Cultivating a Christian Family
Retreat Summary
God’s Design for the Christian Home
God has given us the gift of family, and it is the epicenter of life. Like marriage, the family is an irreplaceable piece of God’s plan for our good, the good of those around us, and the good of those who will succeed us. Together, at this retreat, we explored the topic of a Christian family and how it relates to all of us, whether we are single, married, or currently a father of many.
A scriptural theme for this retreat was Proverbs 24:3-4,
“By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches.”
Session 2
Let’s begin with a discussion. Share with a neighbor one repeated, regular practice that has shaped you as a Christian.
If you grew up in a Christian family (however imperfect), pick something from your time in your parents’ home. If you did not grow up in a Christian family, pick something else that formed you in life.
I learned from my family to love the local church. We moved several times during my childhood, and we always found a new church. It was assumed that we would invest our time and energy there: AWANA, kid’s choir, VBS, Sunday School, nursery. I never remember a time that I thought, “I wonder if we’re going to church this Sunday?” It would have been the strangest thing in the world to plan another activity on Sunday morning or to sit at home while church was underway unless we were sick.
Now those are the easiest practices to replicate in your own family. Today, I want to challenge you to move further.
Our question for today is: How does a man (husband and father) build and raise a family to honor God, grow in maturity, value one another, trust in Christ, and love his church?
The Answer: By creating an atmosphere in the home in which living explicitly as Christians in all areas of our life is assumed, normal, and attractive.
Deuteronomy 6:4-9
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, 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. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
Deuteronomy 6 gives us an example of how God directed his people to organize their lives as families and in community. I think it provides guidance for every man here. And you’re here either because you have founded a Christian family, or because you will found a Christian family, or because you have a vested interest in seeing Christian families succeed, or because you should cultivate family-like relationships in Christ if you are single.
What is Moses’ goal in this passage?
Moses aims for each generation to inhabit and own the covenant as their own.
The setting of Deuteronomy is in Moab, to the east of the Jordan River, in the time just before Israel entered the Promised Land. Moses calls the people to stay true to God’s covenant with them and to establish a form of life that will sustain their faith as they enter the land.
The scope of this passage is multi-generational. Not only does Moses call the current generation to believe, but he gives instruction on how to train up the subsequent generation. The family provides the essential context for this training.
Moses’ goal is found in verses 2, 7, and 20.
Deuteronomy 6:2,
“that you may fear the LORD your God, you and your son and your son’s son”
Deuteronomy 6:7,
“You shall teach them diligently to your children”
Deuteronomy 6:20,
“When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes”
Fathers teaching their children is the fundamental and primary place where these words find their application.
The task of instruction does not stop with fathers, but extends to the whole community.
Deuternomoy 6:4,
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”
This is for the entire community to confess together. Moses says, in effect, “You should mark allegiance to Yahweh publicly: talk about it as you walk around, put marks of it on the doorposts and gates of your house.” The text uses plural verbs (you all) in verses 10-19 when talking about what they (Israel) should do when they enter the land.
So, God gives Israel directions for ordering their community life in line with the covenant when they enter the Promised Land. For the sake of their own faith and for the faith of their children, they should make Yahweh and his covenant the center of their lives — first in the immediate context of family relationships, and second in the public ordering of the community.
Their task is to create a certain atmosphere in which Israel rejoices in the covenant with Yahweh.
Differences between Deuteronomy and Christians today
There are some differences between Israel in Deuteronomy and Christians today.
First, the covenant with Israel is land-centered and temporal; the new covenant is universal and everlasting.
The Covenant with Israel is a temporary stop in God’s revelation. God revealed his law for Israel as an ethnic group, and for Israel living in the promised land. An ethnic group living in a specific land needs certain things for survival — including a strong emphasis on marriage, family, and children.
The New Covenant moves beyond the ethnic (i.e., family) focus of the covenant with Israel in order to gather a people of God that have their feet, as it were, in two time periods — the present time with its families and nations, but also a future time in which we are united to Christ together with a worldwide family that is bigger than all family, ethnic, and national ties.
