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As a church family. We’re about to start a new series together, and that being how to build a Christ centered family. And as a church family should be highly important to us. After all, God made the first family tells us in the book of Genesis, before any other institution existed, before even the church existed, the first thing that God brought on this earth was a man and a woman. It says in Genesis chapter two and verse 18, then the Lord God said, it is not good for man to be alone. Guys, you already know that you’ve lived there, right? And God says in Genesis 218, it’s not good for man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him. In chapter two and verse 24, he goes on to say, for this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. The Bible went on to say in Genesis chapter one and verse 28 that when he created man and woman. The first thing that God tells them is that you are blessed and immediately follow the word of the the, the statement of the word blessed. He then tells them how they receive that blessing. He tells man and woman to be fruitful and multiply. The idea of blessing came in the multiplication and the fruitfulness of the life in which the husband and wife lived together, but not in just themselves, but incorporating that with a family.
It only makes sense. That is the way God designed us as people. That something that we would desire in our own lives is family. I mean, God, we’ve seen as a church family, he created us for relationship. And the most intimate of those relationships are expressed in the family setting. That’s why in our minds, as we read Scripture, especially in the New Testament today, to get a concept in our mind and an idea of what God is like in our imaginations. God used particular vocabulary that centered around the family to give us a perspective of how he chooses to operate in our lives and in this world. God is referred to as a father, referred to as his children. He refers to the church as his bride and he being the husband. The family is of the most intimate setting and should be considered highly important for the church. Whether you’re young, single, looking to a future family one day, or you’re married or you’re retired and kids have left the nest, I believe everything that we cover together in this series is pertinent to the church. For instance, in Scripture, it tells the the older ladies to teach the younger women how to be godly ladies to their families and for their church and for their children. You as older ladies to learn how to do that, and especially the the older men as well. For those who are married and you have children, maybe you’re moving in those waters with me, wondering what what God has for your family and how you can incorporate the Lord better into your family to to live the kind of life that God desired just for you and also for your family as well.
And those who are single got big decisions to make concerning your future as to who you’ll spend your life with, what those goals should include as you seek to have your own family one day. God’s word, as it goes forth into the New Testament, tells us in the book of First Timothy. As Paul writes to Timothy, he’s telling Timothy how to establish a church and what Paul says to Timothy, when you seek to establish this church, you need leaders in the way that you decide who the leaders are going to be in the church is to examine the people within the church and find those who are managing their families well. The family is the mini expression of what church life should be about, and Paul declares this to Timothy, displaying the significance and importance of us as people learning how to manage our family the way that God desires for us. And so the question remains this morning how can we build a Christ centered home? Maybe I should back up and even ask before we begin to answer the question, how can we build a Christ centered home? We should ask ourselves, in today’s world, is it even possible to build a Christ centered home? Is it possible for us today, in this sin cursed world, to have and build a godly family? If it if that question weren’t yes, then of course we wouldn’t even be able to ask the second question this morning.
How can we build a Christ centered home? You know, if we’re honest with ourselves about our family situations and we really peer into our home lives behind closed doors, many of us would be honest in saying we probably fall short of what God desires for our lives. When I asked the question, how do we build a Christ centered home? Maybe we should even ask, what does a Christ centered home look like? For many of us, maybe even most of us, I don’t know, perhaps we didn’t grow up in that environment. I know for me, Jesus wasn’t something that was often talked about in church, wasn’t something that was often encouraged. And the the continued presence of a male in my life that would dictate and display a model for me. What a godly man looked like wasn’t always present when I came to know Jesus. And then I even got married and now have a child, that question continues to churn within my mind. What does a godly family look like? It’s so much easier in your lives when you have that presence modeled before you, because you can see the example and see how it plays out in into real life.
