Speaking at a teen conference many years ago in the city of Abu Dhabi, a young girl walked up to me after my sermon and said, “Uncle, what you shared did not make any sense to me.” After a good sermon—during which I saw some of the teens committing their lives to the Lord—hearing feedback like that was shocking.
However, I continued the conversation to understand why she felt this way. She explained that in my sermon, I had equated God to a father, and that had deeply disturbed her. She went on to share her story of being sexually and physically abused by her father. She said that understanding God as a father made her angry and upset.
Ungodly expressions of family life and parenting can have a deeply negative impact.
This incident made me realize how parental behavior and ungodly expressions of family life and parenting can have a deeply negative impact on how God’s love and grace are perceived.
Create missional habitats
Influencing our children for eternity is possible if they grow up in a missional habitat. What do I mean by a missional habitat? It is an environment that reflects the presence and purpose (or mission) of God. The word “missional” is rooted in reflecting the nature of God and his mission. A missional habitat is the kind of environment the first couple (Adam and Eve) enjoyed—walking and talking with God regularly before their fall.
The age-old foundation laid in Deuteronomy 6 instructs parents to create a habitat conducive to their children’s spiritual growth. It is deeply reflective of the habitat God gave His first human children, Adam and Eve. The presence of God and his word forms the sacred space where the next generation will thrive. It impacts their thoughts, their behavior, and their conversations.
Deuteronomy 6:4 calls us to: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” This must be the lifestyle and experience of the parents, who are commanded to impress God’s love upon their children.
This impression is not made through casual teaching or by merely memorizing a few verses, but by creating an atmosphere saturated with His Word. Whether they wake up, sit down, walk along the road, or lie down, the call is to intentionally provide the right foundation for children to bloom.
It is the intentional responsibility of parents to ensure the right foundations are laid.
It is the intentional responsibility of parents to ensure the right foundations are laid—foundations that cannot be shaken by any whirlwind of teachings contrary to God’s plan and purpose.
Create missional homes
A home where scripture becomes the foundation, and every member lives to fulfill God’s purpose embedded in His love, is what I call a missional home. Such missional homes emulate the character of God in their daily living.
Based on my research and extensive reading on the missional church, I have identified five characteristics of what a missional home looks like. This is also reflective of the family of the Godhead, from whom all families on earth derive their name (Ephesians 3:15). The five-fold characteristics reflect Christ to everyone at home and outside. They display Christ in:
- Worship
- Affection
- Incarnation
- Attraction and
- Nurture.
Emulate Kingdom principles
How can we intentionally create a habitat, so our families thrive, and our children have the right foundation to withstand the onslaught of various worldly influences? The answer lies in reflecting Christ-like nature at home.
The best gift parents can give their children is to demonstrate their love for each other.
The best gift parents can give their children is to demonstrate their love for each other by embodying love and respect—a reflection of Christ and the Church (see Ephesians 5:22–33).
When husbands fail to show the love their wives long for, and when wives fail to offer the respect, their husbands need to feel valued and loved, the home environment becomes damaged and broken.
Children growing up in dysfunctional homes will never be able appreciate or even understand what real love is. Their closest experience of love in their growing up, vulnerable age is not anywhere close to God’s expectation for the family. It has deep implication in the understanding of God’s love, and encourages the child to reject the God of their parents as God's love was never demonstrated at home.
More than just rights and responsibilities
The scriptural command for husbands and wives to love and submit to one another has often been interpreted through the lens of rights and responsibilities. Instead, it must be understood through the lens of Christ’s demonstration of love for His Church—where He laid down His life to express His deep love.
Loving demonstrations of Christ's love between a husband and a wife are missing in many homes, and that absence leads many children to develop a negative perception of God and his beautiful plan for families.
Children need a Christ-like, missional, habitat to love and understand their Creator. If every Christian home prayerfully cultivated a space that reflects God’s love and character, many of our children will be drawn to Christ and will long to establish a godly home of their own someday.
Let us pray that every Christian home becomes a demonstration of Christ-like love.
Let us pray that every Christian home becomes a demonstration of Christ-like love so that the Church will not lose future generations to the world and the enemy.
I have expanded on these thoughts in my book Becoming a Missional Family, which is also available as a Bible study video series on RightNow Media.
PC Mathew and his wife Ciby, are leaders in family life education in India. They run Urban India Ministries (www.urbanindia.org), a major family ministry in South Asia, and founded the UIM-Family Research and Training Institute (www.uimfrti.org), offering academic programs in family life education and counseling. PC is also the Global Director of WEA-Family Challenge (https://family.worldea.org/).
