How To Create the Ideal Family

If you're like most parents, building a strong family is at the top of your priority list for 2011. In order to help CCC parents along, I've decided to compile some Biblical examples of parenting so that you'll have some step-by-step instructions on how to get started. 1. Adam & Eve. Look no further than Genesis and you'll see two people literally created for each other, ready to populate the earth with delightful offspring. Let's see what we can learn from their parenting techniques.

• Step 1: Lure your spouse into deadly sin.
• Step 2: Blame someone else for your failures, particularly your spouse.
• Step 3: Raise your sons to be so filled with jealousy that one kills the other.

Uh, maybe we should move on to someone else.

OK. Trying again.

2. Noah. This one is easy. After all, Noah was the only man on earth who followed God. Surely he can give us some insight.

• Step 1: Obey God with reckless abandon and involve your whole family in the journey. (So far so good.)
• Step 2: Witness God do an amazing rescue of your entire family.
• Step 3: When the whole thing is over, take up drinking.
• Step 4: If one of your sons makes fun of you for lying around naked and drunk, cast him out of the family while cursing him and all of his descendants.

Hmmm. This is harder than I thought.

I've got it now. Let's check in with the father of many nations.

3. Abraham. This guy got a little bit of a late start in the whole parenting process. In fact, things were taking so long that he decided to speed things up a bit. Let's see how he did it.

• Step 1: On the advice of your wife, sleep with the maid.
• Step 2: Do we really need to know what Abraham's Step 2 is? Seriously. That's messed up.

How I am going to instruct you how to create the ideal family using biblical examples when I can't even find ONE single family in there that isn't screwed up?

But isn't that what we're after? Sometimes I feel like there is this illusive dream I'm chasing to have the perfect family with a husband who hangs on my every word and kids who obey the first time with a cheerful attitude. In my dream the laundry is always done, the bills are always paid and the kids are hanging out just waiting for family devotions to start.

Isn't that what God is after? Good Christian families he can use to build His kingdom? If that's not it, what is He up to?

What if God is telling a bigger story rather than holding up a perfect picture? What if God can take broken, screwed up people and fulfill His promises in them...through them...with them? What if God wants to do that in and through your family?

Will you let Him?