Message Description

Dr. Kurt Bjorklund and Director of Kids' Ministries Emily Roberts continue the teaching series Turning House Into Homes each speaking about principles for a Biblically centered family.

Message Transcript

Download PDF Version

Dr. Kurt Bjorklund 

Well, good morning. And let me just add my happy Mother's Day to all of you who are here, especially the moms. And a special happy Mother's Day to my mom who's here, mom, thanks for all the years of investment in me. And to my wife, who I've told my kids on multiple occasions they won the mother lottery with their mom, so thank you for all the ways you've invested in our kids over the years. I realized when we come to a day like Mother's Day that for many of you this is a great day, and for some of you this is not a great day. Some of you this is a day that has some pain associated with it. Maybe you wanted a child, and it hasn't happened yet, maybe you've had some friction with some of the kids that you have had, maybe you had a difficult mom growing up. And so, I realized that not everybody says Mother's Day, yay, kind of a thing. I realized that that can be even more painful when you come to church and it's like, mom's rock, kind of a message.

So today we're in the series that we started, Turning Houses into Homes. And here's what I believe is probably true for most of us, even if we don't necessarily want kids, we're single right now, or wherever we are in that journey, most of us want a place in our lives where we are valued and loved exactly as we are. Sometimes we call that a home. That's often what drives our desire for relationship and what we spend so much time searching for. So, what we're doing over these few weeks is we are looking at Colossians 2:6-7, you heard it read. This is not written to families directly; this is written in general to people. But I believe that when we apply some of what it says about how we follow Jesus, what we can do is we can see how it can help create the environment that all of us really want.

Here's what we read in Colossians 2:6, it says, "So then just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him." So, this is a verse that basically says something very simple, if you've received or as you've received Jesus, now live your life in Him. I was thinking about just the simple concept because for some of us, this idea of living our life in Jesus doesn't make a lot of sense. That is some of us say, "Well, why should I?" But maybe think about it this way, and that is to receive Jesus means to have been given an incredible gift. If you are somebody who had kidney failure and somebody offered you a kidney, that would be an incredible gift, they would have to go through the transplant process, they couldn't just give it to you, but it would be an incredible gift. You would say, "That is awesome."

And if you had spent years drinking like 12 cans of Mountain Dew a day and eating nothing but HoHos and somebody offered you a kidney, you would say, "That's even better because I didn't deserve this in any way, shape, or form." Then as you were having your exit conversation from the hospital if the doctor said to you, if she said, "Listen, you have a new kidney, you have a new chance now, and I want you to stop drinking 12 cans of Mountain Dew every day. You should start eating vegetables and fruit and some healthy foods not just HoHos." You might actually have a moment where you say, "Okay, maybe it's time to make a change." Now, the challenge is very few of us feel like we have kidney failure. The Bible talks about our need for a savior because it says sin is universal, every one of us is facing something. And when we are running around living our lives, that doesn't often feel that way, and so we don't feel this sense of saying, "Since I've received some incredible gift, therefore I should build my life around Jesus Christ.”

But that is what this verse says. And what we're doing is we're looking at each of the participles over these weeks. Last week we talked about being rooted. In other words, the invisible part of our lives where we make hundreds, thousands of choices over time. This idea of being rooted is really to say, God has a way, his way is best, his way will be my way, and I will act accordingly. Today we're going to look at this little phrase being built up, this participle. And this is where Paul changes his metaphor. He goes from an agricultural metaphor now to a construction metaphor. This in the original language is a present active participle, and what that means is this is not looking backwards, it's looking to today and saying, "Here's what you can do. If you've received Jesus, you can build your life around him.”

Here's what's true, and that is, we're all building our lives on something, we all are building towards something, it's a default mode of our lives. Some of us will spend much of our lives trying to be healthy. We'll eat healthy, we'll exercise, and we will do everything in our power to make our lives healthy. Some of us will build our lives around relationships, we'll so invest in the people that are close to us that we hope it will produce happy and good moments. Some of us will spend much of our time building up our careers saying, I am building my life around having a successful career. I've heard it said that early in life many of us will trade our health for our career or for money and later in life we'd trade as much of our money as we could for our health. But we're building around something.

