So when I was growing up, there’s this thing about TV that was very standard, and that was the family sitcom. Now, I, I think it’s largely ceased to exist, but for a long time, you knew that the family sitcom from generation to generation to generation, it was a thing. And I wanna start by doing a little bit of a pop quiz. We’re gonna go way back. I’m gonna throw up a picture and then I’m gonna turn to you and you’re gonna try and guess what that sitcom was. So here’s the first picture. It’s going way back there. If you recognize this sitcom, what is it? Leave It to Beaver. It’s in black and white. So some of you are like, “That’s way before my time.” , that was Leave It to Beaver, the, the picket fence, the perfect American family. That was kind of the concept of Leave It to Beaver.

Okay, what about this one right here a little bit later? That’s the Brady Bunch. I, I remember as a kid, they had the boxes and they all looked up at each other. I thought that was cra – that was CGI back in the day. That’s what we had. , Then there’s this one right here. A little bit harder.That is Family Ties, Michael J. Fox before he was super famous. That was Michael J. Fox and Family Ties. , Then what about this one? You’re all gonna know this one. This one was Full House. , Fuller House was the sequel to it, but Full House, , has possibly one of the most iconic theme songs of any one of these sitcoms. And then what about one more? What about this one right here? That is, that’s Family Matters, , which is the theme song that, that we’re kinda tying in this whole series together.

Here’s what I love about the name Family Matters is that in the, the, the show, they worked, they dealt with family matters, matters that the family had to deal with. But, but also, it was this idea that the family matters. A- and here’s the thing about the family sitcom, it’s very different than today. My, my kids have this hard time understanding that back in the day, we did not have streaming, , because I grew up in a time before internet. , And we didn’t have cable in the house that I grew up in. And so in order to watch the, the sitcoms that we watched, we would have to s- sit in front of the TV at the right time. Like it came on at a specific time. And then we had to get the bunny ears right so that we got reception. And, and then you had to watch it during that time slot.

And, and all sitcom families had one thing in common, that no matter how bad things got, they could fix it all in 22 minutes. And, and even that, i- if you’re, if you’re in the era of streaming, you wouldn’t understand, well, why, why 22 minutes? It’s because of commercials. Because every show had 22 minutes of show and eight minutes of commercial that were spattered and scattered all throughout there. , But that was the family sitcom. It was the family that, they all looked great and they all looked happy and they all looked perfect. And they always had conflict, but then they resolved every bit of conflict by the time the show was done. And so there was parts of the family sitcom that you looked at and you’re like, “Hey, that’s awesome.” But there’s parts of it that you looked at and you say, “That’s not very realistic for my family.

Like we didn’t look that happy. Or we had conflict that did not resolve itself in 22 minutes.” Here’s what we wanna do over the next handful of weeks is we wanna talk about the family. Today, we’re gonna look at God’s design and purpose for the family. We’re gonna look at marriage, we’re gonna look at parenting, we’re gonna look at some very practical things, all going back to God’s word and looking at what does God’s word tell us about these things. But my encouragement is that it is something that applies to every single person in this room. So whether you are single and not married yet, this stuff all applies. Maybe you are in the thick of it. Maybe you are a married couple that, that are, are raising kids that are elementary or middle school or high school or college, or maybe you’re a single parent that is raising kids, or maybe you’re an empty nester, or maybe you’re a widow or a widow- widower.

Regardless of what season of life that you are in, we’re gonna look at God’s word and understand the significance of family. And why does the family matter? Because God designed the family to shape the people we become. And we see that all the way back in the beginning, there’s a very intentional design that our family is shaping us. Our family is forming us. Our family is helping us be discipled into the people that we should be. And, and it’s interesting because there, there’s, there’s times where, where that works really well. And so there, there’s certain things about your family growing up, , that, that was really healthy. And there’s certain things about your family growing up that maybe that wasn’t so healthy. You see, in God’s design, that families shape people and people shape the world. In the New Testament, God gives us the church, and the church has this great commission to take the message of Jesus to the world around us.

But long before the church, God ordains and institutes the family to have a profound impact on the world around us. And now here’s the interesting thing about family, and that is that every family has a curriculum, but most of it is unwritten. Like, there’s a lot of things that you learned from your family. You were taught for your family, but they never sat down with a whiteboard and said, “All right, this is how we do it.” Like you just learned. Like, think, for example, the way that you deal with conflict. Probably the way that you think of conflict resolution, the reason you think that is because you grew up in a family that that’s how they did conflict resolution. Or maybe you grew up in a family that didn’t do conflict resolution. , Probably when you think of the identity of a man, a husband, a father, that’s largely because of how that was shaped when you were growing up.

