Facing Prometheus — Week 22 (Sacred Lives in a Secular World) | “Family Matters” | Pastor Erica Parrish
The series has been camped in Ephesians 6:1–4 for a few weeks, looking at children, parents, and especially fathers. This week Pastor Erica Parrish widens the lens to the whole household. Most of God’s instructions come simply as commands. The Ten Commandments lay out the do’s and don’ts, and even when Jesus simplifies the whole law down to two commands in Matthew 22, he attaches no promise. He just states them. But the command to honor father and mother is different. It is the first commandment with a promise attached, and Deuteronomy goes even further with that promise: honor your father and mother so that you may live long and prosper in the land.
In Week 22 of Facing Prometheus: A Letter to the Ephesians and the Future Church Dilemma, Pastor Erica turns from the theology of the family to the practice of it: seven things a family cannot forsake if it is going to become a home where God is exalted and families experience real connection and unity. Running through all of it is a strong word for broken families. The church itself is the spiritual family God uses to heal what has been broken.
The Text — Ephesians 6:1–4
“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, because this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, so that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life in the land. Fathers, don’t stir up anger in your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”
— Ephesians 6:1–4 (CSB)
We cannot ignore the power of the promise here. When more is attached to a command, that is a signal to take note of its importance. The obedience of a child leads to longevity and prosperity. Parents, in most cases though sadly not all, provide safety, security, conviction, boundaries, and good teaching, and they model what it looks like to follow God. An obedient child learns from all of it, and their own life is deeply shaped. Proverbs paints the same picture, calling a parent’s instruction a garland of favor (Proverbs 1:8–9) that brings many days, a full life, and well-being (Proverbs 3:1–2).
And just as children are called to obey, parents, particularly fathers, are called not to frustrate their children.
★★ It’s like Paul is saying: make the path to obedience as easy as possible.
The Nuclear Family and the Spiritual Family
Before getting practical, Pastor Erica addressed the importance of the nuclear family, a home with both a father and a mother, an institution being attacked on every side. This is tender ground given how high the divorce rate is, even in the church. For anyone in a single-parent home, the beauty of the church is that it heals the broken family through the spiritual family. She pictured it like this:
The nuclear family is not God’s only means of discipleship. Scripture is full of spiritual fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters. But study after study shows that when children experience the stability, presence, and covenant commitment of a healthy mother and father, they are more likely to flourish emotionally, physically, spiritually, and economically. That is not a message of shame for broken families. It is a reminder of why the church must fight for strong marriages, intentional parenting, and spiritual families that carry one another’s burdens. God can restore anything that has been broken, and he does it through the body of Christ.
Family scholar Urie Bronfenbrenner called the family the most human, the most powerful, and the most economical system known for “making and keeping human beings human.”
★★★ Nothing builds people better than the family, and nothing ever will. It is God’s design for human flourishing.
The family is also the pillar of society. Francis Foulkes, in his commentary on Ephesians, observed that the strength of family life and the training of children toward order and obedience have always been marks of a stable community, and that when the bonds of family break and respect for parents fails, a community becomes decadent and will not live long. Our culture is dismantling the very institution God called sacred. Parents are being sidelined, children are being handed decisions that would burden a mature adult, and in place of the family we are offered a counterfeit that looks caring but cannot deliver what only covenant and commitment can.
Yet God is not deterred by a broken family. He has always used others to lead people whose family was not the idyllic picture: Moses had Jethro, Ruth had Naomi, Timothy had Paul and his grandmother Lois and mother Eunice while his own father was not a believer. The early church became fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters to one another.
★★★ God’s answer to broken families has never been abandonment. It has always been redemption through his people. Which is exactly why the spiritual family is so essential.
Seven Things a Family Cannot Forsake
1. Do not forsake discipleship
It is easy to leave discipleship up to the church, but parents have to recognize the power of discipleship in the home. Two everyday spaces have proven especially fruitful:
- The table. Eat together as often as possible, even just thirty minutes in the busiest seasons. Sharing weekly highs and lows opens the door to speak into situations, correct language, and teach the Word. The research backs it up: children who eat five to seven family dinners a week are more likely to earn mostly As and Bs, and significantly less likely to engage in high-risk behaviors including alcohol, drug, and tobacco use, depression and suicide, violence, and antisocial behavior, compared to those who eat zero or one dinners together.