Some of us we build our lives around intellect, we build our lives around our kids and their lives, some of us it will be spirituality that we'll build our lives around. And this isn't saying don't build your life around anything else, this is saying make sure that part of your building is around spiritual things. And nowhere is that more important than in our homes, in our families, in terms of how we build life. I heard it said that Ray Kroc, who was the chairman of McDonald's as it went through its massive global expansion had once said, "My priorities in life are God, family, and McDonald's hamburgers." And he said, "Until I go to work and then I turn my priorities around, it becomes McDonald's hamburgers, my family, and God." And if you ever saw the depiction of his life or have read anything about it, you realize that he had his priorities around McDonald's hamburgers being first. And then the movie that chronicles his life and investment you see the ripple effect of those choices of saying, "I spent so much time building McDonald's hamburgers, but other parts of my life were a mess." 

Now, sometimes in our day and age, parents will say, "Well, you know what? I just want my kids to experience the world the way that they're going to experience and build their own spiritual life, wherever they need to." But in a way that's a ridiculous notion because you don't let your kids simply choose everything that they're going to build into their lives. If your kids decided age eight that their whole life is going to be about video games, you would say to them, you know what? Let's pursue video games in an appropriate level, but let's not drop out of school at age eight for video games, let's keep it a little right size. In other words, as a parent, part of what you're doing is you're saying, "I want to help you build your life around what's important." And so, what this passage is saying, first to each individual, is make sure that you're building something in your life, build something around the spiritual foundation that you have. But to parents specifically, make sure that you are building into your family a spiritual foundation.

Now, what does it mean to build? Well, building involves intention, it involves effort, it involves time. Certainly, the message of Christianity is the message that you cannot earn your place with God. But when we get this image of building, what it's saying is you receive something from God that's an incredible gift you did nothing to deserve, nothing can take it away, but you can still through intention, effort, and time build a life that is better based on what it is that God gives you through Jesus Christ. Now, to build is use this phrase, the same wording that's used in Colossians 2:7 is also used in Ephesians 2:19-22. Here's what it says, "Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers but fellow citizens with God's people, also members of his household." That's verse 19, verse 20, "Built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone." So how has this word used by Paul in another place? He's using it to say you are built, see the word built, up into the church.

In other words, part of being built spiritually is by putting ourselves in a place where we're part of the global community that's built on the teaching of the apostles and the prophets, not modern apostles, and prophets, but this means the apostles and prophets that we have in the Bible. These are the ones that we build our lives around. And then it says this, "In him," verse 21, "the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him, you too are being built together to become the dwelling in which God lives by his spirit." So, the picture here of being built in a Ephesians is that it's part of saying, I'm building a spiritual foundation by saying, we're going to be part of the global community of Christ followers who build our lives around the scriptures and what's taught there. And we will do it in a local expression in community because together that is how we're built up. That's what this is in part saying because of how this word is used in different places.

Here's what is probably true if you're a parent you know that this is true. When your kids are little and you go in and help them go to bed at night, your kids when they're really little you help them go to bed by coming in and sitting with them, praying with them, doing something at night. It's an incredible time as a parent because you have this moment where you can speak into your kids' lives and you know that they're hearing you and that your voice is carrying some weight.

Then something happens, where your kids get older, and they don't always want you to come into their room at night. Sometimes that happens when they're 18, sometimes younger, where they're like, "Okay, I'm good, I got this." What happens is you lose a prime window to speak into your kids' lives. All of a sudden, other voices start to become more important to your kids. One of the things that building your life into the structure of the global church with a local expression does is it brings other people into your kids' lives who will be able to speak into your kids' lives at key moments when your voice is no longer the dominant voice. And that is such a critical thing to building your family spiritually.

I know that some of you today are saying, "Well we thought we were building into our kids' lives and we're just in a tough season. We don't see right now where this is headed, where anything good is coming from this." But whenever you take on a project, a building project, again take his metaphor, there are days where everything goes wrong. If you've ever remodeled something, built something, just done a project and you're like, "Why did we ever start this? This will never get where we want it to go." What happens is you persevere through those hard days and sooner or later you get to the vision that you had when you started the project in the first place and you say, "I'm glad we persevered." Some of us are in a place in building whether it be personally, whether it be in some relationships, whether it be with kids where we just need to say today is one of those days where I just need to keep building because there will come a day where I'll look back and say, "I'm glad I built toward this.”

And this is true in your own spiritual life, this is true when you invest spiritually in the lives of your family, when you say we want to be a family that says this is what matters to us. When our kids were younger, we gave them allowances, cash allowances. And our cash allowance was minimal, it was not a lot of money. One of the things we always did, and this is just our approach, if you do this differently it's all good, is we never tied it to the chores that they did because we never wanted it to be you're being paid for doing work at home. It's like, "No, everybody pitches in at home." So, we just gave money to our kids to say, "This is for you to spend however you want to spend." And the reason we did it is we wanted them when they were young to have the experience of taking money and spending it poorly so that they would understand that money is only spent once.

