When I started this series I had no idea it was going to be a series of blog posts on this subject. Family Destroyer was going to be about sexual sin but as I ended it that I realized that God was nudging to make this a series of things that cause families to be destroyed.
This is why we are on Part 3 now. Part 1 was Sexual Sin, Part 2 was Love of Money and now Part 3 is on time. Part 4 is on addictions, part 5 is on attitude and part 6 is Wrap Up.
I believe those 6 areas cover a lot of territory. Time is kind of a run off of what I wrote on the last post. Also I have written quite a few blog posts on time. I realize a lot of people don’t get where I am coming from but time is an issue that most people don’t think about.
Time is killing our marriages and our families. People are trying to do so much in the few 24 hours we have that they neglect their families in the process. We can’t do it all. We have to pick and choose where our priorities are.
As I look at how many live, I can clearly see their priorities are out of whack. I hear people say I work long hours for my kids. REALLY? Is it for your kids or for your lifestyle? Many times we put our lifestyle ahead of our families without even realizing it.
I want people to wake up. How much more can we take? Every decade we live we work longer and longer. The average work week now is around 50-60 hours. That’s average. What happens when we keep building more debt load then we have to work even longer?
Something has got to give. People are destroying their families because they are spending no time with their wife and kids. This goes both ways but I think it is more on the men side than women. Men want to accomplish big things in their lifetime and there is nothing wrong with that but you should not sacrifice your family in order to do it.
I remember hearing Oprah say the reason she never had kids was that she knew in her heart that she could not do it all. There was no way that she could put the effort in both things that needed to be put in. She knew that either one or both would suffer if she had a big career and had kids.
Most people think they can do it all but then you look at the divorce rate being 50%. You look at all the families with no dads in the picture. You look at all the kids doing stupid things while parents are working. After you look at everything that is going on you realize that we as a society aren’t doing something right. That something in my eyes is building the relationships within our families through time.
You don’t have to agree with me here as I know a lot won’t but the fruit is not there in many lives. Why would you want a family if you are going to not spend time with them?
Then we have people on top of working 60 hours a week who have to have hobbies. They say you have to enjoy life which is true to a degree. Yes we need to enjoy our lives but why not find hobbies that you can do with your family? Wouldn’t that make more sense? We already don’t have much time because of working 50-60 hours a week then we want to spend even more time away from our families?
Again, something has to give or the day will come that you destroy your family and have them no more. We have to appreciate what we have in our family or the day will come when we will regret what we had in a family.
I am hoping that people will start waking up and realize that we don’t need the big lifestyle in order to be a man or a woman. If you can afford the big lifestyle without sacrificing your family then go for it. Then there is nothing wrong with it but for the most part most people can’t.
Do you really know what it is? It is about keeping up with the Jones’. Because either their neighbor has it or society says that you deserve it, we fall into that trap. It’s a trap that if you buy into it, your life will be in bondage to your things.
We all want nice things but we as a society need to be smart with how we achieve those things. We may never see that BMW or Mercedes or that big boat but what we can have is peace of mind that we are investing our time into our families. You never hear people on their deathbed say I wish I would have worked more but what you do hear them say is I wish I would have spent more time with family.
Don’t be that person on your deathbed. You can change this now so that down the road instead of having all the regrets you can have a life full of enjoyment of things with your family that money can’t buy.
Ask God to help you see areas where you can pull back from so that you can invest more time in your family. It isn’t just about quality time with your family which is important but also quantity time. Ask God to help you not buy into satan’s lie that it’s only about quality time with your family. Ask him to give you the guidance to see that you need both quality and quantity time with your wife and kids.
Ask him to heal your heart from your selfish desires so that you can reintroduce yourself to your kids. Allow your kids to get to know the real you not just the you they are used to.
Living an Inspired Marriage,
Chris Benton
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