Skip to content Basic Thought - How To Have A Blessed Family Life? Sep 14 · 22 min ...more
September 14, 2022 · 22 min · Basic Thoughts
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Beth Jones is a Bible teacher and founder of The Basics With Beth, a non-profit Christian teaching ministry dedicated to helping people learn the Bible basics.
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0:02 Thanks for listening to the basics with Beth. We're all about helping you get the basics so you can reach your God given potential and live a life you love. This podcast is a combination of straight up bible teaching and0:13 fun interviews on how the basics of faith intersect with our lives, families, careers, and callings. We believe that getting the basics has the power to fundamentally transform our communities and our culture. Thanks for0:25 listening to the basics with Beth. Here's Beth Jones.0:29 Hello, everybody. Welcome to the basics with Beth podcast. And we're gonna talk today about the basics of family and marriage. And I wanna pick up on the conversation we had in our last0:40 podcast with Erin and Greg Smalley, who are really fantastic experts when it comes to family and marriage. They actually are a part of Focus on the Family, which you0:52 guys have heard of, which was founded and led by James Dobson for many, many years, a fantastic organization helping families and marriages for decades. And, of course, you may know Greg's1:04 father, Gary Smalley. Gary was a legend when it came to family and marriage ministry for years and years as well. So had a great podcast with those guys last time. I'm gonna pick up that1:16 conversation, like I said, and talk about the basics of marriage, the basics of family. And before I do that, let me just say a couple of things. First, once again, am in my car, and it's raining. And1:28 you're gonna hear the windshield wipers every now and then make a weird noise. Don't be alarmed. It's just my windshield wipers. And secondly, I wanna thank you guys for tuning in to the1:40 podcast and really love getting your feedback. I love to hear that you're listening, and we appreciate you subscribing, spreading the word, letting your friends know, and, just helping us1:51 help people get the basics. And that's really what we're all about. We're all about helping people get the basics of faith, the basics of the bible, the basics of a walk with God in different areas of life2:03 because it is so true, and you guys know it. It is so true. Our lives can only grow up and be as as fruitful as our roots are healthy and deep. The building can only be as tall and2:15 as big as the foundation is stable and securely anchored. And that's what the basics do. They anchor us in those pillar kind of truths. And so, anyways, just a2:27 reminder, that's what we do here, the basics with Beth. I know it's not deep. I know it's always not novel and, like, oh my gosh. I have never heard that before, but it's a stirring up and a reminding2:39 you of things you may know and things you may have forgotten and getting you reestablished in those basic truths that will really help your life be fruitful and all that God wants it to be. And all the people2:51 out there said, sister. Preach it. Okay. So here we go. Let's talk about the basics of family and marriage. Here's the thing I wanna encourage you in today. It's a simple truth. Again, it's3:03 really basic. 12 verse 3, the Lord gave a promise to Abraham back in the Old Testament, and it was the simple promise that he said to him, Abraham, that in3:14 you, all the families of the earth would be blessed, among many other promises he gave to Abraham at that time. But I wanna talk about that, the blessing that God has3:26 promised to families. And he said to Abraham that in him, the families of the earth would be blessed. Well, then we fast forward that a little bit to Galatians chapter 3. And in3:37 Galatians, which is a great book to read, by the way, if you haven't read it lately, and Galatians 3 in particular, talks about how Christ has come to redeem us3:49 from the curse of the law, all the things that happened as a result of the curse in the Old Testament, being under the law, being under works, and all of4:01 those things. Christ has come to redeem us from all of those things, being made a curse for us. Cursed is he who hangs on the tree and so on. But then here's what it says. Galatians 34:13 14, Jesus did all of that so that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles or come on those outside of the covenant. Might come on everybody4:24 so that in Abraham, just as the Lord promised, all the families of the earth could be blessed among the other promises he was given. So it goes on to say in Galatians that4:36 if you are Christ's, if you belong to Christ, if Jesus is the Lord of your life, you're a Christian, you're a Christ follower, you belong to Christ, then the bible says in4:48 Galatians that you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. Are you getting this? Now the promise to Abraham, like I said,5:00 included many things. I'm gonna give you a couple of those, and then we're gonna zoom in on this family blessing. But, you know, it included many things. 