Hope for Families in Dysfunction - Hope for Families in Dysfunction

Do you have a son or daughter, maybe even a grandchild that's walked away from God that doesn't want to hear about your faith in Christ and you don't know what to do? Well, stay with me. We're going to address that issue today. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Living on the Edge is an international teaching and discipleship ministry focused on helping Christians live like Christians.

Well, we're a little over halfway through our series, Unstuck Overcoming the Pain of Your Past. But today we're pushing pause in our study in Ephesians to do something a little different. Recently, Chip sat down and interviewed a close ministry friend about a topic that goes right along with what we've been learning. So if you're ready, settle in as we join Chip for today's program, Hope for Families in Dysfunction. I am so excited about this special program.

This will be super, super helpful. If you happen to have a son or a daughter or you know someone that's in the midst of a really dysfunctional relationship, maybe has even lost hope, we're going to do something really special today. As many of you know, for the last couple of days, we've been talking about overcoming the pain of a dysfunctional family. And here's a memo.

We all have dysfunctional families at some level. What I've done is I've asked a really good friend, Erin Pierce, who's Executive Director of Steiger Ministry. We partner with them all around the world, a hundred cities that are reaching the global youth that are far, far from God, and find themselves in great dysfunctions. So by way of quick reminder, let me just welcome you, Erin, and maybe give us just a little bit of background of you and the ministry for those who maybe don't know about our partnership with Steiger Ministry. Yeah, Chip, so good to be with you and so excited that we're partnering together all over the world.

Yeah, as you mentioned, I am the Executive Director of Steiger International. It's a global organization focused on mobilizing followers of Jesus to reach young people that would not walk into a church. And we're doing that in cities all over the world. And certainly that's, as this topic today so perfectly says, you know, it's an issue that many of us face. We have many people in our lives who are not walking into a church who are far from God and our hearts break for them. And how do we go after them?

How do we bring the hope and truth of Jesus to them? And so excited to be talking about that with you today. Well, Erin, no one is beyond reach. No one's too far gone.

But we're going to give you some help and some encouragement today. So by way of quick review, definition of dysfunction or a dysfunctional family, a dysfunction is simply something not operating according to its original design. It's faulty. It's impaired.

It's not working properly for optimal results. And the fact of the matter is, is that God has a design, a design for marriage, a design for family, a design for all kind of areas of our life. But because of sin, because of our own self will, we have all found ourselves in dysfunction. In our teaching the last few days, we've learned that we're all members of a dysfunctional family, right?

It goes all the way back to Adam. We learned that dysfunction brings death, disobedience and destruction. And we have learned that apart from an intervention, a real intervention by Jesus, we will all remain dysfunctional. But in his great love, he's given us a way, a process, a community to overcome those dysfunctions. And I know for a lot of the people that email and write and as I get a chance to travel as you do, you know, they find themselves where, you know, maybe their kids went to a Christian school or they went to a good church and, you know, all of a sudden they come back as a sophomore from college or they're 22, 26, they're living with their boyfriend or have a same-sex relationship or are involved in drugs or alcohol or some behaviors where parents, parents have actually learned by now, Aaron, that stop doing that. That's not the way I raised you is an ineffective way to build a bridge. And so you see these young people and I had the privilege of being there with you this last summer in Germany and you met a couple hundred of your team members from all over the world, many of which were in super dysfunctional relationships.

And yet you all have built a bridge. You've seen reconciliation, growth, and they've actually become the people that reach others. So maybe let's start with a story of hope and then let's back our way out of it and talk about maybe some principles or processes that we could give those listening who are thinking to themselves, boy, if you had helped me with my daughter or my nephew or my grandson or my son, oh, this would be the best day in my life.

Absolutely. And that is the point, right, is that no matter how far gone someone seems, their story's not done yet. God is actively pursuing them and there is hope.

And we have seen so many examples, countless examples of people encountering Jesus, being reconciled to Him, reconciled to the family. One example I want to share is a young girl, I'll call her Sarah. That's not a real name, but I'll call her Sarah.

She's 19 years old right now and she's actively part of our team here in the U.S. I won't say where, but she grew up in a strong, healthy Christian family. So like you described, she grew up going to church and part of a good, you know, environment. But as she grew up and especially as she went into middle school, she began to believe a lot of lies about her self-worth and her identity and who she was. And she began to experience pretty strong feelings of gender dysphoria and same-sex attraction.

