Victorious Family

Values help you steer you business culture but also the spiritual, relational, and missional direction of your family, while also giving your spouse and kids a GPS for keeping their personal lives on target, helping them stay balanced and aligned along a consistent standard. Values form the nonnegotiable foundation underneath your family that determines who you are, what you want to do, and how you intend to go about doing it.

So . . . what are they? . . . your family values . . .

Values are the things your family considers special and important. They’re your priorities. Your points of emphasis. They’re the kinds of things for which you make yourself “unbusy” in order to make time to experience, enjoy, and get better at them. And as you work together with each other to try defining and ranking these values you share as a family, here are a few guidelines that perhaps will be helpful:

1. Some of them—the most essential ones—are core, eternal values. We’ll talk about other kinds of values in a second, but the ones that are most important to embrace and embody are those values we derive from Scripture which, according to Matthew 6:20, are like “treasures in heaven.” They contribute toward our spiritual growth and development. They outlive us in importance and significance. They help us cooperate with what God is trying to accomplish in us by making us more like Him in character, in service, in generosity, in love.

2. Some essential values are ones you don’t yet value. This became really clear to us, to me, as we began knocking around as a family what we most prized and emphasized. Things like faithful study of God’s Word, for example, sounded great and all, and we knew it should be one of our highest priorities as Christians. But . . . it wasn’t. Not in practice. And that’s okay. In fact, to recognize failure as an honest admission is actually a good place to begin, as opposed to what our enemy wants it to be—the place where we throw our hands up and say we’re just not cut out for this.

3. Your values can incorporate every facet of life. Of equal concern as the family who overdoes it a tad in compiling their list of values, is the family who figures the only ones that qualify (the only ones we’re looking for) are Christian-y sounding things. In the same way as being honest about ourselves and our true priorities is imperative to this process, we should also feel spared of the pressure to artificially act as though God is not interested, for example, in your six-year-old son expressing how much he values playing baseball, or how your nine-year-old daughter says she values making good grades. Sports and education may not be, in and of themselves, what we consider eternal values, but a biblical understanding of God and life means that every undertaking is an opportunity “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

So as you think through what your family loves and what gives you your own distinct identity, don’t be shy about putting down things like: valuing hospitality; valuing competition; valuing excellence; valuing healthy debate, the open expression of opinions and ideas; valuing scientific discovery and curiosity; valuing nutrition and fitness; valuing outdoor play and exercise; valuing summer vacations and holiday traditions.

All of these are values. They help cement your distinct identity. They may or may not come with their own prescribed chapter and verse from the Bible, but they do fall under the biblical admonition and invitation that says, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men,” since you know it is always “the Lord Christ you are serving” (Col. 3:23–24), no matter where or how you’re serving Him.

4. Values are timeless, not temporary. A big part of what goes into developing a vision for your children is seeing them not merely as whatever age kids they happen to be at the moment. As parents, we need to already be envisioning them as the twenty-year-olds and thirty-year-olds they will one day become. I’m not talking about growing them up before they’re ready. (The world and culture is already way too busy doing that.) But how will these values of yours—these values of theirs as part of your family—how will these values help shape them as they move on later into adulthood? That’s what you’re going for. Growing lifelong disciples.

So not only are the values you’re defining today a key component in how you’re leading your family at present; not only are these the values you want to deepen and intensify in each other through ongoing practice and experience; not only do these values touch on every kind of endeavor in which you and your kids participate—but they also assist you in being able to help shape your children into the men and women they are on their way toward becoming.

This one thing—knowing your values—can solve so many of the concerns you’ve been feeling about why you’re not leading your family like you should or like you want. It will help you do it better. It’s what could transform you into a dad or mom who’s becoming more and more effective each year and each season in tapping into your kids’ hearts. Knowing and prioritizing your family’s core values can help you accomplish so much.

It’s what gives your family its vision.

Do Your Children Believe?: Becoming Intentional About Your Family’s Faith and Spiritual Legacy: Chatmon, Terence: 9780718078263: Amazon.com: Books