Building Godly Marriages and 'God Kids' (Mal. 2:10-16)

There are four dimensions to this, like a four-legged stool, with each leg strong and of equal length. Growing in wisdom means growing intellectually! Growing in stature means developing physically! Growing in favor with God means maturing spiritually! Growing in favor with man means developing socially in an appropriate manner! That is what we are supposed to be doing, raising well-rounded kids—physically, intellectually, spiritually and socially.

Let me give you one little clue that comes out of all of this: It’s perfectly obvious that Malachi is saying, “There is a direct link between stable marriages and godly offspring!” In other words, if the marriages are unstable—if there is unfaithfulness there; if there is a breaking of covenant there; if there is inconsistency there—then there is less likelihood of that child understanding what it is to be a “God kid” because that child has been surrounded by things that are not at all helpful.

Let me give you a very simple acrostic of  the word CHILD that I think helps us to understand the kind of environment in which it is most likely that godly kids will grow.

First look for CHARACTER. What I mean by character is Christian character. The people Malachi was talking about continued to go to church, we know they continued to put something in the plate, they said their prayers. But we also know they were divorcing their Hebrew wives and were marrying pagan women! We also know they were being more infected by nations around them than they were affecting the nations. In other words, they were going through the motions, but at heart there was no spiritual reality! That is fundamental inconsistency; and kids can smell it a mile off! We are looking for character where there is performance that equates to profession. “C” stands for character.

“H” stands for HARMONY. If there is discord, if there is unfaithfulness, if there is a fighting and a feuding between the parents, the child is going to be insecure. If the child is insecure in that situation, the likelihood that he will grow up into a secure, mature kid is much less likely!

Our daughter, Judy, did a Ph.D. at New York University years ago. Her dissertation concentrated on “The Impact of Divorce on Adolescent Development.” She studied intact families, divorced families and broken families in various ethnic groups all over New York City. One of the

conclusions she reached in her research was that children of divorce showed that their development was affected, and there was no getting away from it. But this is significant: Children of intact families that were subjected constantly to arguments and fighting and feuding tended to be as unstable as the children of divorce. In other words, it wasn’t divorce that was the problem; it was the things that led to the divorce that were the problem! So people said, “Oh well, we might as well get a divorce then.” No! It means we need to recognize that “if there is not harmony between the parents, there will be instability in the children.”