When you think of who a woman is, a wife, a mother, that so many of those characteristics are based off of your family. Maybe when you think of affection, that your concept of, of family and affection is based off of the family that you grew up in or, or possibly how you nurture one another, the words that you say to one another. Some people grew up in a family that, that you said, “I love you a lot.” And probably you took that with you in life. And now you say to your family, “Hey, I love you a lot.” And some of you, you grew up in families that were maybe more isolated. Maybe you never used phrases like, “I love you.” Maybe you didn’t feel very loved in your family. And so we all come from all kinds of different backgrounds, but, but here’s something that’s true of all of us, is there were things that happened to us when we were growing up that, that were familiar.

And we just assumed because those things were familiar, that those things were normal. All the research would point to our family unit, the people around us when we are young, having huge formation of who we become as adults. , Look at what research from the center on the developing child from Harvard University, look at what they write. They say, “Our early experiences and exposures, including responsive relationships with caregivers, shape the architecture of our brain, providing a strong or weak foundation for all future learning, behavior, health, and wellbeing.” It, it’s saying that, that how we’re formed by relationships in our young childhood, that that forms our brain in such a way that it creates the foundation for all of our future learning, behavior, health, and wellbeing. And now maybe you look back in your childhood and you say, “I had a wonderful childhood. And there are things for my childhood that I wanna make sure that I carry forward with me.” Or maybe for, for some people in this room, you look back on your childhood and you say, “Well, no, there were some really unhealthy things about my childhood.” So unhealthy patterns of behavior, and I wanna make sure that those patterns of behavior stop with me and don’t go into the future.

Or probably for most of us, because we’re all broken people. Most of us, we look back and we say, “Well, there’s some wonderful things about my childhood that I, that I wanna carry on, but maybe there’s also some unhealthy things in my childhood that I don’t want to carry on.” But regardless of your view of your own childhood or your current family right now, h- here’s something that all the research would point to is that the family has power. And, and here’s a question that I would pose. Why does family have that kind of power? Why would all the research say that your family of origin, your story growing up, those relationships, those influences that you can’t get away from it, no matter even if you try to get away from it, you can’t get away from it. There’s a part of that that is always with you.

Why is that? Well, if we look in God’s word, what we’ll see that family has a purpose, family has a story. If you got a Bible, turn with me to Genesis chapter one. We’re gonna start in Genesis chapter one. We’re gonna start in verse 26. It says this, “Then God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. And the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them. Now, now pause for a moment because there’s something so profound there that I don’t wanna hurry past. And then there’s this idea that you and I are created in the image of God.

The, the term we give it is a Mago Day. That, that your value intrinsically is given to you because you are created in the image of God. And so often our struggle in this life is that we try and find our value in other things. I try and v – find my value in what other people think or what I accomplish. And here’s what scripture rooted is trying to get you and me to understand is that you have divine value, not because of what you accomplished, but because God, the creator of the universe, created you in his image. It also says that he creates a male and female. With a family unit, when we look at it, it’s a dad, it’s a mom, male and female ordained, created by God without mistake. It goes on in verse 28 to say, “And God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” N- now here’s what I wanna point out about God’s creation in Genesis chapter one.

So first, there’s no sin. This is before Genesis chapter three. That’s when sin enters into the equation. And so we get this glimpse in the creation story of God’s intended design for things. Sin breaks that intended design. The, the whole meta narrative of scripture is that God is redeeming His creation back to Himself. But we get this glimpse in Genesis chapter one and Genesis chapter two of God’s intended design. And so in God’s intended design, there’s, there’s no sin. There’s no brokenness. There’s no rebellion. But I also wanna point out there’s no isolation. The, the, in the first six days of creation, there’s a seventh day where God rests, but in the first six days of creation, God’s creating things. And over and over, he’s saying, “This is good, this is good, this is good.” And then he says that this is very good. But when he creates humans, he doesn’t just create man and says, “Hey, you’re gonna be fine just all by yourself.” No, in the design, the intended order of things, God creates a husband and a wife.

