The Five Things You Must Learn in Your Family

“Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52 NIV).

Awesome families encourage growth. They create an atmosphere of lifelong learning. They help each other develop. They encourage the discovery of each person’s spiritual gifts and abilities.

If you’re not growing, your family is boring. You’re just stuck in a rut. If you haven’t learned anything new or developed any new interest in a long time, you’re not growing!

There are some things that you’re never going to learn if you don’t learn them in your family. You can’t learn them at school. You can’t learn them at work. You only can learn them in your family.

In fact, most of your problems as an adult come from the fact that you didn’t learn certain things correctly as a child. Here are five things you must learn in your family:

1. What to do with feelings. In a healthy family, you learn how to recognize, identify, own up to, express, and deal with your feelings. Awesome families should let everyone be honest and let kids express their emotions.
2. How to handle conflict. Kids need to see their parents working problems out in front of them and showing how you deal with differences in a healthy way.
3. How to handle loss. You don’t want your kids to win all the time. Because when they get out in the real world and they face the inevitable losses, it will be devastating. They need to learn that failure won’t destroy them, that a loss isn’t the end of life.
4. What values matter most. It’s important to teach our kids the three basic temptations of life so they are not swayed by what the world values. Those temptations have to do with how you feel, what you do, and what you get in life — basically sex, salary, and status.
5. Good habits. Habits determine our character. Families should help each other grow so that everyone’s character is more like Jesus Christ.

PLAY today’s audio teaching from Pastor Rick >>

Talk It Over

• How can you create an atmosphere of learning within your family?
• Why does it seem harder to teach kids how to handle loss in today’s culture?
• What are the values that matter most to you? What are the biblical values that you want to teach your children?