We’ve been given permission to release another chapter from my new book, The Life You Were Reborn to Live. This is chapter 3, focusing on ordering our loves so that we can love our families best when we prioritize loving God first. And one of the reasons we want to prioritize other relationships is so that we won’t be so dependent on one particular type of relationship (even marriage or parenting).
Human relationships, rightly ordered, with the appropriate spirit, are essential to a flourishing life of community service.
I am a foreigner to my own family, a stranger to my own mother’s children; for zeal for your house consumes me, and the insults of those who insult you fall on me.
Psalm 69:8–9
Nobody warned us what was coming. In fact, we were often promised the opposite. What we heard was that being good, pious Christians and hyperinvolved parents would create a good, pious family, all of whom would follow the Lord and raise grandchildren who would do the same. The implication is that if we are faithful in serving God, all our descendants will be as well.
I can’t count the number of times thirty or forty years ago when someone would point to Congregationalist preacher Jonathan Edwards, whose faith and life produced many impressive descendants, including fourteen college presidents, more than a hundred ministers, another hundred college professors, and so on. I wasn’t told that Jonathan Edwards owned slaves. And so the slavery issue for Edwards blew the “example” theory (be faithful and your progeny will be faithful) part to bits. Real life has a way of seriously challenging that promise.
It wasn’t until I became an empty nester myself and had friends who are empty nesters that I began hearing other stories and perspectives. One earnest father with a broken heart told me, “Gary, I can’t think of hardly any Christian parents with adult kids whose hearts haven’t been seared by their children’s lifestyle or their rejection of their faith.”
When a woman working for a major national ministry shared with me her grief over the pain of a son’s recent decision, I shared this father’s quote to encourage her. She paused and said, “Actually, none of my three boys are following the Lord.”
A counselor told me about the godliest couple he had ever known, the kind of people who bring the presence of Jesus into every room. They were beloved at their church. God used them to heal many marriages and offer counsel to many young people who sought them out. “Their faith was so genuine and powerful and inviting,” the counselor told me, “it was amazing.” Yet when the woman died, an entire year went by before her estranged son even knew it. He was that estranged. An entire church mourned his mother’s passing, and yet for her son, his mother’s funeral was just like any other day ending with y. His absence at the service was painful and shocking.
Learning the preeminence of “Father God”—who is our first, primary, and most important “family” relationship—leads to lives that are stable and secure because our acceptance in Christ is certain and cannot be lost. Putting our sense of well-being and happiness in the hands of fallen people—even people who share our bloodline—is precarious, risky, and hazardous to our peace. It’s like fool’s gold that sparkles from a distance, but when we see it up close, its lack of eternal value becomes clear. We must dismantle the desperation we feel for earthly families to fulfill us and learn instead how to be fulfilled in the spiritual family into which God adopts us.
Life in Christ will lift us up when loved ones let us down. God will draw us close when those we love the most push us away. The same psalmist who wrote, “I am a foreigner to my own family, a stranger to my own mother’s children; for zeal for your house consumes me, and the insults of those who insult you fall on me” (69:8–9), found comfort in the God who is always there: “I pray to you, LORD, in the time of your favor; in your great love, O God, answer me with your sure salvation. . . . Answer me, LORD, out of the goodness of your love; in your great mercy turn to me” (vv. 13, 16, emphasis added). While admitting the pain of family estrangement, the psalmist bathes in God’s glorious affirmation and love.
Life in Christ hinges on the notion that Jesus claims not just our first allegiance but our entire allegiance. Our commitment to our family is a subset of our commitment to God, not vice versa. We shouldn’t try to use God to get the family we want (“we’ll pay lip service to you, God, if you just keep us all happy and united”). Rather, we put our family on the altar, along with everything else, so we can be 100 percent surrendered to our Lord, Master, and King.
Jesus doesn’t promise that faith will always bring families together. On the contrary, “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matthew 10:21–22).
Some of us must learn that God—simply God—is good enough for us, even if there is no family alongside us. It is a true blessing when we can have both God and close family relationships—heaven on earth! One of my happiest moments was sitting in a small church, glancing up during worship to see my then three teenage children worshiping God, two raising their hands in praise. Another incredibly happy moment for me was the summer all three were involved in missions opportunities. Not much can be more fulfilling than that. It is natural to want that. But what we are promised is God, and God alone; what we are warned about is putting family before God.
Job did not curse God when his children physically died, and we must not curse God if our children spiritually die. And we must never join them in their spiritual death by choosing them over God.
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