I came in and I'm, you know, at this point, just a couple of weeks away from delivery, and just heard the words that I never thought I would hear. which were just I'm sorry. And, um Just had a moment. um to acknowledge what he was telling me. that there was no heartbeat.
And that Our baby had died. Susan was devastated, but we reminded her of God's unfailing love. And so Focus on the Family really was monumentally instrumental in teaching me this truth and healing me. And the resource of Focus on the Family was teaching me to grieve with hope. I'm Jim Daly.
We need your help now to deliver hope and joy to hurting people like Susan. Give before December 31st and your gift will be doubled. Donate at focusonthefamily.com/slash family. Last time on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, Dr. Gary Chapman explained how healthy families can positively impact our culture.
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. Welcome to today's show. It's one of our most popular programs of the year, and we're so glad you could join us.
I'm John Fuller. This is a very dynamic presentation by Dr. Chapman detailing five characteristics of a healthy family that he gleaned from the New Testament, Ephesians 5:18 through 6:4.
Now, last time, Dr. Chapman talked about building an attitude of service in your family, as we just heard in the opening clip. He stressed the importance of emotional intimacy between husband and wife. Today, he'll describe the keys to healthy child discipline, and we all went, Okay, and he'll encourage fathers to be loving leaders. Yeah, it's a great message.
Here now, 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. And we'll start with a brief recap for those who missed last time. And essentially what I want to do is to share with you the five fundamentals.
of what a healthy family 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. Number one. An attitude of service.
Second characteristic of a healthy family. There will be intimacy between the husband And the wife. In a healthy family. The third characteristic of a healthy family, the parents will teach and train the children. Chapter 6, verse 4 says, Fathers, don't exasperate your children.
But instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. You know, I don't know why he addressed the first part of that to fathers. Don't exasperate your children. Unless fathers do that more than mothers. Don't push your children to the breaking point.
Don't exasperate them. You know guys, some of us are so driven that we drive our kids beyond their capability. And we expect them to do things they're not capable of doing. and we push them and we pressure them. And he's saying to fathers, don't do that.
Don't expect the unrealistic from your children. But then he says they were to bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Those are two different words. The King James says, bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And that word nurture is a word which means training.
Training by action. And the other word means literally putting into the mind. Using words.
So essentially, we are going to be training them by actions, and we're going to be teaching them by words. But these two must always go together. You see, in our culture, parents tend to lean toward one or the other.
So, the parent with words is a parent who says to the child, Well, honey, let's talk about it. Let me explain this to you. And they feel like that, you know, the child's intelligent, and all you have to do is explain it to them, and they'll do it. But what happens if that's your model and the child doesn't do it? Typically, you explain it again.
A little louder. And then you explain it again a little louder. And what happens? Eventually, you are verbally abusing the child. And then on the other side, their parents go to the other extreme, and their pattern of teaching is.
Do it and we'll talk about it later. These are the parents who say, do it because I said to do it. And if they don't do it, what do they do? They start whacking on them. And those parents can move off into physically abusing children.
And neither one of those extremes are biblical. The biblical pattern is that we use words and we use actions and these two must go together. Can I illustrate? You mothers ever had this experience? You're fixing dinner at night.
And it's about five minutes until dinner, and you go to the front door, and Johnny's playing in the yard next door, and you say, Johnny, dinner. And you go back to finish dinner and Johnny just keeps on playing. And about a minute later you go to the door and you say, Johnny! Dinner. And Johnny keeps on playing, and you go back and work on dinner, and you do that about five times.
And the fifth time, you say, Johnny, get home. Johnny comes home. Yeah. Why did Johnny come home on number five, but not on number one, two, three, and four? Because Johnny has learned that when mama says, get home.
That if he doesn't get home, Mama will come down there and take him by the hand and walk him home. And Johnny does not want Mama in the neighborhood.
Now, it's okay with me if you want to call your children five times for dinner. But you don't have to. All you have to do is take the action that you normally did with number five and move it up to number one or number two. But please tell Johnny you're going to change the paradigm. Went to church, Donnie got a new idea.
Going to come home on the second call. And if you don't, mama's going to come get you on the second call. You will not walk Johnny home but once, and he'll come on the second call. He'll come on the first if you prefer. With actions and words.
I remember E. V. Hill. Pastor in the area of Watts in Los Angeles. But E.
