FAMILY MATTERS

© 2008 by Deidre Campbell-Jones

JUNE Theme: Fathers

Our Family: Matthew 12:46-50
His Family: Matthew 19:29

Last month our theme was Mothers. And I missed the last week of the month. This month our theme will be fathers. And so I think a good segue between these separate three weeks of lessons about mothers and fathers, is “family.”

Jesus had a family just like us. He was the first born amongst His siblings – brothers and sisters. He had a mother and a father who cared about him (Luke 2:48b); raised him up in the ways of the family; and had certain disciplinary expectations of him. (Luke 2:41-49). And by the time He was a teenager he too had parents who didn’t understand him! (Luke 2:50)

Jesus, just like us had to do things for his mother that he didn’t want to do (John 2:1-10); He had to work in His father’s business even though He had a different vocation (Matthew 13:55 & Mark 6:3a) and was at odds with his family from time to time (Mark 6:3b). But when push came to shove, they loved Him and supported Him none-the-less. (Acts 1:14)

Jesus understood the importance of family, but He recognized both the physical family and the spiritual family.

When Jesus was on the cross in the midst of His “passion” – the crucifixion, He took the time to acknowledge the importance of family. There He noticed the woman who had been blessed to be His earthly mother, and also His Aunt, both standing by the cross. I am sure Mary had to have been weeping and lamenting the fate of her son. There also was the disciple “whom Jesus loved” (John 19:25-27) standing by and when Jesus saw them both He told them – “woman here is your son; behold here is your mother,” And from that same hour the disciple took Mary as his own mother and cared for her.

It’s easy not to think much about Jesus’ family – but when you do, you could imagine they were close. But whether they were or not, there is that closeness of family that God wants with us through Jesus.

At one time, Jesus went up to a mountain to pray. Afterward he called to himself His many, many disciples and chose the twelve who would be His Apostles: “And Simon he surnamed Peter; And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder: And Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Canaanite, And Judas Iscariot, which also betrayed him: and they went into an house.” (Mark 3:16-19)

Now when the multitudes heard He was there they pressed in on Him for healing and to hear His teaching so much that Jesus and the twelve disciples could not even eat. Soon someone told Jesus that His mother and His brothers were outside seeking to speak with Him. “And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren? And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.” Mark 3:33-35
Jesus wants us to recognize that once we are adopted as sons and daughters into the family of God, that we have a new family that we must love and care for.

The commandment to honor our mothers and fathers never comes to an end even though our relationship with them must change. We are to honor mother and father that our days may be long upon this earth – and if those days are long – then we must continue to give our parents honor through out all of those days.

But no matter how long our days become upon this Earth, once we come to Christ, we must come to him honoring Him even more than the family we’ve been commanded to give honor to. Luke 14:26 says, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”

Let me tell you a true story – my husband and I needed to go pick up my car that was in the shop and for some reason, we couldn’t take our 4 year old son along with us. So, we asked our neighbor to watch him for about 20 minutes. Now, our neighbor John is a 50-something bachelor, divorced with two grown children and no grandchildren. He has a pool table and an arcade golf game in his rec room so we figured both he and our son would be cool for this short amount of time.

Well, from nowhere, John produced a basket of wooden building blocks and we left them facing off over the family room ottoman, getting ready to build – they were fine. My husband and I did what we had to do, came back, got our kid and it all worked out.

Weeks later John told me that once we were gone and they were quietly focused on building a tall tower, my son stopped and asked John, “who is more important, your family or God?” And John, being shocked by the question and not wanting to risk accidentally trampling on what we might be teaching him decided to give him what he called a “politically correct” answer and replied, “Well, I figure since I love God and I love my family and God gave me my family that I love them pretty much about the same.”

My son apparently was not satisfied with that answer and said, “No, who do you love more?” John stammered, now a little more uncomfortable and said, “Well, I guess I’m not sure really sure how to explain it to you.” And my son, still not satisfied, could only let John off the hook a little and answered, “But, you do know what the right answer is, don’t you?”

John said He struggled to respond because, indeed he had been wrestling with this very same question in his heart just recently and he was so amazed that God had spoken to him through our little son.

The truth is God does want us to love Him more than we love our families. He wants us to trust Him more than we trust our families. And in doing so we entrust our care and concern for our families over to Him.

There is a woman I know who looks like she is the best example on Earth as to how to love the Lord our God "with all your heart and all your soul and all your might" – Deuteronomy 6:5. For the time that I have known her, it has been obvious that she fears no thing except God. She is a shining example of the Proverbs 31 “virtuous woman,” and her husband is a strong man of God.

And this dear woman is ill. My pastor’s wife mentioned that this was the example of living for Christ that was void of being afraid to die. But the truth is that this dear woman’s heart is indeed fearful about leaving her wonderful family. She is clinging to the promises of God and her knowledge of the word with the hope of remaining on this Earth longer, for her family.
But if she would release that desire unto the Lord, ready and willing to let them go and be with the Lord, then would her days be prolonged upon this Earth.*

Abraham in his old age was promised a son – and he was promised a son who’s generations would be greater than the stars in the sky or the sand by the seas. Isaac was that son of promise. And when Isaac was a boy, God told Abraham to take his son and offer him as a sacrifice. Abraham was supposed to kill his son, the son whom he loved, before that promise was fulfilled. And though distraught, I’m sure; Abraham was willing to be obedient and faithful in doing it. The knife was raised over his son lying on the altar, and an angel of the Lord had to shout Abraham’s name twice because he was about to plunge that knife into his son.

Sometimes we have to give up family, to receive family. Job gave up all his family – wife, children and all he had including his own health – but he never cursed God. He was rewarded with a double portion of blessings and family restored to him.