Here is how the Apostle Paul explains it, Galatians 3:25-29,
“But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian [the Israelite Law], 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.”
Although we are still Jews or Greeks, slave or free, male or female — we are at the same time not these things in Jesus Christ. For our purposes in particular, the New Covenant entails that the biological family is not our only nor ultimate family.
Second, the New Covenant opens up a possibility for God-devoted singleness.
Descendants were a specific blessing given to Abraham. To participate in that Abrahamic blessing, an Israelite would want to participate in bearing children. This is why the stories in the Old Testament that emphasize the inability to have children are so stark.
Not so in the New Covenant. Jesus and Paul serve as examples of those who live the life of the age to come (when there will no longer be marriage) right now by living as single people to the glory of God.
So, as much as you will hear me praise the Christian family in this message, we should remember that a biological family (husband, wife, and by God’s grace, children) is not the only calling in which we may glorify God.
How will we cultivate a Christian family?
I will present this in five directions.
1) By founding a Christian family
Gentlemen, it is the task of a man to found a Christian family. It won’t happen without your active pursuit of that end.
Both singleness and marriage are good before God
Marriage testifies to the good of the earth, singleness testifies to the good of heaven. So, Christ gives us two options: pursue marriage and family for the sake of affirming God’s created order and introducing new never-dying humans into the universe (if God permits). Or, live a life devoted to spiritual progeny and fruitfulness through gospel living as a single person (1 Cor. 7:32-35). Notice the option that he does not give us — live for yourself as a single person or as a married person.
As Calvin says, the primary rule of Christian ethics is, “You are not your own.” (Inst. 3.7.1) Galatians 2:20,
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
We all pursue spiritual fruit in our lives and the lives of others through a joyful submission to God’s will and a desire to follow Christ. We all do it while single; some continue to pursue this in marriage and with children.
Unexpected fruit: Founding something that will outlast you
If God gives you a wife (and then, by God’s grace, children), you receive the privilege and responsibility of founding a Christian family — whether you know it or not. Your father may have been very godly, but your family will look slightly different than his and will develop in its own ways. Your father’s defects may have been painfully obvious to you, but your family can legitimately be different. Your efforts to found a distinctly Christian family may set up or continue a generational chain of solid faith.
We cannot underestimate the significance of a new Chrisitan family. When Andrea and I look back at our early marriage, we see that we made some assumptions about how mature we were in Jesus. That probably allowed us to skip some important work on being explicit about what we were seeking as a family. What sort of person do I want to become knowing that my faith could set up or continue a generational chain of Christian faith?
2) By explicit commitment to Christ, his story, and his ways
We will cultivate a Christian family by an explicit commitment to Christ.
Deuteronomy 6:4 is called the Shema, and it is the bedrock of Israelite faith.
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
Check the footnote. The ESV gives three additional options for translating that phrase. Like Bilbo answering Gandalf about the meaning of “Good Morning,” I think it could mean all of those, all at the same time.
First, “Yahweh is one.” That is, he is not divisible into parts; he does not spin off into other gods and goddesses. There is a unity to the divine creator that makes him Lord of all creation.
Second, “Yahweh is our God, the Lord alone.” That is, we belong to no other God. In this sense, it is a pledge of allegiance. There are many so-called gods in the world, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
How does that play out in a Christian family? A Christian father makes explicit what we believe and why we believe it.
What does it mean, then, to be a Christian family?
Here is my back-of-the-envelope definition: “a home in which the husband/father confesses Jesus as Lord and strives to create the conditions in which the whole family can live under the Lordship of Jesus.”
It is father-centric because men are called to lead their families.
It includes a personal confession of faith.
It cultivates an atmosphere of life under the Lordship of Christ.
Ephesians 6:4, is the most well-known exhortation specifically to fathers,
“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”
“Discipline” is paideia, which is not just correction, but the whole spectrum of teaching. “Instruction” emphasizes that same point. That is, we are to bring up our children in the training and instruction in agreement with what we have learned of the Lord. This is not just the catechism, but involves all aspects of living well to God. Paul admonishes men to take the lead in making explicit our commitment to Christ.