- Bedtime. When the world slows down, the weight of the day comes out: rumors they’ve heard, worries, fears. Making space for conversation at bedtime tends to produce the best conversations, the chance to point children to Jesus, give them tools for anxiety, sit with them in sadness, and pray over their fears.
Deuteronomy 6:4–7 (CSB) — Listen, Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
2. Do not forsake the role of the church
Just 1 percent of teens ages 15 to 17 raised by parents who attached little importance to religion were highly religious in their mid to late twenties. By contrast, 82 percent of children raised by parents who talked about faith at home, attached great importance to their beliefs, and were active in their congregations were religiously active as young adults, according to the National Study of Youth and Religion. The church helps build the home, but regular commitment to the body and the way you model your beliefs at home work together to make it far more likely that your children keep walking with God. Bring them on the journey with you. The danger is being so afraid to “force” them that we forget they are also ours to steward.
Joshua 24:15 (CSB) — But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.
Joshua doesn’t ask his family’s permission. He walks in the authority given to him and chooses the path his family will take.
3. Do not forsake boundaries
The discipline and instruction of the Lord is the highest duty of Christian parents. As Foulkes puts it, parents should care more for their children’s loyalty to Christ than for anything else, more than their health, their intellect, their prosperity, their social position, or their freedom from sorrow.
1 Corinthians 13:6–7 (CSB) — Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
To protect the family, we have to put up boundaries that do exactly that, building a healthy, vibrant, God-ordained family unit together. And for anyone sitting with regret over the years lost, the boundaries not set, the screen handed over just for a moment of peace: this is not condemnation, and God doesn’t condemn you either.
★★ The door is not closed. The prodigal’s father never stopped watching the road, and neither should you.
4. Do not forsake encouragement
Our homes should be full of encouragement. Paul tells fathers not to frustrate their children, and says it again to the Colossians:
Colossians 3:21 (CSB) — Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they won’t become discouraged.
This doesn’t mean we stop correcting. It means we also learn to listen and communicate well. It is easier to shut a child down, but a little encouragement and a listening ear, even in the middle of correction, goes a long way. As Dunnam and Ogilvie write, continuous criticism and discipline that diminishes rather than affirms a person’s self-worth breaks the spirit. Discipline is essential, but it needs the context of reciprocal respect.
5. Do not forsake prayer
It is tempting to forsake prayer, to grow unintentional, or with a wayward child to simply give up. But your prayer is working. Augustine, one of the greatest theologians in church history, traced his conversion in his Confessions not first to a sermon but to the prayers of a mother who refused to stop believing.
2 Timothy 1:5 (CSB) — I recall your sincere faith that first lived in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am convinced, is in you also.
Pray for your children and pray with your children. One study found that children from families who regularly said grace before meals were more than three times as likely to attend church weekly as young adults, climbing from 7 percent to 22 percent.
6. Do not forsake the Holy Spirit
Everything we do requires the Holy Spirit. The Spirit saturates our conversations with our kids in grace, highlights when things have gone too far, and brings to light what is hidden.
John 14:26 (CSB) — But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
7. Do not forsake apologizing and forgiveness
When the first six have failed, it is not too late. Lead through apologizing and asking for forgiveness. Make your home one where “I’m sorry” is frequent and “I forgive you” is second nature.
Closing
The family God designed is one that gathers, equips, follows, creates safety through boundaries, seeks the Holy Spirit, prays, and apologizes. It will not be perfect, because we are not perfect, but it is God’s design. There is healing available today for broken relationships and broken homes.
And if the family being described here feels more like a dream than a reality, this church exists for you.
★★ We are the spiritual family. We are the outer circle. And we will not leave you to figure this out alone.
Referenced in this message:
Urie Bronfenbrenner, The Ecology of Human Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), as cited by Glenn T. Stanton.
Francis Foulkes, Ephesians: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1989).
Maxie D. Dunnam and Lloyd J. Ogilvie, The Preacher’s Commentary: Galatians–Philemon (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982).
Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
Family-meal and youth-faith findings from the National Study of Youth and Religion and studies by Fulkerson et al. (2006), Eisenberg et al. (2004), and the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA).
