My Daily Pause

In a previous post, we had a look at Paul’s formula for building strong families. In that post, I offered a few of Paul’s instructions for building strong families as given in Ephesians 5:22-6:4.

Protecting the marriage should be a primary concern for a couple. As it turns out, single parent homes run a very high risk of living below the poverty line and having a member convicted of a crime. You can read the statistics at the US Government’s site Child Stats.

Paul mentions the order of the family unit as God intended it a few times. In addition to the Ephesians passage mentioned above, he restates it again in Colossians 3:18-21

• the wife and children respect the husband as the head of the house
• the husband loves and protects his wife with the intensity that Christ does the church
• the couple understands they are to move, live and think as one

Daily Bible reading for May 13

Psalm 132
Numbers 12
Isaiah 51:1-52:12
Colossians 3:18-4:18

Tight knit families make the local church a functional unit, make communities strong and even spill over and make the workplace better.

It is heartbreaking for the family when they split up, but the church also feel the injury when one of their own goes through this.

Families work better when:

• the wife and children respect the husband as the head of the house
• the husband loves and protects his wife with the intensity that Christ does the church
• the couple understands they are to move, live and think as one
• the children obey the parents

Out of over 8 million marriages from 1990 to 1994 only 87% made it to their fifth anniversary and less than 75% got to their tenth. (here’s the census data )

I’ve been around a lot of families that were strong and many that fell apart over the years. Speaking only as an outsider looking in, the ones that fell apart weren’t operating like Paul laid it out in Ephesians 5:22-6:4.

Daily Bible reading for May 2

Psalm 121
Numbers 1
Isaiah 38
Ephesians 5:22-6:9