Christian Family inspired Articles
"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you... Jeremiah 29:11 NIV
Honour your father and mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you.
(Deuteronomy 5:16)
Welcome to our Family Bible Verses & Devotions section of Spiritualbridge.org! We hope our selection of family bible verses and family devotions will motivate you to continue raising your family in the knowledge of Christ and to trust in his word above all others. Know that whatever troubles you face each day The Holy Spirit will always be victorious. Spiritualbridge.org explores family Bible verses and other topics relevant to Christian families. Our original, exclusive content is, fresh, unique, and sincere in its commitment to supporting your spiritual growth.
We believe in the power of God’s word to bring families closer together. We believe the selfless spirit of God’s love lives in every syllable, every parable, every sentence, and in every punctuation mark of the Bible. If we trust in its power to guide us, we can find answers and inspiration to the most troubling family problems. It’s not always convenient or easy to find other people we trust for advice, but Scripture will not steer us wrong. Spiritualbridge.org uses technology to bring the friendly, helpful word of God to you at your convenience. Our articles are short and easily accessible online from your mobile phone or laptop. Browse through the handy menu of biblical verses for an article of interest and share instantly to your preferred social network like Facebook or Twitter.
Fathers do not exasperate your children; instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
(Ephesians 6:4)
Our goal at Spiritualbridge.org is to empower Christian families with access to family devotions, advice, guidance, and spiritual inspiration. We want to help you find the answers to the spiritual challenges you face raising your family with Christian values. Our insightful articles are short, making them convenient to read from your phone, whether you’re on the go or just waiting in the doctor’s office. Each article explores a specific passage of Scripture and examines its relevance for modern Christian families. In addition to our collection of family bible verses and family devotions, you’ll find practical suggestions, helpful tips, interesting facts, and discover fresh insights into scripture that will encourage you to continue making Christ the head of your home as well as your heart.
Christian Family Devotions
Meditating on God’s word, as Paul and the apostles demonstrated, gives us the armor we need as Christians to remain firm in our devotion to righteousness. By reading God’s word daily, we nourish ourselves spiritually to be better fathers, better wives, parents and children in Christ. Our hope is that our daily family devotions and family Bible verses will be an inspirational source for you as well. At Spiritualbridge.org we encourage parents to lead others by example, and leading your family with daily family devotions from our site is a great way to strengthen your faith.
Family Bible Verses
Although biblical stories can enchant us, they can also leave us mystified as we struggle to understand the meaning or context behind a passage of scripture. When we seek help from scripture on family matters, we may not always recognize the relevance of a passage immediately. The articles collected in this section examine passages and verses in their historical context, as well as their spiritual context, bridging the gap between ancient and modern for today’s Christian reader. Whether you are a seasoned Christian with many years of faith under your belt or new in the faith, you’ll gain new insights exploring the deeper meaning of God’s word and his devotion to the human family, which surpasses all understanding.
God’s Purpose for Christian Families
Social trends, values, and customs can change drastically over time, but the institution of family remains a sacred institution in many cultures and countries, protected by the church and by the law. As Christians trying to live in a godly manner, how can we know the best way to raise our family? What is God’s purpose for Christian households, and how can we fulfill that purpose best? As always, we can turn to scripture and find the answers to these fundamental questions:
Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.
(Genesis 1:28, NIV)
Uttering these simple, profound words, the Creator blessed the first human pair and their unborn progeny for untold generations to come. Adam and Eve received their directions to be fruitful and multiply with great enthusiasm, but their union was the beginning of God’s plan for our salvation. Beyond the physical act of procreation, God gave men and women the capacity to share with him in the trials of parenthood by becoming parents themselves. He sanctified the human family from the very beginning and gave humanity the highest responsibility for the earth. Family bible verses and family devotions, like the ones found at Spiritualbridge.org, help Christian parents to uphold this responsibility to the best of their ability.
The lesson of this enduring biblical story is that the human race is a family, and we are all, by God’s purpose and design, members of God’s family. When we devote ourselves to our families as husbands, wives, or parents, and when we submit to one another in love as parents, siblings, and spouses, we facilitate the harmony that makes God’s healing love possible.
A House is Not a Home
Parents often worry about providing for their children. They make sacrifices of their time and their money to ensure that their children are well fed, well clothed and educated. They happily spend money on birthday parties, family trips, after school programs, extra-curricular activities, and private tutors to give their children a strategic advantage in life and a broader range of choices. When the children are asleep, most parents are awake discussing, planning, and scrutinizing the needs of their children. This tremendous effort is exerted on a daily basis by people of various means and incomes, who could not imagine living any other way, and would gladly find more to invest in their children if they knew where, how, and had the time.
It’s easy to believe that wealth and beauty, a big home and a nice car are the ideal of happiness in our society. Billboards, bus ads, commercials, magazines and other media bombard us perpetually with luxurious images of things that make us feel inadequate about our lives. We start to imagine what it would be like to have a bigger house, more vacations (or a vacation), adding to feelings of inadequacy and, ultimately, fear, that we are not living up to the expectations of society. Hidden beneath a neatly groomed, cool exterior may be a lingering suspicion that we are falling behind in the race to improve our lot, to do more for our families, and provide for our children.
However, we as Christians are also called to remember the timeless words of our Lord, “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Mathew 16:26 NIV) In providing for the material well-being of our families, eagerness to succeed by worldly standards can tempt us as Christians to forget where true value lies. It is important for parents to also provide spiritually for their children. One way in which to do this is by reading family bible verses together as well as family devotions.
God does not judge us as the world does. He does not value human beings by their possessions, their status, or achievements, but their faith. A person’s character is the greatest treasure we possess as human beings, and the hardest to teach. We have already been told by our Lord, to “…seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”(Mathew 6:33 NIV). Our priority, as Christian parents, is the spiritual wellbeing of our children.
