Start your day off, right? With the free in touch.
Devotional, subscribe today In touch with Dr.
Charles Stanley celebrating 45 years of God’s faithfulness, ensuring the gospel worldwide. Next on in touch. A strong family.
God created the family and yet there are no perfect families.
In fact, if you look in the scriptures, you’ll find pretty quickly.
Adam and Eve had a very difficult time in their family.
Not only was the conflict between them because you remember when she uh said to Adam, why don’t you take a bite?
He told God she made him do it. It’s sort of, that’s what she said, he said.
And then of course they had two sons, one of them killed the other, Andy Lee’s sons, the priests, both his sons and the Bible says were evil.
Abraham married Sarah. They’re getting along real fine.
And then uh Hagar comes on the scene and they have a conflict, then you could move all the way through the scriptures.
But let’s just take David who is the he was the supreme of all the kings of Israel.
There was lying, murder, rape and rebellion in his family.
And this was an awesome family and he was an awesome king and yet their family was a total disaster.
So when you’re thinking about your family and your thinking, we’re not doing too well.
Well, just remember this just because your family isn’t doing too well, isn’t because you can’t be better.
In other words, you can improve what’s going on.
If you’re willing to work at it, it’s difficult in these days to have a strong family.
And yet that is exactly what I want to talk about in this message.
And God intends for us to have strong families and proof of that is this.
If you turn to Deuteronomy chapter six for a moment, I want us to look at a few verses.
That’s absolute proof that God was very interested in his family’s being strong families.
If you look in the sixth chapter and I’ll just start reading in verse three uh to save a little time here and notice what the scripture says.

Scripture says, O Israel, you should listen and be careful to do it that it may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly just as the Lord, the God of your fathers has promised you in a land flowing with milk and honey.
Then he says, hear o Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is one.
You shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart and with all your soul with all your might.
These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart.
And then this is what he says about the family is proof that he wants strong families.
He says to them, speaking primary to the fathers, you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up, that is to teach the word of God to his children’s family.
You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as front lips on your forehead.
You shall write them on the door post of your house and on your gates.
And he was simply saying the word of God I want in your family everywhere you turn, there’s evidence that the word of God is in your family.
God wants us to have strong loving family.
So somebody says, well, so how would you define that kind of a family?
I’d simply say this and that is we mean by a strong family, one in which the members of the family have a love and devotion to one another.
Love and devotion for one another. No other, no other substitute. Just love and devotion for one another.
That it’s the beginning of a strong family and it doesn’t just happen. It takes work.
And I think one of the reasons many people don’t have strong families is the father and the mother or one of the two, they’re not willing to do what is necessary to build strength into their family.
So the purpose of this message is this is to give you the characteristics of a strong family.
It doesn’t mean that you have to do every single one of these things, but it does mean this, these are the characteristics of strong families.
So I want you to listen carefully to this message and I want you to think about your home and how you can improve, how you can make it stronger wherever it might be.
And don’t give up no matter what’s happened, you don’t give up God placed you there for a reason.
And if you will listen to him carefully, he can make you a strong influence and your Children will grow up to have the right kind of influence and testimony and they’ll pass on what you pass on to them and that will make a wonderful family for you.
So let’s begin with the first one. And that is, let me just say this right up front.
When I say this person, you’re going to say, well, that just count me out. No, no, no, no.
Uh because I’m coming to the part where the families are divided and separated and blended and so forth.
So stay with me from the very beginning.
First of all, Godly parents, you want a strong family, you need a strong father and a strong weather who love God and are devoted to him.
That is the most powerful of all the elements in a strong family.
Secondly, one of the, one of the very important things about having a strong family is that parents are consistent.
That is if you say something, do what you say, because here’s what Children do, they hear what you say, but they do what you do.
And Children watch that very carefully.
If you want consistency, you have to do what you say, you’re going to do very important.
Then of course, you need to be a good listener.
Everybody wants to be listened to and Children want to be listened to.
And if you want to turn a child away and separate yourself from that childhood, it’s a little boy, little girl or teenager, just get too busy to listen.
Listening is a very important activity in a family.
You may not always be interested in what they have to say.
But remember this, they honor you as their father and their mother and they think that you’re smarter than they are.
So they want you to listen to what they have to say because you may be able to help them and everybody wants to be listened to.
You want to be listened to on your job and your family, among your friends, you feel like that’s very important to refuse to listen to somebody is to shut them out and really to make this statement, you’re not worth listening to your not important.
So I’m not gonna listen, be sure not to let that happen in your family.
Then of course, discipline them without rejection.
A very, very important point which simply says this, you don’t discipline your Children when you’re angry with them.
If you’re angry at something, they did get over it, move us, walk away, do something to get over the anger till you and God can settle your feeling about that.
Then you come to them and discipline them.
You see if you discipline your child out of anger, you’re probably gonna hurt them.
Secondly, they’re gonna feel by your attitude, they’ll feel your rejection. You don’t want them to feel rejection.
You want to say to them that you’re doing this for a reason.