But what if we’re left asking that question and and really have no example to look at for ourselves? It’s easy for us to get to the goal that God has for us and our family when we can see what the end looks like. Isn’t it Many of us ask the question, what is a Christian family look like simply because we’ve not always had it displayed? Well, let me tell you, when I talk about a Christian family, I’m not talking about the Care Bear kind of lifestyle. You know, where we just float on clouds and everything’s happy and we all wear the symbol of our happiness and emotion on our on our stomachs. What is a Christian family look like? A Christian family is not always peaceful. It’s not always quiet. It’s not always tranquil and joyful all the time. No way. That’s not going to happen. We’re talking about perfection. And. And we know this side of eternity. Perfection doesn’t happen. A Christian family happens to be a place where sinners live. And a Christian home is not a perfect home. Kids come home with epsilon report cards, right? Sometimes, God forbid that happen to your kids, but it happens. Sometimes they throw tantrums. Sometimes you as adults throw tantrums. I mean even in a marriage, in your position and your relationship to a family, we fail, don’t we? We fail our spouse. We fail one another. We fail God.
We fail church. We fail. A Christian. Home is where sinners live. A Christian home is not a perfect place, but a Christian home is also a place where we make accomplishments, though oftentimes they’re far from ideal. You think about before you were married. If you were married today or the future of your marriage one day, did any of us plan to make mistakes as we thought about that? You know, you see idolize on television the romanticism of marriage, relationships that are perfect when your knight in shining armor walks to rescue you, and the princess and the queen and the king leave together into a wonderful relationship forever. It was joyous. And then you get into that relationship of seeing all the Disney movies as a child. And you you think about your future husband as ladies and you get in the marriage relationship and you realize all the extra details and the the messiness wasn’t really displayed in those televisions. And, you know, when I thought about marriage, I thought about all the wonderful things that we were going to do, but I didn’t really plan for the mistakes that would come along with that. What do we do with that as people? So, you know, this morning, as we think about a Christ centered home, we ask those questions. What is a Christian home look like? A perfect home and a Christ centered home are not the same thing. So we’re going to set our goal this morning and briefly, as we talk about building a Christ centered home as a family, I just want to lay the foundation of what even a Christ centered home is for our lives.
As we as we look towards the future in the series together, and what God wants to accomplish in our lives and the lives of our family. But a perfect home in a Christ centered home aren’t the same thing. And what I’m after this morning is not to get rid of every iota of sin that exists within your family. That’s impossible. It will not happen, right? But the way that we choose to deal with it as a family together is what makes us different from what a world family is all about, and what a Christ centered family is all about. First, this morning, the first thing I want to look at when we ask the question, what is a Christ centered home? The first point we want to make this morning is that a Christ centered home is a place where sinners live. We’re going to look through the book of Ephesians as we consider these points this morning on what a Christ centered home is, because the book of Ephesians is going to lay the foundation for us as a church family, and how we progress together through the series. If you’ve never read or taken the time to study the book of Ephesians, I’m just going to encourage you to do that, especially this week.
Even go through the first four chapters of what the book of Ephesians is all about, because it’s going to help us to lay the foundation for a Christ centered home. If you’ve never read the book, the focus of the book of Ephesians is all about relationships. The first three chapters of the book of Ephesians is all about the gospel. What’s wonderful for me to to see even my own studies. I look at the book of Ephesians as when we talk about the gospel in the first three chapters, and then from chapter four on, it relates how the gospel, the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, how the gospel plugs into our everyday life, and understanding our relationship to Jesus helps us to understand our relationship to the world and understanding our relationship to the world. We recognize how we can live as a family. And so when you begin to see chapter four of Ephesians on to chapter five, what you understand is that Paul and the way that we’ve come to know Christ, asks us to display that knowledge of Jesus and our living through grace and love and unity with one another. And as he asks us to, to display that one of the things he jumps into immediately in, into chapter five and six is the relationship between a husband and a wife, a relationship between employer and employee, and a relationship between parents and children. The gospel is important for us to understand as a basis in the way that we operate as a family.
