Of course, families are and always were, God’s idea. Yet so often these days, families seem to be, well, let’s be honest, just a tad dysfunctional. And as we each grapple with the realities of family life, all too often, we look around at all those apparently normal, balanced, near-perfect families out there and wonder to ourselves – what’s wrong with my family? What’s going on here?

 

The Dysfunctional Family

Well, here we are, a new week! And today we are going to start a discussion, you and I, about something completely different. Over these next few weeks on the programme we are going to be taking a look at what it means to build a godly family. I’ll tell you why.

Recently here at the ministry of Christianityworks we asked our friends and supporters to write in to us to share their prayer requests and here’s what struck me: at least eighty percent of the prayer requests we received – and there were a lot of them, I have to tell you – at least eighty percent were asking us to pray for people’s families: for my son or my wife, for my daughter, my husband, my auntie, my cousins. You know something? We actually care about our families. As difficult and as strife torn as many families are, blood is thicker than water and our families really do matter to us

And we don’t have to look very far, you know, in society to see todays families are becoming more and more dysfunctional. But here’s the thing: we kind of know that 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 are just the only ones.

"It’s my fault. I’ve botched it up. We’re just stuck with this – it’s the way it is. The teenagers who don’t respect their parents; the adults in our extended families who are having feuds and they haven’t talked to each other for ages because they argued over distributing the assets of their parents when they died eight years ago. No, you see, it’s just my family that’s a mess. And that’s the thing, it’s what I’ve been handed; it’s the hand I’ve been dealt and there’s just nothing I can do about it – there’s just nothing. What’s the point?"

It’s true, isn’t? Living out families is sometimes like living out a gorilla war. It’s so in your face; every time you come home; every time you walk in 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 are so close to it all, it kind of feels like it is a basket-case. We get it out of perspective.

And in the middle of this constant relational tension you can get to feeling like, "Aw, God, what’s going on here? Why can’t I have a normal family like everybody else – like those people next door?" And let me tell you, I’m not talking about this whole "family thing" from some perfect place, I can tell you.

Before I gave my life over to Jesus a decade and a half ago, I’ve got to tell you I made some huge blunders that changed the very course of my life and I am still far from perfect. But since that time God’s been teaching me a new way – I’m still learning.

So I’m at a certain place in my journey and you are at a certain place in your journey and let’s get over this comparing and judging, "Other people have better families than me." There’s only one issue: "Where do we go from here?" And I for one, I am about building a godly family because there is such reward in that; such harvest and not just one day in the future but along the way, here and now – the joy of investing and sacrificing to make a difference in the lives of those whom we love.

We will talk about that over the coming weeks but today I just want to give us some comfort that God knows all about dysfunctional families. You can take the very first human family, if you like – Adam and Eve – and their two sons Cain and Abel. You probably know the story of Adam and Eve – you know, the Garden of Eden, then they sinned; they ate the apple and God kicked them out and they had a couple of sons.

But I want to show you something about this family – the interactions between the people – that’s a real stark reminder about the dysfunction in family. You often hear people talking about Adam and Eve and the snake and all that stuff from a theological perspective – and that’s great – but what about from a family perspective? Okay, Adam and Eve, they’ve sinned; they ate from that one tree that God told them not to. God comes looking for them – they are hiding in the garden. I have always thought that was incredibly smart to be hiding from God! And God brings Adam to account:

He says to Adam, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” And the man said, “The woman whom you gave me, she gave me the fruit from the tree and then I ate it.” And then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent tricked me. I ate.”

And the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals and among all wild creatures. Upon your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat for all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers and he will strike your head and you will strike his heel.

Comes from Genesis chapter 3, verses 11 to 15

So there it is: they rebelled against God and God – well, Adam blames Eve. The very first thing he does when he does something wrong Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the snake and I guess, the snake didn’t have a leg to stand on! You see what happens? We go from perfect harmony to dysfunction.

God tells them that that is going to be the norm from now on there’s going to be enmity between the man and the woman, there’s going to be enmity amongst the children and that’s exactly what happens. Listen to what Cain and Abel ... what their relationship ends up like:

Abel was the keeper of sheep and Cain the tiller of the ground. In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground and Abel, for his part, brought the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering but for Cain and his offering, God had no regard. So Cain was very angry and his countenance fell.

The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted and if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door. Its desire is for you but you must master it. Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out into the field,” and when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.

Genesis Chapter 4.

So there you have it – the very first family. They rebel against God; husband turns against wife, brother kills brother. It’s the absolute natural state of affairs for a family that has turned its back on God. But here’s the good new, there’s a flip side to this coin for the family that turns back to God. A family that honours God; a family that has God as the head of its household – that family can expect God to bless it. Have another listen. Deuteronomy Chapter 5, beginning at verse 8:

You shall not make for yourself an idol whether in the form of anything that is in heaven or above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them for I, the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of their parents to the third and fourth generations of those who reject me but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

In other words, when we put God at the head of our lives and the head of our families, He will show us His steadfast, unwavering love, not just to us but to a thousand generations. And you know what that means? It doesn’t matter how bad things have become in our families, when we honour God, He in turn will honour us.

 

Breaking with the Past

One of the things that bring so much dysfunction into families are the things of the past – things that have been handed down genetically, emotionally and spiritually. Our parents hand so many things down to us – their genes, their strengths and their weaknesses. People say that I look like my dad, I even walk like him but it wasn’t till I saw myself in a TV interview that I was shocked to realise that my very mannerisms are so much like my fathers.

It’s pretty scary! And so alcohol addictions and bad tempers and a tendency to whinge and complain; all sorts of things end up being handed down from generation to generation.

Dysfunctional families are much more likely to produce children that grow up to have their own dysfunctional families. Where does it end? Well, I have a simple answer to that – it ends today, right here and now, this very minute – that’s when it ends. Let me explain. See, it’s really easy to blame our parents for things ... for the bad things that happen. If abuse happened in your childhood or you had a father with a bad temper or your parents smoked; whatever it is and they handed those things down to you.

I don’t know about your parents but mine, I had good parents. They weren’t perfect, they just worked hard and I am sure they can look back at their lives and go, "Well, I could have done this better or I could have done that better," but there is no point in just sitting here and b