Uh Kimberly struggled for 10 years in an unhappy marriage filled with conflict, addiction, and so much anger. Kimberly was ready to walk away, but God used our ministry to transform her heart. The podcast and all the focus on the family resources was like the hands and feet of Jesus in that moment, in those moments, because it's like, we're arguing. We don't even know how to pray. We don't know where to go in the Bible.
As Kimberly and her husband rebuilt their marriage, we were part of their healing process. Focus on the Family was like the well of wisdom that we can always go to. I'm Jim Daly. Every day, people reach out to Focus on the Family for help with their marriages, their parenting, and their faith. In their most desperate hour, you can help deliver hope and joy to these families.
Give by December 31st, and your gift will be doubled. Donate today at focusonthefamily.com/slash family. You know, it's interesting to consider that even captains of industry, if you will, recognize the importance of the family. For example, American automobile executive Lee Iacoka once said, the only rock I know that stays steady, the only institution I know that works, is the family.
Now, you're going to hear how to help your family stay steady on today's episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly as we feature one of our most popular programs of the year. Thanks for joining us. I'm John Fuller.
Well, we always enjoy having Dr. Gary Chapman visit us in the studio, but today and next time, we're going to present a very dynamic message that he shared at a large church in his hometown. And as you said, John, the topic is improving the strength of your family. Dr. Gary Chapman is a counselor, and he's the author of the best-selling series of books based on the five love languages.
I know some of you are nodding your head right now because you read the book. He has his own talk show on the Moody Radio Network, and he's been a great friend to Focus on the Family over the years. And here's Dr. Gary Chapman speaking at St. Peter's Church and World Outreach Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on today's episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
I want to tell you before I start what I hope is going to happen. in the brief time that we spend together tonight. My first desire is that your family relationships will get better. That'd be all right with you? You know, family relationships either get better or they get worse.
They never stand still. And I certainly hope your family will not get worse because I came. I hope it'll get better. My second desire is that you will learn some things. that you will find so helpful Now you'll want to share them with your friends.
Who are not here tonight, but who desperately need help. Do you know the people I'm talking about? And my third desire. is that we can have a little fun while we do this.
Now I meet people who don't believe in fun. You talk about fun, and they say, Oh no, I'm a Christian.
Now, I understand that for a good while now you've been focusing on the family, as Pastor said. And tonight I want to kind of try to bring it together for you. And I want to talk to you about the family you've always wanted. And essentially, what I want to do is to share with you the five fundamentals of what a healthy family looks like. You know, we're in danger in our generation of forgetting what a healthy family even looks like.
You know when they train bankers Tellers at the bank. to spot counterfeit bills. They don't show them a lot of counterfeit bills. What they have them do is focus on the real thing. And if you focus on the real thing, You can spot a counterfeit.
So we've had so much talk the last 20 years about dysfunctional families. That almost everybody I meet thinks they grew up in one. Yeah. In fact, they come into my office and sometimes that's the way they start. They say, Doc Chapman, you know I grew up in a very dysfunctional family.
And they go on from there to blame their family for what happened.
Now, you know, we're not going to improve things by talking about dysfunctional families. What we have to do is rediscover what a healthy family looks like. And that's what I want to focus on.
So I want to suggest if you have pen and paper, you take a few notes tonight. But I want to first of all read a passage that's very, very familiar with you. Because I think in this passage we find the key, the five fundamentals of a healthy family. It's Ephesians chapter 5. You're familiar with it.
But let's just read it again to get it on the front burner. Ephesians chapter 5, verse 18. Do not get drunk on wine. Incidentally, that's good advice. No family was ever helped by somebody getting drunk.
Don't get drunk with wine, which leads to debauchery, but instead be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Submission is not a female word.
It's a Christian word. Submit to one another. Then he gives you illustrations in the family. Wives, submit to your husbands as unto the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body. of which he is the Savior.
Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. And then he talks to the husbands about what submission looks like for them. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. to make her holy. Cleansing her by the washing with water through the Word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish.
But holy and blameless. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body. But he feeds and he cares for it, just as Christ does the church.
For we are members of his body. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother. They united to his wife and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I'm talking about Christ and the church.
However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Children. Obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise. What is the promise?
that it may go well with you, and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. Fathers, do not exasperate your children. Instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. A very familiar passage, but I think sometimes we have read it and heard it so many times that we failed to get the points.
So I want to try to share with you tonight the five fundamentals of a healthy family which grow out of this passage. Number one. An attitude of service. Look at the words in this passage that describe the various family members. It says in verse 23 that the wives are to submit.
