GOD IN OUR FAMILY
[9-minute read]
How would you describe a spectacular firework to someone who has never seen it before? You may show a photo of it, tell them how you felt when you were watching the vivid explosion of light and colour, their perfect synchronization, and the memories it evoked. Try getting someone excited about the unusual song of a rare bird that you encountered. If you had captured the tune on a handphone, you could easily share a playback. But what if you don’t have any recording of its captivating sound? What if you have nothing but a memory of the bird’s effect on you? Over time, your recall will naturally require greater effort unless you have more encounters with the bird.
If encountering God daily is as spectacular to you and His counsel is music to your ears, how would you make that a part of your normal conversations with people? We are not talking about Christian sales pitch but conversations in our everyday interactions with family and friends. Know that God is not a private ‘way of thinking’ or a preferred way of life, but He is God for our families, communities and the nations.
It is easy to go through life without being conscious of who God is and what He wants from us. As with any relationship, our relationship with God has its requirements. Not paying attention to what God requires of us is selfish and detrimental to the well-being of our relationship with Him.
What does our relationship with God need from us? Psalm 78:5-8 reminds us that “He commanded our ancestors to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands.”
We must be careful not to think that we are so ‘open-minded’ that we refrain from sharing our knowledge of God with the people in our lives, particularly our family members. So how do we keep our life and relationship with God respected and evident within our families?
The Bible emphasizes six imperatives for keeping the knowledge of God within our families for generations:
1 LOVE GOD WHOLEHEARTEDLY
First and foremost, we must learn to love God as though our existence depends on it. Deuteronomy 6:5 puts it this way: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” Beyond engaging our human faculties, only the Holy Spirit can continually feed us with the determination to hold onto God’s love as we go through storms and heartaches, and to exercise His love even when it is difficult to do so.
This is important because families cannot love each other unless they love God first. Let’s not pretend that relationships within the family is a walk in the park. Culturally, we may be expected to ‘keep everything within the family’ including shame, the lack of success, the lack of care and intimacy, moral failures, brokenness and dysfunctions. Keeping it together takes great work but even more importantly is for Christians to exercise the right kind of love within the family and we can do this only when we learn to love God wholeheartedly.
2 KEEP HIS COMMANDS
A good way for Christians to keep relationships from falling apart is to keep God’s commands. We must learn and know what God’s commands are for victorious living. We cannot rely on pretty and nice-sounding quotes about love that may not be biblical at all, or just consuming sermons or teachings by teachers and preachers and think that we have actually studied God’s Word. We need to keep a ‘live’ mental log of our reflection of the Word of God. The Bible tells us, “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.” (Deuteronomy 6:6). It’s like keeping our understanding and knowledge of God’s Word on a spiritual Cloud storage – always updated, always accessible for the right moment and the right conversation!
Our obedience to God must become so consistent that people expect it of us. If all people see in our Christian walk is a richly ritualistic relationship with God without ongoing transformation into Christlikeness, or if they see only a transactional relationship with God where our obedience is treated as a currency that guarantees benefits to us, then we need to go back and learn to love God because following His commands is a direct resultant response to truly loving Him.
3 DO NOT FORGET THE LORD
Humans tend to forget the good and remember only the negative things. After God set the Israelites free from slavery in Egypt in such a spectacular way - the ten plagues, and the parting of the Red Sea - they forgot about His goodness as soon as they faced setbacks, and turned away from Him. The imperative to not forget the Lord is not just for us who continue to experience His goodness, but importantly, also for our families so that they will not forget His goodness to us.
However we feel on a given day, God’s blessings in our lives can become the ‘hygiene factors’ that we expect from Him. On most days, we can expect that the car will not breakdown, the bus will arrive on time, our loved ones will be safe when they travel, and our paychecks will be deposited into the correct bank account. If only we make it a habit to think of these blessings as a set up for a more purposeful existence, we will then create personal anecdotes from ordinary moments in life that can be shared with our families.
Let’s say we have experienced God’s goodness in an unexpected way, or if He has corrected any wrong thinking that has kept us stuck in unrewarding connections with others, or He has revealed idolatry in our hearts where we have been relying on people and not God to give us meaning and purpose, or He has helped a loved one overcome hurdles for personal breakthroughs - these become powerful testimonies or stories that illustrate what a typical life with God looks like. However, if we keep these personal stories to ourselves, the lack of such oral traditions within the family is a disservice to both ourselves and our future generations.
4 WORSHIP GOD AND GOD ALONE
If you look at the core of your interests, plans and concerns, whose voice takes centre stage? If it is not God’s, then you have allowed another person's interest to take priority of place in your life. It could be a spouse, a boss or your family who think they are the centre of your universe. Or perhaps you have allowed them to dominate your life, and your conversations with God is all about these people and rarely, if ever, about what’s on God’s heart and mind. You see God primarily as the Giver in your relationship. When you mess up, you expect Him to forgive you. When You are sad, you expect Him to comfort you. When you need help, you expect Him to respond on call. But you hardly notice when God requires a responsive action or change on your part.
Yet, it is very clear to Christians that God makes no apology for wanting to have our undivided devotion and love. We are to have a love for God that ‘always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres’ (1 Corinthians 13:7). It allows nothing to compete and threaten the relationship. He should always be important to us and kept close to our hearts.
Deuteronomy 6:13-15 reminds us summarily, to fear the Lord our God and not to follow other gods (cultural and social prescription of who and what is important) because He is a jealous God. That means God is not interested in pursuing any one-sided relationship with us where He is always the Giver and the One who extends compassion and care. He requires us to love Him, keep His commands, not forget Him, and worship Him and Him alone.
5 DO NOT TEST GOD
Deuteronomy 6:16 reminds us not to test God. We test God when we second-guess His goodness, doubt His ability, and circumvent His plans with alternative solutions. To test God is liken to questioning His integrity.
God Himself does not change, and Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever (Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 13:8). Our emotions may run wild, our lives may turn topsy turvy, but God never changes. His character does not depend on our behaviour or our opinion of Him.We cannot rely on circumstantial interpretation to guess what God is thinking and conclude that He might have changed His mind about something without telling us. God is very present in good times as well as in times of intense suffering. He is constant whether we enjoy fair and kind employment, or if we work with a prominent and narcissistic leader for years with no sign of change. He is constant even when no one knows our hurt, or commiserates with us. He is constant even when people fail us.
6 IMPART YOUR FAITH
Deuteronomy 6:20 instructs us on how to respond when our children and family ask us for the meaning of our faith in God. As Christians, we must not live like a closed book, but to leave our faith open so that our families can see what God has done and is still doing in our lives. Whether our families are believers or not, living a life of active faith will impact their faith trajectory and also ignite their own need for God.
What kind of anecdotes do we have in our day-to-day life with God? Do we articulate concrete evidence of God’s involvement in our lives, or do we use the word "blessing" as a catch-all for everything we assume to come from God?
In the final analysis, we are certain that God has put us in families not just to perpetuate the human life cycle and die. As Christians, we have the potential to create eternal legacies of faith in our families through our knowledge of God.
This is a summary and reflection based on a virtual BIR Session held on 21 July 2023.