V. Hill tells this story. He said, I was 14 years old.
Well, I was some guys on the Friday night, and he said, I got drunk. He said, The first time I'd ever had anything to drink in my life at 14, I got drunk. And I came home and stumbled into my room and I threw up on the floor and said, Mama, came in, smelled the whole thing. And mama didn't say a word, she just closed the door and went to bed. But he said the next morning, bright and early, my mama came in and said, E.
V. Get out of bed and clean up this mess on the floor. Get yourself a shower. You and I are going to take a trip. And he said, Mama, I don't want to take a trip.
And she said, E. V, I did not ask you if you wanted to take a trip. We are taking a trip.
Now get up and clean this mess up. Evie said, I cleaned up the mess. It was awful. Awful. Took my shower.
Mom and I walked out the front door. And I said, Mama, where are we going? She said, you'll see. He said, we got on the subway. And we rode for a while.
When we got off the subway and we came up, I had no idea where we were. But we were on skid row. He said, Mama worked at the rescue mission two nights a week cooking meals. And all the men on Skid Row knew Mama.
So we're walking down 9 o'clock in the morning, we're walking down Skid Row, and the men say, Hey, Mama Hill, what you do down here so early in the day? And he said, My mother would say, This is E. V., my son. He wants to live down here. I brought him down to see what it's like.
He said, All day long, Mama and I walked Skid Row. That night, Mama took me to the rescue mission. I ate with the men, I did the whole thing. He said, we went home. I never had another drink of liquor in my life.
You understand what I'm saying? It's words and actions together. I remember I used to, when my son was about 16, I used to clip the articles in the newspaper when some kid got killed by a drunken driver. or some kid at 16 got killed because he was drunk. I'd clip out those articles and give them to my son.
I'd just say, Derek, read this, son. This guy is your age. How sad. You understand what I'm doing? I'm not preaching them a sermon about alcohol.
I'm just trying to expose them to reality. I used to take him on Saturday night to the juvenile detention center. and we'd play ping pong with the young kids. And then we drive home and I say, Derek, think about it. Those kids, some of them are your age, son, and they're not going home tonight.
You understand what I'm saying? It's reality. It's words and actions you put together to help your children learn things that are right and things that are wrong. 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.
And incidentally, this is best done in the context of love. What do I mean by that? If your child does not feel loved by you, Chances are they're going to rebel against your teaching. But if your children feel loved by you, They're going to be far more likely to follow your teaching. And again, that's why the five love languages is so important, learning how to speak the child's love language so the child feels loved.
A fourth characteristic is that in a healthy family children will obey. and honor their parents. Chapter 6, verses 1 through 3 says that children are to obey. and to honor their parents. Please notice that obedience comes before honor.
Incidentally, obedience is a healthy word. For the most part Parents are older than children. And there's a good chance. that with advanced age there is advanced wisdom. That's the way God planned it.
that children are to obey their parents. You see, obedience teaches a child respect. For authority. and all of us live under authority. We live under authority in the community.
We live under authority in the church. All of us live under authority. It's a healthy thing for young children. In fact, this is one of the major problems in our schools today. We have so many children who don't respect the authority of the teacher.
So obedience to parents teaches them respect for authority. It also teaches them responsibility. and it also teaches them and helps them build character in their lives.
So obedience is extremely important for a child. Let me just say this. Three-year-olds are not supposed to be in charge of hou homes. You know, I'm amazed. I'm amazed at what happens in so many homes with three-year-olds.
It's Sunday morning. We're getting ready to go to church. And the mother holds up the dress of the little three-year-old girl and she says, Honey, let's put your dress on, time to go to church. And the three-year-old says, no. Oh honey, look at the pretty ducky wuckies.
No. Oh, honey, grandmother gave you this dress. No. How do you get a dress on a three-year-old? You stuff her in it.
Yeah. It's not that hard. There's one hole for the head and two for the arms. It takes about 30 seconds to dress a three-year-old. But I've seen parents take 15 minutes dressing a three-year-old.
Obedience. Yeah. How do we teach obedience? First of all, we teach it by our model. By the way, you obey the laws under which you live.
You know, it's 11 o'clock at night. You got your 12-year-old son in the back seat. Maybe in the front seat, strapped in, the seat belt. You come to the stop sign and it says no left turn. But there's nobody around.
And if you don't turn, you'll have to go two more blocks. What are you gonna do? You see, if you go two more blocks. And obey the law. You're teaching your son.
It doesn't matter, son, whether anybody's looking or not. We obey the law. See, and he may say to you, Dad, why don't you turn back there? I mean, why don't you turn back there? You say, Son, didn't you see the sign?
