Our children in America need our help. 

The chart below summarizes showing what was known as Family and Household government data, now called living arrangements.  A rapidly diminishing percent of children have the benefit of living in what the Bible calls family.  Politically correct people in America now shun the term “nuclear family” and have more appropriately substituted “living arrangements.”  A nuclear family is a family group consisting of only a father and mother and their children, who share living quarters. 

Data Summary: Only 75.78% of white children, 63.69% of Hispanic children,  35.82% of black children and 82.98% of Asian children live with both parents, married to each other. 

*White = White alone, Non-Hispanic; Hispanic = Hispanics may be of any race; Black = Black alone or in combination with one or more other races.  Source: U S Census Bureau 2009

Children born into a living arrangement rather than a nuclear family are inflicted with soul bruises.  These show up in emotional problems, antisocial behavior, chemical abuse, disposition to promiscuity, perpetuation of unmarried lifestyle, homelessness, runaway, suicide, crime and incarceration.  sad statistics

In our American culture, postmodernists are blind to spiritual solutions for our social problems.  They use the term “fatherless” for illegitimate children not living with their father.  When we find fatherless in the Bible it means the father is dead.  Just as widow means the husband is dead.  These children have a father who didn’t have enough integrity and responsibility to marry their mother.  Now he has decided not to live with their mother, so they are considered fatherless. 

The solution for postmodern blindness is sight.  Jesus came to bring recovering of sight to the blind.   He gives us Christians the kingdom worldview.  When we adopt it, He establishes us in kingdom relationships that fulfill our deepest longings to be useful and productive in the noble things of eternal importance in our day-to-day lives.   This includes marriage.  A godly marriage is the basis of society.   

Our family relationships are meant to help us grow in grace and truth, in accord with the two commandments Jesus presented to sum up all the Law and the prophets.  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your life, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and most important commandment.  The next is like it: Love your neighbor like yourself” (Matthew 22:37 -39).  If we love the Lord our God, we obey Him.  If we obey Him, we love our neighbor as ourselves.

Godly “covenant”  marriage is meant to taste of, nurture, and reflect our love for the Lord as we share our lives together.  By pouring His love into our hearts, God enables us to lay down our life for our mate and so participate in the creation and sustenance of a home filled with His glorious light.

Our heavenly Father /Pater, from whom every group in heaven and on earth gets the name of family /patria has blessed us with the ability to enjoy harmonious family relationships (Ephesians 3:14-19).  They are the primary setting for the calling to which we are called. As we love and nurture one another, we bear fruit that doesn’t pass away.  Beyond that, godly family relationships are essential to civilized society.

Covenant marriage love is mutually rewarding now and will be rewarded through eternity. Troubles do not quench such love. They develop godly character.  The fire of the Holy Spirit vaporizes our dross and replaces it with love that repents, forgives, and serves to the building of a home.

Such love is painful at the times it shines bright light on inner darkness we vainly try to hide from God and our spouse.  But, it makes our relationship tingle with healthy transparency.  In the light, little things do not get a chance to escalate into distrust, resentment, hatred, jealousy, or other selfishness that fractures relationship.  Facing and resolving our problems together is the way we grow up in the Messiah in a bond of love.  We can walk in this light because God has rescued us from the tyranny of darkness and transferred us into His marvelous light.

In this enviornment, we can bring up our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.   “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). 

With the Beatitudes, Messiah Jesus introduced the kingdom worldview and the heart we should have as His disciples.  We should feel as poor as the destitute rather than rich in our own moral power to serve God.  Jesus says the poor have the kingdom of God.  We have pondered how this can be.  In Romans 7, Paul graphically showed us how to mourn over our wretched sinful state prior to God saving us.  But he didn’t stay in that state.  Rather, he was comforted by God’s grace and encouraged to look forward to the things that are to come (Romans 8). 

Paul characterized himself like a mother nursing her child and like a father urging his children to live worthy of God.  He equipped God’s people by relating with them as family. At the moment, the majority of believers settle for impersonal institutional treatment.  We are fenced in with our exclusive doctrines, pulpits, pews, conferences, programs, and anonymity. Wouldn’t it be much better to be loyal and faithful to our Father in heaven and live according to His plan? If we walked to “grow up into Him who is the Head – Christ,” we would be more receptive to tender love and personal care from people like Paul an apostle.