After all, we’re talking about a Christ centered family. We can’t operate as a Christ centered family without having first Christ in our life, in our lives. Excuse me? A Christ centered home is a place where sinners live. It’s important for us to recognize what sin does in our lives and the relationships of those around us. God desires within our families unity. When Jesus is at work, wherever he’s at work, there’s always unity. God works in unity. What we recognize in sin as it’s played out into our lives, is what sin brings, is disunity, discord among the family. If we think about the gospel for a minute and it’s expressed relationship to us and the Lord as God has referred to us as a father and us as children and the context of a family. It says this about sin. In Ephesians two and one it says, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins. It’s literally Paul’s laying out the gospel foundation of why we need Jesus. And he’s saying, here’s your relationship to God. It is functionally dead in sin. He goes on to say in verse 12, remember that you were at the same time separated from Christ. He’s saying, as he’s progressed through this passage of Scripture between verse one and verse 12, he’s saying, now that you know Jesus, that’s a wonderful thing, that God’s grace has come into your life.
You need to show that grace to other people. But remember at one time your relationship to God was separated because of sin. It’s literally saying this. As for mankind that that if we think about a wall for a moment and the power source that comes to the wall, you know, we look to to plug in our cell phones sometimes to charge in those batteries when it comes to your life and being able to charge into God everything that God wants you to do and to live that life and to find that energy with him, your outlet isn’t working. You’ve got no power coming from it. And the reason is, is sin. Very simple understanding for us, and especially when we think about family. Family life doesn’t function well with discord and sin, does it? In fact, he goes on to say in Isaiah 59 and verse two, but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God. Meaning this iniquity is referring to sin. There’s a barrier between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear you. I mean, Bible goes on to give ample illustrations for us about the the presence of sin in man’s life. It’s important for us to understand that when we’re born in this world, we are born sinners. In Psalm 51 and verse five, David says, I was conceived in sin. I was born in sin from from birth.
David refers to himself as a sinner. In Romans 310 it tells us, for all of us are unrighteous. In three 2323 it says, for all of us have sinned. If you read Romans 118, it says, for the wrath of God is against all ungodliness. And it’s just referred to all of us as being unrighteous people. And when sin is present, disunity is there. It’s also important to recognize the difference between sin and sickness in the world today. We’ve grown conscious of being able to call things more sickness than what they really are, which is sin. You ever met a person that just says, you know, that’s just the way I am, especially in a family relationship or any relationship in context. They’ve done something that’s rude or offensive to you and they just say, well, that’s just the way I am. God made me with this natural inclination to react this way. And so you just accept me, for as I am, the way that I live. And that’s just how it’s going to be. I’ve got this particular weakness. You think about even the way that drugs and alcohol affects families to some degree. They ravage a family life. Someone has necessarily may have an inclination towards a particular sin, such as drugs or alcohol. That may be their area of weakness. All of us have one, but yet God calls us accountable to all of them. And whether it’s a weakness in our personal lives or not, it’s what God calls sin.
And the problem with referring to things as sickness rather than sin is that sickness doesn’t have a solution. Sickness is something that sometimes we kind of medicate to get over, and we we do our best to work through it a little bit. But when we refer it to a sin, Jesus offers a solution to that. Now, I recognize at some points in our lives there are sicknesses that we need medication to heal ourselves with. For instance, if I were diabetic, I would take medication. If I had, if I had some sort of chemical imbalance. Medication helps to set those things right, but we’re still accountable for our actions, even in what we might refer to sickness as sickness. And so we’ve got to acknowledge it in our wrong behavior as sin. Because if we can’t acknowledge it as sin, we don’t see the the need and the necessity to change it, not just for my sake, but for the sake of our families. A Christ centered home is a place where sinners live. People don’t usually walk around this world with a tendency of calling themselves sinners, do they? But a Christian home is a place where we can admit sin. Usually, someone who doesn’t think of themselves as a sinner would oftentimes remark with the phrase, well, that wasn’t just. That’s not me, right? When I do all the good things, that’s me. So when I do the bad things, just ignore that.
