How Can I Help My Family - 19

Welcome to Turning Point Weekend Edition. If your family were facing physical harm, you'd do anything to protect them. But would you do the same to prevent spiritual harm? Today Dr David Jeremiah offers tips on fortifying your family with prayer. Listen, as David shares, how can I help my family? In today's edition of Turning Point, we are studying some questions, and most of all, the answers to those questions from the Bible. Today we're going to look at two Psalms that are back-to-back, Psalm 127 and 128, and we're going to talk about how we can help our families. It's kind of interesting to jump back from Psalm 127 and look at the last couple of verses of Psalm 126, because here's an overarching principle that really does affect the family. It says, those who sow in tears shall reap in joy.

He who continually goes forth weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing sheaves with him. It's a reminder to us that in all of life, the principle of sowing and reaping is in vogue. In our families, that's true, isn't it? What happens in our family has a lot to do with what input we give.

And unfortunately, many of us try every modern approach to family life, only to discover that while it may fix one part of the family, it ends up messing up all the rest of the family. Well, God has a better idea. And in case you're a little bit skeptical about listening to something from the Bible on the family, could I remind you that the family is God's idea? In fact, it's God's primary idea. The church was God's idea too, but the family was God's idea long before the church. Civil government, that came from the mind of God too, but long before there was civil government, God thought of the family. In fact, if you go by its place in the Word of God, apart from human life itself, the family is one of God's first great ideas for us in this universe. In the very beginning of the Bible, God looked at man alone and he said, it is not good that man should be alone.

And he brought a woman to him and family began. So if God had the idea about the family, doesn't it make a little bit of sense to you that maybe he might have something to say about how we could make it work, how it should work? And I'll tell you what, not only here in the Psalms, but throughout all of the Bible, God has some incredible truth for those who are willing to dig for it to help us build families that will bring honor and glory to his name. Now there are four principles that I want you to see in Psalm 127.

We will barely get to Psalm 128, but they're connected and I want to show you some things there if I have time. The first thing I want you to note about building your family and helping your family, principle number one is that if you're going to be successful, you have to place God at the head of your home. Notice what the Psalmist says, unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. This Psalm begins with the most important truth in building a home. It says, unless the Lord builds it, it isn't going to work.

It is a truth that is so simple in saying, but so challenging in doing. This verse is teaching us that there is only one builder in the home and that builder is God. There is only one architect for the home. God who had the idea of the home is the one who wants to be at the head of the home. And men and women, until you put God at the center of your home, all of your attempts to try to make family life what you want it to be will be attempts in frustration. And that's what the Psalm says. Unless you let him build the home, you're going to do it in vain, which means you're going to go through a lot of frustration and experience a lot of emptiness and get down the road and think this is it and only discover. How many people do you know that thought that if they could just get all the things that their family wanted, that their family then would be a good, strong family and everything would be together?

And how many kids do you know, maybe some of them hang out with you, some of them are at your place trying to get in on the family life you have because they've got so many things, but they've got no family and there's no one there. And that's not God's plan, you see. If God's plan was that family life was how much stuff you had, then very few of us would even be candidates, would we?

We would be stuck where we are. No, God has a better plan. God says that he wants to be the head of your home.

Now I want to take just a moment and debunk that, if I might. Because some of you are saying, you know, there's no way I'm going to install halos on my kids, they wouldn't look right, they wouldn't fit, it's not going to work. We're not going to say Bible verses like mantras around home. We don't have plaques up in every room that says God is the head of this house and little verses and we don't have a promise box at the breakfast table. Is that what it means to put God as the head of your home? Isn't it interesting how we get stuck on all the externals, we focus on all the little trinkets of the family.

I'd just like to give you a testimony of my family growing up days. I knew that God was central in the home I grew up in, but I got to tell you something. It wasn't because of a lot of the things that we might focus on. You know, when I think back on my growing up days, I didn't know God was at the head of my home because we read the Bible after dinner at night. In fact, I got to tell you, a lot of those times were very forgettable, very forgettable.

That doesn't mean that it's not important to do that, it just means that that's not the issue. It wasn't even the fact that my parents were involved in institutional ministry. The thing, as I look back on it, that's very incredibly clear to me is this, it's a very simple thought, and that is that God was very important to my parents. That God was very important to them. That somehow in all the stuff we did and everything we're involved in, he always was there as a part of the picture. Most of the time he was the centerpiece, but wherever he was, he was a part of our family. And as I grew up, I couldn't escape that. It wasn't that my mom and dad preached at me all the time, but it was the sense that I had that in our family life, God was important. Is God important in your home?

Is he sort of a matter of convenience maybe? You see, we communicate our values where they really are. You can't fake it with kids. Can I get a witness?

