Made to Flourish #3 - Family
Description
Dr. Kurt Bjorklund examines Ephesians 6:1-4 to reveal God's design for family, emphasizing that parents are called primarily to nurture their children's spiritual well-being rather than merely pursuing worldly success. This message reminds us that while we should balance encouragement with admonishment in raising children, God offers abundant mercy and peace even when—like the perfect Father whose children sometimes rebel—we don't get everything right.
Summary and Application
In his message Kurt explores the biblical foundations for family relationships through the lens of Genesis 1-2 and Ephesians 6. As parents, we often feel overwhelmed by the responsibility of raising children, as Kurt candidly shared about his own experience: "I was sitting and holding the newborn baby one day... and my two year old came and wanted to get on my lap... I'm holding the two of them together. And I had one of these moments where I thought, what have I done?"
The Balance of Encouragement and Admonishment
Kurt emphasizes that effective parenting requires both encouragement and admonishment. Referencing Ephesians 6:4, he explains that parents should "bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord." He notes that "instruction in some translations is the word admonish and it means basically to encourage, to instruct through encouragement and to instruct through kind of challenging somebody."
Many parents tend to excel at one approach while struggling with the other. Kurt shares from his own upbringing: "My dad was more of an encourager than an admonisher. My mom was more of the admonisher than the encourager." He recalls a powerful moment when his father stepped into the admonishment role, telling him, "don't blame your failures on other things, own them or you won't end up being successful." This balance is crucial for children's development.
Understanding Biblical Wisdom on Parenting
Kurt addresses a common misunderstanding about Proverbs' guidance on child-rearing. Many parents interpret Proverbs 22:6 ("Train up a child in the way he should go...") as a guarantee that children will always return to their faith if properly trained. However, Kurt clarifies: "Proverbs is not a promise as much as it is or a guarantee as much as it is a statement of how things generally work. And what that means is sometimes you may do everything right and your training may not do exactly what you want it to do."
To illustrate this point, Kurt references Isaiah 1:2: "Hear me, you heavens. Listen, earth, for the Lord has spoken. I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me." He emphasizes, "God is a perfect father. And what does it say about his children? That they still sometimes rebel? And what that means is you can do everything right" and still face challenges with your children.
Children's Responsibilities
The message also addresses children's obligations within the family structure. Kurt references Ephesians 6:1-3: "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the commandment with a promise, so that it may go well with you, and that you may enjoy long life on the earth."
This dual command to obey and honor parents establishes the foundation for healthy family dynamics and personal development. Kurt suggests that honoring parents is similar to the military concept of saluting the uniform rather than the person—we honor the position even when the individual may be flawed.
God's Support in Parenting
For parents feeling overwhelmed by their responsibilities, Kurt offers encouragement through the story of Moses. When God commissioned Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt (Exodus 3-4), Moses felt inadequate for the task. Similarly, parents often feel ill-equipped for the challenges of raising children. Yet just as God promised to be with Moses, He promises to be with parents in their journey.
Kurt reminds us that even when we fall short as parents, God offers "mercy, peace, and love in abundance" (Jude 2). The goal isn't perfect parenting but faithful parenting that points children toward God's truth and grace.
Practical Application Questions
Reflect on your parenting style: Kurt mentioned that some parents excel at encouragement while others are stronger at admonishment. Which comes more naturally to you, and how might you intentionally develop the approach that's more challenging for you? What specific situation with your child could benefit from a more balanced approach this week?
Consider your response to imperfection: How does the knowledge that even God—the perfect Father—had children who rebelled change your perspective on your own parenting journey or your relationship with your parents? What steps can you take to extend grace to yourself or your parents while still pursuing growth?
Remember, as Kurt emphasized, flourishing as a family isn't just about increasing in number but about nurturing relationships that honor God and help each member grow in faith and character.