That just that just wasn’t me. But what Jesus wants us to recognize even in our relationship to him, and he plays this out into our families as we look later into Ephesians, is that we’ve got to just be honest with ourselves and say that, yes, indeed, we oftentimes respond as The sinners. But sin has a solution. And noting in the life of Christ here, as he says in verse 12, remember that you were at the same time separated from Christ, that when I need grace, when I make mistakes, so do other people. Christian home is a place where sinners live. But not only is it a place where sinners live, it also becomes a place where we can admit our sin. And one of the freeing things that happens when we just recognize in our family relationships that we’re just going to make mistakes, that we are sinners. All of us within that household are sinners. We have the opportunity to more freely admit it to one another. And admitting sin, what it does is give us the opportunity to then begin to deal with it and take a page from Alcoholics Anonymous for a second. The first step to the healing in Alcoholics Anonymous is just to admit that you have a problem, right? If you don’t admit that you have a problem, then you can’t work towards a solution. When you recognize in your family that there is sin that’s going to be in your and your family, and you have an opportunity to to admit that sin, you give the opportunity then for healing to begin to work as it surfaces to the top.
In first John chapter one and verse nine, it says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and His word is not in us. The context of First John chapter one and verse nine is relationships. So the idea of finding forgiveness in sin isn’t for the purpose of finding forgiveness in sin. The reasoning for admitting that we are sinners isn’t for the purpose of admitting that we make mistakes. The purpose of admitting our sin in our own lives, before our family and loved ones, is for the reconciliation of relationships behind all of it. In the context, when we ask God for forgiveness the thing that we’re seeking after is a right relationship to the one that we’ve offended. And what God says here is, listen, we know that you make mistakes. We know that you’re sinners. But what I want you to do in understanding my relationship to you is to feel the freedom to express your need to find love in me and grace. I mean, how wonderful it is to think in this whole world. We we constantly live under struggle to prove ourselves and our workforce, to prove ourselves as a child.
When you’re going to school and you’re being graded on your academics, or you try to make a sports team and all of a sudden maybe you don’t, you don’t measure up to their qualifications to to meet that team everywhere in the world. It measures your goodness. But the most intimate setting is, is the family that God has created for you to experience in a relationship level. And when you enter into that family, what you find is you’ve made those mistakes, is that God opens up a hand of grace to you. So there’s a reason that God connects his his self to what a family is all about. And expressing himself to people so much like a family should have. Grace within it as we come broken inside of its walls and we find healing in that family setting. God is the same way. It tells us in first John chapter one and verse nine that if we come to him, if we confess our sins, if we need in that most intimate setting of a family environment to find healing, he tells us in this verse that if we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive it. So once we acknowledge that we’re sinners, and we begin to admit that for healing to come forth, the question is in our relationship with God or with other people, how are they going to receive us? What are they going to say to us? What are they going to think about us? We begin to worry about those things.
But in in the life of a family, in the in the home environment, it becomes necessary to be a place of intimate healing. Kids, when you mess up and you begin to admit it, there’s consequences for actions and sometimes even admitting it. We go through those steps. But how’s Mom and Dad receive us? Spouse. You think about your significant other for just a moment. They made mistakes. They make mistakes and they fail. How often do you give them that liberty and room to find that grace in the relationship? It’s important to know that when you walk into a home, regardless of the sin that you’ve conducted, and though there may be consequences that follow, that when you come before your family, that what you experience is the same experience that you find with God. It’s a place that you can freely admit it because you received grace. I didn’t put this on the bulletin or the outline, I probably should. But Ephesians two eight and nine, the expression we looked at verse one in chapter two and we looked at verse 12in chapter two. But if you were to read verse eight and nine, you see the joy of that grace that comes in that relationship. It says, by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves it’s a gift.