Like you go to the grocery store and spend your whole allowance for the month on candy and at the end of the time you're like, "Well, now I don't have money for anything else I want to do." We wanted them to learn the concept that money only spends once. And here's what's true about building, you can build a lot of things into your kids' lives. You can build sports and music and academics and social relationships, you can build a lot of things into your romantic relationships, you can build a lot of things into your own in life, and they can all be good. But you can only build one thing at a time, and whatever time you spend building one thing is time you won't spend building something else. This passage says, "As you've received Jesus Christ, spend some time building toward that because you'll never regret it." Now, this is what this text says, build your life in general, specifically apply to families around families.

And now Emily Roberts, who is our leader for our kids' ministry here at Orchard Hill is going to come and talk about how we can specifically do this in our families and as moms, so welcome Emily. 

Emily Roberts

My name is Emily Roberts, as Kurt mentioned, and it is so good to be here today. I am a fairly new mom; my little guy Charlie will be two in June. It's an honor to spend this special weekend with you all because I'm so grateful for all of the women in this space, online, who pour out your energy, your love tirelessly, endlessly for your family, for this church, for our community. So, thank you so much. And many of you are my heroes as I just am beginning on this journey.

So as a new mother, I often think of a story a friend shared with me once about one of her mentors who was a mom. This mom was driving her kids to school one morning and absolutely lost her mind. Can you picture this, annoyance in the car, pressure building for the day, probably baby shark playing on repeat, exhaustion is likely a part of the equation, and she snapped. Likely feeling terrible and guilty and looking at those sweet shocked little faces looking at her wide-eyed thinking, "Mommy's lost it." This mom quickly apologized except for she didn't just say, "Mommy will do better next time. I love you again because you're listening to me." No, this mom sincerely apologized, she explained to her kids, "I'm so sorry for behaving this way. I'm stressed and I have not spent much time with Jesus lately." What an interesting response.

Now, let me first ask, has anyone ever had a morning like this? Anyone, anyone, anyone? But perhaps you didn't get as quick as a resolve as you would have liked before you moved on with your day, maybe it ended, this stressful morning ended with you pushing your kids out of the car door, see you later, taking a moment for yourself, and then just really feeling bad about yourself for the rest of the day. Mom guilt, ooh. I'm sure dad guilt is a real thing as well. Guilt in any of our relationships, and I wonder if I'm alone in this. Here's what amazed me and my friend about this mother's response, she took responsibility so quickly, what a model for me to follow. Amazing really. Wouldn't it have been so much easier to tell the kids, "Get your act together, you're making mommy crazy."

Wouldn't it have been gratifying to tell the kids to get out of the car and to walk to school? But seriously, I want whatever this mom has that she didn't just point her fingers at the littles for screaming, for her screaming, for her responsibility. And let's talk about this Jesus response for a minute that she had. To some of us, this may sound really endearing, "Oh, what a wonderful mother. She knows that this love of Jesus will make her stronger, more patient, loving, tender if she spends some time with him, her Lord, her savior." But to some of us, this makes no sense at all. How is spending time with Jesus going to keep her calm the next time she drives her kids to school? Isn't that what coffee and John Legend are for? Maybe a little self-control too. But I think there are many things that we can learn from this mom's example today.

I revisit this story so often, she comes to my mind when I am wading through mom guilt and the temptation to blame my stuff on everybody else, husband, Charlie, dog, anyone. Now here's the thing, if I want to consider building a deeply rooted and biblically centered home, this will require that I take responsibility for my own heart, my own mind, my own soul, my own body, my own attitude as the mother and the leader of my child, my children. I learned from Clay Clarkson, who is a director of a family ministry called Whole Heart Ministries that, "A Christian home," I'm reading a quote here, "in uncomplicated terms is one in which God is alive and present in the lives of the parents. It is Christian not just in name but in reality, this means that Christ is actually present through his spirit in the lives of his followers who live there. And it is worth noting that the common Greek word in the New Testament for family is oikos, which means house. Family is the people who live within the house."

So, in short, my own words here, a biblically centered family starts with parents. Parents, the first thing that you can build, you can do to build your children up in faith is to build yourself up in faith. But let me be clear, it will be important for us to not just count or confuse endless activity for ourselves or for our kids with rootedness and growth. Certainly, we live in a culture that really celebrates busy-ness and activity. I think many of us can relate when we come to the end of each week and we wonder, what did I accomplish? What just happened? And we do this with Christian activity. People fill their calendars, or perhaps we fill our calendars, with Bible studies, midweek programs, serving opportunities, or Christian events, and these are all good disciplines to have built into our calendars. But let's be clear, Christian activities and events are not what ultimately build a deeply rooted biblically centered family, but they do have an important place. And we'll talk more about that in a moment.