Beginning before children
This explicit commitment to Christ as a family begins whenever marriage does, whether or not we have children. It can be tempting to think that a husband’s role as spiritual leader in this respect only begins when you have children. But, it is a husband’s responsibility to lead his wife in thinking Christianly about their marriage: when will we start having children, how do we deal with potential childlessness, how do we live intentionally for spiritual progeny and fruitfulness during a time of biological childlessness.
The Christian husband’s responsibility is neither, “What will we do when we have children?”, nor “How will we ‘make the most of our time’ before children?” Rather, we should ask, how are we cultivating this unit, this family, right now, to model Christ's kingdom? A husband/wife pair without children is still a Christian family.
Are we really a “Christian family”?
Some well-meaning Christians who believe with us that children are born sinners can fall into danger here. They think, “Since my five-year-old son has not had a credible conversion experience, he is still unregenerate and so is an unbeliever.” An extreme form of this would be to think of one’s children as “unbelievers” unless and until they show explicit evidence of saving faith.
But this goes against the natural order of creation in which children learn and assimilate what is most important within the family. So, while we explain to our children that they need have explicit faith in Jesus in order to be counted as a part of his family, we do everything we can to create an environment in which that is straight-forward and encouraged. We give a judgment of love on the confession of our 3 or 4 year old about faith in Jesus, and we assure them of God’s love for them within the emerging faith that may not yet be visible.
A “Christian family” then, means, a “home in which the husband/father confesses Jesus as Lord and strives to create the conditions in which the whole family can live under the Lordship of Jesus.”
In our home, we are explicit that this is a Christian family. We will reason as Christians, we will talk like Christians, we will assume that everyone is thinking as a Christian until proven otherwise. Now that my older kids have been baptized, we frequently refer to that confession of faith as foundational for their decision-making.
This explicit commitment to Christ also has a surprising fruit. It clarifies our own convictions. Every time that you reason with yourself, with your wife, or with your children explicitly as a Christian, you clarify and model what it means to follow Jesus.
3) By Modeling Christian discipleship
Deuteronomy 6:6,
“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.”
John Milton Gregory’s classic little book, the Seven Laws of Teaching, has this obvious and yet profound law:
“A teacher must be one who knows the lesson or truth to be taught.”
We will not pass on to our family anything that we do not possess ourselves.
What do you want your kids to say about you when you die?
My dad knew a thing or two about investments, about his job, about his favorite sports team, about coaching, about fixing things around the house, or about how to crack a joke at the dinner table…
They may say all of that, but will they say, “My father loved Jesus. My father confessed his sins. My father loved God’s word. My father cared about my faith”?
We will cultivate a Christian family to the extent that we model Christian discipleship. Here are a few areas where that will be made clear.
Confession and Repentance
Did you grow up in a house in which your father never said “I’m sorry”? Andrea and I make it a practice to apologize and ask forgiveness whenever we can in front of our children. I cannot expect them to do so if they have not seen and heard me do so.
Personal Testimony
I need to be able to tell my family what God is doing in my life. I need to be ready to tell them stories of what God has done in my life.
We were invited to a family’s house last year and after dessert, the dad called in all the kids and said, “We always ask a question of our guests: Why are you a Christian?” Andrea and I were so happy to answer that both for their family, and for our own children. These parents knew that the testimony to Christ from other adults will have a special effect on their children. They want to show that faith in Christ is not strange, weird, uncool, outlandish, or only for the super-spiritual.
Love for God’s Word and Prayer
Did your parents read their Bible and pray on their own while you were growing up? How did it shape your opinion of Bible reading?
Modeling Christian discipleship produces an unexpected, and even indispensable fruit: A father’s modeling of Christian discipleship primarily adds beauty to the gospel of Christ. You can teach your family a lot. You can have the perfect system for disciplining your children. You can give them experiences of hard work, economizing, taking risks, and using opportunities. All of these things will train and mold your children. But how will you pass on a feel for the beauty of following Christ?
Like it or not, you are the head of a household. You are the symbol of the Christian faith to your children. Your humble modeling of Christian discipleship will communicate the beauty of following Jesus to them.
