Rick Warren - Fighting for an Awesome Family - Part 1
Last week, we looked at marriage. This week, I'm gonna look at: how do you have an awesome family? "Fighting for an awesome family". I chose this word intentionally, fighting, because families are not awesome by accident. By accident, they're average, and you have to fight for your family if you want it to be a great family. Because there are all kinds of forces working against your family in our society, and I'm not gonna spend a minute detailing those. I don't wanna make a laundry list or a litany of all of the things that are working against the family today, but there are economic forces, there are spiritual forces, there are moral forces, there are cultural and social forces that want to destroy the idea of family, and specifically, your family.
What I'm much more interested in is looking at the positive side, and that is: How do you fight for an awesome family? You know, when the families of Jerusalem were under attack thousands of years ago, the leader, Nehemiah, said this. Look up here on the screen. He said to the people, "Don't be afraid...Remember the Lord who is awesome," everything is awesome, including God, and we're looking at awesome relationships, "Remember the Lord who is awesome, and fight for your brothers, fight for your sons, fight for your daughters, fight for your wives, fight for your homes". He's saying your family is worth fighting for. Don't just give up and say, "Well, it can't change. It can't be any different. It's too late". It's not too late. No matter where you are on the continuum of family, starting out, or at the end, or helping a new family develop, no matter where you are, it's not too late to fight to make your family better.
Now, what I wanna share with you today is not just from God's Word but from 40 years of counseling families, and I have discovered, after talking to thousands and thousands of families, that you can find four common traits in families that are really awesome, and we're gonna look at those today. Here's the first reason. Write it down. Awesome families ARE PLAYFUL. Most people know that the Bible teaches we're supposed to work, and the Bible tells us we're to work hard, and the Bible says that if we're lazy, we shouldn't even eat. Work is an important part of your life, but most people don't know that the Bible says that play is an important part of your life, and play is essential to adults, not just to children.
In fact, play is connected to creativity. The more play you have in life, the more creative you're gonna be. If you don't have anything play, any fun in your life, you're not a very creative person. "All work, no play makes Jack a dull boy". And so, you need to have fun in your life, and the Bible talks about this and actually, commands it. Let me show you some scriptures. This first section is from Ecclesiastes, written by Solomon, who was the wisest man who ever lived. God said, "What do you want"? He said, "I want to be the wisest man who ever lived". God said, "I'll answer that request".
So let's look at some verses. Ecclesiastes 8:15, Solomon says, "I commend the enjoyment of life". Circle the word "enjoyment". As I said, we know that play is extremely important to development. In fact, you know, we've known for years that play is essential to preschoolers. For preschoolers, play is work. They're actually developing when they play, and recess is not a waste of time. Kids are developing at much at recess as they are sitting down with a book open or things like that. Paul says, up here on the screen, look at this verse, 1 Timothy 6:17: "God generously gives us everything for our," what? Did you realize that everything in the world God created, he created for you to enjoy?
Now, listen. God wants life to be enjoyed, not merely endured, and a lot of you are simply enduring life. God wants you to enjoy life. The wisest man who ever lived, Solomon, says, "I recommend, I commend the enjoyment of life". God says, "Everything I created is for enjoyment". If you're too busy to enjoy life, you're too busy. God meant for you to play and to have some fun. Ecclesiastes 11:7: "People ought to enjoy every day," not just on a weekend, not just vacation, "ought to enjoy every day of their lives, no matter how long they live".
Now, why is that important that you enjoy every day? 'Cause you don't know how long you're gonna live. Now, I want you to write this sentence down, and it applies to you, whether you're a parent or not, whether you ever get married or not. Here's an important thing in life. People don't remember what you say, but they will remember how you made them feel. That's important advice for a boss, for an employer, for a husband, for a boyfriend, for a girlfriend, for a parent, for a husband or wife. People will not remember what you say. They will remember how you made them feel. My kids don't remember anything of what I said in the early years of their lives, but they do remember how daddy made them feel. Awesome families are playful. They're Candyland families. They have a lot of fun.
Now, Solomon gets very specific about the kind of fun you're supposed to have in a family. Ecclesiastes 9, verse 9, he says this: "Enjoy life with your wife whom you love," dads, if you're a dad here today, the greatest gift you can give your children is to love their mom, to have fun and enjoy life with their mom. Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love. You see, when a father shows love for the mother of the kids, it creates great stability. It creates great security. It creates great peace in the heart of little children.
And when I hear couples saying, "Well, you know, we really can't afford or can't have time to go out because of the kids," serious mistake, serious mistake. Your kids need to see you loving each other, because you are the first and greatest model of relationships, and if they see parents just passing in the night and working and working and working but no real relationship, that's what they're gonna grow up thinking marriage is all about. Love your wife. Enjoy life with your wife. The Bible says in Psalm 1:27, "Children are a gift from God". They are a gift from God. Now, let's be honest. Sometimes they're a gift you'd like to exchange, okay, but they are a gift, okay. They are a gift. And what is a gift? A gift is given, and it's meant to be enjoyed. Are you enjoying your kids, or are they just your pet project? "You're gonna grow up right," and it's all serious, and you're not enjoying the gift that God gave you. Psalm 8:15, this one's gonna blow your mind.
Look at this verse on the screen. You should write this one down. It says, "I recommend having fun". Did you know that verse is in the Bible? The wisest man who ever lived said, "I recommend having fun...And that way you'll experience some happiness along all the hard work that God gives you". In many ways, a family is like a garden. You have to grow it. You have to develop it. You have to cultivate it. A garden doesn't grow on its own. You have to weed it. You have to water it. You have to care for it. And this is the second characteristic of awesome families that makes them different from average families.
Write this down. Awesome families ENCOURAGE GROWTH. They create an atmosphere of lifelong learning. They help each other develop. And one of the things that you do in an awesome family is you support each other, and I'm not just talking about the kids growing up. I'm saying that you're always growing. Your family never stops growing. Mom never stops growing. Everybody encourages mom to grow. Dad never stops growing. Everybody encourages dad to grow. Brother, sister, everybody encourages everybody to keep growing. If you're not growing, your family is boring. You're just stuck in a rut. You haven't learned anything new, developed any new interest in a long time? Your family's boring. Now, look at how Jesus grew. The Bible tells us in Luke 2:52, this is when Jesus was 12 years old. It says, "Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and favor with men".
Now notice, there are four kinds of growth you wanna have in your family. You grow in wisdom. That's intellectual growth, mental growth. You grow in stature. That's physical health. You grow in favor with God. That's spiritual growth. And you grow in favor with man. That's social growth. Most of your problems as an adult comes from the fact that you didn't learn certain things correctly as a child, and if you didn't learn certain skills as a child, then you're gonna have a rough life the rest of your life.
There are five things you must learn in your family, and if you don't learn 'em there, life's gonna be tough for you. You might write these down. The first one is the first thing we have to learn is what to do with feelings, one of the most important skills in life. How do I handle my emotions? What do I do with them? How do I deal with how I feel? What do you do with feelings? And in a good, awesome family, you learn how to recognize your feelings, how to name your feelings, how to own up to your feelings, how to identify your feelings, how to express your feelings correctly, rather than incorrectly, how not to stuff them, and how to deal with how you feel. If you don't learn how to deal with how you feel in your family, you go through life an emotional cripple. You have to relearn it somewhere else. And the reason why so many marriages split up is because they didn't learn in their family how to deal with how you feel correctly and effectively. And you need to let people be honest and let kids express their emotions.
One of the stupidest things a parent can say is, "Stop crying, don't cry, don't cry," why? Crying, there's nothing wrong with crying. Tears are a gift from God. If you're telling your kids, "Stuff your emotions, stuff your emotions, stuff your emotions," they're gonna have problems with their emotions the rest of their life. There's nothing wrong with crying. There's nothing to be ashamed of with crying, and telling your kids "stop crying" is saying, "Deny your emotions. Deny how you feel". And you learn to stuff it, and that comes out in all kinds of strange relationship patterns later on. In a true family, in an awesome family, we learn how to recognize that's a good emotion, that's a harmful emotion, and we learn to name it, own it, speak about it, identify it, talk about it. That's a key. So you name 'em. You don't stuff them.
Second skill you have to learn in the family is how to handle conflict, and if you don't learn how to handle conflict in your marriage or in your family, you're gonna have problems in your marriage, 'cause you don't know, nobody taught you the skills on how to resolve and clarify conflict, and if kids don't see their parents working problems out in front of them and showing how this is "how we deal when we have a difference, this is how we deal when we get hurt, how we deal with when we get mad," then you have a problem with that. And what happens is most people in conflict, they become either a mute and a martyr or they become a maniac. They either hold it in or they explode it. Everybody, if you don't learn how to deal with conflict, you tend to become a skunk or a turtle.
Now, skunks, when they're upset, they let everybody know it. They just stink up the place, and they spray, and everybody knows they're ticked off. A turtle pulls into their shell and isolates and pulls back out of fear of conflict. Now, here's the interesting thing. Skunks always marry turtles. Don't look at 'em, but you know one of you is the skunk and one of you is the turtle in your marriage, all right? It's true in every single marriage, all right? One of you is the aggressor and one of you pulls back, and neither of these is the more godly approach. So neither of you get the higher upper ground morally. They're both ineffective ways to deal with conflict.
A third thing, really big thing, you have to learn in family is how to handle loss. Because you're gonna have a lot of losses in life. You're gonna have big losses. You're gonna have small losses. And you gotta teach kids, and even parents have to learn, how to grieve a loss. Because nobody wins all the time. In fact, for a kid to have an unbroken string of wins in early life with no losses is actually detrimental to them. You don't want your kid to win all the time. Because when they got out in the real world and they face the inevitable losses, that they're not number one all the time, it's devastating if they haven't learned that failure won't kill you. Failure won't destroy you.
A loss won't be the end of your life. You don't win everything. It's like if you're in a professional baseball team, it's actually good to have a few losses in preseason because then the pressure's off. What you don't want to do is have an unbroken season of all perfect wins and then lose in the Super Bowl. That's painful. If you're gonna lose, you might as well lose early in life and learn from it. And so, we learn how to deal with losses, and we treat the losses of kids as big things so they can learn how to grieve. I remember when Matthew, my youngest, was quite young and he had a pet hamster named Wilson, and Wilson died. Now, we didn't treat it and say, "Oh, he's just a hamster. Come on, I mean, really, it's just a glorified rat".
You know, we didn't just, "Oh, you can get another one. I'll get you another one tomorrow". No, no, we treated it very seriously. We had a family funeral for Wilson, and we went down into the canyon, and we buried him in a little box, and we all stood around, and we each had our little say of how much we loved Wilson and well, how much he meant to our family and things like that. And what I was doing is I was teaching the kids the theology of grief, that it's okay to express grief. It's okay to be sad. In fact, you're gonna be sad many, many times in life in much bigger ways, and so, we don't demean it. We don't dismiss it. We deal with the losses of life. One of the verses you need to memorize, whether you're a parent or not, every person should memorize this verse. Write it down.
Proverbs 24:16: "Even if good people fall seven times, they'll get back up again"! I love that verse. Says, "Even good people fall". The word there actually in Hebrew is the word "righteous". It says, "Though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again". Even when good people fall. You know what? Even the best people, the well-intentioned people, they stumble. They mess up. They flub. They say the wrong thing. They do the wrong thing. We all fall. We all stumble. We all mess up, and when we fall, that's not the important thing. It says, "Good people get back up again, even if they fall seven times".
That's the difference between a success and a failure. That verse is talking about what psychologists call resilience. Resilience is the most important characteristic for a child if they're gonna succeed in life, resilience. Do they have the ability to get back up again? They fall off the bike. See, a lot of kids learn, "I'm not even gonna try because I stumbled once. So I give up. I went to one practice at music, and I didn't like it. So I'm just gonna give up. I went to one game in soccer, and I didn't like it. All right, I messed up. I embarrassed myself, so I'm gonna give up".
And so, people learn to give up, and then they spend the rest of their lives facing challenges and giving up. But in teaching a child resilience to keep on getting back up, those are, the leaders of the world are people who have the most resilience. They're not any more successful. They have just as many losses in life. It's just they don't give up, and they are resilient.