He, he says, “You’re not gonna be isolated. You are going to do this together.” Sometimes w- we think, well, hey, , sin causes a- all kinds of different brokenness, all kinds of isolation or, or God just intended it to where it’s just me and God and I can be all by myself. But the created order of things before all the brokenness is that there’s relationship. No isolation. That is this intention. And then in the next chapter, if you flip over a page, Genesis chapter two, verse 24, it says, “Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.” Now, there’s something really profound that happens in Genesis chapter two. And that is that family was God’s idea. God ordains and institutes the family. , Family is not something that, that our culture came up with.

Family is not something that some government at one point said, “Hey, we’re gonna create this thing called family.” Family is not something that somebody in the church came up with. That family was part of the created order by God, designed by God, and it was God’s idea. , Which leads to this question, what then did God intend the family to do? Well, what’s the purpose? Why is it such a big deal that in all of creation, God ordains and gifts to us the family? Well, well, the family is intended to form us, to disciple us, to shape us, to be all that God is creating us to be. Now think about the things that family requires of you and me. The family requires patience. Like, if you are in a family, it requires patience. Why? Because you, you don’t just get to live by your, yourself and do whatever you want.

There’s all these other people with all these different ideas and all these different concepts. And so you need to have patience for the people around you. It requires forgiveness because you are in a house with people that are broken, sinful people, just like we are broken, sinful people. And so you’ve got to forgive just like you have to ask for forgiveness. It requires sacrifice. You don’t get to just do whatever you want. If you’re part of family, it means that I am intentionally putting other people’s needs sometimes in front of my own needs. There is a sacrifice that is required for this to work. In the summertime, especially if you, you’re a parent with young kids, there’s a lot of my life revolves around my kids’ schedule. I’m constantly driving and Ubering and this and that. W- why? Be- because I’m trying to shape and form my kid into being something.

I care about my kid, and so I’m willing to sacrifice for the betterment of them. Family requires responsibility. It requires faithfulness. It’s not just a, hey, we’re, we’re family for a season and for a moment. No, it’s, it’s a lifetime commitment of what this looks like. Responsibility is a hard thing to learn. , My kids, we will. First week of school is always easy. It, it’s the next Monday that it starts to get hard, like you gotta wake up early. And then a month into it, maybe you have these conversations where your kid wakes up and says, “I don’t wanna go to school today.” And you know what my response always is? I say, “I don’t wanna go to work today. Like, I just. There are more fun things for me to do than, than, than go to work. And yet, guess what I gotta do?

I gotta go to work.” And guess what you have to do? You gotta go to school. This is part of the learning and responsibility. I have to go to work because I gotta pay bills. No, I, I have to earn an income for us to survive. You have to go to school because this is your job. There’s a responsibility element that our responsibility is strengthened. It’s higher when we are a part of a family. It teaches us self-control. I have to sometimes not do something that I want to do in order for the betterment of my family. It also teaches us grace. Because over and over and over again, I have to extend grace and I also have to receive grace. And, and so when we think about the Genesis two family, , there’s something beautiful here that, that when we’re thinking about the idea of what are we trying to accomplish, that in Genesis two, it says that they’re naked, there’s no shame.

So, so the family unit of this moment before sin, there’s no shame. They’re completely vulnerable with one another. There’s complete trust and there’s no fear. And, and so if we think of the things that we’re trying to idealize, we’re trying to accomplish in my own family, that we want it to be a place that there’s no shame. And that you can be completely vulnerable and you’re still gonna be loved no matter what. And there’s gonna be complete trust that, that I really do care for you and want what’s best for you and that you don’t ever have to be fearful of this place, of this family. When we think about God’s design and purpose behind family, here, here’s where I think it gets off sometimes. That culturally, we like to think about family and say, “Well, the purpose of the family is for my happiness.” And so like if you talk to a young single person, they think about marriage and, and you say, “Okay, why get married?” Sometimes the idea is, “Well, in order for me to be happy, I need to be married.” Like, marriage is my key to happiness.

And then you talk to a young couple who’s been married for a little bit, and then they will start to move the, the goalposts. They’ll say, “Well, in order for us to be happy, we gotta have kids and we gotta start raising a family.” And so we can falsely, in our culture, have this idea that your happiness is tied to your marriage, your happiness is tied to your family, that, that is what is going to make you happy. But I, I think scripture would point to a different direction when it comes to formation. , Gary Thomas has a, a line in his most famous book, which is sacred marriage. He has this line where he says, “What if God didn’t give us marriage just to make us happy, but instead he gave us marriage to make us holy?” And, and it’s an amazing quote because it gets stolen from him all the time.

