CURRENT TRENDS IN THE CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE AND FAMILY
By Dr. Jobe Martin
The God of the Bible “. . . established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children: That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children, That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments,” ( Ps. 78:5-7) As we travel around the U.S. and overseas, ministering in churches, Christian Schools, and camps, we see, increasingly that “form of godliness”, the external facade, but hardened, cold, and hypocritical hearts toward God. The sin we see and hear about among God’s people is shocking. Sin in the body of Christ is not being dealt with, from the church, to the family, to the individual parent and child.
The average Christian family is caught in a lethargy of compromise that dilutes and neutralizes us from being useful vessels for our Master (II Tim. 2:21). Our first love is usually the approval of men rather than the approval of God (In. 5:44, 12:43). We work diligently on making an impression on people (peer pressure)” but lack conviction and courage when it comes to making a difference for our Lord. We reflect, in fact, the church of Revelation 2:4 who had lost their first love.
Christian families, it is time for us to remember the works of God and live out His commandments! Our children are losing hope in God because we parents and grandparents are, in the eyes of our children, largely hypocrites. Our walk and our talk do not match up. There is nothing new under the sun, (Eccl. 1 :9), but our toleration of evil and wickedness must cease, especially in a time when there is a glut of Christian information and influence. Can it be that we have lost the discernment to even know good from evil and are doing what is right in our own eyes? (Judges 21:25) Most certainly, ” There is a way which seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”(Prov.14:3).
The ways of death in the family are characterized by pride and selfishness. Christian parents who insist on indulging their sinful, fleshly pursuits are killing hope in their children by not “doing what they know is right”. (Jas. 4:17) A father who takes his family to see movies with any kind of nudity, blasphemy of our Lord, or bloody violence, is selfishly indulging his flesh and his children know it. The trend, however, in Christian families, is to accept and even enjoy the pagan evil culture in which we live, and to “tolerate” it rather than standing on the Word of God. Perhaps if Christian families were more familiar with God’s Word (”I will set no worthless thing before my eyes” - Ps. 101:3), the Holy Spirit would have some true truth to work with, as opposed to the world’s seductive lies. The time spent on movies, TV, and sports could be greatly invested in eternity if we would make godly choices. We prefer the entertainment of the world (and yes, even in the church), to the living and active entreatment of God’s Word.
Why do we have a column on trends in the family? The primary reason is that the trend is in the wrong direction. Christian families are loving and practicing wickedness. Let’s face it, we hate other family members, we rage in anger toward each other, we with great lust look at Internet pornography, an astonishing number of our “Christian ” children are involved in all areas of the occult, there is flagrant “in your face” disobedience to parents, we are unthankful, and we have that “form of godliness”, that denies the power! (II Tim. 3:1-7) We parents and grandparents, for the most part, are too selfish to take the time and pay the cost of loving our children. We send them out into the humanistic, Marxist, New Age institutions of learning so that they can be carefully taught the lies of evolution, sex education, tolerant attitudes, deconstructionism, and “Decision Making Skills”. The teaching of evolution undermines the foundational truths of Scripture, sex education instructs the youth on the “how to” details of sex without biblical guidelines, and the tolerant attitudes generated by multiculturalism undermine the ability and opportunity to share one’s faith. Deconstructionism results in the ridiculous lack of logic that says words have only the meaning you assign to them, and decision-making skills enable your children to be unhindered by their parent’s values. It frees them to be able to make their own decisions, even at six and seven years old!! The Lord Jesus established the Christian family so that we could be an audiovisual lighthouse to the pagan culture around us of the indwelling and abiding power of God to do what is right. (Col. 1:27)
We are discrediting the ministry (II Cor. 6:3) by selfishly indulging and tolerating sin in our families. We have been infiltrated and contaminated with wickedness. Part of this is rooted in the fact that we do not know God’s Word (My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, Hos. 4:6). And if we do know it, we lack the conviction to do it (He who practices the truth comes to the light, John 3:21). The Lord Jesus says that it is His Word that will judge us at the last day (John 12:48). Have we read His Word, the Bible, from cover to cover as families, so that we and our children and grandchildren know the standard by which each one of us will be judged? When each family member knows God’s Truth, it sets us free (John 8:32) to stand apart from the pagan culture, and do what is right. If we as family members do not do what the Bible says is right, we sin (Jas. 4:17), and maintain the trend toward unrighteousness.
