You’re God’s Hidden Treasure in Your Family
The role of the director is to create a space where the actors and actresses can become more than they’ve ever been before, more than they’ve dreamed of being.
Robert Altman
It was an experiment. The grandkids were dabbling at dinner, and I wondered if they were going to finish. So I tried something.
Firmly and enthusiastically I said, “I can’t believe how great you guys are eating! Look at you!” I wasn’t lying—I was giving them credit for what I knew was coming.
They smiled. Then each one grabbed their fork to take another bite.
I held a spoon to my mouth like a microphone and started announcing loudly in a fake, macho announcer guy voice, “What an incredible performance we’re witnessing tonight! Never before seen in the annals of eating!”
They laughed and ate some more. I kept egging them on, and they kept eating. Every bite became an amazing achievement, another milestone. Our time together was positive and fun, and they felt like they were accomplishing something. Five minutes later, they were done, clean plates all around.
I didn’t tell them to eat. I didn’t talk about what they should do. I didn’t scold or make them do anything. But I was part of the change that comes simply from cooperating with how we are all created to respond to acceptance and encouragement.
The Hidden Treasure in Your Family
There’s a hidden treasure buried in your family. That treasure provides your family with access to God’s acceptance and encouragement and is uniquely created by him and divinely placed for your family.
Here’s how to find it:
Your family’s hidden treasure is you. Well, actually, the treasure is your presence in your family. There’s a subtle difference between you and your presence. Your presence is God’s access to your family.
On our own, we’ve proven to be feeble change agents in our families, wouldn’t you say? What good have you brought about by the power of your will and personality and wisdom alone? For me, not much.
But God’s presence through us goes to places we can’t touch, places we don’t even know exist. Yes, he can go there without us. But he created families as a place for us to influence each other while cooperating with him.
There’s you. There’s your family. And there’s you in your family. None of that is accidental.
We love it when someone cares enough to commit to cooperate with what God is up to in us. Your family would love to have the same thing—and they do: you.
When you accept someone for who they are, when you’re patient and curious, and when you give them the incredible gift of attention, that’s when you begin to see inside their soul and see what God is up to in them. You learn who they are, how they feel, and why they do what they do. You hear their heartbeat. You then have the awesome honor of cooperating with God in what he’s doing in this person you love.
I know what you might be thinking right about now, because I think it too: Aren’t there some other big, strong grown-ups in this family who also should model and cooperate with God? Oh yes, but right now it starts with you. And you’re enough to start with.
Maybe you’ve heard of Compassion International—they help match children living in poverty around the world with sponsors who enable the kids to get schooling and have their basic physical, emotional, and spiritual needs met. Where Compassion goes, whole communities are changed. Compassion president emeritus Wess Stafford says:
While changed circumstances sometimes change people, changed people always change circumstances.
One changed child eventually changes a family. A changed family will influence change in its church. Enough changed churches will transform a community. Changed communities change regions.
Changed regions will in time change entire nations.1
Do you believe that? Because if big changes in a family can start with one small child, what kind of changes can start with one big, strong grown-up actively cooperating with God?
Don’t default to the common, “Well, I tried, and they just won’t change” or “Things can’t change because ____________ __________” (fill in the blank with your favorite reason). You’re better than that. God is bigger than that. You just haven’t seen how it will happen yet. Don’t give up.
The Bible says in Christ “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3). It also says the hope of glory is Christ in you (Col. 1:27). So if you’re a believer in Jesus, and he is in you, where are those treasures? In you. And where are you? In your family. That person in your bathroom mirror is God’s access to your family to influence them toward the things he has in mind. As we’ve said, since the things are in his mind, the burden is on him to make them happen, and the privilege of cooperating is ours. If you want to be God’s access to your family, be up to what he is up to in your family’s life.
God made each of our family members unique without asking our opinion, and he’s going his own direction with each of them. For me to go with my agenda for who someone else should be or what they should do would be taking over God’s job. No fun. I’d be fighting God. He may not be asking my input for what he’s up to in my family, but he sure is inviting me to be part of it. I get to cooperate if I want to.
Here is the fun part: when I see a little of what he’s up to in a family member, I take it seriously and see myself as God’s agent or ambassador. If I’m acting in God’s interests for the good of that person, I get to model and be an example of what I see God is up to. Instead of deciding what I want to see in another’s life, and pushing, pointing, scolding, and correcting, I try to cooperate and model a bit of what God desires and trust that it will be contagious.
