Across the globe, families are falling apart. They don’t mean to, it just happens. Well, there’s one thing – one very simple, natural thing that you can do to substantially reduce the probability of that occurring. And that is this: Make sure that most days, you share a meal together. Can it really be that simple?

We’ve all had that experience – having a meal with someone takes a relationship to a whole new level. Not quite sure what makes this whole eating together so important to us – but it is. It’s one of the primary ways that we form relationships.

Perhaps it’s the fact that as we sit with someone over a meal, we have the time to engage them in conversation. Perhaps it’s the simple act of sharing food. Perhaps it’s the fact that oftentimes, one of the parties at the table has put time and effort into preparing the meal.

Just the other night, some friends of ours invited Jacqui, my wife, and me out to their place for dinner. It was a simple meal – nothing fancy you understand. And for about 3 hours we enjoyed their company. We were already friends with this couple, but somehow, having that time together in their home, eating a meal that they’d prepared for us, deepened those bonds of friendship.

It’s a very special thing. And in many cultures – the whole idea of a man and a woman dating each other places a lot of emphasis on going out for meals together. 

Eating meals together with other people – in almost every culture on the planet – is an incredibly important part of building and strengthening relationships. We kind of already know that – but just stopping to think about it and talk about it – really drives it home doesn’t it?

So why is it then, that we’re seeing declining rates of families having meals together? In the UK for instance, one in ten families never sits down to an evening meal together. But that same study – which surveyed 3,000 families – revealed that two–thirds of children yearn for a return to the traditional family dinner time. And four out of 10 children have even asked their mother or father to have more evening meals together as a family. 

A similar study conducted in New Zealand found that the majority of 15 year olds – 64.7% – reported that they shared a main meal with their parents around a table several times a week. That sounds great until you realise that 35.3% – or just over a third – reported that they didn’t share a main meal with their parents around a table several times a week.

The newspaper USA Today had this to say on the whole subject of family dinners:

Family dinners help kids avoid risky behaviors and may even help them in school. But new research shows that the more frequent these dinners, the better the adolescents fare emotionally, says new research published this week in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

“The effect doesn’t plateau after three or four dinners a week,” says co-author Frank Elgar, an associate professor of psychiatry at McGill University in Montréal. “The more dinners a week the better.”

With each additional dinner, researchers found fewer emotional and behavioral problems, greater emotional well-being, more trusting and helpful behaviors toward others and higher life satisfaction, regardless of gender, age or family economics. The study was based on a nationally representative sample of 26,069 Canadian adolescents ages 11 to 15 in 2010. 

Do we really need more studies and statistics to tell us what we already know? Eating meals together is good for children, and good for families. Eating meals together stops people from falling apart and families from falling apart. And yet it’s something that in many countries – we’re doing less and less. It’s as though we’re hell–bent on destroying our families.

And our family contains the most precious people on the earth to us, right? What’s one thing – just one thing that you can do to stop your family from falling apart? Eat meals together as often as you possibly can. They’re important for children, they’re especially important for teenagers and they’re important too for husbands and wives.

Over the dinner table in the evening – it’s as though we check in with each other. We find out what’s been happening in each other’s days. How are the rest of our family members going? What joys and triumphs did they have today? What sadnesses and disappointments? Time magazine puts it this way:

Studies show that the more often families eat together, the less likely kids are to smoke, drink, do drugs, get depressed, develop eating disorders and consider suicide, and the more likely they are to do well in school, delay having sex, eat their vegetables, learn big words and know which fork to use. “If it were just about food, we would squirt it into their mouths with a tube,” says Robin Fox, an anthropologist who teaches at Rutgers University in New Jersey, about the mysterious way that family dinner engraves our souls. “A meal is about civilizing children. It’s about teaching them to be a member of their culture.”

I want to encourage you to take this one thing in your family seriously. It’s all about being a family – providing a safe place for one another – not just the children, but also the adults. I’ve found that our kids need us just as much – differently – but just as much now that they’re young adults.