Let’s discuss this: If you were to grow into a better and more convincing model of Christian discipleship yourself, what is one area of life in which you would like to see improvement?
4) By Repeated practice and Healthy rhythms
What do you want to be “normal” in your home? What is “normal” in your house? What was normal in your house growing up?
Perhaps shouting matches between your parents was normal. Perhaps a start-and-stop approach to Christian living: family worship, attending church, manners, limits on technology. Maybe unhealthy TV habits from early childhood — cartoons on the iPad at all hours, Fox News playing in the background from 4-6 PM, unlimited Youtube binges of funny videos or sit-coms.
We may not have a picture of an ideal normal for our household when we get married. Step one is acknowledging where there might be problems. For example, it is not just that I get frustrated with my six-year-old at bedtime on occasion, but that a cycle of behaviors and attitudes is the normal way we get to bed.
Deuteronomy 6 tells us to make certain rhythms normal in our home.
Deuteronomy 6:7-9,
“You shall teach them diligently to your children, 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. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
We learn through repeated practice. We are formed by whatever our practice happens to be. Rhythms are not just for our children, but for ourselves. Notice the variety of places in Deuteronomy 6:
Verse 6, how do we get these words “on our heart?”
Verse 7 - Teach them, talk about them both at home, when you are out for a walk, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand and in front of your eyes (built-in reminders and nudges). On the doorposts and on your gates (publicly and explicitly).
We are after repetition and ubiquity in order to create a “normal” life that nudges us toward Christ.
Repetition, evaluation, and recalibration
“I’ve already read the gospel of John, why read it again?” said a friend of mine in 9th grade. Don’t be ashamed of repeated practice. The shema is meant to be recited frequently. Getting to church on time is a weekly practice. Prayer time and Bible reading are meant to be repeated. Everything is a liturgy, a form by which things take place in a certain order.
One example, in the Hoglund house, is evening family prayer time.
Neither I nor Andrea grew up in a house where family worship was a regular event. My dad often read books to us and prayed for us before bed, but it was not Scripture-focused and it was not the entire family. I remember several attempts at family Bible reading, but these never lasted beyond the second attempt (usually in Proverbs 2).
So, coming into marriage, we each had a desire to make this a reality, but we did not have a clear model for how to make it happen.
We started with a few simple songs that our kids could sing with us. Eventually I moved to making a list of Bible readings so that we would be more comprehensive. Kids who can read look at their Bibles and Dad asks simple questions about the content. Everyone says something they are thankful for. Then we pray. We have prayed kneeling for a season, and asked everyone to pray. Andrea has made prayer cards for friends and family, church, and the world. Each family member gets a card and prays for that. We have memorized the Lord’s Prayer and three “compline” prayers from the Book of Common Prayer. We recite one of those together before we close.
As a regular liturgy, this has become normal in our home. If it has not happened by 9PM, someone asks, “Aren’t we going to pray?”
The anchors of family dinner and bedtime prayer has benefits not just for the biblical content we cover or for practice in prayer. These two times create a context for conversation that we see as invaluable. There is no set structure to this, but once my children learned that dinner and family worship were times when they could say what was on their mind, they were ready to do so. Andrea and I were surprised at how fruitful this time has become — bordering on the ridiculous…such as when I have to cut short dream-reports.
The dad in me wants to run this conversation. It is easy to turn it into an interrogation, or a Socratic leading toward an acceptable answer. But, it seems to me that the greatest value comes from conversation that is only mildly regulated, that goes on for longer than I feel comfortable with, and that everyone knows will end in prayer. Sometimes there is gold in those times. Sometimes something is made clear. Sometimes we just enjoy our children as the people that they are. Sometimes we learn our kids’ real concerns or worries and can address them.
Deuteronomy 6:20,
“When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the LORD our God has commanded you?’”
Your son will ask you in time to come — Moses is saying that there will be a context for this question to come out. What are we doing today to create a context in which this question will come from our kids at a proper time?
