We’re currently in a message series called “Become Part of the Family.” In this message series we’re talking about God’s purpose for your life of community or fellowship. God has five purposes for your life and building relationships within the family of God is the one that I’m going to talk about today. None of God’s five purposes for your life is optional. If you don’t grow in these purposes, you’re not going to reach the potential that God created you with. More than that, if you don’t grow in these purposes, you’re going to go through a lot of needless pain in life as well.
People today are relationally challenged, they find it difficult to build and maintain healthy relationships. The most stable of all relationships should be marriage, remember the “till death do us part” phrase? Yet currently about 50% of first marriages end in divorce and the rate for second marriages is even higher. Is this normal? Not at all, people simply don’t know much about building relationships. Life is almost always worse after the divorce than before. When the parents have problems in their relationship, whether it ends in divorce or not, the children have relationship problems and eventually carry them into their own homes.
Why do people today have so much difficulty with relationships? I’m going to postulate two main reasons. The first reason that people have problems in relationships is that they have ignored God and His principles in the Bible. You were never created to try to build healthy relationships without God’s help. Second reason that people have problems in relationships is that the sense of community that surrounded and strengthened families in the past has evaporated. God never intended for you to try to live life in a vacuum, just you and your family and maybe a few relatives. You were created to live life within the context of a godly community.
A strong family can only be built as a unit of God’s family where you are building strong relationships with other believers. NIV Ephesians 4:3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. This verse says that there is a unity of the Spirit in God’s family, a family held together by the bond of peace, a family where conflicts are resolved, a family that is strong and healthy. This unity and peace in God’s family is meant to permeate your family, but it’s not automatic. You and I need to make every effort to keep this unity and peace. If we don’t make any effort, the unity and peace can disintegrate and vanish both in your family and in God’s family.
To hear more about this topic, listen to my June 4, 2006 message entitled Growing Together In A Life Group