The Ideal Family // Building a Godly Family, Part 3

Let me ask you something – if you could set about building a Godly Family – what would that look like? I mean how would you know when you’d arrived? A Godly family. Man – wouldn’t that be amazing.

I'm excited because this week we're kicking off a few weeks looking at what it means to build a Godly family. That's why I'm so excited. Because I've been praying, praying that of the millions of people that will listen to these programs this week, God will transform countless families. Think about it, the family is God’s smallest, fighting formation. In the battle of life, He uses the family to protect and to nurture, to teach and to mature one another.

Over the last couple of days we've been chatting about the realities of family life. Today, so often, we can be so dysfunctional in our family relationships. But that's nothing new. Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, they had exactly the same problem. It's what happens when we turn our backs on God. Husband blames wife, brother turns on brother.

Look back over the history of our families, past and present and we can probably point to quite a number of dysfunctions; the rifts, the strife; the relationship breakdowns; the tensions. But truly I believe that when we get back into a relationship with the Lord our God one of the things that He wants to do is to restore those family relationships; to make our families the blessing He always intended them to be.

The problem I have is convincing people that this is, in fact, the case. "Look at the mess I'm in", is so often the attitude I encounter. "God couldn't possibly, possibly set things right in my family." Well, maybe some of the things we're reaping, from the mistakes in the past, are here to stay. Divorce is divorce – that's it.

But I'm an optimist and I'll tell you why. Because God is all about hope and that hope is meant to shine a light in every nook and cranny, every dark crevasse, every hurt and loss and pain that we try not to think about. God’s light of hope shines there. Have a listen to what Paul writes in Romans chapter 5:

Since we are justified by our faith, we have peace with God through Jesus. Through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we now stand and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.

Not only that but we also boast in our suffering because we know that suffering produces endurance. Endurance produces character. Character produces hope and that hope doesn't disappoint us because Gods love has been poured into our hearts through His Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

For a while we were still weak but at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans chapter 5, verses 1 to 8).

There are a few things in that. Let me just pull three of them out. The first thing is he talks about the fact that, when we believe in Jesus, we have peace with God through Jesus. And that's why we can stand in the grace in which we now stand. That's the effect of putting our faith in Jesus. Peace and Gods grace.

But then he goes on and says, "well, it's great, we've got peace and grace but you know something, we're also going to suffer. And that's okay because suffering gives us endurance. Endurance builds our characters. And once our character's been built, we can look beyond all suffering and all whinging and complaining and we can see that God has given us hope. Hope because He's written His love on our hearts by His very Spirit." And all of that, all of that is based on sacrifice. God proves His love for us in that, while we were still sinners, Jesus died for us.

How often do we want to grumble about family? "Agh, they're so difficult, it's also tense, grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble, suffering." Paul says, "No, no, no. Boast in your suffering because something good is going on here; because through it God is refining us and building us and leading us into a place of real hope."

Let me tell you something. God loves to refine us through suffering. He deals with some of the worst things in us through suffering – selfishness, deceit, pride – but only when we co-operate with Him. That's why Paul says that he boasts instead of grumbles, because God's up to something good.

God put us in family for reasons and look at the end of this passage, it's all based on sacrifice. We're going to talk a lot more on this 'sacrifice' thing over coming weeks in family, because it's important. But right now, I just want to paint a picture in our hearts.

If you were going to build a godly family, get over all this suffering, all this pain, all this whinging. Let's just get our eyes focused on the end game. If you