Good morning, Five Minute Families! This might be slated to be a rainy week, but we have a light that shines brightly through all the norms and storms of life, and we are so glad that you let us bring a bit of His truth to you each week.

Let us start with a quick reminder that five minutes is just a start to help us get our minds focused on better relationships through the wisdom of God’s Word. You can take the Bible as only advice and live a fairly great life, or you can realize that God’s Word is both guidance and salvation, bringing abundant living no matter what is happening around us. And, yes, that means living abundantly even in the midst of the COVID chaos. Our prayers are for those who hear this message would come to know Jesus, our Lord and Savior, and believe His truth for life.

So, let’s explore a great verse that is quite applicable to daily life, especially family life and relationships.

Philippians 2:3 states, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves.”

Do      nothing      out        of      selfish       ambition     or       conceit.

Wait, maybe that isn’t that easy. But, if we are to set our minds and hearts towards relationships, it should start in the right direction. Can we get out of ourselves? Think for a moment about a relationship you have seen in which someone pushed their own agenda above all else. Those relationships are hard enough to watch from the outside; how much harder it is to be living in one. Relationships are two sided. There is give and take.

When we pause to recognize our selfish ambitions and conceit, we can be free from the anchor of what ruins relationships. Remember, though, that takes humility, and as the verse continues, we must consider others as more important than ourselves.

In      humility        consider     others           as more       important   than ourselves.

So, how can this play out in families? In the spirit of the Five Minute Family, let’s explore five examples:

1. Spouses – In Ephesians 5 we see the concept of love and respect. There truly is no room for selfishness in marriage. How would your marriage look if you considered your spouse as more important than yourself? Well, first of all, love and respect would be easier to express. Once that ball of love and respect gets rolling, so many other aspects of daily living fall into place. What if your children saw you holding your spouse in high regard?

Which leads us to…

1. Parents to children – More often than not, parents will go to an extreme with their kids by either placing themselves too far above their children and stifling the child’s unique character OR by allowing the kids to walk all over one or both parents. Who’s really running the house? God’s wisdom allows us to help mold and shape our children as we seek how God has created them in the way they should go. We should not push or pull them, but, rather, lead them the way God leads.
2. Children to parents -Ephesians 6:1 instructs, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, because this is right.” Parents, you probably have heard or said that verse before to your children to get them to obey. Some kids will obey because they want to please their parents; other kids seem to desire the opposite. The “in the Lord” phrase of that verse speaks volumes. It encourages parents and children to both be in the Lord. God’s wisdom equalizes the equation and allows us to bring the focus off of our own personal agenda and place it back on God’s agenda.
3. Siblings to each other – Anyone else have competitive kids? Or, again, the opposite extreme might be true in your house wherein a child allows their siblings to dominate their lives. We must teach our children to be assertive for both themselves and their siblings. AND, to do so knowing that isn’t about being the better person but about pointing everything always back to God.
4. Extended family – This is a bit harder to quickly summarize, but one example is when an extended family member is struggling through the consequences of a few bad choices he or she made. It can be easy to stand from the outside and believe they deserve to suffer, but we must remember, that we each could make similar bad choices, and we need to be praying for him or her and loving them as God does.

May God bless your relationships this week as you seek to walk as He walked, humbling yourself as He humbled Himself. Please check us out at clearviewretreat.org for more encouraging in family relating. God bless.