Greetings,
Today I am in Las Vegas with my family that lives here. My wife and I are blessed to be in the home of our son, his wife, and two of our grandchildren. This is a place where life is good. It is a place where love lives, love grows, and love overcomes all things. This is another place of wealth in the earth.
As believers in Christ, we should be a testimony of salt and light to the world. We do not condemn people in the world for acting like people in the world. We should simply shine as lights in the night. We don’t shine to condemn the darkness, but to be a beacon of hope and an example of life by which those in darkness can find their way. Salt preserves, purifies, and heals. We are commissioned by God to bring life and healing to the world. When people come to us, we want them to see healthy lives and healthy families that inspire others to seek to know what we are growing to know. God is the only Father who can truly define family. Our path to becoming family as God defines family is not found in our abilities, but in our ability to receive God’s grace to become the family that God as called us to be.
People in the world have many opinions about what constitutes true family. Those opinions are formed by past experiences of pain, dysfunction, and abuse of some kind. We have all come from some measure of dysfunction in family, but God wants to heal the family. He wants to heal the human identity. He wants to redeem, restore, and reinstate the true testimony of family for the generations of mankind. Family is God’s means of filling the world with life. We can count on the fact that the evil one, the devil, seeks to destroy family and any life that produces life in a generational way. The devil wants humanity to live for themselves and to establish relationships that are based upon meeting human needs. God wants to do more than merely meet human needs. He wants to empower human destiny. Our choice of independence from God has caused us to battle a spiritual battle from the heavenlies. Jesus made a way for us to boldly come to God’s throne of empowerment. He understands our world and the things we face. He understands the weapons that have been formed against us. God wants us to become the substance of His life in the earth in an intimate and powerful way. When we become dependent upon Him, we become increasingly like Him. We become givers of life and the result is the meeting of every need in our lives in an amazing way. The goal is not to meet our own needs, but the fruit is life and satisfaction. The goal is to become givers of life to one another is God is a giver of life in all things.
What does God say about the basic unit for family? If we lay down all of our opinions all of our ideas and we look to what God says we see that the beginning of family is with a man and a woman. The Bible records the story of the beginning from God’s perspective as Moses was inspired to write it from His personal encounter with the manifest presence of God. The story as it is recorded in Genesis is not one of human perspective, but of God’s. Genesis chapter one is from God’s vision from heaven. God saw mankind as both male and female and that the fruit of their relationship would be both natural and spiritual. They were to be fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue, and have dominion in the earth. They would naturally produce children who would also produce children in an increasing generational way. They would also bring life to the world in a spiritual way by subduing and exercising dominion. These attributes are found in the nature of God. Mankind was created in the likeness and the image of God, male and female. What is that likeness and image? God does not need anything. He gives life, breath, and all things. He doesn’t get His identity from a place of need. He is a giver and not a taker. To be in the likeness and the image of God is to be like Him in His character, nature, way, power, and authority. To be like Him, mankind must be givers and not takers. They must be able to do so in a generational way. This involves both a man and a woman. It involves a man giving life to a woman and a woman receiving that life. In turn, the woman gives life to the man and even more. It becomes generational. The fruit is the giving of life to offspring, the fruit of relationship. The purpose is not carnal like the flesh of animals, or merely natural like the substance of plants or trees. The purpose is greater because it includes the ability to subdue the barrenness of the world and to exercise dominion over all of creation. These two things cannot be based upon merely meeting human needs; but must be the fruit of life. They must be the fruit of being loved. To subdue is to destroy death with life. To exercise dominion is to manifest as truth and thus crumble every lie. By these two things life expands in the earth to even effect the heavens.
When we create relationships based upon human need we create dysfunctional realities of family. When we allow God to create our relationships from the place of being loved by Him, we become givers of life to one another. This creates family as God desires it to be. There is a clear identity of that which is male and that which is female. These two things are very different, but together they create a whole that is greater than any one person alone. It creates a mystery of relationship that is only truly found in the heart of God.
I am not writing these things to condemn those who come from cultures of the world that see family as a place of meeting one’s own needs. We have all been affected by this thinking and it has caused our relationships with one another and in the context of family to be damaged and even destroyed. When this happens, humanity does foolish things in seeking to create relationships according to their own likeness and image. When we do this, we leave the original blueprint. We become copies of copies of copies, until everything of the original design has become twisted and perverted to become something that God never had in mind for mankind. The mystery is dependent upon God, the giver of life. He is the key to a man dwelling with a woman and a woman dwelling with a man. He is the key to a man understanding a woman and a woman understanding a man. He is the ingredient that causes the relationship of a man and woman to become the substance of life-giving ways to children and children’s children.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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Thank You So Much – Ted J. Hanson
