Hearing family stories of faith

Short teachings from Hillcrest Church further exploring Sunday's teachings.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, hope you're doing well. Tim here, and we are uh diving deep into this uh teaching series Living Sent. So um continuing on some of the themes James talked about from Sunday, one of the uh, you know, one of the questions he asked was, he encouraged us to reflect on, um, you know, he's talking about God is seeking us, God is sending to people to us, and to reflect on who God has used in our uh lives uh to seek us out. And then he made this just kind of side comment about he said, uh, you know, parents, like tell, I hope you tell your kids about who God used to find you. And then he moved on. Uh, but that I just thought that was that was a really powerful comment. And and I and I want to kind of uh explore that for a moment in a way that I think really applies to all of us, whether we have parents, whether we have kids uh or not. You will uh yeah, I was gonna say whether you have parents, um, everybody's got parents, uh, but whether you have kids or not. So um it made me think of uh a piece of research that I've uh referenced a couple times. Actually, somebody just emailed me this week asking about it, but um it, I'm just pulling it up here. So there's a uh our author, Bruce Feeler. He wrote this article um called uh The Stories Uh That Bind Us. It appeared in the New York Times. It's actually part of um his book, The Secrets of Happy Families, um, that was published years and years ago. Uh, but in this article, uh Feeler actually references the research of a couple people. Um, let's see, their names are Dr. Duke and Dr. Fivish, who they were researching kind of the resiliency and mental health, emotional health of children. And they were exploring the idea of, they were asking the question of how much do kids know about their families, their parents and grandparents. And so they developed a measure called the do you know scale. It asked children 20 questions, things like, do you know where your grandparents grew up? Do you know where your mom and dad went to high school? Do you know where your parents met? It just kind of, how much do you know about um your your extent, your family? And they found the more the children knew about their family's history, the stronger, the more the kids had a sense of kind of control over their own lives, they had higher self-esteem. Um and uh they just kind of like stronger sense of well-being. It was the single best predictor of the children's emotional health and happiness. So, anyways, they did this research in the summer of 2001, and they were they were blown away by that how well this correlated with kids' sense of well-being. Well, then 9-11 happens, of course, and so they decided to circle back um and follow up with it. And um once again, uh it was the kids who knew more about their families, they uh emotionally navigated the the awfulness of 9-11 um with a much greater sense of stability. It helped them manage their health more. And so these these researchers just talk about how um these kids, the the phrase they use is these kids had a sense of an intergenerational self. Like they understood themselves as a bigger part of a bit a bigger family story. And in fact, the researchers even identified three different types of family stories. Um, one was called the ascending family story. Um it was it's the story of like we once had nothing, but now we've made it. Uh, that's the uh uh ascending family narrative. The second one um was the descending family narrative, which is the opposite. We once were rich and well off, then we lost everything, and now it's all bad. Uh and then the third family narrative was the oscillating uh family narrative, they called it. This is the researcher's language, um, where it was essentially it's the way that the family story gets told is of a story of both highs and lows, of um, of stories of success and failure, of joy and heartache. Um, and and and the researchers found that it was kids who had heard those kinds of stories of both the triumphs and failures of their grandparents, uh, of both like unexpected joys and unexpected sorrows, um, that those kids had the the most inner resiliency, um, self-esteem and ability to handle stress of them all. And I've just found this to be uh just fascinating. And for me, it so connects with uh, well, it connects with it connects with scripture and so many things that God tells us. I mean, it made me think just that at this, you know, this Sunday what James said, hey, um parents, do your kids know who God used um to draw you to faith? Uh and I and I think, I mean, I think that, you know, parents, grandparents, do your kids know? Uncles and aunts, do your nieces and nephew know? Um, you know, um, and do we know? Um, do we, you know, when we think about our parents, um, do we know how who God used in their in their life? And and even kind of beyond that, like our our our spiritual ancestry. Um, I don't know if you remember when Jeff Mumley and the Kyopha team uh they had some, they did some sharing earlier this this springtime, but they had it they had kind of a spiritual family tree, like this person who had mentored this person, who had mentored this person, and mentored this person, and even that, like uh, you know, to do do we know the larger, our larger spiritual family story of of how God uh worked to draw them in? And and are we telling these these biological family stories and spiritual family stories? Um are we passing them on? And and for me, this is just like this, it's like, yeah, of course, when you read through scripture, um, it just so resonates with what God is modeling for. I mean, how many times does God instruct his people to remember? Remember, remember, remember, remember what the Lord did for you. Remember what God brought you through. I mean, even to be uh to be part of the the the Israelite people was um every Passover to tell the story. We were slaves in Egypt, um, but God rescued us. Uh my father was a wandering Aramean. This is how they would talk about Abraham. My father was a wandering Aramean. They they they told they held their family story and they told it over and over again. I mean, you think about the genealogies um in scripture, and those are those are uh one of the most succinct ways. A genealogy is one of the most succinct ways to tell the family story. Uh, because every one of those names, of course, um, stories, those are like hooks that whole stories hang off of. I mean, when you read through the family, the genealogy of Jesus in the beginning of Matthew, you see a story, a family story of triumphs and sorrows. Um, and this is this is you know, over and over again, that's good, and the this gets told in the whole the whole scripture itself is one giant telling of the spiritual history of God's people, warts and all. For every moment, um, you know, for every moment Abraham is walking in faith, he's also, you know, going off and you know, circumventing the promise and trying to have a child with Hagar. Um, for every time David confronts Goliath, you know, he's murdering uh Uriah, you know, for every time Solomon says, I choose wisdom, um, he's you know, um he's pursuing uh idolatry, like all like over and over again. The whole the whole biblical story is this the story of of both uh the the stories of faith and the stories of failure. Um and this is what God models for us, even in the way God gives us uh scripture. And so I just thought that encouragement from James Um was so uh I don't even know, like right uh that uh parents and grandparents and aunts uncles and 412 leaders and small group leaders that we would that we would reflect on who God used to reach us, um that we would tell those stories, we'd pass them on, um, and that we would we would know the stories. Maybe we would ask those who came before us what their stories are, um, how God drew them in, um, who God used to draw them uh to himself. And uh and I just imagine I imagine families and small groups and youth groups um and churches that do this. Uh I think all those things that those researchers found, uh, I think those things uh become tenfold and a hundredfold. And I think that's what I think um, you know, so often I think about a biblical community, I picture it as a fabric. Um uh 10,000 invisible threads binding us together as we follow God together. And and I think the when we share those stories, it's part of the weaving of this fabric of shalom uh that makes up the community of God. And so um be encouraged and may you find uh may you find the right moments um to share those stories around whatever coffee table or phone call or um dining room table this week to share and to ask and to listen. Um uh and may you be encouraged by it. All right, grace and peace.