With kids, I may see interests in dance, cheer, skateboarding, hockey, or the like. If their interests change, do I allow them to move on, and move on with them, or do I resist because I’ve begun to take ownership of them as a cheerleader or hockey goalie? Latching on to my own expectations for someone can be sneaky easy. I can do the same with adult family members, having my own expectations for how they should behave or what they should do. This prevents me from being God’s access to my family.
We’re concerned not only with the interests and drives of our family members but also with the kind of people they are becoming. We cooperate with God when we’re up to the same thing he is and model what we know he’s up to.
Want more patience in your family? To spread patience, you be more patient.
Want people to care more about each other and put others first? Show what that looks like by modeling it rather than describing it.
Want less yelling? Want people to feel loved and appreciated? You don’t need to give a speech, just start loving and appreciating, and watch love multiply over time.
These are just some of the character traits God desires in each of us. We know this because we see them in the Bible.
When we read the Bible, we see the big picture of what God is doing in each of us. And when we pay attention, we see what God is doing in each person’s life through their unique drives and interests.
We put our families in a big bear hug when we unite the big-picture Bible things and the unique what-we-see-in-each-person things. We want to cooperate with God as he forms each person in our families to be a unique expression of himself, placed purposefully in his world.
What does it look like to cooperate with God?
Set the Pace with Your Own Walking
Remember the story of the guy with earbuds in the waiting room tapping his foot, and another guy tapping his foot along with him even though he couldn’t hear the music? It takes only one person to hear the music. One person can set the pace, and others will keep pace with him even when they don’t hear the music themselves.
What is the music that your family could walk along to with you? The Bible says, “Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called” (Eph. 4:1). In other words, “Live like this. Be this type of person. This kind of person walks like this, keeps the rhythm.”
God is speaking to all of us, so we know that includes the family, which just happens to be the most contagious social organization there is. Family members are wired to walk along with each other.
What does this walk look like? He tells us exactly in Ephesians 4: Be humble, patient, bearing with one another in love. Don’t be consumed by anger. Let your words build up and give grace. Avoid bitterness, wrath, and malice. Be kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving. “Be this kind of person,” God says. If everyone loved their family this way, the world would be different. If just one person in a family did this, that person could be a world changer.
Are you willing to cooperate with God and be a start-with-my-family world changer, no matter what anyone else does?
When you walk in a manner worthy of your calling, then you are God’s access to your family. They hear his music through you. Since family is designed as the most contagious social unit there is, you will influence them.
You have no choice but to be an influence. The only choice you have is what kind of influence you will be. Part of your calling is to be God’s access to your family. But that potential is fulfilled only when you walk in a manner worthy of that calling. Otherwise you’re the access of something else, not of God. Dale Carnegie said, “Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain. And most fools do.”2 Ouch. Who would want to walk along with that? We’re wired to walk along with something; let’s choose to walk God’s way.
How can we help our families want to walk along?
Be the Encourager
People in the human sciences work hard to understand and explain what God did when he made the world and wired us with certain defaults. The need for encouragement is one of those defaults. From what I’ve read, I’ve come to conclude that we need at least six times more encouragement than criticism. Scientific studies are always catching up with how God made us, and he made us to thrive under encouragement.
God’s enemy is the accuser, the criticizer, the blamer, the discourager. God’s enemy is the anti-encourager. I don’t want to be my family’s access to discouragement.
There is a place for blunt criticism and correction. Sometimes someone needs to hear, “You’re heading for the ditch!” or “You just blew it” or “Stop before you make things worse.” But these types of comments should be no more than one-sixth as much as the direct, blunt encouragement we receive. Encouragement should always outweigh criticism.
There are three problems with this.
One, criticism comes easily and naturally, so we underestimate how critical we actually are. We criticize more than we realize.
Two, criticism is often true! We’re telling the truth when we criticize. Isn’t the truth good? But it’s not the whole truth, and there’s often more to the story that sometimes explains or mitigates the criticism.
Three, we all automatically give more weight to criticism than to encouragement. That’s why it takes five encouragements to equal one criticism, and six to outweigh the criticism so we feel encouraged. Someone can compliment you several times, but throw in one criticism and what’s the thing you keep thinking about later? What’s the thing you share with a friend? What’s the thing that most influences how you feel? Criticism instantly gets our attention and keeps it.