And husbands and wives – make sure that you guys have a time on a pretty regular basis, where you can have dinner just the two of you. Whether it’s at home, or going out on a date, it’s so important to connect. Seems that we’re so intent on connecting with the world through social media and email and all the other electronic relationship destroyers – that we’ve forgotten to connect with the people we love the most.

This one thing is so simple to do. It’s so practical. Okay, perhaps it will require some changes to entrenched routines. Perhaps your children will raise their eyebrows or wonder what’s going on. But remember that study – most of the children on this planet long for a return to regular family mealtime. And for you – it’s perhaps the simplest, most practical thing that you can do to stop your family from falling apart.

Just sit down, once every day, and have a meal with your family. Can it really be that simple? Sure it can. If the studies are right – it’s worth a try.

As I open my Bible – there seems to be precious little in it about sharing a meal together as a family. Or… is there. I guess back in the times when the various books of the Bible were written, there weren’t all the distractions that we have today, to tear families apart. No cable television, or mobile phones, or internet, or social media.

And yet it seems that God sees the family as the central piece in bringing children close to Him. This is what God says to His people way back in the book of Deuteronomy Chapter 6, starting at verse 4:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.

Talk to your children about God. And to the church, he says in the NT – Hebrews 10:25

And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.

Bring those two together into the modern day malady of families falling apart and the message is clear. We need to spend time together as a family – it’s good for us. It’s God’s will for us. And the easiest way to start is to do what comes naturally. Eat meals together. It really is that simple. 

One of the reasons that families are falling apart all around the world, is that they don’t spend enough time together. Being a family can be hard work, sure. But it can also be fun. Lots of fun if we do it the right way. As things turn out, families that play together, stay together.

Can I ask you a question – what do you do with your spare time? Do you invest it, spend it, or waste it? We all have spare time and time wasted doing something we really enjoy isn’t time wasted at all.

Let’s take a look at your week and break it down. We’re all different of course, but here’s a typical week – you make your own modifications to suit your lifestyle as we go along.

Each week has a standard 168 hours. So – the average working week is 40 hours, so that leaves 128 hours. Let’s say you spend 7 and a half hours commuting – that’s one and a half hours five times a week) now we’re down to 120 hours roughly. 2 hours a day – 14 hours a week, preparing and eating meals – that leaves 106 hours.

Oh – we’ve forgotten sleep. Can’t forget sleep. Let’s say you’re getting 8 hours a night there’s another 56 hours for the week – now, we’re down to 50 hours and right there, you have your spare time.

Some of that’s going to be taken up with necessary chores – washing, cleaning, shopping – let’s say they add up to 10 hours – what’s left now, is 40 hours.

40 hours of spare time. That’s pretty much the same as the average working week. 40 hours is rather a lot, wouldn’t you agree? As I said, different people have different routines. I work longer the average and sleep slightly less than the average. So I’m probably closer to 30 hours of spare time a week – that’s still rather a lot. That’s over 4 hours a day of spare time – 7 days a week – on average – less on weekdays, more on weekends.

30 hours, 40 hours – whatever your spare time ratio is, that’s rather a lot. Some of it, you’re going to want to rest and spend on your own. Just getting some “me” time is important to recharge your batteries. Watch a bit of TV perhaps, hop onto Facebook, surf the internet, whatever it is you enjoy doing. Perhaps reading a good book? Fantastic. But there’s one very important thing that we haven’t talked about yet when it comes to our leisure time – and that “thing” is your family. Husbands with wives, wives with husbands, parents with children, children with parents.

Last time I checked, being a family was meant to be fun. It’s not all fun of course. Disciplining our children isn’t always fun. Fights and arguments aren’t always fun. Sometimes being a family is hard work. That’s okay. That’s the way it was meant to be. But here’s what I’ve noticed. The more fun families have together, the less time they spend fighting and arguing; the more fun they have together, the less it feels like hard work.

So – here’s my question for you today. How much fun are you guys having together as a family? Do you plan fun times into your busy week? Do you have spontaneous fun time, where you forget about your busy schedule and just laugh and play together?

When I was a young lad, my father worked really hard. He emigrated to Australia after WWII and whilst he had an engineering degree, it wasn’t recognised in this country, so, with a young family and a demanding job, he went back to university and studied for 7 years part–time – can’t imagine how soul destroying that must have been. 

