Somewhere along the way we picked up the idea that there is a Biblical family, and that it looks like a Christmas card.
Two parents who never raise their voices. Children who obey the first time.
A house where the hard conversations happen calmly and everybody is home for the holidays.
Hold your own family up next to that picture and it will come up short every time, because that picture is not in the Bible. It is in a catalog.
Here’s what changes everything. Scripture does not hold up a single healthy family as the model.
Not one.
That’s worth repeating: Scripture does not hold up a single healthy family as the model.
Abraham lied about his wife twice and fathered a child by his wife’s servant.
Isaac and Rebekah each picked a favorite son and split the house down the middle.
Jacob cheated his brother, got cheated by his father-in-law, and played favorites so openly that his other sons sold their brother into slavery and lied to his face about it for twenty years.
David’s house held adultery, a murdered husband, a daughter assaulted by her own half brother, and a son who tried to take his father’s throne.
Then Matthew opens the New Testament with the family tree of Jesus. He could have quietly tidied it up.
Instead he names them. Tamar.
Rahab. Ruth.
And when he gets to Bathsheba he does not write her name at all. He writes “the wife of Uriah,” so that nobody reading it could forget how that one happened.
God never waited for a family worth using. He never had one.
He worked through the families He actually had, and the line ran straight through the worst of it, all the way to Jesus.
That is a strange sentence until you sit with it, because it means the brokenness in your family is not the thing keeping God out. In Scripture it is almost always the thing He walks straight into.
The state of your family is not your identity.
And it was never the whole of what He gave you, either.
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.” — Ephesians 3:14-15
Every family. Heaven and earth.
You do not have one family. You have two.
The one you were born into and the one you were born again into, and both of them take their name from the same Father.
Jesus never made you choose between them.
He did not replace the family He was born into. He made sure she had both.
And He did it while He was dying.
So let us say the plain thing. Honoring your father and mother has never meant standing still while somebody harms you.
You can honor a person and be a long way from them at the same time.
If the relationship is dangerous, distance is not disobedience, and you can pray every word of this blessing from a safe distance. God can reach them there.
He can reach you here.
And if the list of people who share your blood is short, or empty, read this next part slowly, because Jesus said it on the last night of His life to a room full of men who were about to lose Him.
“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” — John 14:18
He did not say you would learn to cope. He said you would not be an orphan.
Then He made sure of it.
He gave you the Spirit who makes you cry Abba, which is not a formal word, it is what a child calls a father across a room.
You may not have much of a family. You are not an orphan.
Those are two different sentences, and God has only ever said one of them about you.
Which is why the body of Christ is not the backup plan for people whose families failed. It is the family God was building the whole time.
So bring Him both.
The one with your last name on it, mess and all, and the one you walk in on Sunday. He has never been short on room, and He has never needed a clean family tree to work with.
You do not need a family worth blessing before you can bless one.
“Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in His holy habitation. God settles the solitary in a home.” — Psalm 68:5-6
So find a quiet spot and pray this out loud with us. A whisper counts.
“The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.” — Numbers 6:24-26
Pray this with us: 🙏
Heavenly Father, thank You for my people. And thank You that You never once intended for me to walk any of this out alone.
I am grateful that this does not depend on my blood family being easy, on my church being perfect, or on me having the kind of story that sounds good when somebody asks. You are the Father every family in heaven and on earth is named after, and You have never once looked at me and seen an orphan.
Lord, I come to You today and lift up both of the families You have given me.
Free me from taking these people for granted. Free me from waiting for a funeral to say what I could say tonight. Free me from loving them in my head and never out loud. Free me from believing I am the only one in the room without a family. Free me from keeping everyone at the distance that once kept me safe. Free me from treating church as something I attend instead of people I belong to.
Your Word promises that You are a Father to the fatherless, that You settle the solitary in a home, and that Jesus does not leave His own as orphans. So Holy Spirit, come and pour that out on my people today.
Bless the minds of my people. Guard their thoughts, quiet their fears, and give them clarity in the decisions sitting in front of them. Let Your Word be the loudest voice any of them hear this week.
Bless the bodies of my people. Strengthen what is weak, heal what is hurting, and give them rest that actually restores. Keep them safe on the roads and in the rooms I cannot follow them into.
Bless our home, and bless the home of every person I love. Make them places of laughter, honesty, generosity, and open doors. And where somebody is alone tonight who should not be, put them on my heart and put my address in their hands.
Bless the work of their hands. Make their labor fruitful and their provision steady, and give them favor with the people they serve.
Bless the spirit of my people, and bless my church. Remind me that You are near, that I belong to these people and not only to You, and that You have never once built a lone follower.
Lord, I repent for every time I have received from these people and never once blessed them back.
I am not a slave to the lie that I have to do this alone. I am not a slave to the family I came from. I am not a slave to the independence I used to call strength. I am not a slave to the fear of being a burden. I am not a slave to the idea that church is a building I visit.
My place in Your family does not depend on the one I was born into.
I belong to Jesus.
Teach me to walk in the family You already gave me.
Not the thin version the world sells where everyone is a contact and nobody is a commitment, but the real thing You designed. Family that shows up. Family that tells the truth. Family that stays.
Today, I trade every year I spent believing I was on my own for the people You have already put around me.
I receive Your blessing over my home. I receive Your blessing over my church. I receive the people You have already given me. I receive the joy of being known. I receive the work of loving them well. I receive Your word over me that I am not an orphan.
Amen.
When someone you love is changing in front of you, this is how we have learned to grieve with hope…
Upgrade and learn what God’s Word says about every area of life
and how to live it. That’s what Bible Health is all about.
Walk each 6-week live group study the day it opens.
Get the Blueprint and every weekly Swap.
Follow Jesus, not trends, in every area.
As always, our hope and prayer is that you experience the abundant life.
~ Dr. Z & Mama Z
P.S. Before you close this, do one thing. Pick one name and tell them today what you just prayed over them. If your blood family is thin right now, pick somebody from the other one. That is not settling. That is the family God has been building for you the whole time, and somebody in it is waiting for you to go first.
😭 so beautiful!