Does God Bless Families That Have a Non Believer
The Family—God'due south Approving to All Peoples
We idea it would be safer 1 and faster to win individuals. We found it to be safer and faster to win households and other groups.
— Trevor Larsen,* autobus for rapidly multiplying movements
Still, when motion coaches urge winning house-holds rather than individuals, some react:
What about Jesus identifying those who do God's will as his mother and brothers? What well-nigh Jesus maxim he came to divide families? And what about Jesus telling the states to hate our families?
Do these rare "hard sayings" overrule the Bible'due south emphasis on honoring our parents and providing for our families?
Individualism vs. Family
In contempo centuries, Western gild has embraced individualism—valuing the independence of individuals in a higher place family and societal expectations. Individualism says, "Salvage your ain life and pursue your ain dreams, regardless of how that affects others." This contributes to the breakdown of families.
Throughout most of history, even so, societies have held the opposite value system. In the Bible, and much of the world still (specially Frontier People Groups, or FPGs), is valued service to family and community above personal dreams and independence. independence: "Don't seek to salvage your ain life. Pursue the benefit of your family unit and your people in the generations to come up."
At a Pakistan university a Western invitee speaker said:
"I am not here to tell yous how to succeed by yourself, because that is non important. What is important is for your families and communities, back in your homelands, to become healthy and strong and take all their needs met. What I am telling you today is non merely for you, just for your family and people for generations to come."
The students began clapping—slowly at first, then rise to a standing ovation.
"I have never seen our students clap before!" the department head afterward told the speaker. "What you said has touched our hearts."
Does Jesus' sacrifice for the residue of humanity correspond a family centered or individualistic value organization?
Does our gospel urge individuals to pause with their family unit and people in society to follow Jesus, or to become God's blessing to their household and the generations to come?
Family unit (Mishpachah) in the Bible
Mishpachah appears more than 300 times in the Sometime Testament. There is no directly parallel in English language, equally mishpachah includes "generations yet to come." Mishpachah is just ane in a prepare of Hebrew and Greek words with a generational perspective, variously translated association, family, tribe, people, or nation. In English we could retrieve of all of these as "family lines" of varying sizes.
In God'south foundational hope to Abram (Abraham) in Gen. 12:3, the final recipient of God'due south approving volition not be every individual, but ALL mishpachah. Paul labels this promise "the gospel preached in advance to Abraham" (Gal. three:8). Blessing and conservancy aren't just for individuals, simply also for households and whole family lines.
From this biblical perspective, nosotros can understand the biblical terms translated people/nation as:
Households bonded together in preserving a shared generational identity—through intermarriage, the continuation of traditions, and rejection of outside influences.
Many FPGs are isolated from the gospel in office by their perception and fear of Christianity as a threat to their households and to the historic identity they are seeking to preserve. One study of Christianity in India observed this in action:
The adoption of Christianity by one group within a generic community would lead to a strengthening of non-Christian identity among other groups within the aforementioned customs.2
When our evangelism methods win individuals away from their families among FPGs, we reinforce these fears within the FPG.
The Father loving ALL mishpachah back to himself
Woven throughout Scripture, we see God's intertwined commitment to bless individuals, households and family lines (nations/peoples):
- Individuals blessed past God receive redemption, adoption into God'south family, a committee to exist fruitful (reproduce) and a physical or spiritual family unit line (generational blessing and destiny).
- Households blessed by God experience healing, strengthening and unity to become His stable, reproducing vehicle of blessing to other households and time to come generations.3
- Nations/peoples blessed by God temper their fierce independence to embrace a new and better identity and destiny—in Him. They too become "His mishpachah." 4
Even earlier the Fall, God blessed mankind (the kickoff household) with a commission they were to fulfill as households (to reproduce, Gen 1:28). God afterward blessed Abram with a commission for his family line to become God's blessing to all mishpachah. Israel was thus called as the get-go family unit line to anoint the rest, for other family lines to follow adapt. As each of our family lines is adopted into God's family, we too share in this committee/blessing.
HisStory (and the gospel) tin be summarized this manner:
God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) is patiently loving estranged individuals, households and family lines back into His family line, then calling our family lines to join Him in loving the rest of the estranged human being family—in every family unit line—back to Himself .
The commission is for our children and disciples
In the verses above, we besides run across that the commission is not for Abraham to fulfill alone, only for the generations to come up. Nosotros (Abraham's spiritual children) deport this committee besides, along with the responsibility for education it to the next generation. Our chief responsibility (next to intimate friendship with God) lies in what we model and teach our children and disciples, not only in what nosotros ourselves accomplish for God's kingdom.
The blessing/committee throughout Scripture
This blessing/committee, through Abraham's seed for all peoples (family unit lines), is repeated directly to Abraham two more times (Gen. 18:eighteen, 22:xviii), so to Isaac (26:four), then to Jacob (28:14). The Old Testament, particularly the Psalms, carries many more explicit and implicit references to this blessing/commission. In the New Testament, more explicit references include:
- Acts 3:25 (Peter references Gen. 22:eighteen and 26:4): "You are heirs of … the covenant God made with your fathers. He said to Abraham, 'Through your offspring all peoples on globe will be blessed.'"
- Galatians 3:viii (Paul references Gen. 12:iii, 18:18 and 22:18): "Scripture … announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: 'All nations will be blest through you.'"
- Hebrews vi:17 (the author references Gen. 22:xvi–xviii): "Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very articulate to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed information technology with an oath."
The "Great Committee" of Matt. 28:18–20, along with the parallel commissions in the other gospels and Acts, are all in directly fulfillment of God'southward committee to Abraham.
The commission starts with intercession
Then the LORD said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham volition surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth volition be blessed through him. For I take called him, and then that he volition direct his children and his household afterward him to keep the way of the LORD past doing what is right and just, so that the LORD will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him " (Gen.eighteen:17–19, emphasis added).
In the larger story where these verses announced, God sets upward Abraham to bless others through intercession. Abraham responds by pleading for God'southward mercy on Sodom and Gomorrah, where Abraham's nephew Lot lives.
Practical implications
Movements happen simply when the gospel blesses and multiplies through households and other natural groupings. In 1982 Donald McGavran observed that ninety% of missionaries among the unreached were attempting to draw individuals abroad from their families rather than anoint these families with a view to starting movements.5
Might FPGs more readily cover Jesus if we present the gospel in Paul'southward terms, as:
- God'south desire to redeem and bless their households and their full family line through following Jesus together,
- rather than urging individuals to break with their family and community to follow Jesus?
Breaking with family should non be the common practice our evangelism sometimes makes it into. Let us learn to invite families to pursue God together, only as we meet throughout the Bible.
Jesus came to give life, and to anoint all the families of the earth (John 1:ten and Gal. three:8). This was His exercise, and it should be ours also.
Thus we must enquire, individually and collectively, do our ministry approaches aim to:
- produce a visible boutonniere of flowers cut off from their roots (winning individuals away from their families to produce a church of gathered strangers such every bit we are familiar with back domicile), or
- plant gospel seeds that can spread to produce a forest in the years to come (approval households with God's discussion in a way that multiplies throughout a people)?
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Source: https://www.missionfrontiers.org/issue/article/the-familygods-blessing-to-all-peoples