We all naturally see faults. But majoring on finding faults is not God’s way, and it doesn’t produce what God desires. It doesn’t change the person being criticized. If criticism produced change, you’d never have to say, “I’ve told you a million times! Will you ever learn?”
Majoring on criticism does accomplish one big thing: it steals energy from people. On the other hand, encouragement infuses energy into people.
You’ve seen this played out in your own childhood or in your own backyard. Two kids are running at the same speed, neck and neck. To one you yell, “I can’t believe how slow you’re going! You need to go faster! Is that all you can do? I thought you could do better than that!” And it’s true, you do think they could do so much better.
To the other kid you yell, “Way to go! Look at you! Awesome! You’re running like the wind! Go, go, go, go!” This is true too.
If you were one of those kids, which phrases would energize you and make you try harder? All other things being equal, which kid do you think will win? Which kid will feel better?
Which kid will you have a better relationship with?
Would you rather give energy to those you love or steal it from them?
You don’t improve relationships by pointing out faults and telling people how they need to change and how negatively they’re affecting your life. They may need to change, they may have many faults, they may be negatively affecting your life, but repeatedly telling them won’t fix things. Criticism is not a change agent. It’s a venting agent for the criticizer.
Humans are wired to respond to love, grace, and respect. We are designed to become who we were created to be: beings in relationship with God who are being changed into his image and who walk in his ways. What are those ways again?
Oh yeah: humility, patience, bearing with one another in love. Don’t be consumed by anger. Let your words build up and give grace. Avoid bitterness, wrath, and malice. Be kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving. These are change agents. You are your family’s access to these things and to God, and that access doesn’t come through scolding and a wagging finger. Access comes through modeling the behavior you want to see.
Why are we so afraid of encouragement? Are we afraid the person receiving the encouragement will get a big head and stop trying?
One day I walked into the cleanest restroom I’ve ever seen in a fast-food place. I even looked for a urinal to make sure I hadn’t accidentally walked into the ladies’ room. Plants were perched on a table in the corner, and the whole place smelled like forsythia. Brenda said the women’s restroom was the same. After we finished our Cajun biscuit and seasoned fries, Brenda found the cleaning lady and told her what a great job she was doing. The lady glowed and said she works only one day a week and tries to make that day special. Brenda made sure she knew it was.
After the compliments and encouragement, do you think she started slacking off?
Encouragement wins. When someone is specific and positive about who you are or how you do something, doesn’t it make you want to be or do that even more? Encouragement energizes and inspires.
What do you spend more time doing in your family or in your most challenging relationships—correcting and pointing out shortcomings or encouraging?
Be the Persuader toward What God Wants
“The Family Persuader” hung on the wall in our kitchen when I was growing up. It was a wooden paddle for dads, engraved with a silly poem that ended with advice to “hide this persuader” when Dad is the one messing up. Ha-ha. Dad never used it. He just liked the idea of it and thought the little rhyme was funny. Of course, there are other ways of looking at persuasion: “With patience a ruler may be persuaded, and a soft tongue will break a bone” (Prov. 25:15).
It’s easy to like the idea of something. We all naturally like the idea of persuading. Don’t you want people, especially family, to see things the same way you do? You know it would be good for them; if it wasn’t good, you’d change your perspective, right? But persuading peoples’ viewpoints doesn’t change them on the inside; it doesn’t touch their hearts and souls.
When Myquillyn and Emily were in their early teens, I liked the idea of a family Bible study. That’s something a Christian family should do, right? So I bought the Scofield Study Bible for them and explained how it worked and how it was helpful. We had a little class on it. Then we had little classes on the Bible. That meant I talked, asked some questions, and they got bored. Hmmm.
I did it the way I thought was the only way—you sit down with a Bible and start talking. You don’t consider them, or their day, or how they are feeling right now. You just teach the truth abstractly as you come across it. Teaching the Bible is essential, and that’s one of the ways to do it.
While I believe the truth will apply itself to each person even if it’s taught by Ferris Bueller’s Ben Stein, I also know that my way wasn’t working with my kids. They were bored. It felt like they were just going through the motions. They couldn’t relate. It wasn’t the Bible’s fault; it was mine. The Bible didn’t talk to them; I did. But I didn’t connect with them.
