Living harmoniously as a family is an ongoing, intentional journey. The beginning of that journey is marked by great anticipation and genuine excitement. A bride and groom have high hopes and great dreams as they start out life together. However, as in all journeys, unexpected challenges pop up, including the arrival of children, which requires the couple to cultivate valuable parenting skills—without a handbook! At each age, from preschool through elementary school, each child requires his or her parents to make adjustments along the way to keep the relationships harmonious. Just about the time parents get their arms around all of that, the teenage years arrive! This stretching and complicated time calls for even more adjustments and a greater willingness to change if the parents hope to sustain harmony in the home. Then, after all that adapting, a new set of challenges arrives—the children reach adulthood, with minds of their own. Can there still be mutual respect and meaningful relationships in the family? Can harmony continue between parents and their grown-up kids? Absolutely! The question is, how?
Life is complex. Our world is more complicated than it was even 20 or 30 years ago. Even though many of the values we grew up with now seem passé, the basics never change—they’re summarized in Micah 6:8, to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.
Chuck Swindoll affirms a reasonably good marriage may not sound exciting but it’s both real and achievable. Marriage enhances life because you’re in it together. The world keeps changing but God’s design for marriage hasn’t. It’s the basis of the family and even society.
Whether it’s your family, friends, job, or home, everything you have is from God. Look within—are you more enamoured with the gifts God gives you than with God Himself?
At times we all find the route God has chosen for us doesn’t make a lot of sense. Especially when life takes a turn we don’t expect. But as Chuck Swindoll says, “Welcome to God’s World.”
Join Pastor Chuck Swindoll as he retraces the steps of Abraham and his beloved son, Isaac. Observe how Abraham’s response to God was immediate, based upon faith alone, and total. Heaven’s commands come with heaven’s provision!
Children learn by repetition. You have to do it over and over until it’s habit. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a lasting legacy is worth a million. Do you have any legacy stones in your life right now? If not, it’s time to create a few.
The word holy means “set apart” for a specific purpose—like the linen and silverware you use only on holidays. As a place where the truth about God and His Word is modelled, your home can be a holy place—set apart for His children to grow.
Too often, we end up saying “if only I had known then what I know now.” Since there’s no way to go back and relive our lives, we need to focus on the best way to respond to these painful memories. Otherwise, we will live under clouds of blame and shame and be paralyzed by fear.
Living harmoniously as a family is an ongoing, intentional journey. The beginning of that journey is marked by great anticipation and genuine excitement. A bride and groom have high hopes and great dreams as they start out life together. However, as in all journeys, unexpected challenges pop up, including the arrival of children, which requires the couple to cultivate valuable parenting skills—without a handbook!
Many of us have the right motives, but we just don’t know how to reprove one another the way God intended. In this message, let’s seek to understand the value and process of speaking the truth in love so we might gain—and share, especially with our children—the helpful insight that can remove blind spots and bring about needed change.
Insight for Living is committed to excellence in communicating the truths of Scripture and the Person of Jesus Christ in an accurate, clear, and practical manner so that people will come to an understanding of God’s plan for their lives, as well as their significant role as authentic Christians in a needy, hostile, and desperate world.
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