GoGrace: Spending Time With Your Family Is Healing And Comfort In Christ

When a father focuses much on God’s work more than making time for his family, he frustrates God’s plan for him and people below him. He leaves Satan to thwart his family, which later exposes his flaws as a leader. For Christ sake, God’s work is God’s work and He is the better person to take care of it. A man’s family is supposed to be taken care of the man hence your right as a father. When we attend, more to God’s and leave ours, the devil sail through. However, the more we spend more time with our families with the love of God glowing in our hearts, the more we excel wonderfully in the things of God. Is it not 'insane' to tell people to love God when you are hardly seen having a nice time with your family? How can you translate God, who is a Spirit to the people that He loves you? God does it through you. Explore the beautiful nature with them, let the have that experience of the sun's kiss, give the kids the hugs and pegs each morning to make them feel secured by your side.

 once asked a kid, “What is the love of God?” She starred at me for a while and took a deep breath. Then she responded, “The love of God? The love of God is God loving us.” That kid missed it. She didn’t know what the love of God is. Then I enquired from her once again, “Have you felt God’s love before?” She smiled and reacted, “Hmm… How can I feel God’s love when I don’t have a clue about who he is” I was moved but bothered at her reply. Finally, I asked her once again, “How deep is the love between you and your dad?” “My dad is my dad; he gives us money for school and buy us new clothes. He goes to work in the morning and comes home in the evening. I hardly see him sometimes,” she replied.

The thought of the little girl as to who is a Father was defined in a universal perspective. She had no personal affection towards love. I call it the error of this generation. I just feel like addressing this message to fathers and God’s leaders and upcoming administrators of the church because it’s a great error affecting and assassinating the Gospel without notice.

We sometimes address the Love of God to the congregation, during evangelism, to our families with anxiety in our hearts, “Love God and serve him with all your heart” yet we fail to prove that Love towards them. We easily forget how Grace has defined the LOVE OF GOD in our Hearts as a treasure, which must be demonstrated for others to come forth. The mistake we make is that, we exhibit the LOVE of God back to God, which is an error. God’s Love is granted to men to show it towards their fellows as benefits. What for?

Why is God’s Love given unto men to demonstrate it to their fellows?

Love is the only definite element, which fulfils repentance in the life of man. Repentance without love, zeal, passion is pretense / hypocrisy. When you love someone, you adapt to their ways of life. When people do not show you love, it means they have not come to understand what its demonstration is about therefore they need conviction to recognize that indeed, this love is worthwhile. It does not make them enemies, just keep revealing that unquenching love to them, gradually, they will feel the need for it.

When Grace fell to earth, one thing He taught us as the greatest commandment was “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ (Mark 12:30).

What does this verse mean? Hypocrites sometimes say to others, I have loved the Lord God with all my heart, soul and mind through their 2 hours Sunday Service and 10 minutes morning devotion thinking that is enough to tell God how much they love him. No. that is not what this verse means. Is there anyone on earth who has loved the Lord God with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his mind and with all his strength? I don’t think so. How can you love God whom you do not see with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength?

Apostle John in the book of John proclaimed that he was the disciple Jesus loved most. Jesus did not say so but from the Gospel according to John, Jesus indeed loved the guy. Why? I, for once believe that John exhibited love not towards Jesus. He did not try to prove to Jesus how much he loved him rather, he boasted in Jesus love towards others for the sake of repentance. No wonder he was given the platform to write the about the grand finale of the world in the Book of Revelations. In his other book, 1 John, he wrote; If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 John 4:20). This is not just brotherly love but a family affectionate love.

When a Father refuse to demonstrate love to his family, he unswervingly denies God’s love towards them. The father is instituted by God as His representative to pass His attribute to the family. A child who enjoys more time with his family easily paints a picture of God in his mind and receives easily the things of God. A child who lacked a father’s love normally misinterprete the things of God and sees them as unnecessary.  Sometimes, when they are punished for going wrong consistently with no love attached and are later told to love God by their mothers, they get it all wrong thinking that the Heavenly Father is wicked as their dad.

Failure to spend time with your family as an ambassador of God to raise God’s moral in them is failure to get them closer to God. Why do you think for a second that the Bible admonishes leaders to be able-managers of their homes in 1 Timothy 3:4-5. You can disagree with me on this but the point is that, God expect 30 percent time allocated for his house and 70 for a minister to manage his home. Why? Because the act of administering your family with love to put them under subjection is another platform to deal with your root, I mean your flaws. You can be very strong in Christianity but the enemy in the weakness of your family will obstruct your focus through them.

If the root is left uncovered, one day, the rains will fall heavily and uproot the tree away. The fruit will fall in gutters and the worldly people will spit at it. When a father does not reveal God’s love towards his family by spending much time with his wife for the kids to have an extension of the evidence of true love, the father’s message to the world on repentance will never be accepted. Why? Because people look up to your family’s attribute also. So it works hand in hand, love’s demonstration is demonstrating love. It’s not about how prophetic you are, not about your ability to discern and speak mysteries but the ability to boast about how love has sharpened your family through you. Others will look up to that small angle and come to the saving knowledge of Jesus. Why? Because he can restore their families too.

However, why is family so important?

Because Christianity is about family affection. The only religion that teaches man to love his neighbor as himself. When family is equated out of the Bible, the rest of the words will just be silhouettes. (1 Thessalonians 4:9, Hebrews 13:1, 1 Peter 1:22, 3:8)

Spending time with our household (wife children) ruins the enemies plans and purpose the love of God towards us. With a father’s love unveiled towards his family, the wife and children get to understand what manner of love the father has revealed unto them. The profiting part is that as a woman thinks of the love of his husband, she is secured and feels quickened every morning whiles the children always have the notion that their father is the best man in the world.