But let me pause here for a moment, for those of you who identify as Jesus following parents, I want to say here today that God did not design your child's faith development to be somebody else's job, but it is your main priority. Let me say that one more time. God did not design your child's faith development to be somebody else's job, but it is your main priority. Because let me tell you, no Sunday school teacher, no KidsFest leader, no YouTube channel, no K-Love song, whatever we're inputting into our kids, none of it can replace the invaluable presence that God has given you in the life of your child. And we should count this a privilege. God has chosen to involve you in the work of cultivating lives, we're talking about whole lives here. Let's count this an honor and not a burden. And guess what? The world is hungry and thirsty for healthy families to form our communities and our world, so this is time well spent.

So, we know we've determined that you have an invaluable presence in the life of your child and that you are the best person, according to the God of the universe, to develop their faith. So, what do you do to develop their faith? Well, as I said earlier, it isn't only about activity, but it also is about activity. As you build your family up in faith and serve as your child's primary spiritual leader, it is also necessary to incorporate disciplines that will assist and enhance your child's growth. Kurt, got at this a little bit, you send your child to soccer practice, so they get better at the sport, you feed your child vegetables because you hope that they acquire the taste for nutritious foods. I'm assuming you require that your child brushes their teeth twice daily, so their teeth don't rot, yes.

You don't just say, "Hey, do whatever you'd like, you can watch YouTube videos all day, eat whatever you want." No, you guide, direct, and sometimes even require that your kids do what you ask them to do because you know it will grow them into a healthy human being. It is the same with faith development. As you bring your child to Kidzburgh, as you worship as a family, send your child off to 7:24 on a Sunday night as you have disciplines of regular Bible reading in your home, you are teaching and modeling for your kids what a life of faith can be, you are also showing them God's perfect design for patterns of worship and church participation. Not only does a child need to see that mom and dad take faith seriously in order for them to take it seriously, but there's a better chance that what is important to you will become important to them. I often tell kids in Kidzburgh that we become who we hang out with. Kids are the best imitators, you know this, do not underestimate them.

I mentioned that I have a two-year-old and recently we have been working on teaching him to pray. Now, I know that he doesn't understand what we're doing, does he really have an idea or sense of who God is? I'm not sure that he does yet. But Matt and I are absolutely convinced that there is a God who hears our prayers and so we've said we're going to teach him early. So recently I was cooking dinner, Charlie was hangry, and as toddlers do, he was yelling at me in gibberish, in pure gibberish, but I knew what he was saying, "Feed me." He still has these primal needs, he's not super sophisticated yet. So, I am cooking the dinner, I run over to him and I say, "Let's pray quickly. We'll pray quickly." And he goes, ["speaking gibberish"], amen. Give me my food." He does this and starts eating. Now, I know the prayer was not sincere, I know it was checking a box so he could eat, but he did know what to do.

I'm not saying this to pat myself on the back, "Oh, I'm teaching my boy how to pray," but to demonstrate the power of modeling and how ready our kids are to learn from us. They're watching, they're waiting for somebody to lead them. So, friends, as I close today, I am here to encourage you in this good work of building your family up in faith, this is extremely important. This issue is maybe I think, in my opinion, one of the most important issues of our time, how families are formed, and will impact the future of our country, our world. And you'll do this best, this good work, when your faith is alive and active, parents, and when you provide opportunities for your kids to practice their faith.

But perhaps today the guilt is heavy, I understand this. Maybe there was even a family fight on the way to church today. Perhaps you wonder how a joy filled and peaceful home is even possible in the midst of grief and brokenness. I'm here to tell you that it is, and it's not too late for God's story to be your family story. In fact, the story of the Bible is that God is the best parent who knows what is best for his kids. He's always correcting, directing, redirecting them to what will grow their faith, to what will provide the best life for them. And when we come into a relationship with God through his son Jesus, perhaps for the first time or in a recommitment, God the father trades our impatience, our anger, our resentment for his love, truth, tenderness, and grace.

Let me pray for us. God, I thank you for the model that you have given us, a family. I thank you that you promise to be our foundation and to build us up. God, I am praying that your grace, your patience, and love would be the song of the homes of everyone here today. Amen. Thank you.