Please, let us as God’s families, reverse this trend and decisively deal with the sin that so easily entangles us (Heb. 12:1). Let us practice the truth in the kind of observable fashion that the watching world (and our children) see “Christ in us, the hope of glory!” (Col.1:27) This means we must die to our selfishness and pride (I Cor. 15:31b) and live in the power of the Holy Spirit within the framework of scripture. It does not matter how we feel, we just do what is right, by faith in the fact of God’s Word (II Cor.5:7). Doing what is right begins with repentance and confession before our Lord Jesus who bought us with so great a price (I Cor. 6:20), and then before our family members. Next we establish godly habit patterns in our home. Reading the Bible from Genesis to Revelation becomes an attainable goal. A day does not go by that we miss out on the excitement of a specific family prayer time. Scripture memory becomes a part of daily life. Worship and fellowship with other Christian families occurs on a regular basis. Family ministries are established that emphasize evangelism, servanthood, and discipleship. All of these things are “counter- culture” and exact a cost! Old habit patterns are not easily broken, but change is possible when it becomes necessary and important. Glorifying God should be both necessary and important to us as “Possessors of Christ”, unless we are in actuality, only “professors”, giving lip service to our beliefs. (Is.29:13) The “cost” for the above might be being reproached for the name of Christ, but the scripture tells us in I Pet. 4:14, that we are to be happy, for the spirit of glory and God rests upon us! It is time for true Christian families to stop drifting downstream, content with the evil culture of our day, and to begin to swim upstream against the flood of spiritual debris. As we decide as families to swim against the downward current, we will experience the resurrection power of the Lord Jesus Christ (Knowing Him and the power of His resurrection and fellowship of His suffering, being conformed to His death - Phil. 3:10). Swimming upstream means investing in eternity (people’s lives and God’s Word). It means spending less time with temporal things, (such as movies, TV, computers, sports, malls). To be pleasing in ALL ways becomes our priority (to please Him in ALL respects, Col. 1 :10). We must become very careful in how we walk, not as unwise, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil (Eph.5:15). We MUST “come to our senses” as the prodigal did in Luke15:17, and understand the imperative of the times in which we live. Our Lord Jesus Christ could come for us at any moment (I Thess. 4:16), and yet the majority of Christians are fearful of this reality!!!
All that we do, say, and think, in our lives, our marriages, and our families, should be with the exhortation to not discredit the ministry (II Cor.6:3), and to bring honor and glory to our Lord who bought us with so great a price! So why do these truths not seem to convict and motivate us?
The Christian Family today has bought into our culture and has been changed more by it than impacting the world for Christ. As lovers of self more than lovers of God, we have sacrificed our birthright for the temporal gratification of a mess of porridge which will never satisfy. We compare ourselves with ourselves and are without understanding (II Cor. 10.12), rather than becoming “imitators of Christ” (Eph.5:1). Whether we will wake up in time to regain the years the locust have eaten is a personal challenge to each person reading this article. We all know that we do what is important to us, and most of us, if honest in our heart of heats, have to admit we make selfish choices everyday that routinely legislate God out of His rightful place of prominence in our lives. Change is never easy, but it is, by God’s grace, possible! New habit patterns can be established but only as we truly put the flesh to death (Gal.2:20, Rom.6.11 ,14), realizing that sin is ever crouching at the door and its desire is for us, but we must master it (Gen.4:7). Let us truly, in deed, and not in lip service, “choose you this day whom you will serve” (Josh. 24:15).
If the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, then we must regain a spiritual understanding of Is. 48:11 where God tells us that He will not share His glory with another. Are we making God share His glory with all those things and activities that will not matter for eternity? In Dan. 5:23b it says “The God in whose hand are your life-breath and your ways, you have not glorified.” It is time for judgment to start with the household of faith, and if we judge ourselves, then the world will not be judging us. Let us not talk the talk if we are not willing to pay the cost of walking the walk, and let us be willing to say, ” . . . Yet not my will, but Thine be done” (Luke 22:42b), so that our great God and Father, the Lord Jesus Christ is the one that alone gets the glory!! (Ps. 115:1)
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