The Kingdom Family
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Do You Want to Be Happy
Do You Want to Be Happy
How would you define happiness? What does happiness look like? It is always interesting to me when I see people who have less but seem more happy. Many times many of us seek happiness in jobs, relationships, church location, and even hobbies. It would be unwise for me to say that happiness comes from any of those things. When we seek happiness in temporal things it can often times turn to idolatry.
What about happiness in your families or in your marriage? How do we achieve that? What does a blessed family look like in the eyes of God? In effort to understand what a blessed family looks like one had to know what are the puzzle pieces to a family. Gods design is husband and wife and in many cases children.
There are times of misery in our families. This misery can be prevalent despite the amount of kids, the amount of money in the bank account or the square footage of the home. On the other hand I have heard and experienced some of the happiest times in my family in our smallest house, cheaper cars, and a few dollars in my bank account.
True blessedness comes from our ability to prioritize God and fear him as he deserves. The true blessings of our life can be traced through our ability to trust God and walk in his ways.
Obedience + Reverence = Blessedness
Obedience + Reverence = Blessedness
“How blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways.
Being blessed begins with God. This idea of blessedness meaning highly favored or fortunate, as by divine grace. In other words happy.
The caveat to blessings is fearing the Lord and walking in his ways.
The family has to be one that fears God. This concept is done by example. If the leader of the family is not in fear of God most likely the rest of the family with follow.
Fearing the Lord or reverencing him, worshipping him. Children should see your praise and worship to God often, and not just on Sunday’s.
Here’s where obedience comes in. The bible tells us this blessedness comes from those who walk in His Ways.
The ways of Yaweh, we must walk in.
walks - to live or behave as in a specified manner. Essentially to travel through life in a way that is pleasing unto God.
Walk in the ways of God means to walk on the road that he built in the way that God would desire.
And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”
Joshua had the ability to speak for his entire family because he walked in the ways of the Lord, his family had no other choice but to respect his decree.
Trees are Supposed To Produce Fruit
Trees are Supposed To Produce Fruit
When you shall eat of the fruit of your hands, You will be happy and it will be well with you.
The idea of happiness continues as we look at the seed investment we have made in our families.
When you shall eat, sowing discord and dysfunction will lead to fruit of that therein. Sowing devotion and obedience to God will reap plentiful benefits with your offspring.
Say to the righteous that it will go well with them, for they will eat the fruit of their actions.
This picture of a family tree is expressed through the eyes of a wife being like a fruitful vine within the home as prescribed in verse 3.
She shall be like a fruitful vine within your house…
In effort for a vine to be fruitful there must be water (resource) that nourishes that vine.
We cannot miss “within” this vine being within or referring to the deepest most remove part of your house.
There is a deepness to the effect that a wife will have with her children.
She might have fruitful vine potential but if that vine is not cared for we are not doing our job as men.
Your mother was like a vine in your vineyard, planted by the waters; it was fruitful and full of branches because of abundant water.
What are you watering you vine with? How are you treating your vine to prepare for fruitfulness.
“Your children like olive plants around your table.
This idea of children being as an Olive shoots is paramount to this text.
But as for me, I am like a green olive tree in the house of God; I trust in the lovingkindness of God forever and ever.
Olive shoots need water every day. Even so much that it is advised that when tending to a new plant that you water them daily and keep an irrigation drip on them as well.
They can’t just be planted in any soil, it has to be a rich soil in effort for them to grow to their potential.
Olive shoots typically have to be tied to a tree trunk of strength. Children need to know what it is like to grow up in a home with strong parents and grandparents.
The idea for most olives is growing them into ripeness to prepare them to be pressed for oil.
Life will press you, and you need to be prepared for the pressing.
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down but not destroyed.
Imagine your family as a solar system, Tony Evans prescribes. There is a gravitational pull from the son that keeps planets in orbit. When that gravitational pull is not strong enough the planets fall out of orbit. Similar to our families, we have to keep our families close to the son, because when they lose that gravitational pull they fall victim to space in which gravity does not exist. It is our duty to keep our families in orbit with God. When God is not the center we leave our family out to be destroyed by space, left to spin out of control.
This is what happens when we fear and obey the Lord it leads to happiness or blessedness from God. Our families are the embodiment of our zeal.