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Alright. Let's pray together. God, as we are gathered this weekend, I ask that you would speak into each of our lives. God, I ask that my words would reflect your word in content and in tone and in emphasis, and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
I have four sons, and I remember when we had had our and then our moment that took place very early, their two were about two years apart, and I was sitting and holding the the newborn baby one day, just trying to take care of him, and my two year old came and wanted to get on my lap because I don't think he liked that I was holding the baby, and he wasn't at the center at that moment. And so I I I got my two year old up on my lap along with the baby and I'm holding the two of them together. And I had one of these moments where I thought, what have I done? I mean I was young, I was thinking I I don't know how to raise two boys. This is a huge responsibility to be in charge of the development of two young boys and how am I gonna pay for college or help them a little bit even with it?
How are any of these things going to work? And none of it seemed to make sense, and I was a little overwhelmed. And we started a series a couple weeks ago that we've called Made to Flourish and we're looking at some of the themes that are in Genesis. And today we're going to look at a theme that shows up in Genesis chapter one verse 28 and the theme has to do with being fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth. Here's what we read in Genesis one twenty eight.
It says, God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it. And these words are, the idea of saying it is a good thing that God wants us to procreate, to multiply, to fill the earth. And some of you may be hearing that and you say, Well, I think Elon Musk is working on that right now. Come on. And and, and yet this is actually a command that some people in our day and age, some Christian young people are saying, this is is a command in such a way that it's saying you should never use birth control and we're not gonna spend a lot of time on that other than to say, I don't think that's what this command is about other than simply saying it is a good thing to have a family and it is God's plan for the earth to have families that multiply.
That is what is in view here and I know that in talking about families, Father's Day, from years of being around church, that it's probably, for me, one of the two hardest weeks of the year to speak. And the reason I say that is because here's what I know, and that is there are some of you who are here and you just want to hear fatherhood matters, good job, keep it up. Some of you are here and you're single and you're saying this is so far in the future. I do not want to sit here and hear anybody talk about fatherhood for twenty minutes. Some of us are here and we had bad parents in our lives or maybe we've had some pain in recent years and so it's just painful to think about it.
Some of us are wishing that we could have kids and for some reason we haven't been able to so it's painful. Some of us have our Father's Day without our Father. And so it feels painful to even think about it. And so I realize that it's hard just to hit the dynamics that all exist in the room and online and all our locations as we think about this today. And so what I'd like to do is I'd like to point us to a passage in the New Testament that isn't about procreation but it's about the dynamics within a family because to flourish isn't just simply to add to our number but it's to flourish as a family and I my hope is that this will address all of us wherever we are in our own journey.
Here's the passage, it's Ephesians chapter six verses one through four. Let me read it and then we'll walk through it. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the commandment with a promise, so that it may go well with you, and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. Fathers, do not exasperate your children, instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
And so very simply this passage addresses children and it addresses fathers or parents, and so we're going to look at the children and it says to the children that they're to obey their parents. Verse one simply says that and to obey is an obvious word but but the word that underlies it is the word to hear, to listen to and so the the picture here isn't just to give rote obedience, although that's certainly in view especially when you're young, but to continue to listen to. Because what happens over years, rightly, is that instead of parents giving direct commands or instruction a lot of times, it turns to more and more advice. And so the idea here is to continue to listen, to heed advice, and I would say that there are two kind of qualifications. One is it says in the Lord, which means to obey and to follow, to heed is not universal, it's just in the Lord.
And so if they ask you to do something that's outside of God's commands, then that isn't an instruction that's binding. And then secondly, the idea here to heed the the word for child and parent here has a connotation of a dependent relationship. So once you are no longer dependent on your parents financially, then I think that, that you're outside of this, this instruction. And that may seem like a arbitrary delineation but what I'm just trying to point at here is this is not a lifelong instruction, this is something that says while you're living with and dependent on your parents, there is a need to heed and listen and obey what they say. That is from God directly.
And then the wisdom or instruction to children is that you're called to honor. Verse two, here it says, honor your father and mother, which is the commandment with a promise. And this is a much harder command because some of us have parents who have been dishonorable. They haven't provided for us. They haven't protected us.
They haven't treated us maybe well over the years. And so as a result, when we read or hear this idea of honoring our parents, we say, how do I honor somebody who hasn't been honorable in my life? Maybe you've heard this before, but in the military there's a concept that says you don't salute the person, you salute the uniform. And I don't think that applies blanketly to parenting, but the idea is right and that is there's a role sometimes that you say, I honor you for the role that you have even if you haven't done everything the way that is ideal or the way that I would like you to. And, and what's important, especially as you age and you're past the age of being dependent, is that honoring does not mean that you cover for the irresponsibility of your parent.