1 of the primary blessings of Abraham was to be set free from the5:09 law, that we'd be would be able to come into a relationship with the Lord, come into a relationship with Jesus Christ by faith, not based on works, by faith through grace. That's a5:20 major component of the blessing of Abraham. But in addition to that, we see in Abraham's life how blessed he was in his family, in his health, in his5:32 vocation, in his finances, in his relationships, and on and on it goes. There was such a massive blessing on Abraham, and it really is outlined in Genesis 12 in its5:43 initial explanation. So a part of that blessing then, as we have said, is this blessing on families. In you, all the families of the world would be blessed. And we're told in the5:55 Bible that if we have faith like the faith of Abraham, then we are heirs of these promises. Promises. So that's what I wanna talk about. I wanna talk about6:06 tapping into this promised blessing on families, marriages by faith. So first, number 1, know this. You qualify. This is6:18 for you. This isn't just Old Testament. No. This is for you because you are Christ's. And if you are Christ's, you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. You get to6:30 inherit the promise, all the promises that were given to Abraham. Okay. So you qualify, step number 1. Step number 2, the way that Abraham walked in the blessings, just as you and I are to walk in the6:42 blessings, is by faith. What is faith? Well, it's a lot of things, but if you boil it all down, faith is taking God at his word. Faith is believing in your heart6:54 and then saying with your mouth the things you believe in your heart. Right? I mean, isn't that how you get saved? You get saved by faith. And what do you do? You believe in your heart that God raised Jesus7:06 from the dead. You confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and what happens? You are saved. Faith is taking God at his word, believing in your7:17 heart, and speaking with your mouth the things you believe. Faith is a 2 part equation. Just like 1 nickel plus 1 nickel equals a dime, what you believe in your heart plus what you say7:29 with your mouth equals faith. That's how faith works. That's what faith is. And over and over and over in the bible, we see it, don't we? Let the words of my mouth7:41 and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, o lord. There's an example of that heart mouth connection. If you shall believe in your heart7:52 and say with your mouth to this mountain, be thou removed, be cast into the sea. Don't doubt in your heart, but believe the things you say with your mouth.8:04 It shall be done. Again, heart mouth connection. And there's numerous ones, dozens of heart mouth connected verses, talking about this principle of faith 1 way or the8:16 other. Okay. That's number 2. Faith is taking God at his word, and the way we take God at his word is we believe his word in our heart, and we say it with our mouth.8:28 Okay? So then step 3, we're talking about this blessing on families. 3, what is it we're to do? We are to take those promises from God's word for8:39 families. We're to believe them in our heart and then say them with our mouth over our marriages, over our families, over our kids, and over our lives. And, you know, for years and years, my8:51 and I, we've been married now for 30 years. We have 4 kids. Our oldest is we're we're in the odd year right now. So 27, 25 no. I take it back. Okay? Hello.9:03 We're in the even year. Rewind. 28, 26, 24, 22. 2 girls, Megan and Annie, 2 boys, Luke and9:15 Eric. Now for years, I literally, for well over a decade, almost 2 decades, we did not do very much teaching on family, on how to raise9:26 kids, a little bit of teaching on marriage. But to be honest, we just thought, you know what? Let's just live it, and let's prove that it works. The verdict was still out. We didn't9:38 we didn't even know for sure if the way we were raising our kids was working. You know? In other words, we didn't even know if this was the recipe. We did it by faith according to God's word, but we couldn't show you the9:49 evidence that this had worked other than the evidence by faith. Well, anyways, I'm I'm fast forwarding now because here we are. All the kids are in their twenties, and the verdict is in. It worked. It worked, everybody.10:00 It worked. Yay. It worked. Now our kids weren't perfect. Of course, our family's not perfect. Our marriage is not perfect, but we love the fruit we're tasting in this season of life when it comes to our family, when10:12 it comes to their spouses, when it comes to our very first grandbaby just being born, and in our own marriage. And while we did make a lot of mistakes and there's a lot of things we would do different and so on, the 110:24 thing we did right okay? That's that's what I'm trying to tell you. The 1 thing we did right is we exercised our faith when it came to our marriage and our family. We believed in our heart,10:36 and we said with our mouth many, many, many times that the blessing that God gave to Abraham for families was on our family. We declared it. We decreed it. We said it. We10:48 confessed it and possessed it. We did all of that, and then we got real specific. We would say things over our marriage. Sometimes we had to say them by faith, like no feelings involved, no10:59 goosebumps noticed, but we still said it in certain seasons of our marriage. We'd say, hey. God's given us a marriage made in heaven. Well, maybe it was a season that felt like a