Family is God’s Idea
by Drenda Keesee
God wants to talk about family, but we need to understand exactly what God’s plan for a family looks like and why it’s so important to Him.
Have you ever noticed entire Bible passages dedicated to genealogy, such as Matthew 1:2–3, “Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob . . .”? Why are genealogies in the Bible? Who cares what family someone came from? Is there more to family than most people recognize? Yes, there is! The Bible says that “all Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16).
Genealogies are in the Bible for a reason, and that reason is…
…the key to unlocking God’s purpose for your family.
For Jesus to come to earth, God would have to place His seed in the womb of a girl named Mary. But as things stood under spiritual law, that would be illegal for God to interfere, as He had given the earth realm to Adam to rule. But if He could find a man who would be willing to offer up his only son on behalf of God, that would make it legal for God to reciprocate. That man was Abraham, and his role in this plan was crucial.
Abraham and his wife were well past childbearing years and unable to have children, but God gave them a son named Isaac. God did an unusual thing, though, when He asked Abraham to take his only son and offer him as a sacrifice on the mountain. God had a better plan in mind, but He couldn’t tell Abraham yet. As we look at the story of Abraham taking his son Isaac up the mountain (Genesis 22), we find some common denominators in the story when compared to the crucifixion of Jesus. Isaac’s walk up the mountain and Jesus’ walk to the cross both take place on the exact same mountain. Jesus was also sacrificed on the same spot that Abraham was about to slay Isaac. Jesus carried His own wooden cross to the place of His sacrifice, and Isaac carried his own wooden altar to the place of his purposed sacrifice. The death of Isaac was not finally required, but Abraham’s willingness was.
When Abraham lifted his hand to slay Isaac, spiritual law was satisfied. It would now be legal for Jesus to be placed in Mary’s womb, be born in the world, and be the sacrifice that was needed to set men and women free.
When God found Abraham, a man who had believed Him, God set in place a legally binding agreement between Abraham, his heirs, and Himself. This agreement was called a covenant, and it laid out promises that God would bring to pass through Abraham and his heirs as well as the requirements for those promises.
Notice that this legal agreement was set in place by one man, Abraham, but was carried by his heirs or families until the day that Jesus was born. Since the promise was made to the heirs of Abraham, Jesus had to come from the heirs of Abraham.
The genealogy in the first chapter of Matthew may seem boring, but in reality, that chapter wasn’t written for us. It was written for Satan to acknowledge that Jesus’ coming to the earth was legal. It traces with minute detail that in fact, Jesus was the legal descendant of Abraham, which then made His birth and sacrifice legal in the earth realm.
So how important was the family in this story? It was everything. It’s why Abraham was chosen in the first place. “For I have chosen him so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him” (Genesis 18:19). The promise was totally dependent on Abraham and his family and on the families that followed. That was God’s plan for family—they were the carrier of salvation! And when you realize God’s plan, you can see that the Bible is largely a book about Jesus’ family.
Most Christians live as though that was God’s entire plan, though. They think that God just wanted to send Jesus to die on the cross, and now we are living in the finished work. If there still isn’t a plan now, we wouldn’t have any purpose to stay on the earth and would have been taken up to heaven as soon as we got saved. We weren’t, though, because God’s plan is just as active today as it was two thousand years ago! That wasn’t the finale—that was only the setup!
God restored us back to ground zero legally, as it was in the Garden of Eden, and now we are supposed to go from there. That’s not the destination; that’s the launching point of a new plan.
John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whosoever shall believe in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Jesus was sent to the world to save mankind. My question to you is: Who is God sending now? If God so loved the world then, does He love it any less now?
God is sending us to spread His love to a hurting world that has rejected Him. That’s a big responsibility. It happens through you and me, and generation by generation touching the world. Just as God wanted to protect families so Jesus could save us from our sins, so we must protect families today. Families create a foundation for the salvation of the next generation.
Abraham was chosen based on his ability to raise a godly family that later Jesus Christ would come through as a descendant. So who has God entrusted His plan with? Families—just like yours and mine. The family is where children learn about values, what life is, and how it functions. It’s where people discern what is right and wrong and learn how to live in daily relationships.
~Drenda
ps…Are you looking for a good church? Be sure and listen on Saturday evening or catch the 3 services on Sunday for Faith Life Church!
Excerpt from “The New Vintage Family” by Drenda Keesee
Drenda Keesee’s contagious zeal and humorous personal experiences help make her ministry of spiritual, emotional, and relational wholeness one that will bless your life and spark a new fire in your spirit.
A wife of over 30 years and a mother of five children, Drenda has ministered at churches, seminars, and conferences, and through the mediums of television and radio, for more than 20 years.
Her books, The New Vintage Family, Better Than You Think, and She Gets It are available wherever books are sold. In these heartfelt books, Drenda shares her personal journey and the life lessons that have brought her to where she is today, as well as practical answers that all people need to live a joyful life.
Drenda and her husband Gary founded Faith Life Now, a ministry designed to spread the message of freedom in the areas of finances, faith, marriage, and family. Tune in for their weekly messages here. Faith Life Now hosts conferences worldwide and sponsors both Fixing the Money Thing, which Drenda co-hosts with her husband Gary and Drenda.
Through their own life experiences, the Keesee’s have found the principles from God’s Word to be powerful and effective. At one point, Drenda was a young, suicidal feminist with no hope of ever being “good enough” for her own standards of perfection. She never wanted the “inconvenience” of a husband or children, and she was on her own path to success. But the stress of trying to achieve perfection and perform for love left her broken and used. She had success, but it was nothing compared to the pain and loneliness it had also brought.
That’s when God got a hold of her heart. It was there—at her lowest point—that she found the One who accepted and loved her, faults and all. Since that transformation, Drenda has had a passion to reach women who find themselves where she once was.
She married Gary after attending college, and there she found herself in a personal boot camp of sorts. She says, “I cried and told God, ‘I can do anything but be a wife and mother.’” She committed to learning how to do it God’s way. Through the many years of raising their children and struggling to make ends meet, Drenda learned from their mistakes. “I didn’t know how to be a wife and mother, but God saved our marriage, taught us how to parent our children for success, showed us how to have financial success, and then the irony of all ironies, He called us to ministry.” It’s truly because of these life experiences that Drenda can now share so many insightful principles for people who are now going through the same struggles.