It doesn't mean that you act as if choices they make are okay when they're not. It doesn't mean that you are responsible for making them happy. It doesn't mean that you are obliged to unreasonable service simply because they ask you to. But to honor does mean that you speak well of people where you can, that you give appropriate time, and that you give appropriate assistance. All of those things are part of what it means to honor your father and your mother.
And now let's just talk about parents for a few moments. And I'll come back to kids here, at the end, so don't check out entirely if you don't have kids. Says this, verse four, fathers, do not exasperate your children. And it's addressed to fathers specifically. Certainly it can apply to parents but the tendency is often more for fathers to exasperate than for moms to exasperate, not that moms can't.
And what happens, and the reason this is probably addressed specifically to dads is because when you exasperate, whether it be through through kind of your your lack of doing something or actively doing something, what you're doing, at least in part, is you are shutting down your child's heart. This is one of the reasons that a lot of times having two parents is super helpful. I can't tell you the number of times over the years that I'll be in a conversation with one of my kids and I'll get the tap from my wife. Do any of you know what I'm talking about? And the tap, sometimes it's under the table, sometimes it's overt, sometimes it's a glance, but it all means the same thing, stop it.
And sometimes I really need to hear that because I'm not stopping it and then sometimes I'll try to give that to her and I don't think she knows that it means stop it. But, the way that that you exasperate or shut down your child's heart, let me just give you a few words, these are from Proverbs and one from Matthew, and that is when you try to dictate to them everything that they do, especially as they age. Obviously when kids are young, you have a certain amount of do this, don't do this, but as your kids age, if you hold on to it too long, what you're doing is you're taking away some of their choice and you're actually trying to dictate what they do. And in doing so, you're creating a little bit of a closed heart. Proverbs twenty two six says, start children off in the way they should go and even when they're old, they won't turn from it.
Some versions say, train up a child in the way he should go. When he's old, he won't depart from it. But I like how the NIV says to start off a child in the way that they should go because the idea here is indeed training, but but but it's saying there's a time to step back. And when you dictate for too long, what you're doing is you're basically not creating thirst, but you're just trying to control behavior. In fact, some have said that the idea of this passage is that you would put a date on a child's tongue in order to create thirst and that that's the picture that's here.
A thing that we can do that shuts down the heart is abdicate. This is Proverbs 22 verse 15. It says folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far away. And sometimes what we do as parents is we simply just step back and say, I don't know what to do. This is too hard.
And so we abdicate. And there's a sense in which kids know when they're being left to their own devices. In Matthew chapter five verse 37, we're told to let our yes be yes and our no be no. And sometimes what is a is a heart killer, an embittered kind of relationship is when we fluctuate, when one day it's this, the next day it's this, and our kids never know exactly what they're getting. And one other thing that happens is we escalate.
Proverbs fifteen one, a gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. Sometimes as an adult, it's your role to be the one who says I'm not going to escalate this situation, I'm going to walk away, rather than simply saying, oh yeah, let let's go right now. Now, certainly as you age, into adulthood, critique and demandingness, being unreasonable, are all things that can still create a little bit of a of a sense of saying saying this doesn't feel quite right. And whenever that happens, you're shutting down the heart. I know that one of the tendencies as any of us age is that we become less technologically savvy.
No matter how much you try to stay with it, compared to somebody who's younger, you are not as technic- technologically savvy because as people have said, kids are digital natives and adults are less so in that, so even if you try to stay at it. And the other day, a while back, I I was talking to one of my sons and I asked him to do something technical for me. And what he said next just kinda stopped me in my tracks. He said, oh, so you want me to do for you what you can do for yourself? And what I realized when he said that was that in essence, I was, because it was faster, easier for him just saying, hey, would you do that?
When I could figure it out, it'd just take me a little longer. But my point is this, there are a lot of ways to embitter your child along the way. And the big command in Ephesians six is, is fathers don't exasperate your children. Pay attention to this. And then the piece for the fathers here is this.
