Praise the Lord for all His gifts to us and for all His promises to us. Praise the Lord for Summertime. We had some refreshing rains yesterday, praise the Lord for showers of blessings. I'm scheduled to officiate six weddings in the next few weeks. Jesus loves weddings. He showed up in Cana of Galilee at a wedding reception and performed His first miracle as it is recorded in John 2. The Lord ordained family and marriage. In the book of Genesis we read God's wonderful plan for our lives. He created Adam and Eve and not Adam and Steve. We live in a confused culture that rebels blatantly against the Lord's Holy plans. But the Lord has ordained home and marriage for our wellness and wholeness. The home was meant to be a redemptive force in our lives. The family is where we learn about healing. When we have been wounded by the world, the home should be a place of retreat. When we have been beat up by the world, the home should be a place where we are built up. When we have been wounded by the world, home is where our wounds are mended and our hurts are healed. We need to learn how to restore each other and restore our relationships. Franklin Graham was with us here in New York for The NYPENN Franklin Graham Festival just a few weeks ago. The Lord blessed us and our region bountifully. through the ministry of Franklin Graham.. Franklin shared with us that It was not easy being Billy’s son. When he was born on July 14, 1952, the fourth of five children, the letters poured in predicting that he would be everything from a famous preacher to the pope. At an early age he learned that everyone expected him to fill his father’s shoes. But Franklin had no aspirations of being like his father. Some said he was a difficult child growing up, but his mother said he was just a normal boy — “Just as good as he could be, and just as bad as he could get by with.” But his rebellious spirit grew, and he began drinking heavily. He loved motorcycles and began traveling the world. He writes openly about his rebellion in his book Rebel with a Cause. At age 22 he was in Jerusalem, staying in a hotel when the Spirit of God began to break in upon his life. He realized that just being the son of Billy Graham was not going to get him into heaven. That night he committed his life to Christ. His ministry is totally different from his father’s. He says, “I’ve been called to the slums of the streets and the ditches of the world.” There has been a complete turnaround in his life, and it is due to a family. They continued to believe in him and pray for him. It was the redemptive influence in his life. It brought forgiveness, healing and reconciliation. Without their continued love, in spite of their disappointment over the choices he was making, he would have been the prodigal who never came home.
This is how the Lord wants our families to operate. We continue to believe in the people in our home and pull them in rather than push them away. We heal each other rather than hurt. We look for the good in spite of past performance. The Bible says, “Love is very patient and kind, never jealous or envious, never boastful or proud, never haughty or selfish or rude. Love does not demand its own way. It is not irritable or touchy. It does not hold grudges and will hardly even notice when others do it wrong. It is never glad about injustice, but rejoices whenever truth wins out. If you love someone, you will be loyal to him no matter what the cost. You will always believe in him, always expect the best of him, and always stand your ground in defending him.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7, ).
In 1502 in Florence, Italy a large block of marble was donated to a church in Santa Maria. The church hired a sculptor whom they assumed was experienced in working with marble. However, the man was not as capable as he claimed to be, and soon after beginning, it appeared that he had ruined the magnificent piece of stone. For a long time the church draped a large sheet over it not knowing what else to do. But a certain man known as Michelangelo heard what had happened, and out of curiosity went to examine it. After some time, he began to work on the marble and found its grain to be beautiful. As he began to sculpt what was once thought to be ruined, he created one of the great art pieces of all time — the statue of David. There are people today who appear to others to be a ruined mess — a lost cause. They have made life-altering mistakes. They are broken. But God has given us families that we might be healed and restored to life. We don’t want our disappointments to lead to missed opportunities to restore and heal.
The family is where we learn about our worth. We understand our worth to God because we have worth from our family members. We are not accepted based on our performance, but our standing as members of the family. We love our children, not because they make us proud, but because they are our children and no one can take their place in our lives. They don’t have to accomplish great things to be appreciated. Our acceptance is not based on how beautiful we are, how intelligent, how strong or how successful. Our acceptance is based on the fact that we are a creation of God and important to Him. The Bible says, “Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of malicious behavior. Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:31-32).
The Bible says, “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing” (1 Peter 3:9). God will bless you when you bless those who curse you because you want to reverse the cycle. The apostle Paul said, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:17-18). Sometimes it is possible and sometimes it is not. But obeying these important scriptural injunctions will not only bring a blessing, they will bring healing to our home. Every family has its own set of dysfunctions, whether that is in the immediate family or the extended family. We don’t want to continue those dysfunctions, we want to stop them and even reverse them. . We will not allow the sins and sickness of past generations affect our family and home. Jesus breaks power of sin. He breaks the power of canceled sin. He sets the prisoner free. He has the power to break the bondage in our lives, He is able to remove the generational curse from us. He makes all things new in His time. He restores us and keeps us in the hollow of His Hand so that we can serve Him with joyful obedience.The family is where we learn about service. Our homes should be where we learn how to live unselfishly — from the earliest years where we teach our children how to share, to adulthood where we learn to share the responsibilities and work in the home. We learn how to think of the needs of others. We put others first. We go out of our way to serve, even when it is inconvenient or uncomfortable. The Bible says, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms” (1 Peter 4:1). We become imitators of God and participate in his character as we become his servants in administering His grace. We lose our lives in order to gain our lives. We lose ourselves in serving others as we put their needs before our own. When this is not present, then chaos ensues. The Bible says, “For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice” (James 3:16). Dysfunction in the family, or on a personal level, comes when we put ourselves first. Paul wrote: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3). I love the story of Marian Preminger who was born in Hungary in 1913. As a child she lived in a castle, the daughter of an aristocratic family, surrounded by maids, tutors, governesses, butlers, and chauffeurs. Her grandmother, who lived with them, insisted that whenever they traveled, they take their own linen, because she believed it was beneath their dignity to sleep on sheets used by common people. Marian attended school in Vienna and met a handsome young Viennese doctor. They eloped and married when she was only eighteen. The marriage lasted only a year, and she returned to Vienna undeterred, and began a career as an actress. While auditioning for a play, she met the brilliant young German director, Otto Preminger. They married shortly after, and went to America, where he began his career as a movie director. Marian was caught up in the glamour, and superficial excitement, and soon began to live a sordid life. When Preminger discovered it, he divorced her. Marian returned to Europe to live the life of a socialite in Paris. In 1948 she learned through the newspaper that Albert Schweitzer, the man she had read about as a little girl, was making a visit to Europe and was staying at Gunsbach. She called and made an appointment to see Dr. Schweitzer the next day. When Marian arrived in Gunsbach she discovered he was in the village church playing the organ. She listened and turned pages of music for him. Afterwards they talked, and by the end of the day a light came on inside of her that enabled her to see life in a whole new way. When Schweitzer returned to Africa he invited her to come to Lambarene and work in the hospital. Marian became a different person. There in Lambarene, the girl who was born in a castle and raised like a princess, who was accustomed to being waited on with all the luxuries of a spoiled life, became a servant. She changed bandages, bathed babies, fed lepers — and became free. Marian wrote her autobiography and called it, "All I Ever Wanted Was Everything." She died in 1979, but she was fond of quoting Albert Schweitzer who said, There are two classes of people in this world — the helpers, and the non-helpers.” Marian decided she would be a helper. That was quite a change from the girl who always looked down on servants. But by the transforming grace of God she became one. May it be so with all of us.
In Jesus,
Brown
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