Who leads my family? The leader of the family is not the one who talks the loudest, the most, or even the one who thinks they are the leader. It is the one who makes final decisions on the direction the family will go and then on how they will all arrive there. The de jure leader (the one who is designated the leader by God’s law according to the Bible) can be far different than the de facto leader (the one who actually…
We saw last week that Eve did not see clearly what was happening in the Garden as Satan tempted her. However, when she offered the fruit to Adam, he knew perfectly well what was occurring. He knew, and yet he seems to have made a deliberate decision to disobey anyway. That is the thrust of 1 Timothy 2:14, when Paul says, “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.” If Adam knew what he was doing, then why did…
We saw in the last posting that rulership begins with the genuine, agape love a husband has for his wife. Without it, trying to implement today’s posting on leadership will lead to oppression, tyranny or disinterest. However, love without authoritative, confident, godly leadership causes a lack of respect and even contempt, as a wife and her children unconsciously seek the strength that the man, as head of his home, is not providing. Strong family leadership from the father also gives security and purpose. If…
The foundation of the rule of the kingdom of God in the family is the unconditional love the husband has for his wife. All other attempts to express that rule without that foundation will never lead to the results we all seek—a home filled with love, joy, peace and secure children who reflect the kingdom in their lives. This love is not the destination; it is the starting point. Nor will it ever be consistently present in my life as a husband until I…
Is there a more vilified, denounced and disparaged concept in our current culture than what immediately springs to mind when the average citizen, Christian or not, hears the word “patriarchy?” To this person, the word is synonymous with selfishness, tyranny, subjugation, and abuse, but the word means simply the “rule” of the father in the family, and the Bible teaches that patriarchy is the only model for a kingdom family (1 Timothy 3:4, 5). This kingdom model is an historical one, first followed in…
As I read the news, I feel like I am living in a crazy, loony-tune cartoon-world. Men are deciding they are women, are demanding that we call them “she” and “her,” and teachers are being fired for refusing to deny biological science when they do not do so. Rather than giving these disturbed “transvestites” psychological help, society encourages them in their folly by giving them hormone treatments and even performing genital surgery to make them as much like the sex they prefer as possible.…
We saw last week that we, as genuine believers in Jesus Christ, have been given work to do here on the earth. We were saved for a purpose—to join with Daddy in His family business of ruling over the earth, practically and not theoretically. How in the world do we do that? We are not holding on against the encroaching hordes of godlessness, waiting breathlessly for Jesus to come back and save us. What do we need to know in order to rule, just…
As our country has gradually moved away from its Christian roots and the culture those roots produced, the results have been amazing. I can remember distinctly what family life was like 50 years ago, Christian or non-Christian, and the contrast to today’s families is dramatic. For example, I recently visited with a friend, a young single adult, who had just babysat the six-year-old daughter of a young Christian, regular church-going family. The daughter had no idea what “authority,” “obey” or “respect” even meant, and…
When we “see” the kingdom of God and that all of us, yes, every one of God’s children, have been given the life-long task to actualize in time what is already true in fact—the right-now rule of Jesus Christ over the whole earth—our lives take on new meaning. We recognize a new reason for living; everything we do comes with a new purpose from a brand new foundation. However, that realization doesn’t come easily. We have been misled into believing that “ruling in the…
Immediately after WWI, a group of German Jewish intellectuals were interested in expanding Karl Marx’s view of economic Marxism to include a cultural aspect as well. They realized that Western Civilization (a product of Christianity) was too firmly embedded in Europe and America to be overcome by purely economic arguments; they worked to devise a method of including cultural change in Marx’s ideas of revolution. This was a direct attack on God and the culture that always follows the true Christian gospel. The began…