Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine within your house. Your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. (Verses 3-4)
Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her...In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church. Ephesians 5
God is into family. It was for the purpose of bringing us into the family of God as brothers and sisters, joint heirs and princesses and princes that Jesus came to Earth to buy us as adopted kids into the kingdom. "See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. And so we are," writes the apostle John in 1 John 3. Marvel at it. Be in wonder of the prospect that God wants us to be His beloved kids. And that means there is an order to our lives implicit in the structure of family. There is a head: wiser, stronger, more giving, more prescient and more magnificent than the offspring. For this particular family, that is an eternal fact. We will never, ever be more anything than our Father, but we might surpass our earthly parents in many attributes, especially as they age. Our Father, however, is the same yesterday, today and forever. Always bigger and better than anyone else's dad.
That is why God is interested in the families here, on Earth. They mirror heaven where there will be feasts and fruit and family joy (Revelation 19-22). The blessing that our Father enjoys bestowing is the constant comradery of a family meal where the wife brings the joy of new wine, basking in the love of the man who adores and fears his Father. The husband loves because he knows love. He has authority because he is under authority. This man is safe. The wife's face glows because it is a reflection of her man. Because he wants to please God, she wants to please him. And their kids? Little shoots of an olive tree. Chips off the old block. Wanting to be like mom and dad someday. Sitting at dinner speaking of spiritual things, hungering not just for the excellent food Mom has prepared, but for wisdom and companionship.
I know this sounds very Donna Reed and Father Knows Best, but it's what God wants for families. And the man and woman who seek to know God's heart and mind, becoming like Him, will be blessed in their homes. It's a promise. There are lots of messed up situations out there in the world right now that don't look anything like a fruitful, joyful wife and little olive shoots eating and spewing platitudes at the family dinner. Heck...there's no family dinner! What to do? It's never too late to love the Lord with all your heart and soul. To become His kid whether or not we've been successful with our own. God wants so much more for us than we typically want for ourselves, or even know we can ask for. Step one in any transformation of any family begins with our own personal transformation. Men can't expect the lovely wine producing vine of a wife if he doesn't have the love of Christ to shower on her. Mommies can't expect little olive shoots to sing their praises if they're simply hanging on for dear life everyday because Mom's vine is shriveled and stressed. The Father Himself loves you. Look up into His face and soak that in. Our Father wants to bless our families. They are His big idea because family with Him is eternal. And we can experience some of the first fruits of it right here, right now. It only costs us our perceived autonomy. Not too much to ask given the mess our own misguided opinions and decisions have reaped in every society on the globe today. When we have redefined marriage to fit our own morality. Even more important that the home reflect it's head--Our Father, Who is in heaven.
Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her...In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church. Ephesians 5
God is into family. It was for the purpose of bringing us into the family of God as brothers and sisters, joint heirs and princesses and princes that Jesus came to Earth to buy us as adopted kids into the kingdom. "See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. And so we are," writes the apostle John in 1 John 3. Marvel at it. Be in wonder of the prospect that God wants us to be His beloved kids. And that means there is an order to our lives implicit in the structure of family. There is a head: wiser, stronger, more giving, more prescient and more magnificent than the offspring. For this particular family, that is an eternal fact. We will never, ever be more anything than our Father, but we might surpass our earthly parents in many attributes, especially as they age. Our Father, however, is the same yesterday, today and forever. Always bigger and better than anyone else's dad.
That is why God is interested in the families here, on Earth. They mirror heaven where there will be feasts and fruit and family joy (Revelation 19-22). The blessing that our Father enjoys bestowing is the constant comradery of a family meal where the wife brings the joy of new wine, basking in the love of the man who adores and fears his Father. The husband loves because he knows love. He has authority because he is under authority. This man is safe. The wife's face glows because it is a reflection of her man. Because he wants to please God, she wants to please him. And their kids? Little shoots of an olive tree. Chips off the old block. Wanting to be like mom and dad someday. Sitting at dinner speaking of spiritual things, hungering not just for the excellent food Mom has prepared, but for wisdom and companionship.
I know this sounds very Donna Reed and Father Knows Best, but it's what God wants for families. And the man and woman who seek to know God's heart and mind, becoming like Him, will be blessed in their homes. It's a promise. There are lots of messed up situations out there in the world right now that don't look anything like a fruitful, joyful wife and little olive shoots eating and spewing platitudes at the family dinner. Heck...there's no family dinner! What to do? It's never too late to love the Lord with all your heart and soul. To become His kid whether or not we've been successful with our own. God wants so much more for us than we typically want for ourselves, or even know we can ask for. Step one in any transformation of any family begins with our own personal transformation. Men can't expect the lovely wine producing vine of a wife if he doesn't have the love of Christ to shower on her. Mommies can't expect little olive shoots to sing their praises if they're simply hanging on for dear life everyday because Mom's vine is shriveled and stressed. The Father Himself loves you. Look up into His face and soak that in. Our Father wants to bless our families. They are His big idea because family with Him is eternal. And we can experience some of the first fruits of it right here, right now. It only costs us our perceived autonomy. Not too much to ask given the mess our own misguided opinions and decisions have reaped in every society on the globe today. When we have redefined marriage to fit our own morality. Even more important that the home reflect it's head--Our Father, Who is in heaven.
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