Hope for Children from Dysfunctional Families
00:00:00.000 | Well, many factors in our lives condition us and influence how we approach God.
00:00:09.640 | That's the case today in an email from an international listener to the podcast, a teenager.
00:00:14.200 | "Hello, Pastor John.
00:00:15.200 | I'm a 14-year-old and a rather new listener to the podcast.
00:00:19.920 | I live in Southeast Asia.
00:00:21.280 | I have a question about fear, specifically my fear of becoming close with God in the
00:00:26.040 | Bible and through prayer.
00:00:27.440 | I find myself longing to be connected with God but constantly feeling repelled away from
00:00:32.120 | Him too.
00:00:33.120 | I don't get the familial feelings that I should have.
00:00:36.280 | I suspect it could be because of my relationship with my parents is bad.
00:00:40.840 | My mother has been abusive in the past and I never knew my father until recently.
00:00:46.080 | He is unstable.
00:00:47.480 | My family is a real mess."
00:00:49.800 | How do you think family dysfunctions affect our relationship to God?
00:00:55.080 | So our young friend says, "I have a fear of becoming close to God.
00:00:59.800 | I find myself longing to be connected with God but constantly feeling repelled.
00:01:08.160 | I don't get the familial feelings I should have."
00:01:12.680 | And I take him to mean that he knows from the Bible that God is his Father and that
00:01:20.040 | he is God's Son, and yet as he attempts to draw near to God, this fatherly-family
00:01:29.720 | relation doesn't feel like it should.
00:01:34.040 | It probably doesn't feel warm or welcoming or hopeful or safe.
00:01:42.280 | And he wonders whether such a paradox of being drawn to God and repelled by God might be
00:01:52.080 | owing to his earthly-family situation.
00:01:56.920 | So he asks, "How do you think family dysfunctions affect our relationship to God?"
00:02:03.920 | So I'm going to make five brief observations from the Bible that I hope he will dig into
00:02:12.880 | for his own hope and stability.
00:02:15.720 | Number one, get really clear in your mind and heart that the guilt of ungodly parents
00:02:25.640 | does not attach to godly children.
00:02:30.480 | Ezekiel 18:20, "The soul who sins shall die; the son shall not suffer for the iniquity
00:02:41.120 | of the father."
00:02:43.560 | Now don't be confused when God says in Deuteronomy 5:9, "I, the Lord your God, am a jealous
00:02:51.600 | God visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation
00:02:59.500 | of those who hate me."
00:03:01.720 | What that means is that wherever the guilty sins of the fathers persist in the guilty
00:03:09.020 | sins of the sons, there will be a divine judgment.
00:03:13.680 | The key phrase is "those who hate me."
00:03:17.840 | Where the evil of the fathers finds an echo in the hatred of the sons, judgment will come.
00:03:26.480 | So the wonderful truth for our young friend is that his mother's and father's guilt for
00:03:35.880 | sin does not cling to him or condemn him.
00:03:42.020 | In Christ, he stands before God by his own faith.
00:03:47.780 | He is accepted, loved, forgiven because of Christ, and his guilt is taken away.
00:03:54.760 | That is crucial.
00:03:56.020 | Now he has a place, a solid place, to stand as he faces these challenges.
00:04:02.540 | Number two, consider the amazing biblical record of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles about wicked
00:04:12.940 | kings and failing kings of Judah who had sons who turned out to be good kings.
00:04:22.500 | Asa did what was right, but his father Abijah was evil.
00:04:28.700 | Uzziah did what was right, but his father Amaziah failed in his old age.
00:04:35.660 | Hezekiah did what was right in his eyes, in God's eyes, but his father Ahaz was evil.
00:04:43.780 | Josiah did what was right, but his father Ammon did evil.
00:04:49.900 | In other words, the Bible witnesses to the fact that in God's world, many failed fathers
00:04:59.100 | have had righteous and useful sons.
00:05:02.660 | In fact, Jesus said, "Do you think that I've come to give peace on earth?
00:05:07.260 | No, I tell you, but rather division.
00:05:10.620 | Families will be divided, father against son, son against father."
00:05:16.220 | That's what believing will sometimes do in families.
00:05:20.020 | Therefore don't be fatalistic.
00:05:22.140 | Don't think, "Well, failed parenting always produces failed offspring, so there's no hope
00:05:28.340 | for me."
00:05:29.340 | No, that's not what the Bible teaches.
00:05:32.740 | Number three, here's why that is.
00:05:37.420 | Genealogical curses are broken in Christ.
00:05:42.780 | Division and dysfunction may have ruined families for generations, so much so that people can
00:05:49.460 | feel hopeless.
00:05:50.460 | We're just cursed.
00:05:51.460 | I mean, I had people tell me this.
00:05:54.220 | Somebody lost a child on New Year's Eve one time, and I went to visit them immediately
00:05:57.860 | while everybody was celebrating at church, and the father stopped me in the hall, and
00:06:01.220 | he just said, "Does God curse families?"
00:06:05.500 | So much problems come into one family.
00:06:07.860 | We're just cursed.
