Family

The family as we may have known it, is currently under attack and needs our prayerful intervention. Let’s look at the “portrait” of family from several perspectives; The Leave it to Beaver scenario, the Modern Family reality, and the Biblical original intent of family. Then, let’s talk about how we can start today to align the family with God’s plan.

Leave it to Beaver Family of Perfection

Leave it to Beaver was a 1957 sitcom that aired for six seasons. The program overview states: “Theodore, a young and inquisitive boy, lives with his parents June and Ward Cleaver and brother Wally. His father gives him advice when he gets into trouble at school, home and in the neighborhood.”

Within this family model, June was a stay-at-home mom, Ward worked outside the home and often sat in his easy chair reading the newspaper until dinner still wearing a suit or a sweater over his button up shirt with a tie.

The biggest trauma that the Cleaver family faces are the children, Theodore and Wally making “childish” mistakes and being given the strong fatherly advice that propels the boys to ask for forgiveness from their parents, make reparations to community individuals, and to see the moral value that is being taught by their parents.

The Modern Family Reality

The sitcom family may never have been realistic, but it was the hope and dream of many families for decades. However, The Step Family Foundation (2023) states, “We are now a nation in which the majority of families are divorced. Most go on to remarry or form living together relationships.” The Step Family Foundation quotes a study by Judith Wallerstein (2004):

• Only 45 percent of children “do well” after divorce.
• 41% are doing poorly, worried, underachieving, deprecating, and often angry.
• Fifty percent of the women and 30 percent of the men were still intensely angry with their former spouses.
• “Most felt the lack of a template, a working model, for a loving relationship between a man and a woman.”
• Divorced parents provide less time, less discipline, and are less sensitive to the children as they are caught up in their own divorce and aftermath.
• Many parents are unable to separate their needs from the children’s needs and often share too much of their own personal life with their children, placing the children in a precarious emotional state, vulnerable to grandiosity or to depression within what is left of their families.
• The majority of parents of divorce are chronically disorganized and unable to parent effectively.
• As diminished parenting continues, it permanently disrupts the child’s once normal emotional growth and functioning.

God’s Biblical Original Intent

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Genesis 1:27-28 (NIV)

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” …Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Genesis 2:15, 18, 22-24 (NIV)

God’s original intent was for one man, united with one woman, having children to assist as a family in the care of the earth. How simple God intended the family to be. A nuclear family that shares love for one another and a shared destiny and purpose.

Practical Application Begins Now

Humanity and our family structure has moved drastically far askew of the T.V. sitcoms of the 1950s and God’s original intent. What can we do to swing the pendulum in the opposite direction of where we are now?

Prayer is always our first line of defense. Pray that God’s original intent for the family begins to materialize. Pray that love begins to permeate families. Love manifesting in the families will reduce the divorce rate. Love in the family reduces the negative atmosphere causing high risk life factors (divorce, addictions, suicide, crime, school drop out or lower academic achievement, etc.)

Prayer without action is like faith without works. Do you know any families that are struggling? Call and encourage the parents. Offer your experience from raising your children. Help parents know that often we do the best we can, with what we know at the time. Surround parents with the fact that too often we set high expectations that are not realistic.

Invite families over to experience a different atmosphere. It doesn’t have to be dinner. It could be a game night, an outdoor yard party, or a trip to the park. Families need to know they are not alone and isolated. Families need to know they have support. Always ask the family if there is anything for which you can pray. When you start praying for them, give them hope and expectation that God will act on their behalf.

This allows God to intervene. God knows more of what each family needs to restore them to His original intent. God is able to move beyond the MESS created to date in each family. Yes, families are shattered, isolated, and in shambles. This leaves each adult and every child of a family as a victim that Satan would like to steal, kill, and destroy.

Can we BELIEVE that God’s Original Intent is Achievable?

We are now in a world that has lost confidence in God. We read the BIBLE, but we only picture God’s rescues and restorations as children’s stories that are like fairy tales. We have lost the WONDER WORKING POWER of God that sets our souls free. How can we believe that God sent Jesus to save us from our sin by dying on the cross, and then not believe every other promise given from Genesis to Revelation?

We often say, “Well, I haven’t seen that happen in my lifetime!” Is the reason we don’t see; because seeing is not FAITH? What do we believe?

• Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us (Ephesians 3:30 NKJV).
• You are from God, little children and have overcome them (those opposed to God); because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4 NASB).
• Since God is for us, who can be against us (Romans 8:31b NLV)?
• No weapon formed against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and this is their vindication from me,” declares the LORD (Isaiah 54:17 NIV).

God allowed each of us to be alive at this time in history. God is counting on us to be like the original family to love one another and have a shared destiny and purpose. Our purpose and destiny was given by God in Genesis to multiply His representation into the Earth. Jesus became even more specific as He shared the destiny and purpose for Christ followers in Matthew 28:18-20.

Jesus came up and said to them, “All authority (all power of absolute rule) in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations [help the people to learn of Me, believe in Me, and obey My words], baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always [remaining with you perpetually—regardless of circumstance and on every occasion], even to the end of the age” (AMP).

Let us take Jesus’ words and believe that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and that He desires a healing of the families on Earth today that will reflect His reality to a hurting and dying world.