Are You Building the Family or Just Living In It?

Sermon outline

God has empowered every father and mother to engineer godliness into their home through their beliefs, values and daily practices, because what we do, not what we say, is what the next generation becomes.

1. Love God, and teach it with intent

   The command is to love the Lord with all your heart, soul and might, then to teach His words to your children when you sit, walk, lie down and rise, and to write them on your doorposts and gates. That is about what you do. Check your motives: are they for yourself, or for the generation you are trying to raise? Put the Word on the doors and in the children's rooms so they read it every day.

   “You have to be intentional in everything that you do.”

   • Deuteronomy 6:5-9

2. Leave a man or woman of God, not a duplicate of yourself

   Ephesians 5 and 6 speak of relational legacy. If you are an angry, bitter survivor, you leave behind angry, bitter survivors, because children do what you do. Surviving is instinct; nobody has to teach it. Being godly is not instinctive and has to be intentional, which means laying what you know, what you have been through and how you have failed at the foot of the cross. Otherwise five children simply multiply your problem five times.

   Illustration: When someone falls, a hand goes out to protect them before they think. Nobody teaches that. Surviving is in our DNA; godliness is not.

   “Children are never gonna do what you say, but they're gonna do what you do.”

3. Engineer godliness: there is no copy and paste

   We imitate God, and God is a builder, maker, designer, architect and engineer. Engineering is making different parts work together, and a home is full of different shapes: the quiet one, the loud one, the angry one. Two children come from the same place and are not the same person, so what works with one does not work with the other. God empowered you to be that child's father or mother, so do not hand the responsibility to anyone else.

   Illustration: Squares trying to fit into circles and triangles into stars. Discipline is easy when the child is small and one tap on the nappy settles it; then the mouth, the attitude and the cell phone arrive, and the circle you had becomes a triangle.

   “God empowered you to be the Father. God empowered you to be the mother. God empowered you to make those parts all fit together and work.”

   • Ephesians 5:1
   • Romans 10:17

4. Builder or destroyer: your practices decide

   Our beliefs, values and practices determine the condition of the next generation. If God is a builder and I am not in line with Him, by definition I am a destroyer, however much I claim to build. A destroyer is only interested in his own needs. Value is what we give time and attention to, so arriving at nine for a service that starts at half past eight tells the whole house that church is not important.

   Illustration: The pastors, security team and staff are in from half past six to prepare. Imagine being told there is no preacher today because he was not ready and stayed at home. We would never accept that from him, yet we excuse it in ourselves. The same goes for the 5am Tuesday prayer meeting, which he joins washed and with his teeth brushed because it is God's work.

   “Say with me, what I do affects the next generation.”

5. Godly order carries the blessing

   When there is division there is lack; when we engineer godliness in the home, the resources are there. Seek first the kingdom is a commandment and a promise at the same time, as is honouring your father and mother. God has to be primary, and the question is whether He can trust us: whoever is not faithful with a little will not be faithful with much, and money arriving early will destroy you.

   “Prosperity is having every day's needs met today.”

   • Matthew 6:33
   • Ephesians 6:2
   • Luke 16:10

6. Take stock, and break the chain

   If God knows your needs before you ask, ask what you are missing. He keeps books of what he has written down, and looking back shows how immature some of it was. If anger is your problem, filler in the wall changes nothing until you change; a child who saw the hole knows it was meant for their face. But when you say I am the problem and overcome the rage before God, your child walks in that victory and never has to fight it. Submit to those placed over you, because they are there to point you to the Word, not to please the flesh.

   Illustration: Years ago his father taught the family to keep a prayer book of visions, dreams and prayer points, and to pray them until they happen. Reading an old one together, his wife laughed at a prayer point from when the children were small, a bedtime routine for one of them, and said how immature she had been.

   “There are things that my father fought that I will never have to fight.”

   • Matthew 6:8
   • Matthew 24:6

7. Six marks of a healthy parent and child relationship

   He gives six, in order: genuine love of the parents for each other, which is the model; genuine love of the parents for the children; consistent discipline, speaking the same language; consistent standards for parents and children alike; godly examples as parents; and fathers being the spiritual head of the home. Fathers who do not lead spiritually have no authority over their families.

   “Fathers who do not lead spiritually have no authority over their children at all, or their family for that matter.”

   • Ephesians 5:25

8. Discipline with love, never in anger

   Do not use emotional blackmail or your love as a weapon, and do not compare your children. Discipline can be consistent but different for every child: for some a look is enough. Love and discipline go together, and when it becomes abuse it is not love. Do not discipline when angry; walk away, cool down and come back. Sarcasm and emotional abuse scar for life. Ending gender-based violence starts in the home, teaching boys the consequence of their actions and girls what not to allow in their lives.

   “Love and discipline go hand in hand. They're not two separate things.”

   • Proverbs 13:24
   • Proverbs 22:6

In this message