For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother. Mark 3:35

A family is a group of people who share a common lifestyle together as well as blood ties. Christians who are adopted into the family of God share the blood tie through Jesus Christ, but we also share the family culture.

Christians are said to be part of the Body of Christ in a real, physical sense. When we are born again, we are spiritually joined to God through Jesus Christ. We draw our eternal spiritual life from Him.

The Bible tries to explain this with stories like that of the vine and the branches, Christ being the vine and we being the branches growing from it. Just as a real grape vine grows from the branches being supplied with life giving nutrients from the main vine, so we grow from our living connection with Christ.

We are encouraged to look upward to heavenly things and to live a life worthy of being in Christ. He does not sustain us for us to use His gifts in selfish, worldly, sinful manners that bring harm and destruction to others and to the world around us. We are to shine as lights in a dark world, trying to make it a better place for everyone as much as we can.

Truly born again Christians become more like Christ in their beliefs as they grow up spiritually. They follow His ways and His commandments when making daily choices about their lives. They form a community that transcends their natural birth and nationality, the kingdom of God.

A characteristic of Christians is that we love the brethren no matter what their race or economic class. A born again Christian may be of any nationality or economic status. These differences among us are superficial ones which have no meaning in the kingdom of God. God has placed us in different places to reach the lost everywhere, or to shape our characters in specific ways for His eternal purposes. Discrimination against any Christian for any perceived difference from another one is criticism of God for His choice for that person, and thus is totally unacceptable.

Another characteristic is that we don't willingly stay in sin. We may sometimes stumble, sometimes repeatedly, but the new nature birthed in us doesn't want to stay in sin. Someone who repeatedly commits the same sin without any pangs of conscience, especially if he refuses to hear rebukes for it, should check to see if he is really born again. No matter how long it takes, a real Christian will strive to be delivered from habitual sins, and with the help and teaching of the Holy Spirit, will eventually gain the victory over them.

A Christian will agree that God's ways are good and that the Bible is the infallible Word of God. The Bible is given to us to teach us His ways. It records the true history of mankind, the history of the Jews and their neighbors in particular, to teach us how to live with God and what happens if you don't follow His commands. Most of the history of Israel is a sad testimony of what happens to a godly people when they turn their backs on God and follow ways of their own devising. It invariably leads to corruption and misery, and finally to God's judgment of the people after ample warnings to repent and turn back to Him and His ways.

Family values are more than a set of rules to follow. Family values center around valuing your family. In these days of two career families, family life often gets a back seat to everything else. Sometimes it is nonexistent entirely when the business of careers takes over the time that should be allotted to interacting with family members.

Strong families are built around a strong faith in God and each other expressed by group activities. The people you spend your time with are your family. Are they biological family members, friends outside the family, or business associates? Who gets the lion's share of your scarce time?

Relationships take quantity time as well as quality time. Children grow up fast, and parents grow old fast. Life rushes by at an ever increasing pace. Too late, many people discover that they never did all the things they intended to do with their families when they finally found the time. Time just ran out when the children grew up and moved out, or when someone unexpectedly died at far too young an age.

Recent psychological studies have affirmed what most people have known all along, that parents do the best job of raising their own children. Children who don't form the normal loving bonds in infancy with their parents, especially their mother, often grow up to be psychologically damaged and violent towards their classmates and society.

Children not only need quality time, they need quantity time. It takes many years for a child to physically and psychologically mature, and they rely on their observations of the people around them to learn how to behave towards others. Whether or not the significant adults closest to them take the time and effort to bond with them and teach them tells the child how valuable he is to those adults.

A child put in day care rather than staying at home with his mother is deprived of both valuable personalized attention and education. There is only a short time in early infancy where the vital social bonding that ties the infant to his society takes place, and if this foundation for further socialization doesn't take place, further maturation is based on whatever faulty ideas of the child's value and place in society that he forms based on infantile coping with this neglect.

Children need parenting by emotionally well-balanced mothers and fathers, not politically correct day care. The sooner we return to honoring parents for raising their children and not just for their job achievements, especially supporting stay-at-home mothers for choosing to put their children's well-being first ahead of the feminist insistence that they should find their emotional satisfaction in a job, the sooner we will return to a society where people are valued for who they are and where diligently taught concern for others is esteemed as a greater good than individual advancement.

Make time for your family in your schedule, even if you have to write it down on your to do list and daily planner. Families are worth every second of it, but you have to invest your time in them to get their time invested back in you.

Love and peace within a family is a priceless blessing. Many a family has material belongings, but such strife between its members that coming to that home is like entering a war zone.

Your home should be a shelter from the troubles of the world, a place where you are loved and accepted despite your faults and limitations. The world is full of strife, envy, greed, malice, and all the evils that Satan's ways always bring. You can get your fill of that, if for some strange reason you really want it, just by going out to work or on errands. There's no reason to have it in your home.

How does your family deal with problems between members? Do you attack the problem, or each other? Do you seek a solution that works for everyone's good, or seek to be right even if you have to dominate or destroy another family member?

Family traditions are habits passed from generation to generation within a family. Many are sentimental reminders of the holidays, where a special food or special ornament or other special memento brought out just for a short time forms a shared memory for young and old. Still others are special ceremonies, which may be held by the whole community or just within a particular family. Whatever form the tradition takes, it is a heritage taught to the young to be passed on to the next generation.

Not all traditions are socially positive, however. Some families teach their children negative habits so that they cause trouble within their community. Their families can become infamous for their history of crime passing from generation to generation. Unless there is intervention to teach the children law-abiding ways, these negative family traditions are passed along just like the positive ones.

The ultimate source of it all is the devil, Satan, who devises evil plans to attack God any way he can. This is the origin of what is called "sin," the lawless rebellion against the ways of love, mercy, and justice. When a person follows Satan's ways, he is showing that he is part of the devil's family by carrying out his family traditions of evil attitudes and actions.

God's way of handling problems are to put the other person's well being ahead of your own and reason out a peaceful solution, even if it means that you have to give up benefits to yourself or even come out the worse for it. When everyone practices that, everyone comes out ahead in both the long and short run.

Jesus came to put a stop to sin permanently. He offers humans the chance to join His family and begin to practice God's ways. He intervened at the Cross to break the power of sin and death in human lives and give people the chance at a new life of holiness and eternal peace. Never again do we have to be bound by Satan's ways.

God loves you and wants you to join His family. You don't have to stay within Satan's family, bound by sin in his evil family ways. All you have to do is ask God for forgiveness and salvation, and you will be born again into the new life in His family. Just sincerely pray this prayer and you will be saved:

Dear God, I'm sorry for my sins. I want to join your Heavenly family and I submit to King Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I renounce anything to do with Satan, his kingdom, and his ways. Please save me and adopt me as one of Your children. In Jesus' Name, Amen