Godly families don’t happen by accident. Godly families are built by godly parents – parents (and especially godly men) who are willing to do the hard work and pursue the sometimes painful process it takes to see their God-given family vision accomplished.
I recently heard this statement that has stuck with me, that “Everything is either growing or it’s dying.” Whether it’s a plant, a person, or a family. Nothing living remains stagnant or in one place. It is either moving forward, or it’s not.
Parents, is your family growing, or is it dying? Are you moving forward with intentionality, simply maintaining out of complacency, or at worst, slowly dying through apathy? Do you have a family vision for the coming year? Because no year in the life of your family can afford to be wasted.
There are many things in general that most of us want to be true of our family – a good marriage, well-behaved children, a home that honors the Lord. But how do we actually know or measure if those things are happening, or if our family is really accomplishing its mission? How do we know if what we say we believe and stand for actually translates into practical life and living for our family members?
In our home, we have been discussing this idea over the last couple of weeks. We’ve been thinking through how we can get everyone on the same page about what our family is all about, what we stand for, and what makes us uniquely who God created us to be as ‘Linders’. We asked ourselves this question, “If we had to articulate what it means to be a Linder, and who we are as a family, could we do it?”
And so we decided to put a pen to paper to figure it out, “What are the things that we value most and why? And in what ways can we practically live these things out?”
Over the course of multiple family meetings and discussions, we came up with seven areas that state who we are and what we do as a family. And we came up with a practical and visible plan for us to be able to clearly identify these seven things and hold each other accountable to them.
Our goal is that these core values will become a filter through which we do life. And when we have decisions to make, we will filter them through these values.
What would it take for your family to turn good intentions into intentionally by identifying who and what God has created you to be? I’m convinced you can do it, and here are a few resources that might help that we used as springboards:
Here’s a look at our family core values. Feel free to steal ideas from ours, completely come up with your own, or a little of both.
If you’d like to see the more detailed list of practical ways we will strive to live each of these out, click here. If you have questions that I can answer for you about this, just let me know. I’d be glad to help!