You can't fake it with kids. They know. You can try to make them believe that God's important, but it's not going to get through unless he really is. So maybe the best thing we could do before we install God at the head of our home is install him at the head of our life and then ask him to live that out little by little in our families.

Enough said about that. I think we know that to be true. Family isn't going to work unless God is at the head of the home. But I want you to notice this next principle, which is pretty incredible in my way of thinking because it's so contemporary. Principle number two says that if you're going to have a home that really makes a difference, you have to put parenting at the top of your priority list. Now notice what the psalmist says. Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. First thing I wrote down in my notes is that God agrees with what I've always suspected, and that is that being a parent is labor.

Can I get a witness to that? Ladies, you thought it started at the beginning of labor pains and stopped when the child was born? No, it continues throughout all of life, and it isn't very nice of you to include us in it either.

We thought we were free from all of this. Being a parent is labor. Say it, being a parent is labor.

It's hard work. It's such an incredibly simple concept, but it is losing its value in our culture today. Because parenting is being pushed over on the edge while moms and dads pursue their professional goals and purposes in life. And parenting is getting a lick and a promise, and we can't figure out what's gone wrong in our families. I want to tell you something, that unless you are willing to work at being a parent, God's the architect, but he needs laborers. And there are two laborers in most homes. In some homes, there's just one laborer. There's a single parent listening to me right now who's thinking, boy, you think it's work trying to do it with two of you.

You ought to try doing it with just one. But God is saying to us that while he's given us the plan, he's the architect, he's the builder, we're the laborers, and we've got to put in the time and make parenting important, or it won't work. Wherever I go to speak, or especially if I'm with pastors, we have a question and answer time. One of the first questions they always ask, and I've just gotten prepared for it, so I thought I'd better get an answer, is can you tell us a little bit about your priorities? Well, you know, priorities are important because they govern your life. And it's one thing to talk about your priorities, it's another thing to put your priorities into perspective and put them into operation and then live by them. I remember going away and getting some time alone with the Lord and really sitting down and trying to crystallize some years back, okay, Jeremiah, what are your priorities? And I'll tell you, it's one of the most important times I've ever spent in my life because I believe that with what God has done here in this place, apart from a clear understanding in my mind, and yet I struggle with these all the time, but a clear understanding of what my priorities are, I would be making a lot of really bad decisions right now.

So let me tell you what they are. They don't necessarily have to be yours, but most of us are going to fall into the pattern of these priorities. Number one, I'm a person, and I better take care of my personal relationship with God. God's number one. In fact, he says he must be number one. He's a jealous God.

He doesn't want anybody in between me and him. He's number one in my life. And so I have to cultivate that relationship. I have to spend time with God. I have to make God number one. Secondly, I'm a partner, and I've got a wife, a wonderfully, wonderfully good wife. God is first, Donna second. Thirdly, I'm a parent, and I've got children, four of them. And they're the most important thing in my life outside of God and Donna. And every day of my life, I have to fight to preserve that priority, because you see, when I'm at a football game, I'm not at three or four other places where people think I should be.

Or if I'm at a dinner sometime, I've said no to other things. And you know, there's an awful lot of pressure and a lot of expectations about what you should be doing with your life. But I want to tell you, as best as I know how to tell you, that my children are third in my life. The only thing ahead of them is God and Donna.

Principle number three is protect your family from destructive influences. Verse two changes the metaphor just a bit. It says, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early to sit up late unless the Lord guards the city.

The watchman stays awake in vain. We've been in the family building business. We've seen the family get built like you build a house. Now we have a picture of a city that is a protection for its people. And the writer of the Psalms changes the picture and he says, unless the Lord keeps the city, the people who try to keep it are doing it in vain. And he's still talking about the family.

That's evident. And what he's talking about is the fact that while it is important for us to come to God and let him be the builder of our families, when our families are built, we have to come back to God and ask him to help us be the watchman over our families. And it's a picture of a parent looking out over his family and protecting it and watching out for it.

Boy, if there's ever been a day when we needed to do that, this is the day. Now the interesting thing here is that the psalmist once again puts us in partnership with God. Just as there's one builder and two laborers and we're working together on the same project, there's one who is the watchman, but we're to be watchmen with him. You see it? Unless the watchman who is the Lord is working, then we who are also watching aren't going to understand it. So what the psalmist is saying is we're in partnership with God in building our homes and we're in partnership with God in protecting our homes.

Are you with me? There's a man who has written a great deal about the family and I come to love his writings. His name is Steve Farrar. Maybe you've seen some of his books. He said, rather indelicately, I don't let my children watch network TV for the same reason I don't let them drink out of the toilet. Now I probably would have said that a little differently than he said it, but he got his point across, right? You don't understand the necessity of work and God knows if that's something you have to do to make ends meet, that's one thing, but if you're doing it to live at another standard of living, it's a foolish decision because you're giving up your children for more toys.