Our appeal isn’t based on error or an unclean desire, and we aren’t tricking you. No, we have God’s approval to be entrusted with the good news. And so we tell it, not to please people but God, who tests our hearts. We never flattered, as you know, or found excuses to make money, as God knows, nor did we try to get you or other people to praise us, although we can claim respect as apostles of Christ.

But we became children when we were with you – and like a mother tenderly caring for her children. So we longed for you and were determined to share with you not only God’s good news but our own lives, so dear had you become to us. You remember my fellow Christians /brethren, how hard we struggled. Night and day working for our living, not to burden any of you, we preached God’s good news to you. You are witnesses and God too, how holy, righteous, and blameless we proved to be to you who believe. As you know, like a father urging his children we used to urge, encourage, and warn every one of you to live worthy of God, who is calling you into His kingdom and glory. 1 Thessalonians 2:3-12

In the next article, we will consider the futility of our own efforts to change the world and how we can embrace the Messiah’s way of rescuing the captives (Luke 4).

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Sin bruises. Sin hurts and wounds our inner being, our soul. All of us have inflicted and received the hurts of sin. The bruises and disorders of our souls prove it.  

Recognizing sin is vital to avoiding it. Identifying one of our actions or lack of actions as sin is the first step to liberation from that sin and restoration to harmonious one another relationships in the kingdom of God.  

People of the world refuse to acknowledge sin. In our American culture, postmodernists are blind to spiritual solutions for our social problems. Rather, sin is an “S” word. Identifying and mentioning sin is considered politically incorrect. The substitute euphemism for sin is behavioral problem or mental problem. The thought that by following Jesus we could lead a God pleasing lifestyle and thereby come to know the truth and be set free [John 8:32] evades the sophisticated. Following Jesus and maintaining integrity with God’s Word is considered old-fashioned, archaic thinking reserved for simple minded Christians. More socially oriented Christians half-way agree. Many believe in a big warm fuzzy all inclusive Santa Clause type of God who allows us to do our own thing.

Postmodernists hold individualism most dear. Personal responsibility for one’s own behavior is shifted to from the individual to others. Determining what is right and wrong is left to the individual. Each establishes his or her own personal values. Whatever is right in one’s own eyes is justified and acceptable as long as it is in-your-face out in the open. Individual rights to self-fulfillment regardless of damage to others and drain on society is considered an American right.

Sexual sin is pervasive among us. Four out of ten American babies and five out of twenty Colorado Springs babies are born to promiscuous non-cohabitating parents or promiscuous cohabitating parents. Soul bruises and disorders are prevalent among the men, women and babies.

When people gratify their flesh in sexual sin, they deprive themselves of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. That doesn’t mean God is done with them. It does mean they are sowing to the flesh and of the flesh reaping corruption. Their souls are damaged and bruised by indulging in shallow, exploitive, relationships that predispose them to more of the same. No wonder so many people are hurt, alone and lonely.

When a man and a woman join in sexual intercourse, they become one flesh. God made this a wonderful intermingling of body and soul—mind, emotions, will, and subconscious—in marriage. He created man and woman to bond for life. Very few realize when a man joins himself with a woman outside of marriage; there is still an intermingling of body and soul! This mingles any evil spirits that cling to the soul. More sexual partners bring more intermingling. This pollutes the mind, emotions, will, and subconscious. Worse yet, it corrupts the body of Christ and causes alienation with God. No wonder so many people are so disoriented, confused and joyless.

Still, there is hope. The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin, including sexual sin. If you have been or are indulging your flesh in such sin, repent and ask God for forgiveness. He will forgive and restore you to fellowship. We all need to repent. That is, change our minds from self-justifying values and attitudes and turn toward God to adopt God’s truth as our mindset. When we turn from sins to godliness in a true 180-degree turn, we walk worthy of the vocation to which we are called. If we confess our sins and repent, God forgives.

Christians can help set at liberty them that are bruised. The primary way we can help is by living worthy of the Lord. God calls you and me into His kingdom and glory. He plants His call deep down in our hearts and it motivates us to walk worthy of Him. 