Ubiquity: Boundaries and Nudges for Decision-making
We are surrounded by too many decisions. One task of a Christian husband/father is to set guidelines, nudges, directions, within which there are opportunities for limited choice (both for ourselves and for our families). Giving your kids choices is great, but can also become an idol. A Christian father sets the spectrum of appropriate activities, words, and responses. We should do so with confidence and humility.
Entertainment and movies. Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan) looks to be an impressive film. Nolan does quality films and I imagine it is really good. But, I immediately heard that Oppenheimer’s most famous line, “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” is placed in a sex scene. We’ve established in our family that we do not watch movies with a sex scene in a movie theater. So that one is off the table. The established pattern serves as a nudge to make it easy to respond when faced with a (seemingly) attractive choice.
One blessing from the last year has been the Cities Church Bible reading plans. I have been hesitant to tell my kids what to read, how much, and when. The church plan gave our family something we could all accept as a framework for Bible reading.
Here are several ways we are handling Bible reading: Everyone is encouraged to read the Bible as a Christian. No guilt trip about missed readings. The guide is just a guide. If you want to keep up, that’s great. If it takes you 1.5 years to finish the whole Bible, no problem. The only two ways to fail in Bible reading is not starting, and giving up completely. Casual, informal check-ups: I sometimes ask in the evening, “Who can tell us something they read in the Bible over the last two days?”
When your kids start reading the Bible for themselves, they will question the Bible for themselves. Here are a few questions I have received this year from Bible reading:
“When it says Isaiah went into the prophetess and she conceived, how do you know that was actually his wife?”
“Why doesn’t mom wear a head-covering at church? Does it really mean women should never speak in church?”
“Don’t you think Solomon is over-the-top in Song of Solomon?”
“It sounds like Paul is bragging in 2 Corinthians. Is he really humble?”
There are few greater joys for a father than to catch a glimpse of his children reading the Bible on their own either early in the morning or late in the evening.
The principle is straight-forward. Set boundaries and provide nudges so that in this house godliness looks normal.
5) By Looking beyond the household to God’s purpose in the church
Ephesians 3:8-10,
“To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, 9 and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, 10 so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”
A Christian father looks beyond his own household to Christ’s body, the church.
Prioritize public worship
My job as dad is to make it as easy as possible for everyone in my house to make it to church on time on Sunday morning. I need to hear God’s word from someone else; and my wife and children need to hear God’s word from other people.
Our family lived seven years in Vietnam and attended a Vietnamese church for that entire time. In order to make that decision, we needed a clear idea of what role the local church plays in our family life — since our kids would often not understand the preaching, the music was louder than we preferred, and even when you know the words of the songs, it is difficult to sing them with your whole heart. And yet, for us, the Vietnamese church was invaluable: (1) it constantly reminded us of why we were living in Vietnam, (2) we understood some of it, even if not all, (3) our family observed what Christian life looked like for ordinary Vietnamese people, and (4) it reminded us that as believers we are part of the world-wide family of God, including people who are different from us.
Value participation in the local church
By participating with the church in teaching, serving, discipleship, and outreach, we teach ourselves what is actually true — that all of God’s power in Christ is given to the church as his instrument in this age. We inhabit the true world — in which God is displaying his glory to the powers through the church.
At the end of all things, when Revelation 7 is fulfilled and there is a great host of people without number standing before the throne and singing, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Rev. 7:10), I, my wife, and my children (by God’s grace) may stand together. But we will know ourselves to be part of something much bigger than this family unit — we will primarily be those who have been purchased by the Lamb and now follow him wherever he goes.
A Christian Family is an Ongoing Task
It is not a scientific experiment, nor an electrical schematic, not an algorithm or a section of code. There is no one-size-fits-all, no short and clear guidance for how to conduct oneself in every situation.
We need to fall back on metaphors like farming or gardening, even building a house perhaps, but one in which the foundation is already half-poured, will require some demo of old work, and that around every corner we’ll find unexpected rot and surprising ways it has been put together.
But in giving us this task, God calls us to our highest temporal responsibility. He lets us participate in the main story of this world. And he promises to be with us.
For session 1 on God’s Design for the Christian Home, click the link below: