Boy meets girl, they fall in love and with stars in their eyes they walk down the aisle and commit their lives to one another.  What a rosy picture and it’s a picture that’s reinforced and represented to us over and over again.  You’ll be amazed how many of the ads on the television dangle a happy, loving, intimate marriage under your nose as the brand promise if you buy whatever they happen to be selling today; from orange juice to luxury homes, the picture of the ideal family is presented to us over and over again.

And so we start believing that that’s how 99.9% of all families are.  Aargh we kind of know they’re not but we still swallow this lie, hook, line and sinker because we want to believe it.

My wife Jacqui and I were on holidays a few months back and we met another lovely couple who live not far from us so we’ve kept in touch.  Well they’re retired, reasonably well off it would seem, a beautiful home on a few acres out of town, happily married they seemed to have it all.

We caught up with them for lunch recently and came to know them a little bit better, interesting.  Behind their apparently ideal lives lies some significant issues with their adult children.  They didn’t go into a lot of detail but it just made me realise how there’s no such thing as the absolutely perfect family.

In fact I can’t think of one family that we know in our lives who has it all sorted, where everyone loves everyone else, where there aren’t any hurts or divisions, where all the children have grown up to fit with what their parents had hoped for them, where …  you’re getting the picture right?

You see God’s master plan for our families was a perfect one.  He created Adam and He created Eve so that Adam wouldn’t be alone, He blessed them in the beautiful garden where they had complete safety and everything they could possibly ever need.  But then Adam and Eve do the one thing that God tells them not to do.  Tempted by the serpent they eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and so this is what happens to them, Genesis chapter 3 verses 16 to 22:

To the woman God said, “I will greatly increase your pangs in child bearing, in pain you shall bring forth children yet your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you”.  And to the man He said, “because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you ‘you shall not eat of it”, cursed is the ground because of you.

In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.  Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field.  By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground for out of it you were taken, you are dust and to dust you shall return.

The man named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all living and the Lord God made garments of skin for the man and for his wife and clothed them.  Then the Lord said, ‘see the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil and now he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.

Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken, he drove out the man and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.

So it was the result of their sin, a result of their rebellion against God a few things happened.  Firstly the woman would experience pain in childbirth and though she desires her husband, now he will rule over her.  That’s a punishment.  Strife and enmity between husband and wife is a consequence of their sin.

And for the man, instead of this idyllic life that he’s been living, tilling the garden and living in perfect harmony with his wife, now all of a sudden things are going to get hard.  He’s going to have pressures and work and things won’t always go the way he expects them to go and that’s going to put even more strain on the husband/wife relationship and on top of it all God boots them out of the garden, out of the ideal life that He had for them and lets them go and fend for themselves in the harshness of a fallen sinful world.

That’s what happened.  That’s why you and I are now in the same fallen sinful world living out the consequences of our sin.  That’s why your marriage and your family aren’t all that you expected them to be and by the way, no there aren’t any 100% perfect families and marriages out there.  Sure some are better than others and the more we live for God, the more we love Him and obey Him, the better our marriages are going to be and the better our kids are going to grow up.

Ah, the kids, did I forget to mention Adam and Eve’s boys, Cain and Able?  Hmm Genesis chapter 4 verses 8 to 11:

Cain said to his brother Able, “let us go out into the field” and when they were in the field Cain rose up against his brother Able and killed him.  Then the Lord said to Cain, “where is your brother Able?” He said, ‘I do not know, am I my brother’s keeper?”  And the Lord said, ‘what have you done?  Listen, your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground and now you are cursed from the ground which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.

See there it is, there are the consequences of sin and they’re playing themselves out in every family on this planet to some greater or lesser extent.  So why am I rambling on about all this stuff today?  Simply to make this point, there is no such thing as the perfect ideal family.  There hasn’t been since Adam and Eve were booted out of the Garden of Eden by God.

So stop whipping yourself imagining that yours is the only family with problems.  That’s the first point I want to make and the second one is equally important.  Doing family, being family in this lost and hurting world was never going to be easy and it never will be.  Family is a tough road.  When a bunch of imperfect people set about loving one another they’re going to hurt one another and so a lot of love and acceptance and tolerance and forgiveness is required over and over and over again.  Matthew chapter 8 verses 21 to 22:

Peter the Apostle came to Jesus and said, “Lord if another member of the Church sins against me how often should I forgive, as many as seven times?”  Jesus said to him, “not seven times but I tell you seventy seven times.”

See it’s going to be hard, it just is.  That’s the message today and just because it’s going to be hard don’t give up on it because you and I have been made in God’s image, the whole idea of male and female, husband and wife, close loving family, tumbles straight out of the very nature of God Himself.

Yes it’s marred by our sin but the more we let God into this family, the more each one of us chooses to live our lives for Christ, the closer our families become to God’s ideal, God’s grand plan for a loving Godly family.

Now I know that there are some people tuned in today whose family has completely fallen apart and it’s simply not possible to go back and patch it all up and make it all sweet and happy and rosy, I get that and God’s healing love is available to you.  Something we’re going to talk about next week on the program when we’re chatting about marriage breakdown and divorce.

But if you’re still in a family, imperfect as it may be, hang in there, live it for Christ, humble yourself, forgive, be who Jesus made you to be because I know that you will discover good in that, I know that God will work in you and through you as you honour Him and as you honour His plan for your marriage and for your family.

Listen, do yourself a favour, when you get to the point of giving up and walking away – don’t.

This week on the program we’re getting down into the muck, into the reality of what we have to deal with in our families.  Hopefully you’ve pretty much figured out by now that there’s no such thing as the perfect family.  Yours isn’t the only family with issues and problems, it’s just the way things are because we’re all imperfect people, you are, I am and our various family members are as well.

Over the course of this week so far on the program we’ve seen how these imperfections have crept in.  God put Adam and Eve in a perfect place with a perfect life but their rebellion against God brought sin into this world and that sin has had some significant consequences to them as husband and wife and subsequently upon their family as Cain ended up murdering his brother Able.  Let’s just recap in case you missed it.  This is what God tells Adam and Eve after their sin, after their rebellion, Genesis chapter 3 verses 16 to 22:

To the woman God said, “I will greatly increase your pains in child bearing, in pain you shall bring forth children yet your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you”.  And to the man He said, “because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you ‘you shall not eat of it’, cursed is the ground because of you.”

“In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life, thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field.  By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground for out of it you were taken, you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

The man named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all living and the Lord God made garments of skins for the man and his wife and clothed them.  Then the Lord God said, “see the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil and now he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.” 

Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken.  He drove out the man and at the east of the garden he placed a cherubim and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.

See serious consequences.   Enmity between husband and wife, pressure, toil, pain and banishment from the garden of Eden, from the perfect lives that they had before their sin and see that’s the family life that you and I are living out now.  Family impacted by sin.

It all starts off rosy when you get married, there’s romance in the air, the intimacy of marriage is wonderful and so you both kind of float along on cloud nine there for a while but eventually you hit the ground with a thump and that thump ultimately is caused by sin.

It’s the same when kids come along.  Oh woo-hoo, little baby, beautiful, goo-goo ga-ga.  Okay a few sleepless nights but all in all a huge blessing and joy.  Until the kid learns it’s very first word and somehow that word, more often than not, is no.  By age two this delightful  little Johnny or Mary has turned no into an art form and there begins the rebellion that mother and father are going to have to deal with for as long as that child lives under their roof and beyond.

See we need to see this for what it is, and what it is, is a playing out of the same story of Adam and Eve.  Sin, rebellion against God has consequences and those consequences can tear our families apart.  In Australia they tear 40% of marriages apart, a statistic that’s pretty common across the western world.

And even in countries like India where by the way the divorce rate is just around 1.4% of all marriages, they’re still being torn apart by that very same thing as people live separate lives under the one roof, somewhere between detente and open warfare, am I right?

So what’s the answer?  Here it is, here is the starting point for turning things around in your family, are you listening?  Are you ready?  1 Timothy chapter 4 verses 7 to 9:

Train yourself in Godliness for whilst physical training is of some value, Godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.  The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance.

Now it’s easy to read that and hear that and think to yourself, “that’s right, my wife or my husband or my children or my parents, they need some serious training in Godliness, they need to get their lives sorted out, they need to start behaving and loving and forgiving, they need to …”

We point the finger at them as though we’re holier than thou, as though we’re somehow perfect and not to blame for any of the problems or the conflicts in our families.  Come on, give me a break, who are we trying to kid here?  Matthew chapter 7 verses 3 to 5:

“Why is it that you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye but you don’t notice the log in your own?  Or how can you say to your neighbour ‘let me take the speck out of your eye’ while the log is in your own?   You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye and then you’ll see clearly enough to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye.”

In fact the closer we are to someone the less they’re likely to listen to our criticism anyway, am I right?  Husbands are sick to death of being hen pecked by their wives.  Wives are sick to death of being told what to do by their husbands.  And children just roll their eyes into the back of their heads or am I missing something?

Come on, let’s get a revelation today, you and I.  The Godly family begins in our hearts.  Your Godly family starts in your heart when you choose to start living your life for Jesus and sacrificing and forgiving and encouraging and leading by example like you’re meant to be doing and my Godly family, my Godly family begins in my heart when I choose to do the same thing.

Why did we start believing this lie that pointing out other family members’ weaknesses to them and insisting on our rights was going to make things better, huh?  Come on.  As someone who believes in Jesus, maybe others in your family don’t or they’ve strayed away, but you, if you believe in Jesus you have the opportunity to make a difference by being the hands and feet, the heart and voice of Jesus in your family.

Do you remember what Jesus said about His mission here on earth?  John chapter 3 verses 16 and 17:

For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but will have eternal life.  Indeed God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through Him.

Jesus didn’t come to condemn us although God knows that’s precisely what you and I deserve.  He came to save us.  He didn’t come to be served but to serve and He did that by dying on a cross for you and me, John chapter 15 verse 31:

No one has greater love than this than to lay down their life for their friends.

Just imagine if you were Christ to your family.  If you modelled and demonstrated and lived that same sacrificial love to your family the way Christ did for you, just stop and imagine the power that would flow from God through you into the lives of those you love.

Yep God’s perfect plan for families was marred the moment sin entered this world and it continues to be spoiled by sin today, plain and simple.  And now, into these scarred and hurting and dysfunctional families His love can flow again because you’re there.

We live in a world that celebrates diversity.  I’ve been blessed to grow up in a city with so much ethnic diversity, that means different cultures, different foods, it’s awesome and yet for some reason the diversity that we have in families often ends up being a source of tension and division.  No more so than in the differences between men and women.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that men and women are profoundly different.  Of course that is why we fall in love because we’re different.  But it doesn’t take too long in a marriage for those differences to start to become a source of tension and division.

Yesterday on the program we talked about the top three mistakes that men typically make in a family situation.  Pursuing work first, being emotionally withdrawn or completely unavailable, and abdicating their roles as husbands and fathers, as leaders.  Today we’re going to chat about the top three mistakes that women make in marriage and a family.  I make the point that we dealt with men earlier in case you’ve just tuned in and for some reason you’ve come to the conclusion that I’m only knocking women, I’m not knocking anyone.

What this series is about is dealing with real life issues that we all confront in our families.  That’s why it’s called Family – When Things Don’t Turn Out the Way You’d Hoped and as I’ve said a few times so far in this series there aren’t any perfect families out there, we all have issues to deal with.  So let’s get into it, the top three mistakes that women make in marriage and family.

Because if you’re a woman, if you can see some of these in how you behave in your family then it’s a great opportunity to make a few changes to get things back on the rails and to see the positive impact that it’s going to have in your family.

Here’s the first one, the one at the top of my list is making your children more important than your husband.  Now mother’s have an incredibly special role in bringing up their kids.  They obviously carry them physically for nine months, they give birth to them and all that that involves.  In most cases they breastfeed them and do much of the day to day bringing up particularly when the kids are young.

Little wonder that mothers have such a close attachment to their children and that’s as it should be right?  Of course through much of those younger years mums spends countless hours investing in the little ones.  Fathers do too of course, and some families share that equally, but in most families, if truth be known, the traditional roles still apply.