What a trade. And what God is trying to help us understand is this, that we not only have to build our homes, but as we build them, we have to stand over them and be protecting of them, care about them. I want to share this with you because I think it's a very practical, hands-on sort of thing. If you're in partnership with God in protecting your family, how do you do it? Well, how do you do anything in partnership with God? It ultimately involves prayer. I read an article written by Suzanne Fields in which she talked about this whole matter of praying, how important it is for couples to pray for their children. And right after that, I had been given a book by Patrick Morley, it's called Man in the Mirror.

It's got articles about the kinds of things that we struggle with as men, articles about children and about our relationship with our wife and how we deal with our jobs and how we deal with our money and all the temptations that come as a part of our maleness. Patrick Morley, in his book, talked about seven couples who were all new Christians who started to meet in a prayer group and the result of their prayers are so dramatic that he said, I verified their story personally. These couples were naive new Christians and they discovered when they met for the first time that they all had something in common and that is that they all had children who were not saved, in fact, a total of 23 of them. Someone brought a verse to their first Bible study that said this, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved and your household. Acts 16, 33, they took it as a promise from God that God was going to save all their kids and they started to meet together, all of them, and they began to pray for the 23 children who God had given them who were outside of Christ. And each week as they faithfully prayed for these children, over the course of two years, all 23 kids committed their lives to Christ.

Some months ago, this really became apparent to Donna and to me. And I don't know if you've struggled with this, sometimes we've struggled with praying together and praying for the things that are important. We pray but it's not always been as focused as we had wanted it to be and one of the things that gets focused real quick when you end up with a bunch of teenagers in your home, boy, do you begin to sense the need for prayer in your life.

Amen? So we began to realize the kinds of challenges that were out there for young people and one of the things we started doing is just we sort of stumble out of bed and get there to the place where we walk. We don't say very much for the first few steps, we're kind of getting awake.

About halfway around the tour, I began to pray. We don't say anything about it, I just start out and then when I'm finished praying, Donna prays. And it's an incredible time of oneness together because we're the only two laborers building this house. God's the builder but we're the laborers. It's a bonding time for us and I'll tell you it's a wonderful thing to see how God answers prayers.

I'll tell you something else. It's a wonderful time of communication. I learn a lot about my kids that I didn't know when I hear their mother pray for them. You may not hear anything else I say today, moms and dads, but I want to tell you, there's never been a time when we needed to pray for our kids more than we do now. They're fighting battles most of you don't have a clue about that are intense battles and they need to know that mom and dad are standing with them and praying with them. I was real intrigued by Patrick Morley gave us a little list of some things we could pray for for our kids.

Listen to this. Pray for a saving faith if they don't know the Lord. Pray for a growing faith if they're immature. Pray for an independent faith as they get older.

Isn't that a good thought? Pray that they will be strong and healthy in mind and body and spirit. Pray for a sense of purpose and destiny in their life. Pray for a desire within them that they will have integrity.

Pray for a call to excellence. Pray to understand the ministry God has for them. Pray that they will set aside times to spend with God. Pray that they will acquire wisdom. Pray protection against drugs and alcohol and premarital sex. Pray that God will bring them the mate that he wants them to have and begin praying for that person already because you know your kids and they need prayer. And there's a whole list of stuff to pray for your children.

What an incredible thing. That's how you build the house and that's how you protect your children. You know one of the things that happens as your kids grow older is you become aware of this wonderful thought that you have lost control.

Are you with me? Little by little. Isn't that what parenting is all about? It's the gradual losing of control. Some of you kids think you're under all kinds of oppression right now. Well let me just tell you, it's going to change. It's inevitable.

You're going to get more and more control over your life and that's the real scary thing about being a parent because you know why? That's when we get our grade card. That's when we find out how well we've done.

Ultimately we're going to say goodbye to them. And the thing that's so incredible is that the one way you can still be in touch with your kids is through prayer. Let me tell you something. God hears.

He really does. One last thing. Number four. We need to get to the place where we praise God openly for our kids. Read with me verses three and following. It's a wonderful passage. Behold, children are inherited from the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.

They shall not be ashamed but shall speak with their enemies in the gate. That's the best thing that Solomon could say in his language about parenting. What he said is be positive about being in the family. Be positive about your children. Realize God gave them to you as a gift. Realize that they're in heritage for the Lord. That's God's reward to you. You say, good night. I hope I don't get rewarded too much more. I know how some of you think.

But I want to tell you the truth. Children are God's blessing to us. And the psalmist uses this metaphor, class. He says they're like arrows. What does an arrow do?