He had a senior position in the Steel Works in the town where we lived – and so spent long hours at work. But sometime, early on, he decided that he and I would collect stamps together. Australian stamps, European stamps. It was our hobby together and we built up quite a stamp collection. That was almost half a century ago. I had those stamps valued recently – they came to just a few hundred dollars. Nothing really. But the time that we spent together as father and son remains a priceless memory for me that I shall treasure until my dying day. 

And when we were older, both my sister and I were heavily into music – we each played 3 instruments, and each weeknight there was something on. Lessons, orchestra practice – it was by and large our father who would take us to all these things, wait for us in the car, talk to us on the way there and back. Again – that’s something I value greatly. He took some of his precious spare time, and invested it in his family, in us, in me.

Families that play together, stay together. One of the greatest things that you and I can do to stop our families from falling apart, is to have fun together. To deliberately schedule time, to plan time and activities, hobbies, car rides – whatever that are times of fun that we can have together as families. 

Okay, they’re not always exactly what we want to do. But those times of fun together as a family, are the times that your children will treasure when you, like my father, are long gone. What can you do to stop your family from falling apart? Play together. Waste time on each other having simple fun, enjoying simple pleasures. 

Do it deliberately. Do it in the face of the pressing realities that crowd out your time. Because your family, your children, are truly the most precious people on the planet. Doesn’t it make sense to invest some of your precious time in them?

Just stop and think. What do your kids enjoy doing? Is it going down to the park to kick a football around? Or going to a movie? Playing dress ups or perhaps the odd shopping trip together? When we plan things to do with our families that make us laugh and enjoy life – that’s powerful stuff.

And here’s the other thing – husbands and wives – you guys need to plan some fun times together too. For Jacqui and me, Saturday is our day. We often go for a drive somewhere, a walk somewhere – I’m really quite deliberate about planning something that we’re both going to enjoy doing – because fun keeps us close. Time together doing something we both enjoy keeps us talking about things. 

How easy is it to allow the burdens that we carry round on our shoulders to rob us of the fun we can have in life? The decision to have fun together or not – as a family – is a decision that we each can make. So… what will you decide to do?

Once again, this isn’t something that the Bible talks about specifically, probably because when it was written, life wasn’t as crazy and hectic as it is today. There weren’t the individual, isolated entertainment options that we have today.

In the evening, after dinner, there was no television, there was not electricity even – and so families naturally spent time together and invented their own entertainment. But the wealthier we become, the more options we have and the less fun we have together as families. 

What God’s Word does tell us to do is to make good use of our time and not to waste it. Because… time is short. 

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. (Ephesians 5:15-16)

In other words, use your time wisely – compared to this admonition: 

Besides, they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things they ought not to. (1 Timothy 5:13)

It’s pretty obvious isn’t it? There are good ways to spend our time, and some really bad ways to spend our time. And one of the best ways that we can spend our time – one of the greatest and most pleasurable investments that we can make in the future – is to have fun, to make some time to play with our families. Can it really be that difficult to do?

Families that play together, stay together. 

When all is said and done, prayer is the most powerful thing that you and I can ever do in a situation of adversity. In fact, prayer that yields powerful results is entirely normal in God’s sight. So, in a world where families are falling apart en masse, what impact would family prayer have, do you think? Turns out that families who pray together, stay together.

So as we talk about our families – and the things that you and I can do to stop them falling apart – how can we possibly pass up the opportunity to talk about prayer? I have a very simple view of prayer. It goes something like this.

Prayer is when we join hands with God, to get His will done on this earth. Do you remember Jesus’ master class on prayer? It was very simple. The disciples came to Him and asked Him to teach them how to pray – it was common for a rabbi to teach His disciples, to give them a form of prayer that they could use.

So, Jesus obliged. He taught them how to pray:

“Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors, And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.” (Matthew 6:9–13)

Do you see? It’s all about getting God’s will done on this earth, and trusting Him for His provision and His forgiveness. 

