A Strong Family - Part 1

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, September seventh. Today, we'll continue listening to the Strong Series with practical guidance for building and maintaining a strong family. God created a family, and yes, there are no perfect families. In fact, if you look in the Scriptures, you'll find pretty quickly Adam and Eve had a very difficult time in their family. Not only was there conflict between them, because you remember when she said to Adam, why don't you take a bite? He told God she made him do it.

It's sort of that's what she said, he said. And then, of course, they had two sons. One of them killed the other. And Eli's sons, the priests, both his sons, the Bible says were evil. Abraham married Sarah, they're getting along real fine.

And then Hagar comes on the scene and they have a conflict. Then you can move all the way through the Scriptures, but let's just take David, who's the supreme of all the kings of Israel. There was lying, murder, rape, and rebellion in his family. And this was an awesome family.

And he was an awesome king. And yet, their family was a total disaster. So, when you're thinking about your family and you're thinking, we're not doing too well. Well, just remember this, just because your family isn't doing too well isn't because you can't be better. In other words, you can improve what's going on if you're willing to work at it. It's difficult in these days to have a strong family. And yet, that is exactly what I want to talk about in this message. And God intends for us to have strong families.

And proof of that is this. If you turn to Deuteronomy chapter six for a moment, I want us to look at a few verses that's absolute proof that God was very interested in His families being strong families. If you look in the sixth chapter, and I'll just start reading in verse three, and notice what the Scripture says.

Scripture says, O Israel, you should listen and be careful to do it, that it may be well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you in a land flowing with milk and honey. Then He says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your might. These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart.

And then this is what He says about the family as proof that He wants strong families. He says to them, speaking primarily to the fathers, you shall teach them diligently to your sons, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. That is to teach the Word of God to His children's family. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets on your forehead. You shall write them on the dual posts of your house and on your gates, and He was simply saying, The Word of God I want in your family. Everywhere you turn, there's evidence that the Word of God is in your family. So, when you look at your family and you say, Well, some of you may say, Well, my family's gone now. I can't do anything about it.

Well, gone where? In other words, if you can call on the telephone, you can reach them. Somebody says, Well, I text them once in a while.

You know what? That's so impersonal, there's no feeling in a text. You say, Well, I tell them I love them, but that's still a text. It's something about, Sweetheart, I love you. Honey, I love you.

You're just fantastic, sweetheart. In other words, there's a whole lot of difference in that I-L-U-V and a capital U. What's happening to a society that we can't even communicate with each other? God wants us to have strong, loving families. So, somebody says, Well, so how would you define that kind of a family?

I'd simply say this. And that is, we mean by a strong family, one in which the members of the family have a love and devotion to one another. Love and devotion for one another.

No other substitute, just love and devotion for one another. That's the beginning of a strong family. And it doesn't just happen, it takes work. And I think one of the reasons many people don't have strong families is the father and the mother, or one of the two, they're not willing to do what is necessary to build strength into their family. So, the purpose of this message is this, is to give you the characteristics of a strong family. It doesn't mean that you have to do every single one of these things, but it does mean this. These are the characteristics of strong families.

Now, personally, I've been on all sides of this. And I'm simply saying this to you. You don't have to give up no matter what happens. You can keep moving on in your life and keep having an awesome influence in the lives of your children no matter what happens.

But it depends upon us and our relationship to God. So, I want you to listen carefully to this message. And I want you to think about your home and how you can improve, how you can make it stronger wherever it might be. And don't give up. No matter what's happened, you don't give up.

God placed you there for a reason. And if you will listen to Him carefully, He can make you a strong influence. And your children will grow up to have the right kind of influence and testimony. And they'll pass on what you pass on to them.

And that will make a wonderful family for you. So, let's begin with the first one. And that is, and let me just say this right up front. When I say this first one, you're going to say, Well, that is counting me out.

No, no, no, no. Because I'm coming to the part where the families are divided and separated and blended and so forth. So, stay with me from the very beginning. First of all, godly parents. You want a strong family?

You need a strong father and a strong mother who love God and are devoted to Him. That is the most powerful of all the elements in a strong family. Secondly, one of the very important things about having a strong family is that parents are consistent. That is, if you say something, do what you say. Because here's what children do. They hear what you say, but they do what you do.

And children watch that very carefully. If you want consistency, you have to do what you say you're going to do. Very important. Then of course, you need to be a good listener. Everybody wants to be listened to. And children want to be listened to.