An arrow goes to a place where you can't go to accomplish a purpose you can't accomplish. Isn't it incredible to see how God raises up our children and he thrusts them out? And do you ever stop and think about the fact that whatever good your children are doing out there, wherever they are right now if they've left home, there's a part of you that's doing whatever they're doing because you're in them, not only physically but your life has been built into their life and they're an arrow that's gone out from your bow to do good for God. And then it says here that when your children are grown, that you will not be ashamed and it says they shall speak with you in the gate. And this is a wonderful picture here.

It's a picture of what happened in Solomon's day. All the business was transacted at the gate of the city. Are you with me?

And all of the major disputes were decided at the gate of the city. And what Solomon's talking about here is this, if you grow up good children and when you get older you get in trouble, they come and stand with you and help you out and speak for you and they're part of helping you. You know, you might not think that's important but as you get older and older it's good to know you've got some kids out there who will come and stand with you and encourage you. And some of us who are children still are in that process right now with our parents, aren't we? And one of the reasons we're doing that is because God has raised us up in a good family. Now we can come and stand with our parents in a time when they really need for us to stand with them.

Oh, let me tell you something, friends. God has a good plan for building good homes. He tells us if we put God at the center of our home, that's the first thing. If we put parenting at the top of the list, that's the second thing. If we determine to protect our kids as a watchman watching over a besieged city, that's the third thing.

And if we bring praise to God and have a positive attitude toward our children, that God has given them to us as a gift, what an incredible thing that can be. The salmon nearly leaped off their hooks. That was a far cry from the day before when the four anglers couldn't even seem to catch an old boot. Disappointed but not discouraged, they had climbed aboard their small sea plane and skimmed over the Alaskan mountains to a pristine secluded bay where the fish were sure to bite. They parked their aircraft and waded upstream where the water teemed with ready-to-catch salmon. Later that afternoon, when they returned to their camp, they were surprised to find the sea plane high and dry.

The tides fluctuated 23 feet in that particular bay, and the pontoons rested on a bed of gravel. Since they couldn't fly out till morning, they settled in for the night and enjoyed some of their catch for dinner, then slept in the plane. In the morning, the sea plane was adrift, so they promptly cranked the engine and started to take off. Too late, they discovered one of the pontoons had been punctured and was filled with water. The extra weight threw the plane into a circular pattern, and within moments from liftoff, the sea plane careened into the sea and capsized. Dr. Phil Littleford determined that everyone was alive, including his 12-year-old son, Mark.

He suggested they pray, which the other two men quickly endorsed. No safety equipment could be found on board, no life vests, no flares, nothing. The plane gurgled and submerged in the blackness of the icy morning sea. Fortunately, they all had waders, which they inflated. The frigid Alaskan water chilled their breath. They all began to swim for shore, but the riptide countered every stroke. The two men alongside Phil and Mark were strong swimmers, and they both made sure, one just catching the tip of land as the tides pulled them out toward sea. Their two companions last saw Phil and Mark as a disappearing dot on the horizon, swept arm in arm out to sea.

The Coast Guard reported they probably lasted no more than an hour in the freezing waters. Hypothermia would chill the body functions, and they would go to sleep. Mark with a smaller body mass would fall asleep first in his father's arms. Phil could have made the shoreline too, but that would have meant abandoning his son.

Their bodies never were found. And then the writer asks, what father wouldn't be willing to die for his son? I'll tell you what.

The best I know, I think I would do that. I think I'd die for my son, if it came to that, and for my daughters. I think if somebody came after my family and it was me or them, I think I'd put myself in harm's way to protect them.

I hope I have that kind of courage. But let me ask you something, men and women. If we, and I assume that most of us would agree to that, if we are willing to go so far as to die for our children, why is it that it seems so hard for many of us to live for them?

That's the issue. Because you see, tragedy is no less painful if it's by the sudden stroke of a storm or a drowning than it is if it's the long protracted hurt of a disenfranchised child who has been swept away in the world and has lost all hope of ever recovering. And I want you to understand that while we can't always be the ones to stand in harm's way, God has put us as parents in this world to stand in harm's way for our kids.

By the grace of God, I want to join hands with all of you as fellow parents and say I'm going to give that the best shot I have until it's no longer necessary. We hope you enjoyed today's Turning Point Weekend Edition with Dr David Jeremiah. You can hear this and other programs and get more information about our ministry by downloading the free Turning Point mobile app for your smartphone or tablet or by visiting our website at davidjeremiah.org forward slash radio. That's davidjeremiah.org slash radio. You can also view Turning Point Television on Frida Air Channel 7 too Sunday mornings at 8 and on ACC TV Sundays at 6.30am and Fridays at 1pm. We invite you to join us again next weekend as Dr David Jeremiah shares another powerful message from God's Word here on Turning Point Weekend Edition.