God’s Plan for Your Family
by Drenda Keesee
Someone walked up to my husband and me once and said, “You know, you have to be the wealthiest people in the world.” Gary smiled. “Why’s that?”
“Because of your family,” he said.
And it’s true; there is nothing worth more than my family. It doesn’t matter what happens in the world, I always know my family is there for me. I know that I can go home and get refueled by spending time with my family. That is a great feeling.
Everyone starts life with dreams and visions. As children, we play games of success and winning rather than divorce court or bankruptcy. We want our lives to make a statement, to leave an impression. So what happens to change the exhilarating picture of success into a sea of sorrows and lost ambitions? For many, entering family life unprepared for…
For many, entering family life unprepared for…
…bills, business, taxes, children, and all the negative pressure beats the living daylights out of the dreams and destiny locked deep within them by their Creator.
And instead of the family becoming the great joy it was intended to be, it’s often seen as the blame for shattered dreams.
Several years ago when Gary and I were first coming out of our hopeless situation, Gary had a dream in which he was walking along the rock siding of a mountain when he heard people talking behind the rock. Then he was given a vision to see inside the mountain into a sealed cave, which had no entrance or exit. It was pitch black, except for the light of a small black and white TV casting pale shadows on the stone floor. Around it sat a small family that looked on distantly. Their eyes had dark circles under them, and their faces were gaunt. They were skin and bone. They were trapped in their situation. Gary wanted to help them out of their rock-encased lifestyle, so he began to yell as loud as he could to catch their attention. They finally called back to him, but their voices were limp and lifeless.
“You have to get out of there!” he cried.
“But we can’t get out. There’s no door.”
“You have to praise God,” he said.
“Turn to the Lord and begin to praise Him.”
They began to praise God, but nothing happened.
“You need to praise Him with all of your strength!” he yelled.
As the family stood up and began to radically praise God, the rocks started to crumble and fall down, and the family came running out of the cave, rejoicing in God. They were rubbing their eyes and seeing light for the first time. There was a world of endless possibilities ahead of them.
I’ve discovered that most people live like that family in the cave. They live inside of a bubble, trying to survive, and just getting through life. They don’t have any vision. They are surviving, but they aren’t thriving. They feel trapped in their situation.
You are not destined to live in dark caves. You can enjoy the fresh air and fields, the mountains, and the endless possibilities God has made available for you. Your family is destined to be free and happy. Yes, God wants your family to enjoy life. “He gives us richly all things to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17 NKJV). We have access to the Kingdom of God.
We have access to a great future. The problem is many people don’t know how to break out of that stronghold. Satan tries to encase us in survival mode, but there’s an escape for your family. Your family can enjoy the benefits of God’s Kingdom!
The Word of God promises the wisdom and insight to live a different existence than the average Joe, but you still have to walk it out. Not only is your family part of helping you reach your destiny, it is your reason, your “why”!
God strategically set up your family with the elements it needs to equip you for your destiny. If God could choose where to place you, and who to surround you with, don’t you think He would choose those people strategically? Don’t you think there is something those people are designed to bring to your life, and something you’re designed to bring to theirs?
Your family is the anchor that keeps you grounded, connected, and accountable to something. It is designed to instill a vision of God’s love and purpose in you from a young age. If your family growing up wasn’t like that, you need to commit to making a change with your own children. You’re not your parents nor are you bound by their mistakes.
Can you imagine if God placed us on the earth without any family? How would we even know how to begin to take care of ourselves? We would either disconnect from people altogether, or we would push ourselves into dangerous relationships to fill that void and end up getting hurt. We would resent God. Children who grew up with parents who aren’t present in their lives act out like this.
People make mistakes. Families make mistakes. When a family is not partnered with God, the positive impact of family life is reversed and your family can equip you for your demise. Some family situations are so dysfunctional they are actually more detrimental to a child, but that’s not how God intended it.
There’s a price to pay to raise a healthy family. It costs money, time, and attention. But it’s worth it! There is no career or accomplishment that I have loved as much as being a wife and mom. There is no greater reward in this life than having your family together, loving one another, and serving God.
It takes faith and courage, but you’re equipped and called by God to lead your family down the road to a place of destiny. You are not as those who just hope, or as those who are destined to fail, but you are equipped by God to win.
It’s time to agree with what your Father God says in His Word and no longer put up with a lifestyle of just getting by. There’s no future when you’re surviving. You can only see the end of the day, striving just to make it week to week, living paycheck to paycheck, and you can’t get a vision for your destiny that way. God’s people are called to live an exceptional life, so it’s time to lift your head up above the chaos of every day and look at what could be.
When our family was broke (in multiple ways), we couldn’t see a future. We could hardly see the end of the day through all of our problems. When you don’t have a future financially, it’s hard to have a future as a family, because everything your family needs takes money. Well, almost everything. We were oppressed by our situation. We didn’t think there was any use in planning because we had no money, no hope, and no answers.
Was that God’s plan for our life? No! As soon as we realized that, we started down the path to a drastic life change. We woke up and understood that God always had a plan for our life and family. God has a plan for yours, too!
So how do you walk in that plan? How do you overcome your situation and the strongholds around you and walk in your family’s destiny?
~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.