And if you want to turn a child away and separate yourself from that child, whether it's a little boy or a little girl, or a teenager, just get too busy to listen. Listening is a very important activity in a family. You may not always be interested in what they have to say.

But remember this, they honor you as their father and their mother, and they think that you're smarter than they are. So, they want you to listen to what they have to say, because you may be able to help them. And everybody wants to be listened to. You want to be listened to on your job and your family.

Among your friends, you feel like that's very important. To refuse to listen to somebody is to shut them out and really to make the statement, you're not worth listening to, you're not important, so I'm not going to listen. Be sure not to let that happen in your family. Then of course, discipline them without rejection. A very, very important point, which simply says this, you don't discipline your children when you're angry with them. If you're angry at something they did, get over it.

Walk away, do something to get over the anger till you and God can settle your feeling about that. Then you come to them and discipline them. You see, if you discipline your child out of anger, you're probably going to hurt them. Secondly, they'll feel your rejection. You don't want them to feel rejection.

You want to say to them that you're doing this for a reason. So, I made it a policy early in my kid's life not to ever discipline them until, first of all, I explained what I was getting ready to do. I would never in discipline touch my child with my hand. When you slap a child with your hand, whether it's a face or some other part, there's something about that that transfers into rejection.

There's something psychologically very destructive about that. Then, of course, parents loving one another builds security in a child's life. If a child growing up, whether he's six or whether he's sixteen, and he sees dad and mom really love each other, they feel that love, they hug each other, they kiss each other right in front of everybody, and he talks about what a wonderful gal she is and he's a wonderful guy.

In other words, when that goes on in the family, what that does that builds security in the life of those children. And here's what they say, that's the kind of love I want. That's the kind of woman I'm after. I want to marry a woman just like my mother. You remember that song, I want a gal just like the gal that married dear old dad?

You don't remember that song? Well, it's a wonderful idea. And it's because two people genuinely love each other. And if you love somebody, you can't keep it to yourself. People who pout and go off and act like children, you know what, that doesn't build a strong family, it breaks it down.

The strong family's built by mom and dad who love each other and don't mind demonstrating in the right fashion. Then of course, praying together about everything. And I think this is so very important. Parents say, well, you know what, some things I don't want to pray about. Well, if there's something that's private, that's one thing, but for the most part, and we had a coffee table, that's what we call it, low down, and we could sit around it. And so, that's where we do our praying together. And we didn't pray together every single night.

When kids get a little older, you don't. But at least once a week, we'd get around the table, and that's where we sort of brought up things and issues that we would need to pray about as a family. And my kids would tell you that there were times when we'd be praying and I would go fast asleep, and they'd pray and then they would slip out while I was still asleep, or I would walk up pretty soon, you know, we all make mistakes. So, I'm just saying, nobody's perfect, but at least they knew that once a week we got around the table and that's where we shared different, if there were financial issues or some kind of issues that we had to deal with, it was a good place for us to pray together. And listen, when you listen to your kids pray, you'll know when they know how to pray.

When you listen to them pray, you'll know that they know how to get in touch with God. Then of course, reading the Bible together. It'd be amazing to know how many Christian homes, as we would say, where the parents and the kids read the Bible together. There's not a dad alive who's too busy.

There's not a mother alive too busy. You may make yourself busy, but what could you do more important to a young child than, listen, to keep this Bible before them and to magnify the Word of God and to talk about the Word of God and read it with them and read it with the whole family. And you may not read it with the whole family every single day, but you could read it at least once a week. But you could help them learn to read the Bible daily. And let me say this, it's your guidebook for life. It's their guidebook for life. You're the one who is to instill within them, watch this, the wisdom, the wisdom of guiding their life by the Word of God. If I should ask you, well, do you want your children to read the Word of God and to be guided by that?

Yes. Well, who's going to be the most effective? Not the pastor. I can talk about it just an hour on Sunday.

You've got six days and twenty-three other hours. It's what you do and what you think is important and what you place in your house. And if you came to my house, you'd probably find a Bible in just about every room.

And so, I would say to you, if you think it's important, make it aware that you think it's important. Buy your kids a Bible if there's a particular kind they want. Do it early in life so that all the days of their life the Word of God has been a part of their family as you have read it to them oftentimes and explained and all the rest. Then, not just reading the Scripture and so forth together, but you need to attend church together. Now, listen carefully. If you happen to be one of those parents and you go to your church and you drop your kids off for Sunday school, you come to what we call Big Church, then you go pick them up after Sunday school and take them home.