• We were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children, so that you would walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory. 1 Thessalonians 2:11-12 
• So I tell you and call on you in the Lord not to live any more like the people of the world. Their minds are set on worthless things. Their understanding is darkened. Their ignorance and their closed minds have made them strangers to the life God gives. Having lost their sense of right and wrong, they’ve given themselves up to a life of lust to practice every kind of vice with greed. Ephesians 4:17-19
• Everybody should think highly of marriage and keep married life pure, because God will judge those who sin sexually whether single or married. Hebrews 13:4

We can give the bruised a hand up by participating in the body of Christ.

• Let us tell the truth with love and in every way grow up into Him who is the Head – Christ. He makes the whole body fit together, unites it by every contact with its support, and to the extent that each part is working He makes the body grow and builds it up in love. Ephesians 4:15-16
  

In his letter to Titus, Paul instructed Titus to set things in order by appointing elders presbyteros and enlisting the help of older men presbytes and older women presbytis. They were to lead by example and one another participation. Paul’s short letter is filled with instructions we would do well to consider, learn and apply.

• 2 Bid the older men be temperate, serious, sensible, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness.
• 3 Bid the older women likewise to be reverent in behavior, not to be slanderers or slaves to drink; they are to teach what is good, 4 and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be sensible, chaste, domestic, kind, and submissive to their husbands, that the word of God may not be discredited.
• 6 Likewise urge the younger men to control themselves. 7 Show yourself in all respects a model of good deeds, and in your teaching show integrity, gravity, 8 and sound speech that cannot be censured, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say of us.
• 9 Bid slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect; they are not to be refractory, 10 nor to pilfer, but to show entire and true fidelity, so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.
• 11 For the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men, 12 training us to renounce irreligion and worldly passions, and to live sober, upright, and godly lives in this world, 13 awaiting our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.
• 15 Declare these things; exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you. Titus 2  

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Sin hurts and wounds our inner being, our soul. All of us have inflicted and received the hurts of sin.  The bruises and disorders of our souls prove it.  

In previous articles, we saw that four out of ten American babies and five out of twenty Colorado Springs babies are born to promiscuous non-cohabitating parents or promiscuous cohabitating parents.  When you look around in your family, neighborhood and church, you will find this true for Christians as well as pagans.  God’s Word urges us to give them a hand up. 

We can comfort those ensnared in darkness with the word Isaiah prophesied of Messiah Jesus the Son of God.  “Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my Spirit upon him, and he shall proclaim justice to the Gentiles.  He will not wrangle or cry aloud, nor will any one hear his voice in the streets;  he will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick, till he brings justice to victory; and in his name will the Gentiles hope.”  Matthew 12:18-21 

No matter how far a brother or sister in the Lord has fallen, Jesus does not abandon one who believes in Him and He is always ready to give one of His a hand up.  “He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick.”  We can always come to God’s throne of grace to get mercy and find love to help us. 

Now that we have a great High Priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus, God’s Son, let us cling to what we confess. We have a High Priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses. He was tempted in every way just as we are, only without sin. So let us come boldly to God’s throne of grace to get mercy and find love to help us when we need it. Hebrews 4:14-16 

We can offer a hand up.  God has called us to participate in one another relationships in the body of Christ.  This includes gently offering the hurting a hand up.  “Live as people whom God has called should live. Be humble and gentle in every way, be patient, and lovingly bear with one another” (Ephesians 41b-2).  When one we know is overcome by some sin, we should help that person onto the right path.   

Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Look to yourself, lest you too be tempted.  Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

For if any one thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. For each man will have to bear his own load.

Let him who is taught the word share all good things with him who teaches. Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption; but he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.   9 And let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we do not lose heart.  Galatians 6:1-10

Notice this exhortation is not directed to pastors and leaders or limited to a particular sin.  It is directed to each of us in our day-to-day lives.  Brethren is a spiritual term for fellow believers, regardless of sex (Galatians 3:26).  

In the next article, I will address how the bruised are liberated. Previous articles in this series: There must be participation, Unwed parents, Life Network: A Christian hand up, Proclaim deliverance to the captives .

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