How To Resolve Family Conflicts God's Way

You honor someone by making a decision. You by an act of your will decide to place high value, worth and importance on another person. You grant the person a position in your life worthy of respect. Love always implies value, worth and honor. Honor is a gift you give to others.

When Ephesians 6:1-3 is carried out in the home there are fewer conflicts in family relationships.

There is also less conflict when

II. Parents give Spiritual Leadership in the home

Ephesians 6:4 “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger; but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

Parents are not to provoke their children to anger. Children get angry because they are self-centered. Children get angry because they are stubborn. And children get angry because they don’t get their own way.

The second part of verse 4 makes a big impact on the first part. Children are born self-centered. When the child comes to a point of surrendering his/her life to Christ self yields to God’s will. The love of Jesus in the child’s heart takes away stubbornness and children grow and mature and become others centered.

Parents develop high expectations for your children. Dedicate them to the Lord and pray that they will honor the Lord and seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. My passion for my children and my grandchildren is that they will honor the Lord and put Jesus first in their lives and in everything they do please Jesus.

Having low expectations of your children can provoke them to anger and cause hurt and emotional damage.

One mother, who had too much to drink, screamed at her teenage daughter, “You’re so stupid.” That daughter had heard a negative message from her mother time and time again: “You’ll never amount to anything! You’ll end up pregnant and unwed just like me, you no-good tramp! If it wasn’t for you, I would have gone to college! I would have become something”

One time the 17 year old tried to talk to her mother. As she got close to her mother to talk she accidentally knocked over her glass if iced tea. “You idiot!” screamed her mother. “Now look what you’ve done! Can’t you ever do anything right?”

“That was 33 years ago.” The woman wrote in telling her story. “I am now 50 years old. I’ve never seen my mother since that day…and I never will.”

Low expectations of your children can end up with tragic results.

Someone has written: “Fifty years from now it will not matter what kind of car you drove, what kind of house you lived in, how much you had in your bank account, or what your clothes looked like. But the world may be a little better because you were important in the life of a child.”

Parents can carry out Ephesians 6:4 by doing several things in the home.

1. Care More! Care for the needs of each other in the family. It’s often in the little things that make a difference in the home. Carollyn feels secure when all the windows and doors are locked. I feel secure when windows and doors are not locked. To show more care I make an effort to make nightly rounds to lock and secure doors. True love is often spelled in the little things that you do around the house.