The family becomes the outward display of that. When you have nothing to give towards a family that you’ve just fallen short in, a family that you’ve your family that you’ve just disappointed. What the Bible tells us we got from Jesus is grace. By grace we are saved. In that moment that we need rescued, we found a place to find that rescuing a Christ centered home is a place that we we know we sin, but it’s a place that we admit sin. Could you imagine for just a moment if if your home was conducted in that way? If we understand there’s responsibility for actions in our lives. But it became a home of grace, how relaxing it is to come back to an environment like that. I mean, I guess the question really is, is do you look at your home life as a place that you try to avoid and run away from, or do you look at it as a place where, when, when everything’s done in the world and you’ve finished your job for the day, you just want to go home and relax. In the most intimate settings, allow yourself to just be open to your family. I mean, after all, God created you for relationships. The family is the most intimate setting for which relationships are established, and it should be the place that you can express yourself to your family and allow them to see you for who you are and love you despite who you are.
If we could create that type of environment within our family, the one that just is peaceful and loving and humbly loves one another closer to the Lord, what a glorious place that would be. You think about the tool that could become, you know, one of the things that the church has done horribly out throughout the last decades is being able to take young men and women who maybe come from a home life that don’t know the Lord and invite them into a godly family and then begin to display for them what a godly family looks like. I mean, you know, people in this world are hurting, and the family is the the many expression of the church. And the family life should be a place where hurting people can find healing. Now, I’ll just warn you, as a church family, I’m not telling you to take everyone in that’s hurting in this world because you need space as a family to protect as well. But you know, as you go through life, you can find tremendous pain in the hearts of people. I think of some young ladies I’ve run across recently who, um, cut themselves as an expression, outward expression of the pain that they’re experiencing on the inside. I think of people who are close to the point of losing their lives, young ladies who may have experienced rape or even drug addiction. How good it would be to find an environment of grace and love in a family, to minister to people in that way.
I mean, to get to that point where you can express that and be able to love on people like that. As a family, we’ve got to understand our role and function and what a family is all about. It’s a place where sinners live. It’s a place where we can admit sin. And third, I would say a Christ centered home is a place where we know what to do about sin. It says in Ephesians chapter two and verse four, But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. You may ever felt dead inside. Jesus says, in our relationship, it’s not a matter of just feeling it is dead because of sin. It’s it’s dead. That’s the whole case that Christ is building for. Why we need Jesus to experience that life. And it says in this verse, when you’re dead inside, you’ve been made alive together with Christ You walk into a home that’s filled with grace because you’re empty. As you begin to experience the ministry that takes place within that home, what happens is you come alive. God, literally in this passage, is referring to taking your dead spirit that’s turned away from him and sending him against him and and bringing it back to life and experiencing a life filled, joyful relationship with him.
But in the context of a family, when we think about a relationship of brokenness coming in within the walls of the most intimate setting, what we should find is is life and grace. And in so experiencing that, be able to come alive in our relationships with one another. Because by grace he says, you’ve been saved. And Christ centered family is a place where we know what to do about sin. In the weeks ahead. As a church, we’re going to be taking a journey through what a Christ centered family is all about. It’s going to teach us how to handle sin within our relationships. And just so you are aware of what’s to come next week together we’re going to be looking at godly communication with one another. We understand together we see what a Christ centered family is all about. We know that God, what he works through is unity, not disunity. Sin brings unity. How do we begin to communicate in such a way with our family, even in the midst of sin, that we work together, unified according to what God desires for us? Not only are we going to look at communication, we’re just going to get some understanding of the Bible basics of what a family is about. If you’re a single person, we’re going to have a lesson on just what it means to be single in the in the eyes of the Lord.
We’re going to give a word to the wives, a word to the husbands. Let me just tell you, husbands. Most of these lessons are already written. The husbands section of it’s called. It’s titled Man up, and you bring your A-game that day. All right. Wear your thick skin. And we’re going to be looking at some things together and what a godly man is all about. I’m sure I’ll be teaching. We’ll be talking together and not against one another in that. But what is a godly man look like in the context of just being a man and living in a family discipline? How does discipline affect the family? You know, you find today that so many people are afraid of the word discipline. Um, you think about, uh, there’s all kinds of worries that you have. What if your kid goes to school and you know your parent that believes in spanking your kid goes to school and tells the teacher something, all of a sudden you got CPS called on you. And. But how does discipline fit in the family? How many of you, when you hear the word discipline, immediately think of spanking or punishing a kid? Okay. In a specific sense, the word discipline can mean that. But when we talk about discipline, we’re simply outlining a structured life for our kids to live by because we have a particular goal that we want to achieve for them.