But things get thrown out of kilter when at some point the children become more important to the woman than her husband.  It manifests in all kinds of ways.  The husband begins to resent the fact he can see his wife lights up around the children and how she has that bored or even cranky demeanour when she’s around him.

See this is such a tragedy.  One day those children will be grown up and off on their way living out their lives and at that point many couples discover there’s nothing left between them.  One of the root causes of that, not the only cause by any means but one of the biggies is this syndrome where women become more emotionally attached to their children and less emotionally connected with their husbands.

Of course it wasn’t meant to be an either/or situation, it just wasn’t.  Wives and mothers have more than enough love in their hearts to go around but if you check back to your wedding vows it’s most likely that you said something like this:

I take you to be my husband and in doing this I set myself apart from the rest of the world for you and you alone.  Everything that I am and everything that I have I give to you.  In the heights of our joy and in the depths of our sorrow I promise to be by your side to hold you, to encourage you, to honour you and to cherish you.  All of these things are yours until we are parted in death.

That means promising to put him first and that leads me to the second mistake that seems to be so prevalent, putting him first doesn’t mean putting him down especially in front of others and especially in front of the children.  Whether it’s politically correct to say it or not, most men are wired to lead, they just are.  It doesn’t mean dominate and control, no not that, but some women seem to think their husband is their own personal home improvement project and so they nag and nag and complain and nag.

They disagree with him in front of their children rather than in private and that one thing can tear a family apart.  Proverbs chapter 21 verse 19 says this:

It is better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and fretful woman.

As a man let me say ‘amen’ to that one.  And finally I think the third most prevalent mistake that women make in family situations is not allowing the husband to perform his role when it comes to disciplining the children.  In my view all discipline should come from love and it shouldn’t be harsh.  That’s exactly what the Bible says, Ephesians chapter 6 verse 4:

Father’s do not provoke your children to anger but bring them up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord.

But note here that the father does have a role to discipline the children, to set boundaries, to make sure that there are consequences for stepping over those boundaries.  Mother’s often undermine that process because they love their children so much, they want to make it easy for their kids, they want to kind of wrap them in cotton wool and they do it to the detriment of their children and the detriment of their marriage.

Kids need to learn these lessons when they’re at home, they need to be prepared for the lives they’re going to lead out in that harsh cruel world out there and that requires some leadership and some discipline and most often it’s the fathers role to make that happen.

So let’s sum them up.  The first most common mistake is making your children more important than your husband.  The second is putting him down with constant nagging and complaining and the third is undermining the husband and the father’s role in disciplining their children.  If you recognise any of those in your marriage, if you recognise any of those in your behaviour as a wife and a mother then it’s time to do something about them, really.

It’s hard isn’t it when someone goes and puts their finger on what potentially are faults of ours, it’s a bit uncomfortable isn’t it?  And yet none of what we’ve chatted about today is meant to criticize or condemn.  I know that God wants so many good things for your family, He wants to bless your family and for Him to be able to do that to it’s fullest effect, for you to experience the blessing of God in your family we each need to own our part of the problem, to step up, to admit our faults and under God’s mighty hand to set about doing something about them.

Husbands love their wives more than words can say.  I love this Proverb, Proverbs chapter 31 verses 10 to 13:

A capable wife, who can find?  She is far more precious than jewels.  The heart of her husband trusts in her and he will have no lack of gain, she does him good and not harm all the days of her life.

What a precious wife such a woman is to her husband and to her children and what incredible power she has to either build up her family or to tear it down, Proverbs chapter 14 verse 1:

The wisest of women builds her house but folly with her own hands tears it down.

If you’re a wife and/or a mother let me encourage you to take those two Scriptures to heart.  Proverbs chapter 14 verse 1 and Proverbs chapter 31 verses 10 to 13.  Your husband will never, ever, ever be perfect, he cannot be, but chances are that he loves you beyond words and as you bless him with wisdom and respect he will in turn bless you more than words can say.

And when your children grow up seeing how mum and dad live, how they honour each other, how they respect each other, how they bless each other that will have such a huge impact on them for the rest of their lives and that, that’s the way God always planned it to be.