In verse 25, that the husbands are to love and give themselves away to their wives, like Christ did. Children are to obey and honor their parents. Fathers are to instruct their children. Every one of those requires an attitude of service. In fact, verse 21 says that that service is to permeate the whole family.
Actually It's very difficult to reject service. I remember a young man who said to me, he said, Doc Chapman, he said, we got married and my wife served me breakfast in bed every morning for a month. He said, took me a month. to work up the courage to tell her that I don't eat breakfast. It's hard to reject service.
I did a little research on my own some years ago, and I found out that not a single wife in the history of this nation has ever murdered her husband while he was washing dishes. Not one. You see, there's something that is Christian about serving. You know, children from the very youngest of age have the attitude of service. I mean, they could be four years old, and what are they saying?
Mommy, can I help you? Mommy, can I help you? Daddy, can I help you? They want to help. It's too bad they forget that by the time they get to be teenagers.
But the reality is That in a healthy family, there'll be an attitude of service. The husband will serve his wife. The wife will serve her husband. They will serve the children. The children will learn how to serve each other and how to serve the parents.
And then they will export it and take it out into the community. This is at the heart of a healthy church. It's at the heart of a healthy family.
So I want to give you a couple of ideas. On how to build this into your family. A couple of games you can play with your family. I call the first game I really appreciate that.
Now here's the way you play the game.
Somebody in the family says to another family member, One way in which I served you today is I made your oatmeal. Or whatever. And the other family member says, I really appreciate that. Why don't you try it right now? Just turn to the person beside of you, if they're in your family, and say, One of the things I appreciate about you is, and tell them something.
And then remember your response is just to say, I appreciate that. Yeah. You see, the fact is, there's a whole lot of service going on in all of our families. In fact, if we didn't have some measure of this, we wouldn't even be here. I mean, somebody has to do a whole lot of stuff in the family, and we need to come to recognize that.
And this is one way of bringing it up on the top burner and saying in our family, we serve each other, and we also have a spirit of appreciation for the people who are serving each other. And then you take it beyond the family and you go out into the community. One way you can do it is to have a begin, is to have a daily sharing time. It's your family. In which everybody gets to share.
One act of service I did today is. Do you all have meals together at least once a day? Mm-hmm. I hope you do. Imagine this, sitting around the table.
And everybody in the around the table gets to tell the family, one act of service I did today is, and they tell you something they did outside the family. Little Johnny says, well, today Susie dropped her pencil and the lead broke, and I picked it up and took it to the pencil sharpener and sharpened it for Susie. He's telling something he did today to serve somebody. When he gets through, Everybody around the table says, yay! Hey, Johnny.
And then Mary gets to tell something. And then Mama gets to tell something, and Daddy gets to tell something. You understand what we're doing? We're communicating to our family, this family is all about service. Service is a big deal, and everybody is learning how to serve outside the family.
Incredible what it does for children. And then you can also have a family project in which you serve outside the family. The whole family does something together. Maybe you make cookies and take them to a shut-in. One of the things I used to do with our kids, my wife and I, we loved to do it, was in the fall when the leaves all fall.
We'd put three or four rakes in the back of the car. And we'd drive the neighborhood looking for yards that had leaves still in the yard. And I'd knock on the door. And I'd say, hi, I'm Gary Chapman, and I have my family with me, and I'm trying to teach my family how to serve people. And I notice that your leaves need raking, and if you don't mind, we'd like to rake your leaves for you.
And usually they would say Say what? Oh. And I'd repeat my little speech. And many of them would say, Oh, I will pay you to do my leads. I've been looking for somebody to do my leads.
I said, No, no, no, we don't want pay. I'm trying to teach my kids how to serve people. And if you would let us have the opportunity, we'd like to serve you. You know, I never had anybody who wouldn't let us rake their leaves. You understand what we're doing?
We're trying to help our children understand this is what life is all about. We serve each other and then we go out in the community and we serve people. Imagine what would happen in this country if this attitude permeated every family in the country. Wow. And this is just one thing.
But it's an important thing. an attitude of service in the family. And for the Christian, You know, Colossians 3.23 says, Whatever you do in word or deed, do it with your whole heart as though you were doing it for Jesus.
So, you're not just raking leaves for somebody in the neighborhood, you're raking leaves for Jesus. And that puts it on a whole new realm. And you're teaching your children: when we serve others, we're serving Jesus. Second characteristic of a healthy family. There will be intimacy between the husband And the wife.