00:06:09.020 | There's no hope for us.
00:06:10.700 | That's why everything goes wrong in our family.
00:06:13.780 | The fathers—they would say something like this—"The fathers have eaten sour grapes,
00:06:19.620 | and the children's teeth are set on edge."
00:06:22.660 | That's Jeremiah.
00:06:23.660 | And Jeremiah says, "Don't talk like that."
00:06:27.420 | That is not a—that's not the way Israel talks.
00:06:32.940 | Jeremiah 31, 29—Christ is the great curse breaker because of what Paul said in Galatians
00:06:41.900 | 3, 13.
00:06:42.900 | "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us."
00:06:48.700 | Now, if Christ has set us free from the curse rendered by God in his law, how much more
00:06:56.500 | will he break every curse and every spell and every enchantment and every hex that may
00:07:01.900 | loom over your family for generations?
00:07:05.980 | So here's the mindset I think our young friends should have.
00:07:10.940 | God has called me—14-year-old me—God has called me to himself in the midst of a
00:07:18.300 | cursed and broken and dysfunctional family.
00:07:21.600 | This is my time.
00:07:23.600 | This is my calling.
00:07:25.300 | He has raised me up to break this curse.
00:07:28.180 | He has raised me up to free this family from generations of dysfunction from now on.
00:07:34.300 | I belong to Jesus.
00:07:36.180 | I have a perfect Father in heaven.
00:07:39.260 | I will, by his power, build a new generation.
00:07:43.500 | That's what I think his mindset should be.
00:07:46.340 | Fourth, keep in mind that God assumes that all of us come to Christ with a defaced image
00:07:55.560 | of God and who he is and who Christ is.
00:07:59.580 | In other words, don't think it's unusual that because of your distorted fathering or
00:08:05.940 | mothering or sonship that your view of God is distorted.
00:08:11.060 | That's not unusual.
00:08:12.540 | It's universal.
00:08:15.180 | Sin has ruined everybody's view of God and self.
00:08:22.000 | Everybody comes into Christ with a distorted, dysfunctional, demeaning view of God.
00:08:29.660 | That's what sin has done.
00:08:31.620 | We spend a lifetime trying to fix it, which means that all of us must experience in our
00:08:38.660 | mind and in our heart a massive revolution in the way we think about God in all of his
00:08:45.740 | roles.
00:08:46.740 | All of us.
00:08:48.460 | Some people have one distortion of God.
00:08:50.880 | Some people have another.
00:08:52.800 | And yes, our parents had something to do with that.
00:08:55.960 | So did a lot of other things.
00:08:58.040 | The process of sanctification for every Christian is this, 2 Corinthians 3.18, "Beholding
00:09:05.720 | the glory of the Lord, we are being changed into his likeness."
00:09:14.560 | In other words, every Christian needs to have a Bible bath for every thought in our head.
00:09:24.040 | Every thought needs cleansing.
00:09:25.840 | Every thought needs adjusting.
00:09:27.720 | Paul says it happens by looking, looking, looking to Christ and to God in Christ.
00:09:35.600 | So I say to our young friend, join all of us.
00:09:40.340 | Join all of us and fix your eyes on the way the Bible describes God as your Father, God
00:09:47.920 | as your Shepherd, God as your King, God as your Friend.
00:09:51.600 | And don't think you are unusual because you must undergo such a revolution in your
00:09:57.600 | thinking.
00:09:58.600 | You're not unusual.
00:09:59.600 | You're normal.
00:10:00.600 | And then the last thing I would say, number five, is that most of us have been lamed.
00:10:08.080 | I think I could say all of us, but I'll just leave it most, lest anybody stumble over absolute
00:10:13.480 | statements.
00:10:15.160 | Most of us have been lamed by past experiences, deep experiences of shame.
00:10:22.000 | I remember a few horrific experiences when I was a child of being shamed, not by my parents,
00:10:28.160 | but others, or rejection or abuse or trauma of all kinds.
00:10:34.120 | We should have a realistic view that some of these wounds are like Jacob's hip being
00:10:40.420 | put out of joint.
00:10:42.680 | We will walk the rest of our lives with an emotional limp.
00:10:48.920 | This doesn't mean we can't have a deep, satisfying, loving walk with our Heavenly
00:10:54.320 | Father through Jesus Christ.
00:10:57.280 | It just means we should be realistic.
00:11:00.880 | The healing of wounds can still leave scars, and even those, though they make us limp,
00:11:10.280 | can be turned to the glory of Christ.
00:11:13.440 | Man, there is a lot in those five responses to meditate on.
00:11:18.440 | Thank you, Pastor John, for your wisdom, for your counsel.
00:11:20.440 | I really appreciate it.
00:11:21.620 | Thank you for listening today.
00:11:23.540 | If you have a hard and sensitive question, you can send it our way and we will keep your
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00:11:35.120 | You may find answers to your questions there.
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00:11:44.920 | You can do all of that online at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:11:51.600 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:11:52.600 | We will see you next time on the podcast on Wednesday.
00:11:56.000 | Until then, thanks for listening.
00:11:57.000 | We'll see you then.
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