Number four, fourth thing we learn from our families is we learn what values matter most, what values matter most. All around us, the world is teaching our kids values that we don't agree with. The world teaches that all that matters is how you look. That image is everything. Doesn't matter what your character is, it's how you look. The world teaches that the more money you have, the more important you are, the more successful, the more fulfilled you'll be, the more significant your life is. That's not true. The world teaches is that everything is about sex. It's not, it's not. The world teaches that the more you can get people to praise you, the more valuable you are. That's not true. And our kids are learning a lot of values from movies, from video games, from songs, from their friends, from all of culture, all these things that aren't true.
It's important to teach our kids the three basic temptations of life. The only good thing you can say about Satan is he's entirely predictable and he doesn't have any new temptations. There are only three temptations. The Bible calls them the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. It has to do with how I feel, what I do, and what I get in life. Secularists or philosophy would call them hedonism, materialism, and secularism, but basically, it's sex, salary, and status. It's basically saying life is about three things: Getting all the good things you can, possessions, having all of the pleasure you want, regardless of how it hurts other people, passion, and becoming important at having status, that's position. These are the three temptations that Jesus went through, that Moses went through, that Adam went through.
I could take you through the whole Bible. And teaching our kids what these are so they can recognize false values. That what matters most in life is sex, what matters most in life is money, and what matters most in life is power, prestige, and popularity, they're just not true. And every single advertising ever created by anybody appeals to one of these three temptations, every single one. Every print ad, broadcast ad, TV ad appeals to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, or pride of life. And the product says, "You get our product, you'll be sensual, you'll feel good. You just have all kinds of pleasure inside of you". Or, "If you get our product, you'll be envied. You're number one. We do what's best for you. Look out for number one". And, "I gotta do what's best for me". And, "It's all about you, you, you". Or materialism, "You need this product 'cause it'll make you significant. It'll make you important".
You know, when my kids were little, I taught them these three values. I said these are the three values you're gonna be up against and none of them are true. And we would stand in front of the TV and watch commercials, and I would pay them a nickel for the one who could figure out which value was being promoted by that ad, "Uh, lust of the flesh," boom, "Here's a nickel". Now, I realize that was materialism, but at least they were learning to spot what most kids and even adults accept without question. We teach our kids the values that matter most.
And the fifth thing we learn from our families is good habits, good habits. Habits determine your character. Now, if one of the marks of an awesome family is that we help each other grow, how do you do that? How do you help mom grow? How do you help dad grow? How do you help brother and sister grow? How do you help your nephews grow and nieces grow? Well, let me give you two ways that help people grow and two ways that don't. This applies in every area of life. Two ways that help people grow: Number one, we grow through example, through example. Jesus did this in teaching the disciples.
John 13, he says, "Since I have washed your feet," which was a model of humility and service. It's an act of service, "Since I have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other's feet. I've given you an example to follow. Do as I've done to you". We learn best by example. Your kids don't want to hear a sermon. They wanna see it. They wanna see it in your life. The second way we help people grow is through conversations, critical conversations. If you're not having conversations with your kids about real issues, they're not growing. We grow through conversations. Unfortunately, most conversations we have with kids have to do with "we need to get here by this time and get back to here by this time," and conversations are about schedule, eating, or homework and no conversations about the stuff that really matters in life.
Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 7 is very specific, and it says this to parents: "You must teach God's commandment," that's not an option, "You must teach God's commandments to your children and talk about them," circle that, talk about them, that means conversations. You're to have conversations with your kids about the Bible, talk about them, and then it gives us four places to do this, "When you are at home," you might circle these four things, "When you are at home, when you are out for a walk," third time is, "at bedtime". And then number four, "the first thing in the morning," breakfast. He's saying these are the teachable moments of your family: when you're at home, when you're out for a walk, in other words, you're relaxing, recreation time, you're fishing, you're playing, at bedtime, and first thing in the morning, the four teachable moments.
Now, friends, this is what God tells us to do, and this is why most families are not awesome. Most families aren't awesome. They're just average, and the reason they're average is because they don't do what God says. God says, "You need to talk about the things that are important at home, when you're relaxing, when you're on vacation, when you're having a walk. You need to do it at bedtime conversations. You need to do breakfast conversations". He said, "If you're not doing this, you're never gonna have an awesome family. You're gonna have an average family".