Great because of grace

If I had a dime for every time someone told me, "You have a great family," I might actually be able to pay our bills for a change! As poor as we might be financially, we are unquestionably rich beyond belief spiritually and relationally, not to mention all the amazing gifts and giftedness God has bestowed upon our wonderful children. 

People sometimes follow up that observation about our family with a question like, "How did you do it?" The short answer is "by the grace of God"--anything great about us is only because of his grace and mercy. The obvious reason for this answer is that the head of the home has been such a miserable failure in so many ways. It obviously can't be because of me, and even my wife will take no credit for it (though she's definitely done much better than I). But beyond the obvious is another reason for the answer "only by the grace of God": anything that's good in our family has happened through God's "means of grace"--namely the biblical truths that we have learned and taught and practiced in the home (though very imperfectly).

In the almost two years since a time of hard discipline and deep repentance in my life, I've been blown away with how gracious God has been to our family despite my sins, and I've also experienced the joy of rediscovering and restoring the principles of his Word to our family. Now Jill and I have an opportunity to encourage a younger couple in our church who are committing themselves to Christ and seeking to build a home that will honor him. To share with them the principles that God has used for good in our home, I wanted to give them some teaching on the family I'd done years ago. Since the files for the series were too big to send by text or email, I uploaded them to YouTube so the couple and their children could be blessed by them, and I'm mentioning it here in case others of you might like to learn more about the truths that God can use to build a good family, and keep it together even through the kinds of terrible disasters that can strike anyone in this broken world.

Please pray for our continued faithfulness to God as a family, and for any others that we will have the privilege of serving in his name.

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