well we must be the only ones. It's our fault. We've botched it. You know, we're just stuck with this.

The teenager who doesn't respect his parents; the adults in our extended families, they've been feuding and haven't talked for ages because eight years ago they argued over the distribution of assets from their parents will. No, no, it's just my family that's a mess. And that's the thing, it's the hand I've been dealt and there's nothing, nothing I can do about it. That's it! What's the point?

Well if that's sort of thoughts been rattling around in your head, then today, today I have some great news for you.

It's true, isn't it? Family is sometimes like living out a guerrilla war. It's so 'in your face'. Every time you come home, every time you walk to the door the whole 'family' thing greets you. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that every family is a basket case. Hopefully yours isn't. But sometimes we're so close to it. Sometimes the pressure is so constant, it can feel like it is a basket case because we get things all out of perspective.

You know, the young mother with a baby that's teething and she's up half the night. And the parents, you know, they're so different, they feel their lives are heading in different directions. And the teenage son who's being the rebel, talks down to his parents and treats his mother like a servant. The grandparents, the grandparents who visit and all they ever seem to do is to judge and to criticize and to tell you what you're doing wrong with your kids.

And in the middle of this, this constant family relationship tension, you get the feeling like, "Oh God, what is going on here? I mean, I love You, I honour you but why is it like this? Why can't I have a normal family like the people next door?"

And you know, for me, one of the things that make it worse. There's this minister I knew once. He seemed to have the perfect family. His young adult children, they were so well adjusted. He'd been brought up by Godly parents and he spoke about family from a position, well it seemed to me, a position of almost having that perfect family we all desire.

And then you compare your own family to that and you think, "boy, I've made a mess. What's the matter with me? There's no hope for my family." Well let me tell you this. I'm not talking about the whole family thing from that place I can tell you. I haven't been a perfect husband or a perfect father. In fact, before I gave my life over to Jesus a decade and a half ago, I made some huge blunders that changed the very course of my life. And since then God's been teaching me a new way. I'm still learning.

So I'm at a certain place in my journey; you're at a certain place in your journey so let's just get over this comparing and judging nonsense. There's only one issue – where do we take our families from here? And I, for one, what I'm about is building a Godly family because there is such a reward in that; such a harvest, and not just one day in the future but along the way, now – the joy of investing and sacrificing to make a difference in the lives of those whom we love.

We're going to talk more about that whole 'sacrifice' thing over these coming weeks but today, today I just want to give us some comfort that God knows all about dysfunctional families.

Let me take you to the very first human family, Adam, Eve, their two sons Cain and Abel. Now maybe you know the story of Adam and Eve pretty well. You know, they were in the Garden of Eden, it was all wonderful. They ate that apple off the tree, they sinned, God kicked them out and they had a couple of sons.

I want to show you something about this family. The interactions between the people that might really make you sit up and take a look. We often hear people talking ab