No left turn. You see, we teach them by Our model. And then also, we teach them by letting them suffer the consequences of doing wrong. Let me give you a little verse. Second Thessalonians.
Chapter 3, verse 10. If a man will not work, neither should he eat. You think that's a good idea?
Now that assumes a man can get work. And that assumes a man's able to work. You with me?
So let's say we want to teach that to our children. Let's say you've got a son. You want to teach him, you know, if you don't work, you don't eat.
So you give him a job.
Okay, son, here's what the Bible says. You have to do your job in order to eat. Daddy works, daddy eats. Mama works, mama eats.
So we're going to give you a job now.
So that you give him the job, whatever it is. Maybe it's cleaning up his room. But if that's the job, tell him what you mean by that. He doesn't know what that means. Tell them it means you want the shoes here, the clothes here.
Tell them what you mean by clean room.
Okay, this is your job. And if you clean your room every afternoon before dinner, you get to eat. If you don't do your job, you don't eat.
Okay?
Now. It's about 10 minutes till time to eat and Johnny's not even thinking about his room. You don't go in there and say, Johnny, you only got 10 minutes. You better go clean your room. Oh.
He's your son. He's brilliant. You don't have to mention it again. If he doesn't clean his room, he comes to the table and there's no plate for him. And he said, where's my plate?
And you said, honey, remember, we told you, if you don't do your job, you don't get to eat. Oh, I'm hungry. And you say, I bet you are, honey. We'll have breakfast in the morning. Folks, listen to me.
A child, it will not harm a child in this one meal. But I'll tell you this, they will not miss but one meal. You got a 16-year-old, and you give him permission to drive the car, or maybe you help him get a car if he's been working and got money, but you give him permission to drive the car, but you say, Now, with the car comes responsibility. And your job is going to be to wash the car every Saturday by noon. And if you don't wash the car by noon, you lose two days of privilege if we take the keys away for two days.
Fair enough? Sure, he'll see that. Yeah, he'll see that.
So Saturday comes and it's 11:30. You don't go say, Johnny, 11:30, better get to watch the car. No, you let it roll. At 2 o'clock that afternoon, Johnny comes and said, can I have the keys to go?
Son, I'm sorry. Remember the deal? You had to wash the car and you didn't wash the car. Oh, Daddy, everybody's going. And you just say everybody but you, son.
Folks, I'm telling you, it will not happen but once, and he'll have the cleanest car in the neighborhood. Let them suffer responsibility. People say to me, Dr. Chapman, my son got picked up for driving under the influence. I need to go down there and get him out on bond.
I say, no. Let him spend the night in jail. Listen folks. Whether we're little or whether we're big, we learn by suffering the consequences when we do wrong. And so we teach them by letting them suffer the consequences.
We also teach them obedience by rewarding obedience.
Now some people say, well, I don't think you ought to reward a child just for doing right.
Well, God does. Listen to this verse, Psalm 19 verse 11. He's talking about God's law. He says, by them, by your law, Your servant is warned. And in keeping them, there's great reward.
Folks reward children verbally and otherwise when they do what is right. Obedience leads to honor. In honor is caught More than taught. They learn to honor you by the way you honor your parents.
So, if you keep up with your parents and you treat them kindly and you speak to them kindly, you're teaching them how to do the same thing. But if you don't treat your parents with honor, they may never treat you with honor as well. Number five. In a healthy family, husbands will be loving leaders. Look at the words that are used to describe a husband.
It says he's the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. And remember, what he did as the head, he gave himself for the church. He's the Savior of the body, it says. The word love, he loves and gives to his wife. He feeds and cares for his wife.
He leaves his parents so they have time to do that. And he loves and leads his children. Yeah. Yeah. All those words are talking about a loving leader.
Don't ever separate those two words. A loving leader. You see, a lot of people in the Christian faith have misinterpreted and misapplied the concept of the husband's headship. And they used non-biblical models. They'll say, for example, the husband ought to be the president.
And she's the vice president. Folks, you don't find that in the Bible. Oh, that's like he's the general. Or he's the principal. No, no, no.
It's very clear in the Bible, he's the head as Christ is the head of the church. And as the head, he takes the initiative. to meet the needs of the church. And as a head, a husband takes the initiative. That's what leadership's all about.
He takes the initiative to meet the needs of his wife and children. Can I just give you hurriedly?
some characteristics of a loving husband. He will view his wife as a partner. Not as a child. Yeah. Not as someone who's subordinate to him.
He'll view her as a partner. an equal team member working with him. He will view his wife. He will communicate with his wife. as Christ communicates with the church.
