Biblical view of marriage
Questions: Where is your family headed? Where is our country headed? What are you prepared to do about it? What part do you think God will play in it?
How do you feel about a movement of dads that would return marriages and families to the design God laid out from the very beginning? And which he has never revised or recounted. You don’t turn a battleship around in a small body of water. And you can’t reverse the trend away from God-designed marriages overnight when the resistance has built up a myriad of obstacles. One is that the Biblical view of marriage, actually anything Biblically, is outdated and irrelevant today. Truth has given way to opinion. And as the saying goes—‘everybody has one’.
Why am I asking you these questions? Because I really want you to stop, think about the direction of the families in this nation. And soberly reflect on whether you are content to hand off our culture to your kids and grandkids. Men, dads, granddads; WE, our generation, are the ones who have delivered the current state of affairs. Yes, US! Frankly, I give a da*n! And I trust you do also. Maybe you are too busy to notice what is happening in our schools at every level and society at large. My front row seat to the issue of absentee fathers has been in prisons for 48 years, juvenile detention center for 10 years and a homeless shelter for 15 years. From where I sit, we are in a heap of a mess. With man, it is an impossible situation, but with God, all things are possible.
What does God want?
You only have to look at the last chapter in the Old Testament to see what God wants for his people, and how serious it is to him. Lean in! “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction” (Mal 4.5-6 ESV). That is the very last word he spoke through the Spirit for 400 years until John the Baptist showed up introducing the answer for the fulfillment of the Malachi verses.
Grasp this, please! The very first command God gave Adam in Genesis was this. ‘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”’ (Vss. 1.26-28 ESV). Procreate, have lots of children, actually cover the planet with them, tend my earth and I am making you its ruler under my authority. He’s talking about families being formed in his image. What has happened between Genesis 1 and Malachi 4 is an abandonment of his design and purpose for mankind.
Today, as never before in my 81-year lifetime, we see firsthand the dissolution of God’s design for marriage and his purpose for his creation. Dads and granddads, what if your children were to say this to you. ‘You have told us all our lives how great it was to live in America and now how the future looks very bleak. What did you do in your lifetime to enhance the future, our future, in America?’ What would you say to them? The overall plan belongs to God, but he expects us to take our sphere of influence and establish a beachhead for our families through the gospel of grace, the gospel of Christ. He receives the glory and we bathe in the joy.
It’s not too late
What other choice do we have as men in our families? I have for some time been daily praying for a revival of repentance in our nation, even writing a book of the same title. The entire book is centered on 2 Chronicles 7.14. “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (NIV) See, it doesn’t have to be too late. The verse is a recipe for dads to be the vehicle through which God will work in our marriages, our families and thus our nation. My further prayer has been that God would use fathers to begin the great awakening in America.
He started it with the first Adam, he secured it through the second Adam (Christ) and now he has called us dads and granddads front and center. Will we answer his call? Don’t worry about the others; just take care of your own nest. He will work on the others. Live Today in Light of That Day! Hearing “Well done” will be worth all the sacrifices you’ll need to make along the glorious journey. And if you need someone to come alongside you, the dads and granddads in Abiding Fathers are ready and willing to join you. Are you ready to take that first step? Jesus did! And be reminded—he promised: “I’ll never leave you nor forsake you.” How can you lose?
Any more questions?