It says, instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. You're called to nurture your children in the Lord. And to nurture or to, train them up, bring them up is the idea of saying it is your job to create in them a pathway, a desire, and it says in the Lord here as well. And this means that that it isn't just a a call to say, make sure your kids do really well but your calling is to say that it is for their spiritual well-being. One of my concerns with the area in which we live is I see a lot of parents who are really concerned that their kids become successful, that they get into the right school, they get the right job, and they make enough money with less concern often for how they're doing spiritually.
And what we need if we're parents is to say, my primary role is to nurture my kids spiritually in the Lord. Deuteronomy six paints a picture of this where it talks about when you're with your kids, when you're walking, when you're at home, when you're when you're in formal places and the idea is really there there's formal training, there's informal training, and they both matter. And it's hard to bring our kids up in the Lord if we aren't engaged in church or if churches is is a low priority for us, then it's hard to raise and point our kids in this direction. And then it says in the training and instruction, in training and instruction, in training, we we talked a little bit about this from Proverbs twenty two six, which is the idea that that you point kids in a direction and it says when they're old, they won't depart from it. And many people have heard this verse and seen it as primarily a promise, meaning that that when their kids do things, say things, going down past that they don't love, what they end up doing is they end up saying, well I train them this way, they will come back.
And that that's understandable but it misunderstands a little bit about how proverbs works as literature. Proverbs is not a promise as much as it is or a guarantee as much as it is a statement of how things generally work. And what that means is sometimes you may do everything right and your training may not do exactly what you want it to do. As further evidence of this, we see this in Isaiah chapter one verse two. It says this, hear me, you heavens.
Listen, earth, for the Lord has spoken. Now listen to this. I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me. Now why does this matter? Well, God is a perfect father.
And what does it say about his children? That they still sometimes rebel? And what that means is you can do everything right, and yet your kids may not go down the path that you believe is best for them, they may rebel. Now I recognize that it's a lot more popular to say Proverbs twenty two six, just do the right thing, you'll get the right results. But Biblically, God Himself rears children who rebel.
Proverbs is not, not a guarantee but a statement of how things normally work. What what this means is, is that it is your job to train but it does not guarantee results and I hope that this provides a little bit of relief for some of us who are here and maybe we're saying, I don't know where it went wrong along the way. Now training means ultimately that you are seeking to help them get to a point where they can make their own decisions. I mentioned about Proverbs twenty two six, creating the thirst, creating a desire. What happens for a lot of parents is they try to control behavior more than they influence thinking.
Now again, when kids are little, it makes sense that you're controlling behavior, don't run on the street. But at some point, what you want is not to say, I have a rule about don't run on the street or don't do this, but you want them to say, the street is not safe, therefore I don't run on the street and I can make that choice. You're trying to ultimately get them to where you have influenced their thinking, not simply controlled their behavior. Let me give you maybe a more, kind of outlandish example of this. Let's imagine that you have a high schooler and your high schooler, along with his or her friends, have decided that for their prank this year at school, they're going to release a pig in the lunchroom.
Okay? Alright, sounds kind of fun. Some of you are like, does it? But let's just say you hear this. Now now what can you do as a parent?
You can say, I forbid you from releasing a pig in the lunchroom. Right? I mean, you can do that. It probably won't work. What you can do instead is say, now let's talk this through.
Let's talk about the benefits and the cost. What are the benefits of such a thing? Well, you know, it'll be epic. It'll live in school history as this great day that that, you know, three of us released a pig in the in the in the lunchroom. And you'll say, okay, that sounds epic, sure.
So what happens when you get caught and it's likely you will get caught, you'll get suspended, what happens then? And you work it through and my my point is, what we often do is we try to control behavior instead of influencing thinking and as kids grow, training is a lot more about influencing thinking than it is controlling behavior. And then there's this word here, instruction. It says bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. And instruction in some translations is the word admonish and it means basically to encourage, to instruct through encouragement and to instruct through kind of, challenging somebody.