So I made it a policy earlier in my kid’s life not to ever discipline them until first of all, I explained what I was getting ready to do.
I would never indiscipline, touch my child with my hand.
When you, when you slap a child with your hand, whether it’s a face or some other part, there’s something about that that transfers into rejection.
There’s something psychologically very destructive about that.
Then of course, um, reading the Bible together, it’d be amazing to know how many, how many Christians, Christian homes, as we would say, where the parents and the kids read the Bible together.
There’s not a dad alive who’s too busy, there’s not a mother alive. Too busy.
You may make yourself busy. But what could you, what could you do more important to a young child?
Listen to keep this Bible before them and to magnify the word of God and to talk about the word of God and, and listen and read it with them and the whole family and you may not read it with the whole family every single day.
But you can read at least once a week, but you can help them learn to read the Bible daily and anything you can do to get your child into the word of God.
Listen to me. You’re saving yourself trouble, heartache and tears because as they read the word of God and find out what God says and then they compared what God says to what you say.
Then there is authority in that. And let me say this. It’s your guidebook for life.
It’s their guidebook for life. You’re the one who is to instill within them.
Watch this, the wisdom, The wisdom of guiding their life by the word of God. If I should ask you.
Well, do you want your Children to read the word of God and to be guided by that? Yes.
Well, who’s gonna be the most effective? Not the pastor? I can talk about it just an hour on Sunday.
You’ve got six days and 23 other hours. You’re the pattern. It’s what you teach them about what they see.
Reading the word of God together. I cannot tell you how important this book is.
It’s the God book for life.
We’d not be having the problems we’re having would not be in the mess we are in this country.
If the people in leadership and the people that’s in towns and city uh state in the country, we wouldn’t be where we are if the principles of the Word of God were lived out by those who rule over us.
And that is true in the family as well as any other place in life.
So you want, you want to, and you want to encourage them to have private devotions, not just what you all read together, but they need to get in the habit of reading it by themselves and just say if there’s something you read, you don’t understand.
You come ask me, I’ll help you understand it. If I don’t, we’ll find out the answer.
Don’t just leave them hanging. We’ll find out what the answer is.
Then of course, build biblical convictions into their life as a guide.
Now that means you, you need to know what you believe and you need to be able to stand up with the word.
And if necessary, you want them to have a conviction about how they treat each other, to love other people and the convictions about forgiveness and on and on.
It goes, if you have those convictions, you can teach it to them by demonstration.
If you don’t have those convictions no matter what you say, it won’t work.
They’re going to do what you do, not necessarily what you say. So, here’s one of the major things.
Always be honest, listen carefully, always be honest with your Children about everything.
Now, for example, listen carefully, let’s say that you are a daughter and you ask your dad about something and he was dishonest, he didn’t tell you the truth And he did that two or 3 times when this little girl grows up and she’s looking for a husband and uh this young man or that young man, whatever it might be, do you know what’s still in her subconscious?
You can’t trust men or you say that’s not true. It is absolutely the truth.
When a person of such authority as your father is dishonest doesn’t tell the truth, lies and you can call it anything you want to, what a child sees that hears, that feels that carries that.
And what happens when it comes to men, listen carefully.
Her experience with the most important man in her life is you can’t trust them.
That’s exactly what happens.
You start off with a marriage with a hindrance.
So I want to encourage you to be honest, listen, no matter what you say, do what you say because what you do, what you say is not what they’re gonna do necessarily.
It’s what you do is what they’re gonna do and you can wreck their family very early in life.
Now you say, well, now what about a broken home?
Is there any way to have a strong home once it’s broken, once there’s divorced, once there’s separation?
Yes, there is. May not be as strong as it could be, but it can still be strong.
You say, well, how do you do that listening carefully.
The first way we started off, we started off with two Christian parents together.
So remove that for a moment and everything.
After that, you can practice in a home that’s broken and the husband’s gone and the wife’s gone or, or there’s somebody else that you’ve married, somebody else, whatever is going on there, you can still practice all of those principles, every single one of them except that you, this is a different family and you have a major issue right up front.
And so I would simply say this if, if the family is blended, if you got two Children from her and two Children from him or whatever, if you just remember this, stay physically and emotionally close to your Children, primarily your Children stay close.
If, if, if your wife takes them away or your husband takes them away, stay as emotionally close to them as you can.
Because listen, they’re part of you, they came out of you mom, they’re still your Children.
And so mom and dad need to stay as close as they can physically and emotionally so that they never feel like they’re genuinely parents just left them.
And oftentimes that’s difficult, especially in a wife, if a wife and her husband have had a terrible, horrible divorce.
And now that, that point of hating each other and here Children, I think about the awesome horrible trauma in a child’s heart who sees one day his dad walk off and not come back.
A little girl who sees her father walk off and not come back and no matter what you tell them, they can’t, they don’t understand that.
And you and I think this dad when you walk off, remember this, you will give account to a holy God but bringing Children into this world and you absolutely dessert them.
Not realizing you tear apart in that child’s heart. Their whole emotional being gets affected.