She engaged in, she had a really strong eating disorder. And then as a teenager, she really began to engage in self-harm and pornography and active transgenderism. So she was going through it and began to rebel from her family. And there was conflict and hostility in her family to the point where as a teenager, she ran away from home, you know. And so here's a girl who grew up in a strong Christian home experiencing all of this and walks away from her house. And then she becomes part of this community that was very hostile to anything of God and began to become part of that community to the point where she began, kind of in a way to fit in, began to share lies of abuse that she was experiencing in her family, particularly abuse that she said she was experiencing from her father, none of which was true. And so she's telling this to the point where actually one of her friends reports this abuse to the police and her father is taken in and investigated. And this girl, Sarah, who's now deep in this lie, continues to tell this lie.

And now they go through this whole story and finally the story proves to be untrue and the father is exonerated. But it obviously created deep pain and hurt between them. And so it was this utter, just broken relationship. But this girl, Sarah, who's now on the other end of this, tells how even in that darkest moment of deep brokenness, she knew that God was there. She began to realize, kind of like the story of the prodigal son who's eating food from the pigpen and realizes, man, even my father's servants have it better than this.

She kind of came to that moment and she kind of said, this isn't working, this isn't right. And so she ended up coming back home. And at this age, she wasn't walking with Jesus or anything, but she came back home and her family expressed what I can only describe as supernatural forgiveness, where they welcomed her in.

They laid out to her very clearly the ways that she had harmed them, but said to her, we forgive you, we love you, you are our daughter and you are always welcome here. And then through that reconciliation, she ended up going to a rehab program, a Christian rehab program, where they did some good deep work in her. And she, in that moment, wrote a letter to her dad asking for forgiveness and then was able to read that letter to her dad over the phone.

And they had this deep, powerful reconciliation. And Sarah said that her dad showed her what Jesus was like in that moment, this deep reconciliation, deep forgiveness. And that letter to this complete surrender to Jesus, complete restoration and reconciliation of her relationship. And so much so that in that healing process that she got through Jesus, she was like, I need to share this with others. Others in my situation need to know the hope of Jesus. And so she is now an active part of our Steiger team, and she's going to be going to the Steiger Mission School next summer to be trained to know how to communicate the love and hope of Jesus to this generation.

So it's an example of someone that was so far gone being restored not only to God, but to her family as well, and now is going out and bringing that hope to others as well. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and we'll get you back to today's interview in just a minute. But first, can you relate to the dysfunction and heartache Aaron and Chip have been describing?

Has a child or grandchild walked away from their faith and you don't know what to do? If so, join us later in this program to learn about a tool we've created to help you reconnect and engage with the young people you care about. Well, with that, here again is Chip and his guest, Aaron Pierce. Well, Aaron, that is, one, an amazing story, and two, there's a lot of things inside of that story of what she did. There's a theology about how God is working despite how we can feel. And then I think there's some real principles about how do we build relationships. I just want to say on the front end here, everywhere I travel, I start talking about reaching next gen or problems in families.

If I've heard this once, and I'm not exaggerating, in the last few years, I've heard this a thousand times, I don't get it. I mean, we loved our daughter. We loved our son.

We went to church regularly. They've rejected everything. We've had arguments at Thanksgiving. We now don't talk. There's hurt. There's pain.

So could we take maybe some of the things that you have learned in the last 20 years? And let me just ask you to talk to maybe the dad who's been falsely accused or the dad and mom who've put him through rehab a couple times or now it's even a little bit more benign. You know, they're not doing drugs, but they're just completely closed to God.

They live an alternative lifestyle or living with their boyfriend or their worldview, not just morality, but just what matters, what's important is like 180 degrees from their parents. It always, no matter what the problem is, it always starts like Nehemiah chapter one, verse four, when I heard these things, I sat down and wept. And granted, I imagine there are many parents and grandparents who truly are weeping for their kids and grandkids. And that is where it starts. It starts with a broken heart because the extent to which our heart is broken is the extent that we will do something about it, that we're going to get uncomfortable, sacrifice our needs to lay aside our needs for the sake of others. And then as it says in Nehemiah, you know, for some time I'm more infested and prayed before the God of heaven. Then we respond with desperate prayer because the problem is too big for us. The solution is not in ourselves.

It's got to be in the supernatural move of God. And so we have to pray desperately. So the baseline for any response is always a broken heart and desperate prayer. Now what we talk about next is we need to pursue people, right? We need to pursue people, not waiting for them to come to us. So my challenge to you is if you're a parent or a grandparent and your young adult son or daughter's walked away from the Lord, or maybe you're a young adult yourself and your brother or sister have deconstructed their faith, the best thing that you can do is to be a consistent, loving presence in their life. To pursue them. Meet them on their turf.