One of the great privileges of Christians, we get to talk to God. Anytime you want to talk to God. And he speaks to us. Anytime you open the Bible and listen. A loving husband will put his wife at the top of his priority list.
Just like Christ puts the church at the top of his priority list. It's not golf. It's not football. No, at the top of the priority list is his wife. A loving husband will love his wife unconditionally.
even when she's not loving him. Listen, the Bible says Christ loved the church when we were dirty, rotten sinners. Listen guys, I know there's a lot of times your wife doesn't treat you very well. And she doesn't love you. But if you love her, whether she's loving you or not, there's a good chance she's going to learn to reciprocate.
And we're to take the leadership in that. A loving husband is committed to discovering and meeting his wife's needs. How do you discover her needs?
Well, you could read a book. But the easier thing is just to ask her. Honey, how could I do this? What do you need from me? A loving husband will seek to model his spiritual and moral values.
You know, guys, the closer we come to modeling what we say we believe. the easier it is for our wives and our children to respect us. But the greater the diversity between what we say we believe and the way we live our lives. The greater the diversity between those two, the more difficult it is for our wives to respect us and our children to respect us. And God says, listen, we don't have to be perfect to be good husbands.
But we do have to apologize when we do wrong. And we have to say, I blew it. I didn't treat you fairly. And there are not many wives that will not forgive a husband. when he honestly apologizes to her when he does wrong.
So I want to challenge you, guys, to seek to model these things uh for your wife.
Well, here's what I would like for you to do. I'd like you to go home and write these five things on a sheet of paper. And I'd like for you to evaluate your family on a scale of 0 to 10. You rank yourself. And if you're really brave and you still have children at home, Let the children rank the family on these five things.
And then you sit down. And let everybody tell what number they gave each of these five and why. It may be one of the best conversations you've ever had in your family. And then you say, okay, which one of these would we like to work on first? Folks, listen.
You can have a healthy family.
Now, listen, I'm fully aware that there are many single parents, and so you may be thinking, well, I can't have an intimate relationship because I don't have a husband. I understand that. And you can't make that happen. But you can work on all these other things. And we said earlier, you can help find some people who can help your children grow up to understand what a godly husband looks like.
So, we want to challenge you. Start where you are. But let's do everything we can to build healthy families. And what does this do? It builds a healthy church.
And what happens then? We infect the community. There's nothing more fundamental. than building healthy families. And I want to challenge you to do that.
Keep your eyes on God. Keep yourself devoted to your pastoral leadership. And you're working here. I'm working in my church, and all the others we hope around us are doing the same thing. We're pointing people to Jesus, who alone gives us the power to do what I've talked about tonight.
Amen. Fascinating. Uh What an encouraging message for every family from Dr. Gary Chapman on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. That was one of our best programs of the entire year.
That was so encouraging, John, and I really appreciate Dr. Chapman's perspective that the family is an essential building block of civilization and that healthy families make for a healthy society. And that's one of our founding principles here at Focus. We want to help your family thrive in Christ and have a positive impact on our culture. Here's just one statistic that shows the impact.
Our research says that over the past 12 months, Focus helped inspire and equip more than 800,000 people to promote biblical and pro-family values in the culture through civic engagement. And we need to influence our culture now more than ever.
So, if you want to see things change for the better, get in. Involved with focus on the family. In fact, check out our latest effort, the Truth Rising documentary and four-part follow-up study. It will rock your world. God has blessed us with a very talented staff.
We just need you to provide the rocket fuel to help us along. And when you make a monthly pledge 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. And if you can't make a monthly pledge right now, we understand.
We can send you the book for a one-time gift of any amount. Get in touch with us today. Yeah, donate online when you follow the links in the show notes. And when you're at the website, be sure to look for your free access to the Best of 2025 audio collection. That's twenty GREAT EPISODES, the most popular of the year, including this message from doctor Gary Chapman.
Well, have a great weekend, and we hope you join us again on Monday for another Best of twenty twenty five show. Heather Holliman and her husband Ashley will be offering insights on how to nurture a warmer connection in your marriage.
So the first thing that changed in my marriage was believing the best about Ashley, meaning the things that he's doing, he's doing for a reason. I don't need to control him or nag him.
So I started complimenting him. I started anytime he did anything, I would make sure I was admiring and respecting him. And was that like the first year of our marriage? Pretty much after the first year, that changed everything. Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
If you would, please take a moment and leave a rating for us in your podcast app and share about this episode with a friend. Help us spread the great word about this content. I'm John Fuller inviting you back next time as we 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.
