Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Do you know that you have a goal for your family if you’re a parent or grandparent?

Of course, you do; we all do.

But can you articulate it?

Years ago, when Katie and I started having kids, we would talk a lot about our kids’ goals, hopes, and dreams, as all parents do. But we had watched plenty of families never reach those goals; we had watched great ideas flame out. Why?

Before I tell you, take a moment to answer this simple question: What is the goal for your family?

Maybe you aren’t able to put it into words, but that’s okay. Here are a few examples I’ve seen over the years:

• For some, the goal is to have fun, not to get too serious.
• For many married couples, their goal is simply to stay married. To survive. Not to be happy, not to be in love, but to survive.
• Some parents aim for their kids to grow up and have everything they didn’t have.
• For some parents, their goal is for their kids not to do anything stupid or embarrassing.
• In some cases, the goal is to get too close because of a background of abuse or abandonment. To have a relationship with their child that they didn’t have with their parents. 
• In some families, it is about keeping the peace or one person happy.
• For others, it is to take care of one family member.
• For other families, their goal is centered around school, getting into the right college, and doing the right steps.
• For others, it is all about sports, scholarships, and winning.

Now, depending on the season of life, the goal for our family might change. And even as you read through the list above, those aren’t bad goals. There are a lot of good things on that list. But, most people have never articulated their goal or even agreed on it with their spouse. Then, you start working towards something, your spouse works towards something else, and you find yourself pulling against each other, which leads to all kinds of disagreements and frustrations.

If you’re following along with our Future Family series at CCC, I’d encourage you to sit down with your spouse and work through your goal for your family. As we move through this series, we’ll help build that out and bring more focus. In week 6 of this series, I’ll share one of the most important things Katie and I have ever done in our family. 

Once you articulate your goal, here’s a question that I think is a little harder: Is it the right goal?

If we aren’t careful, we can go after the wrong goal in our family and figure it out too late.

That’s why it is so important to make sure you have a clear goal, and it is the one you want to go after in your family.

You might wonder, is there a universal goal for families? That depends.

As followers of Jesus, we are to be image bearers of Jesus and reflect Him to the world around us. This means when people look at your family, parenting, and grandparenting, they should think, “I bet that’s how God parents us.”

Put simply, as a follower of Jesus, your family’s goal is to reflect the heart of God.

One of the clearest pictures of that is in Luke 15, in the story of the prodigal son. We meet a family, a father and two sons in the story. The younger son comes and asks his father for his inheritance. In this culture, the oldest son received 2/3 of what the father had when the father died. Notice the father isn’t dead. The remaining children received what was left after that. This son says, “I want mine now before you are dead.” He is telling his father, I wish you were dead. Maybe you’ve said that to a family member, maybe someone has said that to you, so you can understand the intensity of this moment. The father, instead of arguing, gives it to him. Which means he would’ve had to sell land. In this culture focused on the father, the people hearing this story would’ve been blown away by the son’s audacity. The younger son leaves, takes his money, lives it up, and spends it all. Then a famine comes to the land he is in. He is at the bottom, so hungry that he wants to eat the food pigs eat.

The younger son drags himself home. I imagine he is incredibly humiliated by this. 

The text tells us that while the son was a ways off, the father ran out to meet him, threw his arms around him, and kissed him. Then, he threw a party for the son who had returned. 

The older brother, who stayed home, and followed the rules, was the dutiful, responsible one, is furious. Maybe you can imagine your family now and see the different people and their roles. 

Tim Keller, in his great book The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith, said of this passage, “both sons missed the father because neither wanted the father, only what they could get from him.”

In this story, Jesus shows us the heart of God. God’s heart is for us. God gives us our choices and freedoms no matter where they will lead us, but when we come home, God runs out to meet us, throws his arms around us, and brings us home through his grace. That heart should be reflected in how we parent and relate to each other in our families.