And so we outline a life of discipline for them to to grow into that goal that we have set for them. And being a godly man or a godly woman and, and, and being able to build their own family one day is eventually the goal for them. And then ways to respond You think about building a Christ centered home? What? What if we’re doing that by ourselves? What if our spouse really isn’t on board with what we feel like God has for our family? And how do we how do we maneuver and work with that? All of those are coming in the weeks ahead. But we understand that what we know as we come to know that we are sinners, we admit sin. That point number three is God. A Christ centered home knows what to do about the sin. Together we’re going to learn that with one another. Point number four is we look at the final points together. A Christ centered home is also a place where we progress out of sin. See, Jesus has a goal for us in our lives and walking with him. A lot of people, when we talk about praying about God’s will for us, what is God’s will for my life? We get very specific trying to seek this will. Does God want me to have this brand new Mercedes? You know, God must have a particular will for this Mercedes or whatever you’re praying over.
But, you know, in a context of God’s will for our lives. God’s will is pretty a lot of ways, very general in the way that he seeks to work within our hearts and our minds. And if we just follow the general will of God. I think that a lot of times, specifically that specific will that God has for us, whether we take a job or don’t take a job, buy a car, buy a house, whatever it is, it’ll play out as we generally follow God in our relationship with him. A Christ centered home. We understand that what God wants in the general will for him as a as a family, is to progress out of sin and begin to grow in our relationship with him and begin to grow in our relationship with one another. And as we do that, God grows within our family to get it to the place that he wants it to be. And he says in Ephesians three and verse 20, now to him who is able to do far more than we ask or think, according to the power at work within us. I just stop right there and say this about verse 20 at the end of chapter three, what Paul begins to do is, is to build a case for the power of Christ working in a willing heart. And this simple solution is if you want a Christ centered home, follow Jesus. Let me tell you what this isn’t.
This isn’t an oversell of what God can do in the life of your family. If you simply follow what Christ has for you and your family, it’s not an oversell on what God can do. Paul says, even in verse 20, far more than you can ask or think, according to the power that works within you. You know, as you sit here today and you think, okay, my family life is good, my family life is bad, or some of us are even saying, my family life is just a wreck right now. Whatever your goal is for your family and whatever you think God’s doing in your family, whatever you’ve imagined for it, this verse says here in verse 20 that whatever that goal is, God can take that dream and make it so much bigger than anything that you’re holding on to. It’s not an oversell Paul’s even experienced this in his own personal life and the power of Christ working through him, and he’s telling the church, listen, Jesus can work miracles. In chapter four and verse one he says, I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you’ve been called. He’s simply saying this if you know Christ and you found that grace and love in the most intimate setting with him, if you’ve been made alive by Jesus, God’s got a plan and he wants you to walk according to that plan for which you’ve been called. And he says this.
You talk about the general will of God carry this attitude. If we just lived with this attitude in life, it’s a it’s a great way for us to live. And can I encourage you as a church, when we think about building a godly family, come up with a theme verse for your family. You talk about getting together as a family, living according to God’s goal. How does God want your family to operate? Ephesians four has got a lot of great verses. This is one of them as a family. This is our verse on what we want to do. In verse two it says with humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love. Bearing literally is carrying the weight of one another’s burdens in love for each other. Because when we come in that intimate setting, some some days I’m carrying the pressure, other days my wife’s carrying the pressure, but we just help each other just to take that load off. And with patience and gentleness and humility, we are loving one another. And look what he says in verse three, because this is very important, because sin brings disunity, discord within the family. But when God is at work, here’s how we know there’s unity. He says in verse three, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit, of the bond of peace. When you look in Genesis chapter three, right after the sin curse came into the world, and you begin to see in verse 15, as God delivers the curse on Adam and Eve and on the serpent, you know when he when he starts referring to the wife having pain in childbirth.