marriage made in hell, although11:11 those were minor. We didn't have a lot of those seasons, but we had difficulties. But we would just say, nope. This is a marriage made in heaven. Nope. We'd say things like, he who finds a wife finds a good thing. Of11:23 course, would say that a lot to my husband. You have found a good thing, brother. But he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. We would say that over our11:34 marriage. My husband, I have to say, I have to give him props and credit and kudos because he is so good at this. I mean, seriously, he is so good at telling me nice things. He would say I looked great when I knew I11:45 didn't look great. Like, no makeup, sweat suit, hairs in disarray, and he'd be like, you're so beautiful. And I would be like, you are such a man of faith. So those were things we spoke into our11:57 marriage, and we spoke about each other spiritually. You know, like, you can hear from God, or you're a mighty person in the word, or you're a great preacher, or you're a great12:09 prayer. I mean, whatever it was spiritually, then about the soul, the soulish areas of our life. Like, you're funny. You're fun. You have a great personality. You're likable. You're fun to be around. You're12:21 smart. You know, I love that you're even keeled and so on. Anything related to the soulish part of our being, we would speak into that. We would believe in our heart what God's word says12:33 about things, and we'd say it over each other. Same thing when it came to our physical health. We would say things like, you know, we're strong in the Lord and the power of his might. We run and don't grow weary. We walk12:44 and don't faint. We'd say things like, renews our youth like the eagles. He will present us before himself without spot or wrinkle. Now that, my friends, is a verse to claim. And12:56 as the holy spirit leads you and me to get some assistance from those in the professional fields that could help those spots and wrinkles, I say more power to you. Go for it. And all13:08 the ladies said they said, oh, yeah, baby. Let's do it. Okay. So we spoke over our marriage, spirit, soul, and body. We spoke over our love for each other. We spoke over13:20 our unity and that God had called us together and that we were gonna stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. We spoke forgiveness when we needed to speak forgiveness. And and all13:31 of those things, I truly believe, strengthened our marriage. And and I'll have to say, honestly, 1 of them was just this is a marriage made in heaven. God brought us together. He's gonna keep us together, and he's gonna13:41 keep making this marriage sweeter and sweeter, a little taste of heaven, until 1 day we are in heaven. And you know what? That has been our experience by and large. Okay. Now let's talk about kids and family. Same13:53 thing. We just decided what phrases do we wanna say over our family that we believe. And I'll give you a couple. Like, 1 phrase we came up with for our marriage and for our family14:05 was this little phrase, it don't get no better. Now meaning, of course, it continually gets better. But in this moment right now, it don't get no better. This is awesome. This is the blessed life, people. This is a14:17 great marriage. This is a great family. Yes. We're living on a shoestring budget. Yes. We're living in a microscopic house. Yes. We don't have enough seat belts for everybody in the car. But you know what? It don't get14:28 no better. Meaning, of course, it's gonna get better. We know God has greater days ahead. Our best days are to come. But in the moment, living in the present tense, we're not complaining. We're not in the14:40 mulligrubs. We're not discouraged. We're like, no. This is awesome. It don't get no better. We are living the life. We are living large in this season. And you know what? That helped our kids, and it helped us to14:51 stay on the cup is half full side of life. So I wanna encourage you. What's the phrase or phrases you could believe? What are some things you could believe about your marriage and about your kids and about your family?15:03 We would say over each 1 of our kids, we'd said, Lord, what do we believe about this child? Megan, what do we believe about Megan? Mhmm. Well, we saw and recognized in her a bent and a sweetness, and she just had a15:14 tender heart, and she was sensitive to the Lord and to people and was just a little tender heart. So that's what we spoke over her. Megan, our sweet little Megan is a tender heart. And you know what? To this day, our15:25 sweet little Megan is a tender heart. Our daughter, Annie, we saw in her, she was the sunshine. She had charisma. She walks in a room and lights it up. So we called her our little sunshine.15:37 Annie is our little sunshine, and do you know to this day, she is a sunshine. She walks in a room and lights it up. Luke, we spoke over Luke because we saw such15:49 leadership and such creative potential in Luke, but we also noticed he was in a season where he was having a little attitude. He was being a little attitudinal. And so we would say, oh, to him when he was maybe16:01 frustrated, we'd speak over him. Luke is our super sweet smiler boy. And this was when Luke was not feeling super sweet or smiling. We call him super sweet smiler boy. And do you know16:13 of course, that would aggravate him at the moment