Let them know that even though you don't agree with their choices or lifestyle, you love them and nothing will change that. And then, like we just said, then pray and never give up. Their story, like the story of Sarah, in the darkest moments, you could have felt hopeless, but her story was not over yet.

And their story is not over yet. So pray like crazy. Pray that God will bring other people or circumstances into their life that will open their heart to Jesus. Because their hearts may seem hard and cold, but things can happen to open their hearts to Jesus. So pray for people, pray for circumstances to come into their life that would open their heart. And then I would say, be patient. Be patient and ready to respond when the Holy Spirit opens up an opportunity to have a spiritual conversation and to reintroduce them to Jesus. So those moments will come.

You don't need to force it, but be patient and ready to respond when those moments do come. And Aaron, I think one of the keys here is, I mean, we know this mentally, but you care so much. I watch parents and grandparents, and at times even pastors, talk at people. And I mean, the moment you talk, you ought, you should, you never.

Why did you do this to us? Those are the kind of messages that if you're trying to drive them away, those are the kind of messages you have. And by the way, I would, I would say too, this is not saying love is love and you condone their behavior. And you know, there's also boundaries.

There's times where in lovingly broken heart with tears coming down your face, we would love to help you in this way. But right now, your current life or lifestyle or decisions, we can't do something that enables the very things that are destroying you. And by the way, I would just say with some very, very, very close friends who've mentored and loved me for years that have, you know, adult children and the alternative lifestyle, it has been that patience of, I mean, a decade or two. And when the crises come, it has amazed me. It wasn't the people that said, oh, you know, I just accept you. I've changed my theology.

It's been the ones that have been consistent that they run to. I've watched God work in ways that I think most people would think is hopeless, but it's not necessarily a quick turnaround. So if I'm not going to talk at them, I know one of the things, you know, I learned from you all as we were learning and talking about what you're doing in all these cities is kind of meeting them on their turf, but using some of that sense of justice or that sense of the world is messed up or, you know, the church did that to me rather than defending, talk about how you ask the kind of questions that get down to root issues rather than arguing about blue state, red state or, you know, the morality of X, Y and Z that usually just ends up in an argument. Yeah, what we're trying to do is not focus on the kind of the downstream symptomatic issues. We're trying to deal with the heart. You can bank on the fact that people are looking for love and acceptance. They're looking for purpose and meaning. And these are things that we can build bridges and we can say, where does real meaning come from?

What is justice if there's not an absolute moral code? Or, you know, one of the things I find really interesting since the topic here is dysfunctional families is I actually think the existence of the fact that we all acknowledge that dysfunctional families exist is actually an incredible opportunity for a spiritual conversation. Because the fact that we, we all, whether I believe in God or not, feel the pain of dysfunctional broken relationship says something, right? Because if I were to ask my non-religious friend, hey, what is the most important thing in your life?

They're not likely to respond with like a career or a financial, you know, material thing. They're going to say it's relationships. It's something, a relational thing is their most important thing. It's because God created us to be relational.

First to have relationship with Him, but also with each other. And so we desire that. And yet we universally experience brokenness in our relationship.

It's a universal. So it doesn't matter if you're like the healthiest, strongest Christian, you experience brokenness in your relationships as do secular people. And it speaks to this deep spiritual truth that, that the reason that conflict and hurt and disappointment in our relationships are so universal is because it's the result of sin, right? And so actually dysfunctional relationship speaks to the fact that we are sinful and that every one of us needs healing, reconciliation, forgiveness. This is a core need that I need, that everyone needs. We recognize that. But if I were to ask someone, is there someone out there that will never let you down, that will never disappoint you?

The answer is, of course, inevitably no. Only God can meet our need for healing and reconciliation and forgiveness. And so the very nature of dysfunctional relationships speaks to powerful gospel truths. And so the idea here is we need to engage in spiritual conversations that begin to connect to gospel truths rather than speaking of downstream symptomatic issues of behavior.

We need to get to the fundamentals, the heart. And I think one of the things that we have to own is that we've allowed at times, and if you're that parent, grandparent, it's true of all of us to some degree, so much of what has been given to the next generation that they're rejecting is a lot of moralism, a lot of religion. Of all the things that I hear over and over again, it's the courage of some parents and grandparents or even pastors to say we were more concerned about them going to meetings and having kind of good morality than we were an intimate relationship with Jesus where they were in His Word. And honestly, that was not a part of our dinner tables. They didn't see me living out my faith. We got to say we blew it. I know in my own family, you know, I had one of my children went through a pretty significant season of rebellion.