In a healthy family. Notice what it says in verse 31. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother, be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. It speaks of deep, deep. Deep.
Intimacy. Coming together in a very, very deep way. You know, in Genesis chapter 2 and verse 18. God said about Adam It is not good for man to be alone. The word means cut off or isolated.
If you've ever been in a single man's apartment, You'll know it's not good for man to be alone. And God said in Genesis 2:24 exactly what we read here in Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 31: that a man leaves his father and mother, is joined to his wife, and the two become one flesh. God's answer to aloneness in isolation is intimacy in a marriage.
Now, when some people hear the word intimacy, they only think of one thing, and that's the sexual part of the marriage. But it's far, far deeper than that. It talks about intellectual intimacy. The sharing of thoughts, opinions, and desires. You know, some couples have stopped sharing their thoughts.
and their opinions. Because when they shared them, the spouse said, Well, that's not right. I mean, that's that's and they put their ideas down. And after a while they figure, well, I'm not going to share what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, because they're just going to clobber me on the head. And no one likes to be clobbered.
You know, anything your spouse says, you can at least say, well, that's an interesting thought. You know, I mean We don't have to put it all down. Listen to them. In a healthy marriage, couples will share with each other their thoughts, their opinions, their desires. And it doesn't mean we agree with each other, but we give each other the freedom to have thoughts and feelings and desires, and we share them with each other because we are a couple.
It also involves emotional intimacy. The sharing of feelings. The ability to say, you know, I felt pretty discouraged today when da da da da da da da da da happened. We're not traveling alone. We have a spouse.
And so we're going to share emotions with each other. You know, one of the things I teach couples to do in my marriage seminars is to have a little daily sharing time. In which each of you shares with the other three things that happen in your life today and how you feel about them. Just tell me three things that happened today. and how you feel about them.
It's amazing what happens when you begin to share what happened during the day with each other and how you feel about those three things, emotional intimacy. This is where the love language concept comes in. It's building emotional intimacy in the relationship. You know, deep within every one of us there's the desire to feel loved. And if you're married, the person you would most like to love you is your spouse.
In fact, if you feel loved by your spouse, Life is beautiful. If you don't feel loved by your spouse and you feel like inside they don't love me, they wish they weren't married to me. The world can begin to look pretty dark. If we learn how to speak each other's love language, we meet that emotional need for love and we keep the love tank full and life is much easier to process. And then there's social intimacy.
We share experiences with each other. You know, let's face it, for most couples, we're apart. More than we're together. if you don't count the sleeping time. We're off doing our jobs or whatever during the day.
We have a few hours together in the evening or whatever our work schedule is, of course. But, you know, we spend a lot of time away from each other, but we share what we were doing during the day. And then we're also going out and doing some things together. Did you hear the story about the Midwestern farmer? A tornado came through.
and lifted the roof right off his house. He and his wife were in bed, and he lifted the bed and them right out of the top of the roof and set them out in the field beside the house. And the wife was just crying hysterically. And he said, honey, honey, it's okay. Don't cry, honey.
We're all right. We're on the ground, honey. We're safe. It's all right. And she said, I'm not crying because I'm afraid.
I'm crying because I'm happy. This is the first time we've been out of the house together in six months.
So I am asking you if you're married, have you been out of the house together in the last six months? We do some things together. And then it involves spiritual intimacy. Sharing our relationship with God. You know, we're not always on the same page.
On our journey, Sometimes one is further along in the journey than the other. You don't have to be together, but you share your journey with each other. In a healthy marriage, we're talking about spiritual things together. One of the ways we do that is worshiping together. There's something about standing beside your spouse and hearing them sing or seeing them lift their hands that says to you inside, we're together with God.
We're walking together with God. And then there's praying together. You know what I find? That not more than 15% of the Christian couples pray with each other on a daily basis. If you don't count, thank you for the food.
Amen. You know what I teach couples is to start off easy, and that is you start off with silent prayer. Phew.
Sounds easy already, doesn't it? Silent prayer. Here's the way you do it. You hold hands. You close your eyes.
You pray silently. And when you get through, you say amen, so they'll know you're through, and you hang on until they say amen.
Now does anybody here think you couldn't do that? I tell you, if you're sitting by your spouse, let's just try the mechanics. If you're sitting by your spouse, reach over and hold hands. Yeah. If you're by yourself, hold your own hand.
Yeah. Let's close our eyes. And let's pray silently. And then let's say amen out loud. I did pretty good on that amen.
