The Family Reformed: Basics
What do you mean “Reformed”?
Think of Christianity as a cast-iron skillet. It's pretty solid, nearly unbreakable, and lasts a life-time. More than that, actually! It passes down through generations. I still cook with my grandfather’s cast-iron skillet. But how many of us have gotten out that skillet to find that we had put it away without drying it fully? Take that heavy, indestructible, far superior skillet and add something that seems as pure and harmless as water to it and it really won’t take long to find it’s starting to rust.
Our Christian churches and Christian families are built on beliefs that are solid, but we are not impervious to faulty thinking. We are not incorruptible. Seemingly harmless world-views and philosophies get in and quickly start to corrupt our Christian beliefs and practice. Like rust on an iron skillet. Sometimes this can go on until what was once worthy of passing on to children and grand-children now looks like garbage and they want nothing to do with it.
So the best thing about cast iron? You can clean it up! Even the rustiest skillets can be restored and made to look like new! “Reforming” is like restoring. It’s like getting a metal scrub pad and cleaning off the rust. I love how indestructible cast iron is, and Christianity is even more than that. But our churches and our families often require de-rusting and re-seasoning. Let’s get scrubbing!
Reformed Family Basics
Read to know God.
The first thing you want to do is read your Bible. But don’t just read to check that box. And, at least for now, don’t read to find personal application in every verse. Don’t read it as a meaningless history book.
Man's chief end, our purpose, is to glorify God. So start by reading your Bible to know God. Learn who He is from His own Word. Knowing who God is allows us to rightly practice our belief in Him. This brings Him glory and honor and praise. Sloppy, lazy, anything-goes Christianity only works to diminish God’s reputation. We become something more like a barrier to His glory rather than a demonstration of it.
Start in Genesis. What’s the first thing you learn about God? Straight up – God is Creator.
Now keep reading with that perspective: God is Creator.
Who are you, o man? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
To fear the Lord is to place Him properly and place ourselves accordingly. Don't read God’s Word through the lens of what you already know or how you feel. Let what you read become the lens through which everything else is understood. Keep reading, always asking God to give you a correct picture of Himself, destroying any false images we have made.
Submit to the authority of God's Word
As you continue to read God’s Word, submit yourself, your marriage, and your parenting to the instruction of the Lord – clearly given to us in Scripture. Know your role. Let Scripture define your responsibilities and boundaries, and prayerfully submit to them. Know that God gave us instruction for our good. The Creator of heaven and earth, church and family, knows the design and gave us the manual. Follow it!
There is a quote I love from a character in a C.S. Lewis book – “There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one.”
There’s only one true interpretation of Scripture, and yes – we are fallen, so we certainly are capable of misinterpreting. I don't think that should allow us to make excuses. God’s Word was not written exclusively to theologians to decipher and decode for the layman. It's pretty straightforward for the most part. The Holy Spirit enables us to understand, illumines various texts at various times, and equips us to live obedient to the Word.
I am skeptical of people that make excuses for differing interpretations. Especially when it allows for a wide open, to-each-their-own mentality. It's like saying any combination of numbers will work to open a combination lock, as long as you turn right, turn left one full rotation, turn right. The motion might be correct, but nothing clicked in place. But the reality is, once the truth clicks in place, it's silly to give it the same weight as any other viewpoint. The right interpretation is in fact the right interpretation.
When you know the truth, submit to it. Don’t make excuses, but ask for God’s strength and guidance. Living biblically is absolutely going against the current. You will feel resistance. But God’s grace is sufficient to keep us going, and even flourish in obedience.
Family Worship
What is the Great Commission? To make disciples - teaching them to obey Jesus’ commands. Funny how this seems to be the greatest motivator for mass evangelism while true discipleship has been forgotten. There is a push in the church to get parents to serve everywhere but in their own home and everyone but their own family. At the surface, this push to serve not only seems harmless, but noble and right. We should serve, right? And my goodness, we need volunteers, don’t we!
We have countless programs and activities in place to offer some resemblance of discipleship to our children. These children’s programs have been elevated to the status of necessary for true discipleship.
I believe, though, that what many are failing to see is that these programs remove children from proper discipleship and instead offer a watered-down, chaotic, hour-long substitution. We’ve become satisfied, nay, we praise this sort of “discipleship” and have forsaken intentional, daily teaching in our homes.
And what has been the result? The need for more programs, of course! Because each generation of undiscipled children is actually growing - the reverse of what should be happening. We must return to family worship!
What does that look like? It’s a simple as fathers reading and discussing God’s Word with their families. It’s praying and singing together. Put the burden of Sunday School back on the father’s shoulder. Church should be supplemental, not primary.
Christian parents have forgotten that their most important job on this earth, for this time, is to disciple their children. Don’t just get your children to accept Christ, teach them to follow Him! Teach them all he has commanded us. This is THE job. It isn’t something that should be diminished and outsourced.
Join a Bible Believing / Bible Preaching Church
Church cannot and should not replace Family Worship. But neither can Family Worship replace Church! Belonging to a church is necessary for all believers. It is necessary for strengthening individuals, families, communities, and the world! We must join with the body of believers to worship God and build each other up.
The current trend in churches is to be a church for the lost. If you’re not lost, don’t go to that church! It’s not for you! Go to a church that elevates God above man - even lost man. Go to a church that has a stated and practiced commitment to worshipping God. This does not mean that the lost will fall by the wayside - God knows how to find the lost. The lost don’t know how to find themselves. How can we let what appeals to the lost determine our liturgy? Instead, the church should strengthen and equip believers for evangelism in their daily lives and discipleship in their homes.
Join a church that recognizes the authority of Scripture. In the same way that parents should submit to the authority of Scripture in their lives, so should church leaders submit to that same authority. What good is a church or church leader that will compromise on Scripture? Suddenly there is no authority, no standard, no playbook. Eventually every command will be gray and obeyed at the discretion of individual feelings.
If your pastor is preaching from what seems like an abridged version of the Bible, you'll end up carrying the load God ordained pastors to carry. Fathers will struggle to find the time to both provide for their family and study God’s Word with the zeal and depth that God called pastors to do. Mothers will feel lost and unsupported in raising children in a biblical, counter-cultural way. A good church equips believers with sound doctrine which is useful for healthy marriages, for raising fruitful children, and for proper evangelism in the believers’ daily walk.
Persevere
This is a life-long endeavor and it is absolutely worth the effort.
Our natural tendency is to fill our time with the wrong things. Are the demands of life worth forsaking the spiritual health of our family? Every day is a new day with new mercies, a new opportunity to read the Bible with your spouse and with your children. It’s never too late to begin. Or begin again. Again.
Stay in the Word and in prayer and in church and keep running the race. Fight the good fight and keep the rust off the skillet.