And I'll just tell you, I thought it was all his fault. And boy, the older I got, it was like, wow, I have to own how much have I set him up for that. I had this picture of being on this highway with my son. And one guardrail was, you can never ever do anything to make me stop loving you. And the other was, you can't have your own selfish way that destroys our family.

And you know, like every week or nearly every week, we'd either go out to breakfast or spend time together. And he would just roll his eyes and I would come home and tell Teresa, you know, I'm not making any progress. But it was like, you know what, I'm not going to stop. And it got where he didn't want to meet with me.

And I hate to say this, I don't want to meet with him. And it's that choice of being to that person what God is to us. It's being the manifestation of Jesus to them, and then realizing you can't control it.

Yeah, that's good. Well, Aaron, as we get near the end, I'm very glad that we don't just leave people hanging, that we've created a resource to walk them through this process that you and the ministry at Steiger have developed over the last 20 years. The book, Not Beyond Reach, has been really effective in helping parents, grandparents, and even pastors build these bridges to move from just, hey, how do we re-engage to how do you actually share Christ in a fresh way to those who've walked away from the Lord? Maybe you could take a minute and just share a little bit about what's in that book and how it's going to help them, Aaron.

Yeah, Chip, I'm so excited about this book that we developed. It's called Not Beyond Reach, How to Share Jesus with the Young, the Deconstructed and the Non-Religious, which is a resource we created to help you navigate these challenges. You know, your heart's broken, so how do we go after those that seem so far from God? And so the book is really designed to provide a real practical resource about how do we develop trust through friendship and relationship, which as you've said already here, love does not equal affirmation, right? I can love someone and not affirm their lifestyle and their moral choices, but how do I pursue people where they're at and show them not my moral superiority, but the fact that the work of the Holy Spirit is active in me and it speaks to something transcendent? And then how can I begin to engage in spiritual conversations like we kind of alluded to here that set the foundation for communicating Jesus and the cross?

The book is really designed to be a resource to help you navigate these things. And we deal with some of the big cultural stumbling blocks of our day as well. How do we navigate politics, which can get so divisive? How do we navigate sexuality, which we've spoken of here?

How do we talk about science, which some people believe is essentially antithetical to faith? How do we navigate these things so they don't become arguments, but they become opportunities for spiritual conversations? So the book, Not Beyond Reach, and future resources that we're developing around it is all about how can we serve and equip you to reach those in your life and those that are in your sphere of influence, that don't know God and today may not walk into a church, but you can go and pursue them where they're at. Well, one of the great delights of my life is God letting me, I just say, bump into people or get us connected. And so our partnership is a great joy. And I would just say before we close out here, could you just pray for these parents, grandparents, and people that are really struggling and need some hope?

Yeah, absolutely. Lord, we just lift up those in our families, those around us who don't know You, who've walked away, who in some cases, there's just incredible hostility now, Lord. And we just pray, our hearts are broken. We pray because we know that You are pursuing them, that their story is not over yet. And Lord, we just pray that, first of all, we pray that You would bring us a renewed sense of hope, a renewed sense that You are moving, You are active even when we don't see it. And Lord, we pray that You would do whatever needs to be done to bring those people that I'm thinking of right now in my own mind, people that are far from You, that You would bring about circumstances and people in their life that would soften their hearts, open their hearts to consider You again, Jesus, and then use me or anyone else, Lord, to reintroduce them to who You are and that they would truly understand that their identity is in You, that their hope and their source of love and acceptance is only going to be found in You, Jesus. So I pray that You would bring great hope to us who believe, and You would bring Your hope to those who today have walked away. And we pray this all in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.

Amen. And this is Living on the Edge with Chip Engram, and you've been listening to Chip's insightful interview with our friend Aaron Pearce from Steiger International. We hope this conversation has encouraged you to hold on to hope for family members far from Jesus. And because of how universal and relatable this topic is to so many families, let me encourage you to share this program with someone in your life.

Now, you can easily do that through the Chip Engram app or by downloading and sharing the free MP3s at LivingOnTheEdge.org. Well before we go, let me encourage you again to get a copy of Aaron's book, Not Beyond Reach, by going to special offers on the Chip Engram app or LivingOnTheEdge.org. Through it, you'll learn how to skillfully and intentionally tell others about the truth of the gospel in this post-Christian culture. Get your copy of Not Beyond Reach today by going to special offers on the Chip Engram app or LivingOnTheEdge.org. We pray this resource will minister to you. And join us next time as Chip dives back into the teaching portion of our series, Unstuck, Overcoming the Pain of Your Past, based in the book of Ephesians. Until then, I'm Dave Druey, thanking you for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.