Like, there’s a saying that pastors do where they say, the first time they quote something, they say, “Hey, here’s the quote, and this is credit to Gary Thomas.” And then they, they keep quoting it. And then eventually they say, “Here’s this amazing quote that I heard somebody say one time.” And then eventually they move to, “Here’s this amazing quote that I like to say myself.” Like, so eventually they just steal credit for it. And that’s what’s happened with Gary’s quote. Like it gets quoted by people all the time without ever giving him credit. But here’s what’s profound about the quote. He’s not saying that happiness isn’t a part of marriage. He’s, he’s saying that that’s not the primary point. In, in the same way, happiness is part of having a family, but that’s not God’s primary intended purpose for the family. And, and the dad will back that up.

, When, when parents have an infant, in the first year of having a child, the, their happiness does not go up. Their happiness actually goes down. And if, if you’ve had an infant, you know what I’m talking about. , Because there is something about having a child that, that requires you to sacrifice. It requires you to focus on someone, not yourself. And so if it’s just about happiness, that doesn’t accomplish it. No, there’s something else that’s happening. God is using this in your life and my life to form us. We’re forming another person, the child, but we’re also forming ourselves. It’s helping us to love God more deeply and chase after God if we allow it to form us in the right way. But there’s a problem, and that’s Genesis three. So what happens in Genesis three? Sin breaks the family. That, that instantaneously, there’s this shift that happens.

That, that before, it, it’s all about us, but something happens with sin that quickly causes it to become about me. Look what it says in Genesis chapter 3:12. So Adam and his sin, they run away from God. They’re hiding from God. God shows up to have a conversation with Adam. He said, “Hey, what’s going on? What has happened?” And here’s the excuse that Adam gives. It says, “The man said, the woman who you gave to be with me.” Now, now I wanna point out that not only is Adam not taking responsibility for his actions, not only is he blaming Eve and saying, “Well, it’s actually her fault. I wouldn’t have done it except you gave me her and now, now she’s, she’s making me do bad stuff.” But he also blames God. He, he says, “God, okay, it’s Eve’s fault, and it’s kinda your fault because you gave her to me.” And, and so here’s what all of a sudden happens, that sin starts to transform the relationship of family.

And here’s how it translates it, , transforms it. It transforms it from us. It is about us together into, it is about me. That, that Adam is not about, “Hey, what’s best for me and Eve? We’re gonna do this together. We’re gonna figure it out.” No, I mean, instantaneously, sin enters the equation. He separates himself and he says, “Hey, it’s her fault. It, it’s not me.” That, that, that family, when done right, is about what am I giving into this? I’m getting wonderful things out of it because I’m giving things into it. But when sin enters into the equation, here’s what happens. All of a sudden, it’s less about us. It’s more about me. It’s less about give. It’s more about get. And there’s this selfishness that starts to enter into the equation because of our sinfulness. And that selfishness causes me to think more and more about what I benefit instead of what I am giving.

And selfishness is the root of so much brokenness in the family that when sin enters into the equation, it causes us to more and more and more focus on my needs above everybody else’s needs. And that is a recipe for disaster. There, there was a fascinating picture that I came across, , this week. It’s kind of gone viral on the internet. , It’s a picture of a guy that, that took a drone and he put his bird in the drone. , This is the picture. And, and there, there’s this, this phrase he says, it says, “A pet owner built a mini drone with a secure cabin so he, his injured bird can experience the thrill of flight once again.” And on the surface, that sounds nice. Like, this sounds like a pet owner that’s like, “Hey, I care about my pet and, and it doesn’t get to fly, and so I’m gonna let it fly.” , but can I just point out, like, if you zoom in on the bird, and I’m not, I’m not someone that really knows emotion of a bird, but that bird doesn’t look happy to me.

I, like, probably from the perspective of the bird, here’s what happened, is a bird who lives in a cage now gets forced into a much, much smaller cage. It’s very claustrophobic in there. And then gets strapped to an airplane and then just woo, woo. Like, everything about this experience, to me, sounds terrifying for the bird. And the owner likes to, to, to, to posture as, “Hey, this is for the bird. I love the bird. I care for the bird, so I’m doing what’s best for the bird.” But also, the owner posted it on social media and got a lot of accolades personally for what they did for the bird. And, and can I just point out that sometimes in family, the same thing happens? That we can very easily convince ourselves that, “Hey, I am focused on what’s best for somebody else when, when really behind the scenes, it’s really about my selfishness, my benefit.