So let me ask you – is it God’s will for your family to stay together? Is it God’s will for your children to learn to honour their parents and love and obey God with glad and willing hearts? Is it God’s will for your family to reflect the wonder of His love in a world where families are falling apart en masse?

I don’t think you have to be such a great theologian, to be able to answer a resounding “yes” to all of those questions. And if we lived in a perfect world with a perfect family – well, it’d be pretty easy for us to live out His will. No problem at all.

But we don’t live in a perfect world. And, I’m guessing, you don’t have a perfect family. Am I right? You have the sort of family that we were chatting about last week on the program. You have the sort of family that has conflicts and clashes, personalities that sometimes rub one another the wrong way. You have a family with the odd black sheep, perhaps even some very difficult teenagers, going through puberty.

We somehow imagine that out there somewhere is some perfect family, but that’s simply not true. Every family has its issues and yours (and mine) is no exception to that universal reality. In fact, sometimes it can seem that keeping your family together – stopping them from falling apart – is completely impossible. Do you know why that is?

Because it’s true. There are some things that you can’t do to keep your family together – they require supernatural power. They require the power of God – and fortunately, as we saw earlier, God has a mighty heart for your family. And He is ready, willing and able to step in and see His will done, when your family seems intent on tearing itself apart.

That’s where prayer comes in.

Let’s imagine that there’s a teenager in your family – perhaps he’s your son or your grandson – who is going completely off the rails. He’s caught up with the wrong crowd – a recipe for disaster if ever you saw one – and he may be into drugs. He’s out till all hours and you’re beside yourself, You just don’t know what to do.

Nothing you say seems to make a difference. Nothing you do makes one iota of difference. You’re completely powerless to help him and if something doesn’t give, he’s going to find himself in serious trouble. Well, there is something that you can do. You can pray. Hmm. Sounds rather feeble doesn’t it? Because you want to do something real and practical.

Have a listen to this:

“If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” (John 15:7)

“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours.” (Mark 11:24)

“And I tell you, ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everybody who asks receives, everybody who seeks, finds and to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Luke 11:9,10)

Now, you may notice something about those three scriptures – they are all things that Jesus said. I could have chosen passages from the OT, from the epistles – things that God said through other people. But I’ve deliberately chosen the things that Jesus said – so that the power of what God is saying impacts your heart. 

Remember at the beginning of the program I said that the only sort of prayer the Bible teaches about is the sort that has powerful results. In fact, prayer that yields powerful results is entirely normal in God’s sight. So – when you pray for that wayward teenager who’s bent on self–destruction – you are actually doing the single, most powerful thing that you can possibly do.

When you pray for the husband and father who’s a workaholic. When you pray for the young daughter who’s going out on her first date with a boy. When you pray for the mother who is struggling with postnatal depression. When your pray for the marriage that seems to be coming apart at the seams. You are doing the most powerful thing that you can possibly do. Why?

Because you are joining hands with God – the maker of the heavens and the earth, the same God that has a soft tender heart for your family – you’re joining hands with that God. The God who has the power, the wisdom and the desire to do the things that you cannot do.

Hello – is anybody hearing this? Are you listening? Is the mighty, powerful Word of God sinking into your heart and bringing hope back for you? Because that’s exactly what God intends to do through His Word today. The single most powerful thing that you can do for your family is to pray for them. 

I pray for my wife and my children almost every day. I bring them before the Lord. I ask for Him to protect them, to hold them, to heal them where they need healing. To strengthen them where they need strengthening. To test them and discipline them with the love of a Father. And there’s someone else I pray for too – me – that I will have the wisdom and tenderness of heart to be the husband and father God wants me to be.

How much and how often do you pray for your family – as a whole and for the individuals? And – let me ask you this: How often do you pray together as a family? It’s a powerful thing for husband and wife to pray together. It’s a powerful thing for parents to learn how to pray from their parents, as the family prays together.

Sadly, very few families pray together. But imagine what would happen if we took this one, most powerful thing that we can do for our family – to pray – and did it together. Imagine the transformative power as God changes the hearts of each member of your family through prayer. Imagine what your children would learn, how it would change them, as they see God answer the prayer of your family.

Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them. (Matthew 18:19–20)

Imagine if you gathered together in prayer and had Jesus in your midst. Come on! Prayer that yields powerful results is normal in God’s sight. Do you see the power of what it is that we’re talking about here?

What if a good chunk of your prayer life were focussed on your family? What if your family together, as a family under God, prayed to Him together? How different would your family be? Fathers, husbands – it’s up to you here as the spiritual head of your household to take the lead here.

Families that pray together, stay together.

How about it?

Unforgiveness is like a wedge that tears families apart. And actually, it’s one of the biggest contributors to the disintegration of families across the globe. What if a culture of blame and unforgiveness were replaced with one of forgiveness? How would that change your family?

Here’s the thing about the people in our family. We generally know them better than anyone else does. Why? Because we live with them. Most of us can put up a facade that will fool people out there – but none of us is capable of maintaining that façade 24/7 – at home. Eventually, at home – who we really are, comes to the fore.

The people in our families, know our strengths and weaknesses like nobody else. You may listen to my smooth voice and imagine that I have it all together. My wife could tell you otherwise. I try my best, but I’m far from perfect, just the way that you’re far from perfect. 

So – we see all the strengths and weaknesses of the other members of our family. But because we live with these people, their weaknesses and failures and limitations – even just their differences, the ways in which they’re different from us – become like Chinese water torture. Here’s how Chinese water torture works.

Back in the 15^th and 16^th centuries AD, they would tie a subject down, immobilise him, and then drop water on his forehead. They’d vary the timing and intensity without warning, and this would go on for days. Eventually, it felt like there was a brick falling on the victims head – it became completely unbearable.

It was the constancy, repetitiveness and unpredictability of the drips that caused the victim such great distress. Just simple small drips of water became totally unbearable. And that is what, so often, happens with the weaknesses and failures of the people we live with.

I was having coffee with a man recently and he was telling me something that his wife had done which drove him, the other day, into a complete fit of rage. He’d had enough. He just couldn’t take it anymore. Now the thing that his wife did, in and of itself, wasn’t such a big deal. But they’ve been married for going onto 30 years, and she’s been doing it all that time.

It’s the Chinese water torture thing. You see? I wonder, what are the things that some of your family members do over and over again, that drive you to anger and despair all at the same time? Often they’re just little things. For instance, I’m one of these people who has a place for everything and puts everything back in its place. Seems obvious to me. That way, next time I need it, I’ll know where to find it.

My wife and my daughter aren’t like that. It doesn’t seem important to them, to put the sharp kitchen knives back into the knife block in the same order, so that when you reach for the one second from the top, you get a carving knife, not a bread knife. It doesn’t seem important when they borrow a pen from the penholder in my study, to put it back again so that I’ll have something to write with, next time I reach for a pen.

Now, that doesn’t make them bad people. They’re not. I love them both, and truly, they have strengths and abilities that I will never have. There are things that I fail to do – that they simply can’t understand. But this whole knife and pen thing – as small as those things are – used to drive me absolutely around the twist. How can they not get it? Well, they don’t and they probably never will because… they’re different to me. 

So – here’s my choice. Seems to me that there are 3 options here: Option 1 is to continue to get angry with them and tell them what a bad job they’re doing at being a wife and a daughter. Option 2, is to hold my tongue, say nothing but still harbour that anger and resentment inside. And Option 3 is to forgive them immediately and completely.

Which one do you think is the best option? Pretty obvious isn’t it. Option 1 is going to tear us apart. Option 2 is going to tear me apart. Option 3 is going to promote family harmony and let’s face it, which slot in the knife block the knives go in is hardly a big issue, is it? And I do have other pens in the top drawer of my study desk when all is said and done.

These examples may seem trivial to you. And they are, but they have the potential to create a lot of conflict in our household. And I’m guessing that you have some things – equally trivial, equally inconsequential – that set you off too. And because they’ve been done by your family members over and over and over again, you are so sensitive to them, that when they happen, you could just about scream. Am I right? I’m pretty sure I am.