I thought since I was using the Bible, that was enough. That’s what everyone says, right? God’s Word will not return void. And I’m sure it didn’t return void, but having a connecting experience with my family certainly did return void. I was a “Bible machine” spewing truth.
I think my mistake was that I swapped out being a dad—God’s personal access to my family—for being a truth teller. What my family needed was someone they respected, someone who loved them, to share the truth in a personal way. What if, instead, I had said something like this:
I lost my job today. I was freaked out for a while but then I remembered the Bible says that all things work for good to those who love God. And I remembered the Bible says that the king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord and he turns it like a watercourse wherever he pleases. And I remember I’m to serve my employer as if I’m serving the Lord because the Lord is who I’m really working for. I’ve served as best I can, but now it looks like the Lord has turned my employer’s heart.
When I remember those things, I know I can feel just as confident unemployed as I felt employed because the Lord is in control and loves me. He’s in the middle of this and knows what he’s doing. The Lord is changing the assignment he has for me, and although I hate losing the job, I’m excited.
If we had had a family Bible time with that kind of conversation, I bet it would have felt very different to them. It would have felt personal, and they would have likely remembered it for a long time.
Of course, to say all that, I would have to believe it; I would have to personally engage the Bible and actually feel that way. It wouldn’t do to say, “So here’s how we as Christians should react in times of trials and tribulation.”
To be God’s access to your family, to be up to what he’s up to, you need to allow him to have access to you first. You want to be up to what he’s up to in your own life. You need to be a real, live, transparent person who deals with reality by faith and then shares that.
People are much more interested in our real lives than in our philosophy of life.
Be the Leader in the Messy Journey
One big thing we all have in common is this: we all know what it’s like to be in the boat of messy reality, and we all long to see the shore from that boat.
Leadership goes far beyond family Bible time and is a key to any kind of persuasion we hope to accomplish in our families. It’s about how we live with each other, love each other, and go through ordinary days together.
In a family, it’s a lot more fun, and a lot more effective, to stop thinking of things we should do and instead think and live with the freedom and the honesty of messy reality. Being who you are is easier—and more persuasive—than being who you think you should be.
Leading the messy journey is a problem if you have trouble living with messy honesty. It’s hard to welcome the mess if you insist on seeing yourself as some perfect stereotype of a successful mom, dad, or family member. If you insist on seeing yourself as you should be, then that’s how you talk about things, and that’s what you tell others. Your expectations of what should be leads to disconnection in relationships.
One of the most powerful things in the world is telling stories that reveal the reality of your mess even while maintaining hope. You admit that you can’t control things, but you share how you find encouragement anyway. People hear that. This is much more persuasive than just a general admission of “Well, you know I’m not perfect.”
This means you have to learn how to deal with messy reality and still somehow find encouragement—challenging but doable.
As I write this, I’m dealing with the loss of a job—again. I told myself that if I’m going to talk to people about hope, then I need to be an example of it. No moping around, no bitterness, and no faking it allowed. You can’t say anything to anyone else that you haven’t been challenged to live yourself. This responsibility inspires and challenges me. But it’s no different from all the other everyday challenges that families face.
The most powerful hope you can share is the hope you have found yourself. People can tell when it’s just talk. Of course, we can share hope we haven’t yet found ourselves—but we should do it gently and humbly, acknowledging our need for that same hope as cotravelers. No raised finger “as Christians we need to . . .” attitudes allowed.
He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness. (Heb. 5:2 NIV)
That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor. 12:10 NIV)
Imagine someone in your family—your spouse, parent, mother-in-law, sister, or even your nemesis—majoring in encouragement and giving it at least six times more than they criticize. How would that feel? How would it give you hope in your messiness?
Imagine getting the sense that this person sincerely cares about you, notices your interests and feelings, and truly wants what’s best for you. Imagine that person humbly and transparently sharing the ups and downs of their own life and faith.
What difference would this make to you? What difference could it make in your family? That’s the difference you can make when you cooperate with God and are his access to your family.
Your own life is a powerful picture that God can use as a model of what he wants to see. Powerful doesn’t mean perfect, just perfectly usable. Since your family is created to be contagious, family members are already “catching” your life. Why not choose some things on purpose for them to catch? In the next chapter, you’ll see how modeling includes telling, but in a more fun and natural way, and relieves you of the frustration of saying the same thing repeatedly.