That's good. Yeah. You know what will happen if you start doing that every night? About six months down the road, one of you will slip up and pray out loud. When you do, you break the sound barrier.
But if you never pray out loud, it'll help you. You know, I had a lady come to me one time after my seminar, and I taught them how to do this, and she said, Dr. Chapman, I don't think I can do that. And I said, well, why? She said, because I'm not a Christian.
She said, My husband's a Christian, but I'm a Wiccan. A witch. Whew! Don't know how he got into that.
Okay. And I said, oh God, give me wisdom. And I said to her, you know, We all have to be where we are. And right now you're telling me where you are. But you also recognize your husband as a Christian.
So maybe you could disrespect his belief in God. And hold his hand. And close your eyes. And let him pray. And then you could say amen, and he could say amen.
And she said, you know, I think I could do that. You see, folks, we have to be where we are. But if we're going to have a healthy marriage, we've got to share where we are in the journey. And then there's physical intimacy. the sharing of our bodies.
It's such things as holding hands. Kissing. Embracing. The whole sexual part of the marriage. Arm around the shoulder, driving down the road, you put your hand on their leg, sitting around the house, and they walk by and you trip them.
I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Yeah. In a healthy marriage, there will be physical intimacy. In a healthy family, the husband and wife will have intimacy. These kind of things will be happening to a greater or lesser degree and will be moving toward a greater degree in a healthy marriage.
This is what it looks like.
Now let's face it. There are many children today in our culture who have never seen a mother and daddy who had an intimate relationship. In fact, many of them don't even have a father. And if you're a single mom, let me just encourage you: you need to teach your children what it would look like if you had a godly man in the house. They need to know what would be happening if you had a godly man in the house and was working with you.
You know, again, we have to be where we are, but we got to teach our children what health looks like. Otherwise they grow up and don't even know what health looks like.
So do whatever you can, and that's where that big brother, big sister deal we talked about earlier, that can be very helpful that somebody outside the family can serve to help them get a picture of what it would be like if there was a godly person in the house with their mother.
Some great advice from Dr. Gary Chapman on this best of 2025 episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. We'll have more insight into family dynamics, especially as it relates to parenting, next time. That's right, John, and it will be well worth the listen. And let me just reflect on Dr.
Chapman's last point today: If you're a single parent, my heart goes out to you. I was raised by a single mom, and I understand the challenges that that brings. My mom worked three jobs at times to pay the bills for our family and five kids, yet she also had a cheerful attitude, and that's what I remember about her. We had no extended family, but we did have some great neighbors, the Hope family, of all people, who provided support as they could. And they actually led my mom to the Lord just before she died.
So, if you're a single mom or dad, take heart. God can provide for your needs, He sees you. And please reach out to us. Our friendly staff would be honored to hear your story and pray with you. And if you need to speak to one of our caring Christian counselors, we'll arrange for you to get a call back.
Please allow us to serve you in that way. And our number is 800, the letter A and the word family, 800-232-6459. And let me remind everyone, we're able to provide our free counseling consultations because of the generous support of donors like you.
So if you'd like to help families, especially single-parent families, let me encourage you to become a supporter of the ministry. You can help us bring hope and joy to hurting families now and into the new year. And when you make a donation of any amount, we'll send you Dr. Chapman's book on this subject. It's called Five Traits of a Healthy Family: Steps You Can Take to Grow Closer, Communicate Better, and Change the World Together.
We highly recommend. Recommend it. And regardless of whether you can give, we have a gift for you. We're putting together an audio collection of all of our best of 2025 programs, and it's free. Just reach out to us today.
Yeah, don't miss a single episode of these most popular shows. You can access the collection when you follow the link in the show notes or give us a call. 800, the letter A and the word family.
Next time, you'll hear more from Dr. Gary Chapman. In a healthy family, Parents will be teaching and training their children. in the things of God, in the things that are right, and the things that are wrong. Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
I'm John Fuller inviting you to take a moment and leave a rating for us in your podcast app and share this episode with a friend who might need the encouragement from Dr. Chapman. That really helps us spread the word about this great content. I'm John Fuller inviting you back next time as we continue the presentation and once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. Jesus Christ is the ultimate source of truth.
As we celebrate his birth this Christmas, I hope you'll be inspired to share God's truth with grace and love. Become better equipped by listening to my podcast, Refocus with Jim Daly from Focus on the Family. Every episode, I talk to fascinating guests about important cultural issues and how we can reach people for Christ and share his joy. Listen at refocus with JimDaily.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