because he just, you know, kinda scowl at us. We go, why don't you go up to your room? And when you're ready to come out being super sweet smiler boy, come join the16:23 family. And do you know it took a few minutes, and he comes back out with a big old smile on his face. And to this day, if you met Luke, you would say, oh my goodness, that kid. Super sweet, smiler boy. Our16:35 son, Eric, the baby of the family, we called him mister president because he was a leader at 2. Literally, he could lead our family at 2. He was reminding us, hey. Grab the diaper bag16:47 or hey. We forgot the sack lunch or you might wanna get the keys if we're gonna go on a trip. I mean, seriously, the kid's a leader. And so we recognized that and began to call him mister president. And do you know to16:59 this day, he is a leader. People other folks as well see that leadership gift on him and really on all the kids at different degrees, they're all leaders, but that was something we spoke over him. So17:10 those were things that by faith, we laid hold of that blessing of Abraham, and that's what fit our family. So I'm telling you all that to say what fits your family? What fits your marriage? What fits your kids? What do17:22 you need to be speaking over them? What do you believe in your heart? What can you speak over them by faith that is in alignment with God's word? You don't speak what you see and you don't speak how you17:34 feel. You speak what God says and what God has promised, and then you will see that. Eventually, you will inherit that and live in it. You'll actually live in the promises17:46 that God's given you and the promises that God gave to Abraham. Alright? So I hope this has encouraged you. I know it's short and sweet. I'm covering, you know, just 1 little focused area, but enough to get you17:57 thinking about your family and about your marriage today and about your kids. Lay hold of that blessing, and I wanna speak a blessing over your family. Father, thank you for blessing every18:09 single person listening to this podcast. In Jesus' name, Lord, with light, with revelation, with wisdom, with insights that they need, Lord. Thank you for blessing their marriages and18:21 their families and their children just like Abraham. The blessing in Abraham, all the families of the earth would be blessed. And, Lord, when you bless a family, it's18:33 blessed. And I speak blessings over every woman, over every man, husband, wife, every child, every family, that they are blessed spirit, soul, and body.18:45 They are blessed spiritually in their walk with you, in their fellowship with you, in their calling with you, God, in their destiny and purpose, in being a light for Jesus Christ. They are blessed. They are18:57 empowered. They are graced. They are blessed in their soul. In their mind, they have the mind of Christ. In their emotions, they are filled with the joy of the Lord and with hope and joy19:09 unspeakable. I thank you, Lord, that they are filled in their emotions with sanity, with peace, with calm, Lord, with19:20 patience, with kindness. Their soul is blessed. They're fun. They're funny. They have a great sense of humor. They enjoy life. They love people. They're not depressed, but19:32 they radiate the joy and hope and faith of the Lord. And, Lord, I thank you that that is true for them, for their marriages, and for their families. People see their marriage. People see their families, and they say,19:44 I want what they have. They are blessed, and I want the same thing. And finally, God, we speak, and I speak over every 1 of their physical bodies. Part of the blessing of19:55 Abraham was physical health. And, Lord, we thank you, and I decree it in Jesus' name from the top of their heads, every woman, every man, every husband, every wife, every child,20:07 from the top of your head to the soles of your feet, front to back, side to side, top to bottom, every cell, every tissue, every fiber, every chromosome, every bit of your20:19 DNA, every chemical, every organ, every system in your body, in Jesus' name, is blessed and infused with a fresh dose of the life of God.20:31 In Jesus' name, a grace impartation is given to you now from the top of your head to the soles of your feet, that you would be blessed today, spirit, soul, and body, with the blessing of20:43 Abraham, and that in Christ, as Abraham's seed, as heirs according to the promise, your family is blessed, and your family is a blessing20:55 for God's glory, that Jesus is exalted, and that eternal fruit will be the result of this podcast. In Jesus' mighty name, I pray. And everybody out there that agreed said, amen.21:08 Amen. Amen. I receive it my own self. I hope you guys were blessed by this today. I appreciate you tuning in, and don't forget, it's the basics. It's the basics that'll put you over in21:20 life, give you that strong rooted foundation for great fruit in your life. To be mature, Colossians tells us, is to be basic. So thanks again for joining me for the basics with Beth. I21:32 will see you next time.21:35 Thanks for listening to the basics with Beth. We know that when you grow deep roots in the basics of God's word, it will unlock your potential to live a life you love and a life that impacts others. To get more of the21:46 basics from Beth Jones, visit the basics with beth dot com.
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