Age of Opportunity - 4

Chapter Four - "What is a Family? A Job Description"

Notes and Quotes:

The Family as a Theological Community

"The ultimate fact of family life is that God exists and that we are His creatures. . . {we must} root our children's identity in the existence and glory of God." - they were made BY Him, belong TO Him, and should live FOR Him

"If you only look at life horizontally, all things lose their meaning."

"We are always viewing everything in reference to God: who He is, what He is doing, and what He wants us to be and do. There are no unattached moments."

Whose moment? God is near and active. It is unwise of us to present Him to our kids as One who acts only when we pray. He is an initiating God. Grasp His presence and involvement as the sovereign God of the world, and sovereign over my life.

Whose pleasure? Do your teens "just want to be happy"? Do grandparents or parents say, "as long as it makes them happy"? This is unfortunate, because it indicates that "there is no higher focus than their own pleasure." Pretty scary when what makes them "happy" is ever-changing. Instead, God and His will are to be the focus and reason for all that we do.

Whose story? The Bible is God's story - don't reduce it down to an encyclopedia; a "where can I find a verse on . . . (fill in the blank)" type of approach. The Bible is God's story, and "all other stories of people and nations find their life, meaning, and hope in this story."

"We must embed the stories of our teenagers in the story of God."

Important Questions to ask (myself) and to teach my girls to ask:

• "What, in this situation, are the things that God calls me to do that I cannot pass on to anyone else?"
  
• "What, in this situation, are the things I need to entrust into God's capable and loving hands?"

The above questions give concrete and specific action points to the term "trust and obey."

The Family as a Sociological Community

"Sinners are rugged individualists. . . much better at making war than at making peace."

"God's story is not just the story of his character and his work to redeem; it is also the story of his calling together a people to be the people of God."

"The family is a community, and it will model a view of community whether it realizes it or not."

"In the rush of our frenetic schedules, it is very easy for us to rush by the opportunities, enforcing surface solutions rather than dealing with issues of the heart." . . . busy, busy

If we give our kids "doable solutions" to conflicts/problems, we often give them second-best, leaving "the more important heart issues unexposed and unchanged." The Pharisees emphasized doable behaviors, disregarded the fundamental HEART-LEVEL matters.

I love pages 62-64. . . should be required reading for every family member!

Will I be motivated by "the rule of love" or "the rule of desire"? God is calling ME to something greater than my own comfort and ease.

The Family as a Redemptive Community

"Because of sin, the family is a place of unfulfilled promises, broken dreams, and disappointed expectations."

If we don't accept those second-best standards, but live in the light of God's Word, then our sin will be revealed, and . . .

"When God reveals sin, there are only two responses for the Christian. One is to generate some system of self-justification to make wrong desires and behavior acceptable to your own conscience. The other is to admit your sin, confess it to God and man, and place yourself once again under the justifying mercy of Christ. Parents who do the former will not have a home that functions as a redemptive community. They will unwittingly teach their children to hide their sin, to explain it away, to deny its existence, or to blame others. Parents who do the latter will teach their children to rely on Christ, to confess their sin, and to believe that where sin abounds, grace abounds even more. They will teach their children to grow up to be people of hope who have seen and believe that there is no pit so deep that Jesus isn't deeper!"

"We must not distance ourselves from the sins of our children as if they have a problem to which we can't relate. We need to identify with them. . . Sin is a human condition."

"We do not want to communicate to our children that they would be better off if they could just somehow be like us. . . it is only through Christ that we have experienced any freedom from the things with which they now struggle."

"The existence and glory of God {theology}, the moral responsibility to love neighbor {sociology}, and the hope of the gospel in the face of our sin {redemption} must be the constant themes that interpret, define, explain, and organize family life."