A house is more than just a matter of property value, just as family values are more than a matter of extra-curricular activities and high grades. We can fill a house with many possessions, but if it is not filled with Christ’s love, it will seem empty in God’s eyes.
Advice for Families In Scripture
Going to church on Sundays provides valuable fellowship, and a passionate sermon can offer great nourishment for our souls, but there are times when you can’t reach out to members of your fellowship for guidance or advice on a family matter.
Start children off on the way they should go and even when they are old they will not turn from it. Proverbs 22:6
The Bible is a vast collection of stories that draw on centuries of Jewish family history. The lives, feuds, displacements and struggles of one family after another are narrated throughout and explored from many different perspectives. We bear witness to the shameful violence of sibling rivalry between Cain and Abel. We watch in horror as Joseph’s brothers hurl him into a pit. We are moved by Ruth’s loyalty and tender devotion to her aging mother-in-law, Naomi. We feel for a mother’s sorrow when Jochebed is forced to abandon her firstborn son in a bed of brushes, and we cheer for the prodigal son whose father rejoices at his return.
Mothers, fathers, siblings, widows, orphans and aging parents are all unlikely heroes in the Bible. They are everyday people who, through God, accomplish extraordinary things, but they are always depicted in the context of family and community. Their appeal survives partly because of the universal significance of families. We may not all be born a prince or an heiress to an oil fortune, but we all belong to a family, God’s family. God knew that his lessons would best be understood as stories we could connect to and relate. He did not give us a book of fantastical tales about characters and places that could never exist, but genuine stories of human struggles that everyone could appreciate and find inspiration.
From Genesis through to Revelation, Scripture attests to the importance of family in God’s plan for our salvation. The early church often referred to itself regarding a family and Jesus was the first to teach the disciples to address God as ‘Abba’ or Father. Abraham, who was renamed by God, was promised that he would be made the father of many nations (Genesis 17:5). The prophets often depicted God as a loving, faithful, protective father of Israel who would never abandon his children. What does all this mean for today’s Christian?
Clearly, God considers his relationship to human beings as something more than physical or symbolic. God loves and cares for us as a parent does. His examples of parenthood throughout the Bible reveal that God understands our concerns and fears. He is sympathetic to our struggles and hears our prayers. Abraham and Sarah were happily married for many years, except for being childless. God answered their prayer for a child in a miraculous way. Families who have gone through the loss of a child, a failed pregnancy, or are seeking to adopt, can draw strength and fortitude from Sarah’s example, whose prayer for a child wasn’t answered until she was well past childbearing age.
Standing Strong against Temptation and Distractions
Salvation wouldn’t be meaningful without temptations and distractions. Raising a family is a perpetual act of selflessness that tests our willingness to sacrifice ourselves. At every moment we are challenged as Christian husbands, wives, and parents to put the needs of others before our own, but sometimes, the hardest people to serve are the ones closest to us. We can feel tempted to resent family members for the burdens we bear, blame siblings or in-laws for the unhappiness we feel about our marriage, or find ourselves pondering an extramarital affair for the attention we desperately crave from an absent spouse.
Being tempted makes us human, but finding the strength to overcome our misguided emotions takes wisdom and strength from Christ. The power of God’s word not only liberates us from bondage to worldly ambitions and cravings, but it also strengthens us and comforts us when we’re feeling vulnerable to temptation.
When we turn to the Bible, we can find examples of all these emotions and see the results from a godly perspective. Infidelity, troublesome in-laws, sibling rivalries and many other examples of families in crisis are found in the Bible to remind us where the right path lies. We are shown the consequences of David’s lust for Bathsheba. Later, we share David’s sorrow when his son, Absalom betrayed him. We rejoice with Jacob when he is finally reconciled with his brother Esau. These stories and many others illustrate the frailties of our humanity and offer us an alternative through the Gospel’s enduring message of redemption for all.
Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him. “Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.” (Psalms 127:3-5)
Throughout the intricate and varied cosmic design laid out by God from the beginning, the struggle to reproduce is common to animals and human beings alike. Despite pain and hardships, setbacks and dangers, every species seems to demonstrate this fundamental urge to provide for its young and ensure a better future for its offspring. The cyclical process of birth and suffering which continues from one generation to the next is a perpetual struggle that can inspire moments of tender sacrifice as well as examples of cruel indifference. Fulfilling our duties and obligations to children, parents, and siblings, can seem like a terrifying weight for one person to bear, but in Christ, we have all the help and support we need to build our homes on solid foundations, rather than sand. Family bible verses and family devotions help you to remain strong in your commitment to Christ and your commitment as a parent.
A wise man brings joy to his father, but a foolish man despises his mother.
(Proverbs 15:20)
The Bible encourages Christian families to regard children as a blessing from God rather than a burden or as something to be endured. Just as he invites us to address him as ‘Father,' and to call on him as our spiritual father in heaven, God wants us to take delight in our families and cherish them in the spirit of righteousness. When we consider the words of the Psalmist, we can see that God blesses us with children, not the other way around. They are his gift to us, not our property. With God’s love in mind, we can begin to value children as God intended them.
Parents who wish to raise their family with Christian values can best succeed by being examples of righteousness for their children to follow. Social pressure to compromise our Christian values can feel overwhelming at times, but God’s blessing to Adam is a promise we can count on if we seek him out with all our hearts. As Christian parents, our salvation in Christ means we have a duty to raise our families, not as we see fit, but according to his word. Spiritualbridge.org is your family’s online bridge to family bible verses and family devotions, as well as other helpful Bible resources. Advice for children, husbands, wives, siblings and relatives can all be found here at Spiritualbridge.org.