She also. He also refers to the relationship with his husband with her husband as well, and he expresses to the wife that now, previous to sin, entering this world, you had a perfect relationship, but now that that relationship has experienced sin, there’s going to be trouble. If you’re married. You don’t need me to tell you this. You will have trouble, right? Kids singles. One day, thinking about marriage, you’re going to have trouble. The Cinderella life is not real. But what Paul says is, this is our pursuit in knowing we can’t always plan and come up with every sort of problem that we’re going to face and know every solution. But this is what we always need to do, is maintain the unity together. Because when we’re unified, God can work as we grow with the Lord together. We know that Jesus has a goal for our family, and our goal is to encourage even the context of a family. All of us towards a closer spiritual relationship with him. No Christian who seeks after God and pursuing God’s goal for the life will remain the same today as they did yesterday. Just slowly begin to make steps closer to him and incorporate that with your family. Godly teaching, learning how to forgive each other in a godly way, learning how to pray together, how to follow after the Lord.
How to serve in the church. It’s all fruit of righteousness that can be displayed in a family as they begin to progress and grow closer to him. Here’s what we know this morning is that it’s hard. And we talk about family. And I give all these pretty pictures. But when we live in in our context of our own lives, it becomes Uh, difficult. What God has for us is a life of grace and unity within our family. And so we ask the question this morning, what is a Christ centered home here? Simply the answer of the outline that we looked at together. It says A Christian home is a place where sinful people face the problems of a sinful world, but yet they faced them together with God and His resources, which are all Christ centered. Sinners may live in a Christian home, but so does the sinless Savior. Colossians two reminds us that all the blessings, all the grace, everything that we need in this life, comes through Christ alone. So here’s my heart this morning. And this is this is the big picture we want to get across as we go through this journey together on building a Christ centered family. That’s what our church is all about. Number one, we believe God puts us here for relationships, and there is no relationship more important than the one that exists between God and your family.
Number two, the church is only as strong as the families that make it up. And so, number three, it’s our job here as a church family to work to strengthen the Christian family or to strengthen families for that matter. To teach parents of children what it means to follow after the Lord. To reflect towards the people who have been married for a long time, their significance in learning biblical wisdom, and how to have a godly life in order to teach the younger married couples and how to live that godly life. Are our young people or our single people who are looking to to marriage one day? What does it mean to encourage and strengthen the family? And one of the things that we’re going to look at or do together as a church family is once a month, we’re going to begin a date night. One of the things that’s greatly lacking for God to build unity within the family is is time. I can imagine if we begin just to spend more time together as a husband or wife or with our children, that the unity would come, unity would come through that just naturally and being together. One of the things we want to begin here as a church family is a date night, in which we give parents the opportunity to drop their kids off and be able to go out and spend 3 or 4 hours together and just growing close to one another.
And before you go, we’ll give you a ten minute devotional challenge on our relationship between the husband and wife, or in a family context, to to give you something even to, to fuel, to talk about for the future of your family as you progress towards growing with one another. As we close this morning, let’s just leave with this thought. Leave with an openness to allow the Lord to work in your family. How he desires. Understanding that if you’re a family of disunity right now, the reason that disunity exists on some level has to do with sin. Now, you may not intentionally be harming one another, but the fact that you’re not choosing to grow together as a family in itself is enough to repent about and just talk about as a family and what you can do to build that. But our goal this morning isn’t to get us to understand, um. Excuse me. Our goal this morning isn’t to place place before you. An object of a perfect family. We’re not after a perfect family. A perfect family doesn’t exist. What we need to understand as families and as individuals is that we make mistakes. But we need to create an environment in the most intimate settings with those that we love, especially with between husband and wife. The the key to the entire family, a place where grace can be experienced and love can be accepted. As together you progress out of that and grow closer together and closer with the Lord Let’s close in a word of.