Roles on a Winning Family Team - October 14, 2009

Family FX 400 Race
· Warmup/Qualifying Laps: Meet, Greet & Share your Parent's names
· Laps 1-100 Share Roles of Your Parents
· Laps 101-200 Ephesians 5/6
· Laps 201-300 Roles Defined
· Laps 301-400 Roles Applied

Victory Lap When a husband, wife and children all fulfill their God-appointed roles in the family, when they have all committed their lives to Christ and to His service, then peace and harmony will reign in the home.


Blueprints found in Ephesians 5:15-6:4


^{15Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. 17Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. 18Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. 19Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, 20always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.}

²¹Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

²²Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. ²³For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. ²⁴Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

²⁵Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, ²⁷and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. ²⁸In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— ³⁰for we are members of his body. ³¹"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." ³²This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. ³³However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Ephesians 6
¹Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ²"Honor your father and mother"—which is the first commandment with a promise— ³"that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth." ⁴Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.



Original Design for the Family
· Designer: God
· Design: Lifetime commitment before God of one man and one woman, and their offspring or adopted children
· Roles: Husband/Father, Wife/Mother & Children
· Extended Design: Household includes relatives by blood or marriage such as grandparents, nieces, nephews, cousins, aunts and uncles.
· Modified Design: Due to the reality of divorce or death, many households are led by a Single Parent, Step Parents, Grandparents or some other guardian. Although faced with great challenges, these households can discover God's best for them and follow His ways. Our culture readily accepts the idea of divorce, but we know God hates it (Malachi 2:16) and knows better than we the fallout from it.

All:
· Family Team members (as they come of age) to be Christians, having a true relationship with Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
· Both men and women are equally valued in God’s eyes and both are created in His image and likeness. However, men and women have unique roles in family life.
· All team members need to discover God’s will for their individual lives in the context of the family He has place them in.

Husband:
· Loves his wife as Christ loved the church—sacrificial giving of self for her to be all God made her to be
· “Leaves and cleaves” clean break with family of origin; fully invested and focused on his wife and kids
· Be the spiritual leader in the home (takes the initiative). Instructing and teaching both his wife and their offspring scriptural values, leading the family into biblical truth.
· Provides for his family - if he does not, he “denies the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Timothy 5:8).
· Protects his family from physical, mental and spiritual harm.

Wife:
· Respect her husband and willingly submit to his leadership in the family
· Being her husband’s helper (Genesis 2:18-20)
· Having children and raising, nurturing them as a compliment to her husband’s fathering.
· Support the family with her organization and industry (Proverbs 31).

Children:
· Obeying their parents until they are adults on their own
· Honor their parents for their lifetime