You know what you've done? You've said, number one, worship is not important or Big Church is not important. Hearing the pastor's sermon's not important.

You went to Sunday school, you got some training, so that's it. What do you think they're going to do when they get a little bit older? You know what they'll do? Instead of coming to Big Church, they'll go somewhere else. And you think, what'll they do when they get to college? When all, listen, everything is stacked against most kids when they go to college because of what they're going to hear. If they're not rooted and grounded in the Word of God, they're going to come out of college, listen, having laid aside what truth you've tried to tell them. And if you'll look at the statistics, it's horribly unbelievable how many kids leave college, do not believe in God, or do not believe anything about the church or anything about Jesus Christ anymore.

You're the pattern. It's what you teach them of what they see, reading the Word of God together. It's an awesome, awesome lesson in that. Just being there with them and opening the Word. For example, here's what they'll do when you're gone sometime. They're going to find your Bible and look through it and see what you marked and what you underlined and what all that says is this, my dad thinks there's something really important about this verse, I'm going to look at this one again.

And so, what you're doing is you're enriching their life in ways that are very, very simple, but it will absolutely affect them as long as they live. And if I should ask you today, how many of you read the Bible with your children? How many of your children have seen you read the Bible? Have heard you read it?

Have heard you try to explain it? Where is the Bible? The Word of, this is the eternal, infallible Word of the living God and it's our God Book for life and the Book by which you now be judged.

Where is it in your family? And if you'll think about it for a moment, your children probably, if there's none around, they probably wonder why you don't read the Bible. I cannot tell you how important this Book is.

It's the God Book for life. We'd not be having the problems we're having. We'd not be in the mess we are in this country if the people in leadership and the people that's in towns or city or state in the country, we wouldn't be where we are if the principles of the Word of God were lived out by those who rule over us. And that is true in the family as well as any other place in life. So, you want to encourage them to have private devotions.

Not just what you all read together, but they need to get in the habit of reading it by themselves and just say, if there's something you read you don't understand, you come ask me, I'll help you understand it. If I don't, we'll find out the answer. Don't just leave them hanging.

We'll find out what the answer is. And then, of course, you need to explain to them how to handle money. Now, somebody says, well, yeah, well, somebody should have explained that to me a long time ago. Well, this is how simple it is. You can say to a little child, well, here's what you do. You save some, you give some, and you spend some.

Just those three things. And if you get them in the habit of saving very early in life, it may not be much. And one of my friends is telling me his mother passed away when he was rather young. But she taught him, when he got his first job, to do that. To save some, and to give some, and to spend some. And so, he put us out a dollar. He said, I've been practicing that all my years.

He's forty-some years old. He told me how much money he had. And if I told you the kind of job you had, you'd think, but you know what, those things multiply. And so, ask yourself the question, how do you look at money? If you've got a stack of credit cards, or do you have money? Do you have a lot of debt, or do you have money? And the thing, if you'll think about this, I don't, this is just my personal opinion. The only thing I've ever been in debt for is buying a house.

That's the only thing. The only other time I've ever borrowed any money was when I was, had my first paper route, I had to buy the paper route. And so, it cost a hundred and twenty-five dollars. My mother and I went to the bank because she didn't have any money, and so I made a deal with them naturally, and I'd pay them back two dollars a week. So, I paid it back in such a way that I paid it off in a year. And so, we teach our children to save some, teach our children to give some, and teach our children to spend some. And we teach them that the biblical example for that is tithing, that the first ten percent, I taught my kids that. I never tithed, I always gave more than that because my attitude was, it looked a little cheap to me to give God change. I made four dollars and to give God forty cents when I was thankful for a job, I gave Him a dollar. And I've never tithed, I've always given more than that. I taught my children that, and to say, okay, here's how much you have now. If you divide this into ten, I have ten pennies, and if you gave God one of those, how much would you have left?

And of course, we got out of the penny age pretty fast. But, I taught them what tithement's about. And both of them have tithed all of their life and stayed out of debt.

And you say, well, it's too late for me. It's not, listen, pay it off if at all possible. Don't get back in debt. A wise use of your money. Teach your children that, to save some. Put some aside. Because if you'll start now, one of these days you ought to borrow any money to do anything. Just start young, start early, putting it aside.

If you will help them do that, you'll be grateful and they'll be grateful all the days of their life. Thank you for listening to part one of A Strong Family. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by, intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.