3 Best Family Tools to Use in 2024
Let’s be honest. Life is difficult. Add marriage, kids, and owning your own home and suddenly there is a weight so heavy you don’t even think you can make it through January, let alone, the entire year. But hold on! There is hope. If you’re reading this you are likely looking for a little hope. No worries, you’re in good company.
What are the best family tools?
The first is simple, yet profound. I hate to call it cliche because there is nothing about God’s Word that is commonplace. It is all, “God-breathed and and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” 2 Timothy 3:16
#1 is the Bible.
It actually is that simple. And it’s the best family tool you can buy. I also can guarantee you, dig in daily throughout 2023 and you will change. You will also be the change in the lives around you, namely your own family. Now, it’s important to understand, change doesn’t come through the Bible because you read it. There are two more important facets to put into place:
A. The Holy Spirit. If you don’t know God personally through Jesus Christ, you don’t have the Holy Spirit and His Word will not resonate the same. This is where the simplicity of #1 becomes what Eugene Petersen calls, “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.” The gospel (Jesus who came and died, taking the punishment for sin upon Him so that we could be free) is simple. But surrendering is often the hard part. If you’d like more information about what salvation is, check out the About page.
B. Doing. There is a lot of things in life to be knowledgeable about. I can know all there is to know about any given subject. But if I live like a hermit crab and never leave my cabin in the woods separated from all other human life, that knowledge is useless. It’s not enough to know God’s Word, we have to obey it’s teachings. “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” James 1:22.
#2 is the Church.
Let’s be honest, we are not an island. We like to think that we can push through and make it through anything. We’re survivors, and we are because we’ve fought through a lot of things in life and made it out the other end. But how did you get there?
Likely you didn’t arrive on the other end of hardship unscathed. But those bumps and bruises are something you now have applicable knowledge about. And the truth is, you didn’t make it through all alone, no matter how much you may think you did.
https://web.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/island.html
As John Donne says, ‘No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
We all need other people. What we really need are Godly people. Not the kind that have a lot of knowledge of the bible, but those who also “Do what it says.” Have you ever received advice from someone and immediately knew you couldn’t take their advice? That happens when we don’t see them live according to what they preach!
As much as you may want to be an island and push through life alone, God clearly gives us this other best family tool. The church. “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encourage one another…” Hebrews 10:24-25
The church gets a bad wrap. Maybe you don’t like the idea of church. That’s likely because you’ve associated with the phony people mentioned earlier. Be the change this year. Stay long enough to see genuine change. God’s ordained institution is the church. Fight through the emotion that may conjure up. Where there are people there will be hurt and emotion. Trust in God, not man.
#3 is Knowledge.
This sounds contradictory but understand my methodology. As part of my blog I’ll include The Knowledge App. My favorite definition of wisdom is simply stated as, “the application of knowledge.” You first need to know some stuff, you then need to do it. That is, apply it. Hence, “The Knowledge App.” The application of knowledge gives you wisdom. You can have all the brains in the world about all the subjects in the world, but you are only as wise as what you personally obey, or “do”, in your life.
So how is this the Best Family Tool?
Well, let’s go back to our first two points. If you read your Bible and plug in to a local church you will learn and begin to grow. That will make profound affect on your family, no matter what stage of life you’re in. So long as you’re not just puffing up with knowledge alone. Do what God’s Word says, it will not return void.
“As the rain and snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” Isaiah 55:10-11
