Family & Faith: The Foundation of Our Future

A building is only as strong as its foundation.

Just as every building needs a foundation if it is going to stand, so too marriage needs a strong foundation to survive. It takes significant time and effort to lay the foundation, and without it the house will sink like sand in a rainstorm. A marriage is no different, and if there is no solid foundation, the family will crack and crumble just like a house of cards.

A healthy and successful marriage relies on commitment, love, trust, honesty, respect and dedication to each other. These are the quality traits that act as the foundation of marriage. In fact, these are the undisputable and constant truths that are also referred in the Bible. The indisputable truths of God are not debatable and when people neglect these truths, marriages and families ultimately fail.

God has designed marriage to be between one man and one woman, united as one flesh in an unbreakable covenant for life with Him.

Successful marriages are based on couples entering a covenant relationship on their wedding day where both individuals make a choice to live in covenant love until death do them part.

In its essence, love is not just words or feelings but love is a daily decision expressed in deeds. Love is a choice to be patient, kind and away from envy. Love does not demand and is not selfish, but always gives cheerfully. Love is forgiving and keeps no record of wrongs suffered. True love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Covenant love never fails. (1 Cor.13:4-13)

Commitment and dedication to your marriage partner is given great importance by God. It is the kind of strength that should act as the foundation of relationships. When both husbands and wives in a marriage demonstrate this kind of love and commitment a very strong foundation is laid that will stand the tests of time.

Marriage has profound effects on the quality of life for couples and children, not only economically, but physically, emotionally and spiritually as well. The Bible says God hates divorce. He hates divorce because, as Jesus taught, marriage is a picture of the unity between God, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When people get divorced, they are tearing at the very fabric of the unity of God and they end up destroying their lives and ripping the hearts out of their children.

With divorce rates approaching over 50 percent, what hope do we have for our families? The impact of divorce on children is staggering, and the long term psychological and emotional scars children suffer from never fully recover. When parents violate all of God’s standards for marriage (or never marry to begin with), children are left feeling abandoned, confused, lonely, worthless, unloved, and completely broken.

The generations of children from broken homes grow up rebellious towards God, disrespectful towards others and disconnected from reality. The price we are paying now as a results from husbands/fathers and wives/mothers shunning their responsibilities are sons who grow to learn to use women and mistreat their future wives, and daughters who lack self-respect and dignity as they grow older and will not remain pure for their future husbands. Consequently, without proper instruction and guidance, the pattern of instability and curse of weak family foundations are passed down to future generations.

The family was the first institution ever created, rooted in Truth since the beginning, and faith and family are the backbone of society. Disconnecting human life, marriage, and family from its correct foundation in God is literally destroying our communities and keeping generations enslaved to self-destructive behavior.

The reality is that no matter how “liberated” a country has become; the needs of children have remained the same all throughout time! Children always need a mom and dad who are committed to God and each other to grow up to have happy, healthy and successful lives!

So how do we begin to restore our lives and offer hope for the future of our families? Most of us come from broken homes, mothers and fathers who failed at raising us, and we have no example to follow. With so much damage already done, we must abandon the world's definition of success and happiness and use the Word as a guide to victory by seeking the Lord for wisdom, Truth and understanding! We must take personal responsibility for our own lives and rise above our parents’ failures. It is absolutely critical that we break the generational curse that has been passed down to us and return to traditional family values. But in order to do that we must humble ourselves and lay our pride and desire to please ourselves first on His altar, even if we are still licking our wounds. It is only then that God can restore feeling and bring healing to our lives and relationships.

Once you rest things on that solid foundation, everything else will start to come together.

In the meantime, keep yourself in the love of God and use prayer as your means of bringing God's grace and peace onto the scene of your life.