What is it that your family members do (or don’t do) to you that make you want to scream? Come on, just think about them now. You’ll know what they are in an instant, because you’re so attuned to them. It’s like you’re almost waiting for it to happen again at any moment, right? So when those things happen the next time, which option are you going to choose:

Option 1 – get angry with them (again!!) and tell them what a bad job they’re doing. Option 2 – hold your tongue and say nothing, but let the anger and resentment build up inside you. Or… Option 3 – forgive them immediately and completely. Which one will it be? And when you choose that option – what will the consequences of your choice be?

Here’s the reason that unforgiveness is so toxic in a family context. Because it’s cumulative, like the Chinese water torture. Each drip, drop, drip… magnifies the impact on you and the consequences of your actions. And that unforgiveness – each time it happens – it’s like… like wedges being driven between family members, slowly and inexorably tearing them apart.

Before you know it – this family that should be a close–knit, loving unit – is a collection of warring tribes, with no love, or common purpose or sense of family left that anybody can discern at a safe distance. So if unforgiveness is tearing your family apart. There’s just one place for you to begin.

Begin by forgiving people instantly – in fact, you can even forgive them in advance, anticipating the next drip in the water torture, and even before it comes, neutralising its effect on you. Forgiveness based on tolerance is what keeps families together. Forgiveness – your own, and your example that others will surely model and follow – is what’s going to stop your family from falling apart. 

Jesus said this:

“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbour, Let me take the speck out of your eye, while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye.” (Matthew 7:1–5)

He’s absolutely right isn’t He? This precisely describes the pattern of unforgiveness that goes on in our families. We behave on the premise that we’re wrong, and they’re right – not realising that we ourselves, have a distorted view of things. 

This whole forgiveness thing starts with us. It starts with us examining our own flawed judgements and reactions. How can we judge others and conclude that they’re wrong, simply because God wired them differently on the inside? How can an encourager judge a leader – and conclude that the leader is flawed, just because she’s not an encourager?

That’s exactly what we do in our families and we build up layers of unforgiveness, simply because God’s made that family member who’s annoying us different from us. And those layers of unforgiveness tear families apart.

Want to stop your family falling apart? Then forgive them quickly and completely – and all of a sudden – you mark my words – they’ll see the wisdom in that and start doing the same. That’s how you stop your family from falling apart.

With so many distractions and pressures out there to tear our families apart these days, way too many people lose hope in the future of their family, way too early in the piece. In fact, it’s either the hope or the hopelessness that we have in the future of our family, that drives our behaviour towards them. Which is it for you?

Well, over these last couple of weeks we’ve been talking about how to stop families from falling apart. And here’s the thing with this whole marriage breakdown and family breakdown thing. It doesn’t happen overnight.

Nobody gets married with the aim of having their marriage fail. Nobody brings children into the world with the intent of seeing them grow up and leave the family never to return. Nobody nurtures a family, with the express intent of seeing it disintegrate in front of their very eyes do they?

Families don’t fall apart overnight. It’s a gradual process. It begins with distractions – other things, seemingly important things, even apparently good things, start to crowd out our family times together. And so we go our different ways and then, we don’t connect as often or as deeply as we used to.

Before you know it, the members of our family – yours and mine – we’re all living separate lives. Now – as kids grow up, they’re meant to have their own lives. And it’s good for a husband and a wife to have some different interests, things that they do apart as well as together.

All those things are fine until we stop connecting on a deeper, emotional level. Why do we do that? Because we’re tired. Because we’re distracted and sometimes, because connecting with people we love, hurts. What – love hurts? Sure it does! Whenever we love an imperfect person, that person is going to hurt us. Whenever we’re loved by another – because we’re imperfect – we’re going to hurt them. 

And after a while, those hurts become deeper and deeper – we talked about that whole Chinese water torture effect the other day on the program. And so we retreat into our shell – and hide from the hurt. And there you have it. Instead of connecting with our loved ones on a deep emotional level, we now have a family that’s disconnected. We now have a family that is ready, to fall apart. In fact, the process is already well underway.

Talking about this stuff – I am so deeply conscious that some people have recently been through that and some may well be travelling down that painful road at the moment. Or perhaps your adult children are going through it at the moment in their families. When families fall apart it is deeply, deeply painful. And here’s the reason why.

