Experiencing God at Home

Experiencing God at Home Read Free

Book: Experiencing God at Home Read Free
Author: Richard Blackaby
Tags: Family, Christian Life
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is that it is filled with compelling, exciting, and even romantic stories. It has something for everyone! But what makes the book so gripping is that it is brutally honest. It tells it like it is. It doesn’t gloss over the mistakes and failures of its main characters. It shows us the heights to which God can raise people as well as the depths to which sin can plunge them. We know people such as Moses, David, and Peter as great heroes of the faith. But the Bible also concedes that Moses was a murderer, David an adulterer, and Peter a denier. Perhaps that’s what makes the Bible such compelling reading. It tells the stories of ordinary people we can readily relate to. It reminds us that even the greatest saints in the Bible had feet of clay. And, just as God’s grace was sufficient for the fallible humans who lived before us, it is equally capable of helping us overcome our own shortcomings and disappointments.
    What is surprising about the Bible is this: despite the obvious importance that God places on the family, it is not as easy to find examples of good parents in the Bible as you might think. It is alarming how even some of the best-known men and women in the Bible fell short in the crucial area of being a good mom or dad. This becomes painfully obvious when we look at some of the parents in the Bible.
    God
    The first father figure we come across in the Bible is God Himself. Jesus told us to talk to Him by saying: “Our Father in heaven . . .” (Matt. 6:9). The first two people the heavenly Father parented were Adam and Eve. God provided them a delightful environment in which to live (Gen. 2:8–9). He supplied all of their physical needs (Gen. 2:18–22; 3:21). God spent regular quality time with them (Gen. 3:8-9). He offered them wise counsel on how to live an abundant life (Gen. 2:16–17). He also gave them responsibility (Gen. 1:26, 28). No father ever provided as much for his children or was more loving toward them than God was to Adam and Eve. Yet how did they respond? They chose to reject Him and His counsel. They became alienated from Him and even tried to hide from Him (Gen. 3:8). Ultimately their sin caused them to be separated from the beautiful home God had provided for them (Gen. 3:23). The first family in history experienced disaster!
    Adam and Eve
    Adam and Eve were the only two humans who ever experienced what it was like to be perfect. Unfortunately, by the time they became parents, they had allowed sin into their home. Once sin enters a family, it is insidious in its destructive power. The first parents had walked with God in the garden of Eden! They had perfect bodies that weren’t filled with hereditary diseases and artificial preservatives. They had energy! Yet how did their children turn out? Well, their oldest, Cain, struggled in his relationship with God and with his younger brother Abel. This led Cain to eventually murder his sibling and live the remainder of his life in exile from his family (Gen. 4:1–15). The first children in history experienced disaster.
    Noah
    By God’s own reckoning, Noah was the godliest man on the planet. Scripture declares: “Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God” (Gen. 6:9). When God determined to obliterate humanity from the face of the earth because of its grotesque sin, He went to great lengths to spare Noah and his family. Yet once the flood had subsided and Noah and his sons had become farmers, a family scandal occurred. Noah’s son Ham humiliated his father in front of his brothers (Gen. 9:20–23). For the remainder of Ham’s life, he lived under the curse of his father (Gen. 9:24–27). How could a man as righteous as Noah raise a son as disrespectful as Ham?
    Abraham
    By the time we come to Abraham, we feel we are in safer parental territory. After all, he is the founder of a line of patriarchs! From his descendants will ultimately emerge the nation of Israel and the Messiah. God made a covenant with Abraham that

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