You say, well, I get over it. No, they don’t. They do not get over it.
It’s, there is a scar as long as they live.
This is why you should do your best to keep that marriage together.
Sometimes you can’t, nobody, no matter what happens. Sometimes it doesn’t work.
Somebody decides they’re gonna leave and they’re gonna walk away no matter what, then you can’t help that.
But God will be there to help you and he’ll be there to strengthen you and he’ll be there to help you.
Love those Children in a, in a very unusual way.
Then if you’re, if one parent leaves, increase your time of prayer and reading the scripture with your Children.
In other words, you become, you become the physical refuge.
The Bible says that we, we live in the shadow of the almighty.
Now words, if I’m in the shadow of something that’s something big there.
And he says he’s our shelter and our shadow and our keeper.
And when you keep reading the scripture with those Children, the mom or dad’s gone and you have to understand and they have to understand, you know, we, we, we don’t understand why we don’t, we don’t want to be critical.
We wanna pray that whatever’s going on their life.
God will work in their life no matter how good you try to make it, there’s a scar that’s hurt and there’s pain.
But you do have a responsibility to alleviate as much of that as you can.
And then remind them that trusting God is more important than ever before.
When, when one of your loved ones is gone, trusting God is more important than ever before because now you don’t have a father.
You don’t have a mother now, we have God.
And what you want to drill into that child’s heart is God is your father.
You don’t earthly father is gone, but God is your father now and he’ll provide your needs.
He’ll provide our needs. And I know in my mother, in my, in my life, not having a father for those years, um My mother would keep reminding me that our heavenly father was my father now and that we were gonna make it somehow in some way and times got pretty tough.
But she was always that encouraged me.
And one of the interesting things you can do for those Children is give them a verse of scripture every morning that maybe God laid on your heart and just ask him said, why don’t you read this before you go to school this morning?
And if you’ve given them a Bible and they have the Bible, then, uh, if you gave, when I quote to you often, and God says, He’ll teach us in the way we should go.
He’ll guide us with his eye upon us. Well, too little child, things, things ought to get that.
So you’ll, you’ll know exactly what to say to them.
And this is a wonderful opportunity for you to teach the importance of their personal relationship with God.
And that no matter what happens in life, you’re gonna make it, we’re gonna make it.
We’re gonna have a strong family.
No matter what, it’ll never be as strong as it could be, but it will be stronger than most people allow theirs to become.
And so I want to encourage you whoever you are.
If you’ve never trusted Jesus Christ as your savior, you have a very difficult time having a strong family and growing strong Children.
We live in a world that’s slanted against their kids in every way.
There’s something out there everywhere, to destroy them, mentally, physically and morally, you are their refuge. You are their help.
You need them, they need you. Everybody needs God.
And I want to encourage you to trust Christ as your savior ask him to come into your life.
Help you to be the kind of President God wants you to be and be the kind of parent, a godly parent that you need to be.
You may be a son or daughter and you’ve treated your family terribly.
You say, well, that’s been a long time ago. You know what?
They still hurt, they’re still hurt. You say they’ve forgotten and no, they don’t.
You don’t forget when people hurt you deeply as a child and they don’t forget when you hurt them.
So I would encourage you to settle up any issues in your family.
Ask for forgiveness, make things right and do your best to honor your mother and to honor your father.
And I want to say to you this morning, all of us have responsibilities to our Children.
We have responsibilities to each other to love one another, to help each other any way we possibly can.
That’s what being a Christian is all about.
And I want to encourage you to take the notes that you have today.
You can put them on the shelf somewhere. You’ll be sorry.
What you need to do is to look them over, read them over.
And if I want to remember something that’s normally I would have a difficult time remembering.
I make a list of it and I lead somewhere. I can just see it every day.
I just read over and read over and read over and over.
And here’s what I discovered a long time ago when something comes up. I need to remember. There.
It is not because I read it once or not because I heard you once because I knew I was, would be easier for me to forget some of it.
You’ve not heard anything unimportant. All been important. All works. It’s all truth.
And you’re talking about raising Children, raising grandchildren and some of your grandparents, you’re gonna have to step into the position of a parent because your Children have just blown it bad in their marriage.
But grandparents make yourself available. You are not too busy to hear your grandchildren.
You’re not too busy and they need you.
You know what you’ll be, you’ll be like an anchor to them.
I can always, I can always go against, I know he’ll be there for me.
They’ll do the same for you. If you’re not saved, you’re working against yourself.
I plead with you in Jesus name to give yourself to Him, asking him to forgive you of your sins and trusting Him as your savior.
And then let God work in your life, your life of your family and father, we commit all of this to you and I pray the Holy spirit of the living God.
You lord will etch these truths into the minds and hearts of those who have heard it and who will hear it.
And lord you work in the hearts in such a fashion that every family becomes stronger and stronger and stronger and share these truths with their friends who have broken families.
So their family, friends who are going through difficult times make all of us for the missionaries of truth and all the truth that you teach us to give it away because we want somebody to give it to us.
And we pray this in Jesus name.
Amen.