And some of us are really good at the encouragement side and not very good at the challenging side and some of us are really good at the challenging side and not very good at the encouragement side. And if you aren't sure which one is true of you, ask your spouse if you have one and they can tell you. And it would be wise to lean into the other because you need both in order to help your children get where you want them to go. And sometimes, a word of admonishment or correction is needed. When I was growing up, my dad was more of an encourager than an admonisher.
My mom was more of the admonisher than the encourager. And I remember my dad one time admonishing me, because again, it didn't happen very often. I had just played a little league game. I was probably 10, 11 years old, and I had pitched in that particular game, and it didn't go very well. I walked a bunch of batters, hit a few.
When the ball was hit in play, I threw strikes at all. It felt like the kids in the field bobbled it, and so, you know, we gave up a bunch of runs. We lost horribly. And I remember when I got in the car, I sat down and, I don't know if I was trying to just redeem the moment a little for myself, and I said, you know, I don't think I gave up a hit today. And I'll never forget, my dad, who was generally encouraging, said, yeah, he said, you weren't good today at all.
And then he said this, he said, here's an important thing. He said, if you're gonna be good at anything, you have to be honest enough with yourself to acknowledge when you're not good so you learn how to improve. And today you weren't good and you won't be good if you tell yourself that you didn't allow any hits. Now, I'd love to tell you that I went on to become a really successful pitcher in Little League. I did not.
I would love to tell you that that that there were all kinds of bright lessons but but here I am, years, decades later, still remembering the content of that conversation and my dad challenging me and saying, don't blame your failures on other things, own them or you won't end up being successful. Some of us as parents need to have more of those moments because admonishing is part of what's talked about here in the scripture. Now, here's my guess. We talked about children obeying, honoring parents, not in bittering, and training, nurturing your children. My guess is that many of us right now are sitting here saying, you felt overwhelmed with a two year old and a and a newborn.
I've got a 16 year old, I've got a 26 year old, I've got a dad, a mom who's completely dishonorable. How do I do this? Let me show you a passage in the Old Testament that will seem unrelated and it is to parenting but it has to do with an assignment. In Exodus, in the beginning of Exodus, Moses is on the run from having killed somebody in Egypt and God appears to him in a burning bush. And when God appears to him in the burning bush, what happens next is God commissions him to go into Egypt and deliver all of the people from slavery.
It's a startling passage. Here's what we read. I'll just read verse ten, eleven, and 12 of Exodus three. It says, so now go, I'm sending you to Pharaoh and bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt. And Moses said to God, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?
And God said, I will be with you, and this will be a sign to you, that it is I who have sent you. Whenever you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain. Now why do I point to this here? If you read through your old testament, what you'll find is whenever God assigns somebody a task, it's usually, if not always, a challenging task. In other words, rarely does God say, here's something that's really easy.
Would you do this for me? He asked people to do things that are hard. And then notice what what happens next when Moses says, well, who am I that I should do this? Do you notice what God doesn't do? He doesn't do what, what we love to do when somebody says I'm not adequate for something.
Do, do you know what we do? We say, oh no, you're great, you'd be awesome. Moses, you're just the person I need, you're the leader, you have the reputation, You have the wisdom. You have the courage. You do it.
He doesn't do that. He says, yeah, you're right. You probably can't, but I'll be with you. Some of you right now are in a place where you're saying, how could I honor my mom, my dad with some of the things that have happened in my life? When God hasn't given you an easy task and he doesn't say you're up to it, what he says instead is I'll be with you.
Some of us are, are here and we're saying, I don't know if I'm adequate for the role that I have as a parent to, to train my children, to not exasperate them. That seems overwhelming and, and the answer isn't, oh no, you got it. The answer is you probably don't but God is enough. God is at work. You see, what we need ultimately is not just a better plan to keep these commandments, but a better sense of who God is and what God does in our lives.
In the to last book of the New Testament, known as Jude, there's a little verse right at the beginning, and Jude just has one chapter so you don't say Jude one, two, you just say Jude two and it means the verse. Here's what it says, Mercy, peace, and love be yours in abundance. And this is one of these lines that that when you read it, if you ever do a Bible reading plan and you come to a verse like this, you're just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, greeting. Mercy, peace, love, and abundance. I get it.
