Interesting fact:
Everyone has experience with this word and concept. Let me prove the point:
-How many of you came from a family?

-How many of you have a family?

History of Family:
God’s makes Adam.

God Makes Eve and presents her to Adam.

God says be fruitful and multiply.

Adam and Eve make Cain and Abel.

History of messed up Family:
Adam and Eve Sin.

Adam blames his wife.

Cain is jealous of his brother and Kills him!

That didn’t take long did it?

Most of us have tension in the area of family don’t we? Most of us would say that our family dynamic or relationships could be better. Some might call our family dysfunctional, or broken or maybe in the best terms “in process”.

It would be nice if we had a template, a one-stop-shop instruction sheet to build our families by that would produce a better outcome.

Have you ever built something? Table, deck, a swing? What kind of process did you go through to do that? Did you just grab some wood and nails or screws and start building? Did you draw out a picture of what you wanted to build? Did you research how others built the same kind of thing? Did you find a picture that you liked and built a replica? Did you take measurements and draw out a model environment? What was your process?

Have you ever built something without going through that process? How’d that turn out?

I think not having a picture of what the end result is supposed to look like beforehand and knowing what each part should look like and how it should function is the source of our Family problems as well.

We don’t actually know what we are building, we just end up with something we didn’t want. Things tend to turn out better when there is a clear picture with very defined details before the building starts.

-Everybody ends up somewhere, few end up somewhere on purpose.

-Every family will become something, few become something on purpose.

Begin with the end in mind:
-What is a family?

-What is it made up of?

-What is my role in it?

Questions
-What role or roles do you fill in the family?

Roles
Man: Husband, Father, Provider, Protector, Friend, Confidant
Woman: Wife, Mother, Nurturer, Counselor, Provider, Friend
Children: Son or daughter, brother or sister, friend, encourager, protector

Exercise:
Visualize in your mind the perfect family. The perfect Dad, Mom, Brother, Sister. Everyone is doing everything in a way that promotes safety, peace, wholeness, happiness, health, love and joy! No one is failing in their roles so everyone is benefited by the Home life, by the family. When others look at this family, they want to use their template.

-What is the Husband/Father doing?

-What is the Wife/Mother doing?

-What are the children doing?

-Why are we doing this? We are developing a template, a picture of our ideal functions to build the ideal family.

Exercise:

How about this, imagine you are at your birthday party 20 years from now and your spouse is going to talk about you, what do you want them to say?
Your kids are going to talk about you, what do you want them to say?
Your Siblings are going to talk about you, what do you want them to say?
Why is this important? This becomes your template. Everything you do from this point forward is building that home or family, it’s building that legacy. You literally are writing your own toast or epitaph with how you do and say as the family member you were meant to be to make the family what it was meant to be!

This week, your task is to define it and then begin creating it. There is a discussion for you guys to do together, it’s available on the app, so take some time and do those exercises. Let’s get started building the Family.