Family matters – and the love we give them matters. But the love we have for God matters more. John 3:16 is such a common verse: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes on Him, should not perish but have everlasting life.”

God loved us enough to give His only begotten Son so that we could have life. It is the love that makes a difference in regards to life – the life we live now and the life we will live for eternity. And so what family are we willing to give in order to have life? It is the willingness – the loving, trusting willingness to trust God that completely, and that if we do, God will honor us with life everlasting and life more abundantly for all our generations.

Power, love & peace - ya'll!
~Min. Dez

(*) For clarification, drop note in the comments.

FATHER/BROTHER – PROVIDER/PROTECTOR

February Theme: Love

Fatherly Love: Matthew 7:11; Matthew 5:48
Brotherly Love: Proverbs 17:17; Proverbs 18:19

As you may know, I am a parent – obviously (to those of you who know me). And equally as obvious (with just a smidge of thought) is the fact that my perspective regarding my relationship with my son is far different than my son’s perspective of our relationship. Even at four years old my son would already describe our relationship differently than I would – good or bad. But even if I did give this reasoning a smidge of thought throughout every aspect of my relationship with my son, I’m sure it would not change the nature of my relationship with him or his with mine.

Matthew 7:11 says, “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” Do you know why God reminds us of this aspect of our earthly and heavenly father/child relationships? Because we forget that as a parent, God’s perspective of us does not change because our perceptions do not match the actual relationship He has with us.

For many of us, we treat our fathers (or anyone else that we know well for that matter) in the manner in which we think they will treat us. Since my son is four, he is still too young to be completely conditioned to the way his father and I treat him and he comes to us fresh and new, with the same open-ended expectancy every time. For now it’s just a matter of him remembering not to do what he knows he’s not supposed to. Later, I’m sure it will change in terms of him determining on his own accord what he feels he can or cannot come to us about and what he could or should not ask of us.

Several years ago, shortly after buying our first home in Southern California, I ran into some car trouble and needed some help from my Dad to help me pay for it. Well, I miscalculated the bills I had recently paid and how much was actually in my account. Of course, when I realized the problem, I was overdrawn by $90 and knew my only option was to call my Dad, fess up and ask to borrow more. By the time I made the call I was already in tears and grieved about having to ask – purely because I expected him to respond with how careless and irresponsible I was. Instead, he comforted me; he reminded me that as my father, he was there to help me, and since I’d happened to catch him already near my bank, he ran in and deposited the extra funds. And when he spoke to me, I heard not only his voice but also God’s saying this is what a good father does.

So often though, we treat God either the way we think He will treat us, or in the way we think our earthly fathers treat us. But God’s love towards us is more like (and far surpasses) the way in which we would (or think we would, or would want to) treat our own child. In fact, Matthew 5:48: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect,” is an example of how to be the kind of parent God wants us to be – and not to be the kind of parent we think He is to us.

When we think of God as our heavenly Father, as I said, it is often difficult for us to classify or categorize or even define our relationship with Him – especially if we compare it to our earthly fathers. Take for example another comparison God gives us: brothers.

My favorite verses John 1:1-4 and 14 explains Christ’s deity and describes how Jesus is God. Later, we learn that as believers we are adopted into the family of God as sons and daughters, heir to the throne… in other words, not only sisters and brothers to each other as believers, but also sisters and brothers to Jesus as the only begotten Son of God. And so, if God the Son is our brother, how does that affect our relationship with God the Father?

As you may know, I am an only child – obviously I do not have a brother. But I always wanted one. Equally as obvious (with just a smidge of thought to those of you who know me) is that I do have a wonderful brother-in-law who happens to look like my blood brother and we treat each other the same as well. So, I may be biased regarding my perception of brothers, but it is easy for me to treat my brother-in-law like Romans 12:10: “Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another;”

Not all of us who have grown up with siblings can at all say this – unfortunately. Some people have (or are) siblings as described in Proverbs 18:19 “A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle.”

And so again, do we treat God in the same way in which we think He would treat us? If we think God is so easily offended and reluctant to forgive, then we will hold ourselves in blame and guilt for things He has forgiven and tossed into the sea of forgetfulness. Or, if we have sinned, we will not come to Him with a repentant spirit, fearful that He wouldn’t forgive us anyway.

And yet, still others of us may have (or be) the kind of sibling described in Proverbs 17:17: “A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.” And with this perspective of a brotherly relationship, we may only go to God in times of trouble; continuously begging Him - protect me, help me, get me out of this mess and beat up the bully bothering me in the process!

I happened to get my brother late in life so, I no longer have bullies for him to beat up or messes he can rescue me from. And, while he may be moody at times, he is defintely not "hard won." I am still his older sister and I’m not at all concerned about him becoming stubborn, hard-headed or unforgiving if I happen to offend him. However, just like God reminds us that our Fatherly relationship surpasses our earthly relationships with our own fathers and brothers – so too is it difficult even for me to remember or even grasp the kind of loving, brotherly relationship I can have with God through Christ Jesus.

In our limited, finite minds, it is all we can do at times to simply understand the three entities of our triune God – Father, Son and Holy Ghost. And yet it was a shock to me when I realized I did not treat my God, nor love all three aspects of my God equally. However once I began to remove all earthly expectations from my heavenly relationship with God – even God my provider and God my protector – I began to experience, for the very first time a new and renewed walk with God that is built on His perception of me and not mine of Him.

For a scriptural glimpse into next week’s lesson read: Proverbs 18:24. Your Home Study homework: Use this scripture to explain in your own words how God sees our brotherly relationship with Him as different from our earthly relationships with our siblings.

(Note: Aspects of this lesson are taken from the book “Father, Brother, Lover, Friend: Finding “The One”, to be released by Destination Publications in June 2009.)

© 2008 Deidre Campbell-Jones