But these words, and the prayer to say I want them in abundance, in many ways is exactly what many of us need. Because mercy is a word that means basically kindness in the midst of our failure or in the midst of our lack. Some of us need to be able to say, God's heart for me is kindness in my failure, in my lacking. Because some of us know that we've been the dishonorable parents or we've been the kid who's kind of gone down a path or we've found ways not to do things in a way that's honoring to God. And we need to just hear this idea of kindness in the face of, of our lack.
The word peace here is a Greek word that roughly is equivalent to the Hebrew word shalom in the Old Testament and shalom means general well-being, prosperity. Have you ever thought about the fact that that God's desire for you is your well-being in abundance? Some of us need that word because when we think about parenting or relating to adult parents, we think about everything that can go wrong. All of the pitfalls, all of the things that, that, that are working against us in this world and what we need to do is be able to say it is God's heart for my well-being in abundance. And then there's this word love where he says love be yours in abundance.
And this is a word that we need to hear because the way that we'll ultimately be able to honor our parents, the way we'll be able to parent well if we're there or on the other side, isn't by simply saying I need to try harder, but it's when we can do it out of the abundance of God's love because what most of us want and need so desperately from our families is a sense of love and security. And to the degree that we demand that from either our parents or our children in some way, we can crush them in the relationship. But when we have that sourced outside of them, then we're able to give and receive love in a different way. And so this idea of being loved in abundance is, is really at the heart of this and we talk about this often here. It's called the gospel, the message ultimately that Jesus Christ is the one who came for us.
It isn't our good that commends us to God, but it's the good of Jesus Christ. That's how we know we're loved. In the old testament, in Isaiah, there, there's a verse that, that that caught my attention recently. It's Isaiah 60 two:five, just the part of the verse. It says this, as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.
You know, I would guess that many of us who are here, especially when it comes to family, feel like our role is to just do our best And we often feel like we haven't done well enough. We feel like I haven't been a good enough dad, a good enough mom. I didn't honor my parents as well as I could have. It was hard. I had these And, and, and we just, we heap on ourselves these, these should statements.
And certainly, the New Testament says children obey and honor, parents don't exasperate and train, train. I'm not saying there are no should statements, but what I'm saying is, is this, and that is if we could learn to see ourselves as God sees us as loved, like a bridegroom rejoices over His bride, we would be able to give and receive love so much better. Because a lot of us will see ourselves as servants of God, subjects of God, soldiers for God, something. But, but, but a bridegroom in most weddings rejoices over his bride as he delights in her coming down that aisle and saying this is something that deserves my joy. What if you could see yourself as the object of God's love like that and because you source your love outside of your family, you were able to bring into your family, an overabundance of love, of mercy, of well-being.
Do you see how that would change things? Whether you're a child or a parent in the relationship. God created us to flourish, to have this peace, this Shalom even in our homes. But the way we'll get there is by savoring the love that God has for us, and living out of that abundance rather than just simply saying, what can I do as a technique to do better? And that will help us to flourish in our homes, and help our culture to flourish.
God, as we're gathered today, I just want to pray Jude 2 over those of us who are gathered. God, I pray for mercy for those of us who feel like we have not done very well with part of our role, whether as parents or children. God, I pray that there would be mercy and abundance. God, I pray for your well-being to be in abundance to all. God, for those who who who maybe are part of our gatherings this weekend, who who who have the the pain of maybe a hard family or or a recent loss or maybe the desire to have children that feels like it's never been fulfilled, and in many ways might feel hopeless, God, I pray that there would be an awareness that your well-being, your peace is theirs in abundance and that there is a love for them that that exists where they can say, I know that you God rejoice over me like a bridegroom over his bride.
God, for those who are in acrimonious relationships with parents or children, and there's pain in this area of their lives, I pray again just for your your well-being and a sense of your love. And God, for those who maybe feel a sense of inadequacy or or being overwhelmed, I pray again just that you would let us see and savor your love for each of us that is in Jesus Christ, and in that we would feel free, and we pray it in his name. Amen.
Thanks for being here. Have a great week.
This transcript has been automatically generated, please excuse any errors.