What do I get out of it? How am I advancing myself?” And selfishness is what destroys a family. , That’s what we see in the rest of Genesis. So Genesis, you have creation in one and two. You have sin in chapter three. And then you have a whole lot of the rest of the book where it’s not showing the ideal family. As a matter of fact, if you look at just about every single family in the book of Genesis, they’re all messed up. They’re all broken. I, I mean, right off the bat, you got Adam and Eve, they have kids. And their family is very broken because Cain kills Abel. Why does he kill Abel? Because of jealousy and selfishness. God is looking at Abel and saying, okay, he did a great job with his gift. G – Cain is jealous. He, he doesn’t like that his brother gets more favor and so he murders his brother.

If you’re ever in here thinking, oh man, I’m such a bad parent. Probably you’re doing a better job than Adam and Eve did. There’s, there’s some encouragement for you right there. Like it, it goes off the rails so, so quick. And so a little bit later, you’ve got Abraham. Abraham is this amazing man of the faith, and yet his family was really jacked up. , You’ve got Sarah, his wife, and God’s made this promise for Abraham and Sarah, and then they can’t get pregnant. And so Sarah says, “Well, hey, I’ll, I’ll fix the problem. Why, why don’t you get pregnant with my servant?” And, and so Abraham’s family dynamic is odd. , He’s got Isaac, but he’s also got Ishmael. And it creates, when you think of kids and grandkids and generations later, it creates all kinds of conflict that I would argue that in our world today, there is still conflict that goes back to that one broken family.

You go into Jacob and Esau. The Jacob and Esau. There’s weird favoritism that exists in this family where, where mom has a favorite with one and dad has a favorite with the other. And there’s deception. And Jacob steals Esau’s blessing. And then Esau’s trying to kill him and then he has to run away. There’s selfishness. And then you, you look at Joseph and his brothers. Very broken. They, they wanna murder their brother because they’re jealous that their dad loves him more. And so instead, they say, “Okay, well, instead of murder, we’re just going to throw him into a pit and then we’re gonna sell him into slavery.” Like Genesis is not full of families that you’d look at and say, “Man, that, that seems like a happy family. That seems like a family that has got it all together that’s doing really great. It’s full of brokenness.” And that’s kind of the purpose of Genesis.

It’s showing us the ideal. It’s showing us what it can be, but it’s also showing what sin does. That the Bible begins with God’s design for family and almost immediately shows us what sin does. It shows us the consequence of sin and selfishness. Now here’s the reality about your family and my family, that what happens in your family does not stay in your family. That there are things that, that you grew up in a family, that they were very familiar in your family. And so you just assumed that those things were normal things. So, so possibly you grew up in a family that did not deal with conflict very well. Maybe it was a very angry home. Maybe it was a home that had lots of yelling in it. And so that became familiar for you. And so then you got your own family and you took what was familiar and you just said, “Well, this is normal.” And so you also yell and scream and resolve conflict in a very angry way.

And maybe you grew up in a family that didn’t show hardly any affection whatsoever. And so that was familiar to you. And so you assume, well, that’s normal. It’s a likely you grow up into a family where you also didn’t show very much affection. Or you grew up in a family that rarely told one another that you loved one another. Well, probably because that was familiar, you assumed it was normal and then you didn’t do that either.

That our family shapes who we are. It shapes people and those people shape the world. And, and so the, the dangers is if I took unhealthy things from my childhood and I bring them with me, then I’m gonna bring those things with me, not just into that family. I’m gonna bring them with me into the workplace, into my school, into my neighbor, the relationships I have with my neighbors, into my marriage, into how I parent, into the whole world around me. That if you go sit down with a counselor, the first thing that a, a counselor or a licensed professional counselor, one of the first things they will work through with you is your family of origin. And I realize, I recognize that some of you have a really painful family of origin story. But here’s the hope. Your family of origin might explain you, but it doesn’t have to define you.