Because a man and a woman, when they fall in love and get married – have hopes and dreams for their future together. They start their marriage with a great sense of anticipation. When they bring their children into the world, they have hopes and dreams for them too. And all of a sudden when we come to that point of realising that our family – not someone else’s – our family is on the road to destruction – that realisation robs us of our hopes and dreams.

There is nothing so devastating as to see your hopes and dreams lying shattered at your feet. I know – because I’ve been there. Many years ago now – but I remember that sense of hopelessness as though it were yesterday. Of all the pains and hurts that I’ve experienced in my life, hopelessness is by far the worst By a country mile. 

Whilst we live in the here and now, today – we’re always looking forward to the future. And when the things we’d been hoping for in our futures start to look unattainable, it’s completely devastating. 

So – what do you do when that happens? Do you give up? A lot of people do. A lot of people simply resign themselves to the fact that their marriage is going to fall apart. Or, in cultures where husband and wife are not likely to divorce, they resign themselves to a lifelong marriage of separation and isolation. 

In a sense, it’s the impending sense of failure of a family, that causes too many people to withdraw their efforts to hold their family together, way, way too early. What I have to say now is specifically for anyone whose family has fallen apart, is in the process of falling apart or will one day start falling apart. And it comes from Martin Luther King Jr. who once said:

“Only in the darkness can you see the stars.”

When the night is the darkest, that’s the time that you will discover the stars – the treasures in your family relationships that are worth saving. So many people in those dark places, give up their hope for their family. They stop fighting to keep it together. They go the way of convenience –as we do in a disposable world – instead of the hard road of fighting tooth and nail to keep their family together.

If you are in a dark night at the moment with your family – I want to tell you this – do not give up hope. The Apostle Paul had more than most of us to be hopeless about. The guy – he walked a tough road. People tried to kill him. He was imprisoned, flogged, beaten. He was shipwrecked, bitten by a viper and then he spent years on death row – finally to be executed. This is what he writes about hope:

Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. (Romans 12:12)

Hope is that thing that lives in our hearts that believes in a better tomorrow. And when we see those precious stars in that inky black night in which we live – hope is what drives our behaviour. If we give up hope – we stop doing all the things we can do to keep our family together. When we give up hope, we stop connecting, we stop sacrificing, we stop forgiving, we stop encouraging, we stop loving. 

In a very real sense – the moment you stop hoping for better things for your family – your hopelessness is driving one nail after the other in the coffin of your family relationships.

But the opposite is also true. In the face of a family that looks like it’s falling apart, in that place where it looks as though your hopes and dreams are being shattered, your future is being destroyed, you can continue to hope for better things. You can look at your wife or husband and think to yourself – they are so precious to me. I know it’s not going well at the moment – but I believe that I can make a difference here.

And so your hope starts to drive the thoughts and attitudes and actions that will bring your family together. When the night is dark, whatever you do, don’t give up your hope in your family.

Because God is a God of hope. Interesting, whenever the Bible talks about hope – the original Hebrew and Greek words that it uses doesn’t mean an uncertain hope, rather it means a certain hope. An uncertain hope is something like – Oh, I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow. But that’s not what God means when He talks to us about hope.

Because when it comes to your family, there’s one thing for certain, God is in the business of keeping it together. And the most powerful thing that you and I can do when we begin to notice our families drifting apart, is to place our hope in God. To take our family to Him in prayer – to pray for our marriage, our children – and ask Him to make a difference.

Lord show me what I can do – and Lord please do the things that I can’t do. 

From the very beginning, God took a man and a woman and brought them together to be cleaved to one another, joined in such beautiful intimacy as to become one flesh – and in so doing, to bring children into this world. What a wondrously beautiful, stunningly magnificent plan. And this very same God will fight tooth and nail with you to keep your family together.

Friend if your family is going through a rough patch, place your hope in Him and let that hope – the certain hope you have in His grace and mercy and power – drive your attitudes, your thoughts and your actions. And as Moses said to God’s People:

Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you. (Deuteronomy 31:6)