, Look what Peter writes in one Peter chapter one verse 18. He says, “Knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers.” Pause for a second. Here’s what he’s saying. He’s saying that, that we are born into sin, going all the way back to Adam, original sin. The, the sin is, is transferred from one person to the next to the next all through all the generations. So he’s saying you inherited your sin nature. You also inherited some junk from your parents. A- and he says that you and I have been ransomed from that, from the futile ways that we’ve inherited. He says we’ve been ransomed not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but how have we been ransomed with the precious blood of Christ like that of a lamb without blemish or spot? Here’s the hope. I know some of you are in here and you, you’re saying, “You don’t understand the childhood that I grew up in.” So you, you don’t understand how broken it was.

And maybe you struggled in a family that had abuse or abandonment or addiction. And maybe you, you walked through divorce. M- maybe you walked through some real heart-wrenching, terrible, terrible things. And, and here’s the hope of that passage, that those are real pains that you’ve gotta work through in your life, but those things do not have to define who you are. Why? Because the cross, the cross redefines us. The cross says, “You don’t have to be broken anymore. Your sin doesn’t have to be the thing to define you.” Instead, I can look to the cross of Jesus, the blood that he poured out for me. And scripture tells us I can have new life. My old is gone. I have new life in him. And so, so I, there’s nothing I can do that can take away the pain of what has happened, but I can point you towards a person, Jesus, who can restore you and redeem you and make you brand new and whole.

I, I think one of the biggest challenges of raising a family in this culture right now is simply how do we define success? Because if we look at the world around us, oftentimes inside the church as Christians, we define success the same way. We say, “Okay, here’s what I want for my children. Success for my children is I want them to be rich and I want them to be happy. And then I want them to have a lot of stuff. And I want them to be a famous athlete. Like, these are the things I want for my kid.” And, and can I just say, if you look at our culture around us, there’s a track record of a lot of people that have all of those things that are miserable in this life. I- instead, what if success for us says, “Success for me is to raise a child, to form a child, to disciple a child who loves Jesus.

And whether they are rich or whether they are poor, hey, that, that is secondary to the primary thing. And that is, I want a generation, my kids, to love Jesus and to chase wholeheartedly after him. And if they accomplish that, man, that is success. And the part that I have to do with the forming part is how am I caring for them? How am I loving them? How am I instilling and discipling into them who God has created them to be? A- as we kick off this series, I, I wanna end with three questions, questions to wrestle with today, questions to wrestle with this week, questions to have a conversation with your spouse about. Here, here’s the questions. Question number one is, what did my family give me that I want to keep? What, what are the things when you look back at your childhood that you’d say, “Hey, these are positive, wonderful things that I wanna make sure I’m handing off to the next generation.” But then question number two would be, what did my family give me that needs to stop with me?

Addiction tends to be something that gets handed down from generation to generation to generation. We see that pattern in scripture, that sin can be handed on from generation to generation to generation until it stops. And it just takes one generation to say, “No, no, no, that stops with me. That’s not getting handed down to the next generation.” What’s something unhealthy that you’d say, “Okay, that can’t happen anymore.” And then the last one is this, number three, what am I trying to intentionally build in the people around me? And if God has ordained the people that are in my sphere of influence, if you’re a parent, my primary call is with my kids, so I’m being intentional that I’m pouring something into them. I’m not just floating the same direction as everybody in the world around me, but no, instead I’m being intentional in discipling, informing.

, But guess what? God has also put other people in your sphere of influence. Then maybe you think about how am I intentionally pouring into my parents, or maybe it’s my kids, or maybe it’s my siblings, or maybe it’s my neighbors. For all the educators in the room, intentionally pouring into those students that God has ordained to be in your classroom this year, that you have been placed by God into relationship with people. We were not intended to be in isolation. He created us before sin to be in relationship with other people. If those relationships are there for divine purpose, how am I being intentional in those relationships? Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we’re grateful for just this series and this, this concept of family, Lord, in the coming weeks as we unpack this, I pray that you would stir up inside of all of us what it looks like to be a family that is chasing wholeheartedly after you.

We wanna be a church that is modeling well families that are chasing wholeheartedly after you. God, I pray for, for the brokenness in this room, because I know there’s so much brokenness. There have been so many people that have come from families that, that they were selfish and they were sinful and they learned so many unhealthy habits and characteristics. God, I pray that we’d all see the hope, the hope from one Peter, that we

Have been made new in our relationship with you, that when we put our faith, our hope, our trust in you and the cross, it’s not our own marriage, it’s not what we’ve done, it’s what you’ve already done for us. Help that to be a truth that we experience in this life. Not carry the burden of our past, but instead walk with victory into our future in your power, in your name. It’s the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.