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Family Wisdom (Part 4) By @DrPaulEnenche

The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down. – Proverbs 14:1

By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; – Proverbs 24:3

What does it take to build a successful family?

Why is it necessary to understand the family?

The family is the nursery of God’s purposes and agenda on earth.Divine agenda is nurtured and nourished in families. Jesus came through the institution of the family via Mary and Joseph, and so did John the Baptist through Simeon and Elizabeth.

God goes to families to harvest destinies. Where a family is underfunctioning, divine purposes can be wasted; the agenda and purposes of God
could be squandered. Which is why we have to understand family wisdom.

1. Wisdom for the man.
a. If a man wants a successful family, he must take his place as Priest of the house. HE must be the spiritual leader of the home.
b. Take your place as protector and defender of your family, not frustrator and irritator. You should not attack them but defend them.
c. Provider for your family. Do everything to ensure your family is provided for. Any man who abdicates this responsibility is an abuse on masculinity.
d. Give your wife the assurance of your love continually. Eph 5:25-29
e. Bring out the best in your spouse. Add value to the life of your wife. No one should marry you and become a shadow of herself. Let her family
praise you that she married you.
6. Be a model to your children. Be the kind of man your children want to grow up into . Let your children be able to look for a husband that looks like you in character.

2. Wisdom for the woman.
a. Take your place as help meet for your husband’s life. Be a completer, a complementer.
b. Decide and determine to respect and submit to your husband’s authority. It is a great mistake to marry a man you are not willing to respect and obey.
It is a great mistake to marry a woman you are not ready to love.
c. Be interested in your husband’s life vision and passion. What does he want to do with his life. Find out the things that move him and be involved in those things. Your involvement there moves your relationship to another level.
d. Pay attention to his needs and challenges, especially current needs and challenges.
e. Be a role model for your children. If your children think of a wife, let a woman like mummy, come to mind. Be a role model for maternity and
feminity and matrimony.
f. Celebrate and appreciate your husband’s efforts and acts as regards care of the family. BE thankful and appreciate him

3. Wisdom for children upbringing.
a. Never delegate your children’s upbringing to others. DO it yourself. Don’t hand over the upbringing of your children to other people.
b. Strategically hand to your children the principles, the lessons, the insights that make you through instruction. What did your father tell
you, what mistakes did you make on your journey of life, what mistakes did you make,
c. Give your children your wisdom before you give them your wealth; your mentality before you give them your prosperity; your manners before your manna(money).
d. Never use negative words on your children because they turn out accordingly.
e. Maintain a healthy balance between correction and commendation, between Correction and affirmation. Correct them and commend them.
Over-commendation can be seen as weakness; Over-correction can be seen as being petty.
f. Be involved in their life’s choices. Who are their friends? What TV programs are they watching?

Point 4. (Wisdom for the man). Give your wife the assurance of your love continually.

Love is a major lubricant of marital relationship.

Benefits of love of man to woman.
a. Love from man provokes submission from the woman.
Affection makes submission automatic. If the man will love passionately, the woman will submit unconditionally.
b. The atmosphere of love is a fertile atmosphere for bringing up children. The best you can do for your children is to love their mummy to
their knowledge. Love in the home gives the children security.
c.Love for the woman gives her self confidence, peak performance, she performs her duties well because she is loved.
d. THe atmosphere of love provokes the presence of God.

Point 4 (Wisdom for the woman). Pay attention to your husband’s immediate needs and challenges.
The major responsibility of the women is the welfare of their family.
Many men are usually underexpressive. Men bottle up a lot of tension, but women easily cry away their tension. Do something to get your man to
talk. Encourage him that all is well.
We live in a world of multiplied challenges and diminishing friendships. Make your spouse your friend. Don’t use the words he shared with you in
confidence against him. Show yourself friendly to your spouse. Pay attention, look at your wife and make sure your wife is okay.

Point 4 (Wisdom for Children’s upbringing). Never Use Negative Words on Your Children).

Never use negative words on your children. Not in anger, not as a joke. Under no circumstance should you use
negative words, no matter how angry you are.
Make it a practice to permanently bless your children, just like the Jews.

1. Words transmit spirits. John 6:63. The right words convey the right spirit, and the wrong words convey the wrong spirits.
2. Parental words carry prophetic power on the destiny of children. Jacob wasted Reuben’s life with his words.
In their weakness prophesy strength.
3. Words affect their attitude and outlook on life. Wrong words destroy self image and affects confidence, makes them pessimistic. Right words
engenders confidence.

Point 5 (Wisdom for the man). Bring out the best in your spouse. Add value to the life of your wife. 

There is no perfect woman. Wash your wife with words and present her to yourself. To expect absolute perfection is to sign up for frustration. Continuously.

Marriage is the agreement between two people to forgive each other for life. – Billy Ghraham’s wife.

Never allow any woman to become worse in your hands that before you met her. Bring out the best in her.

a. Your input into your wife determines her outcome in life. What you make of your wife determines what she becomes in your life and generation.
b. The difference you make in your wife’s life is the proof of your husband-ability. 

Real men don’t leave their wives the way they met them. Something must change.
If you carry excellence destroy mediocrity in their lives. If you carry passion inject them with the same.
It is the difference you make in your wife’s life that determines your worth as a man.
c. Real lovers are givers. If you love your wife, you will give into her life whatever it takes to bring her best out!
Even if you want to correct her, correct her in love.
Point 5 ( Be a role model for your children)
Your daughters should look at you and know what it means to be a mother; your sons should look at you and ask for a wife that is like you.
a. There is a role model crisis in the world today. There is a leadership crisis. There is a shortage of standard bearers of road pointers as to what it means to be a real wife and mother. God wants you to model it for your children in the family.
b. Children are arrows in the hands of parents. Where you aim them determine where they end. Aim them well as a good mother and they end as good mothers. They see your respect and submission to their father; they see your decency and you are aiming them.
Maintain a healthy balance betwee
Proverbs 13:24 – he that spareth the rod hateth his son, but he that loves his son correcteth him betimes.
Proverbs 22:15 – Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him.
The rod doesn’t mean physical stick. Sometimes words have more power than sticks.

Point 5 (Wisdom for Children upbringing): Temper correction with commendation.

Don’t be generous with correction and stingy with commendation. There must be a balance.

a. The child you pamper today will tamper with your joy tomorrow.
b.  It is easier to correct a child than to repair an adult.
c. Be careful with overgenerous commendation, it produces a negative feedback – the inability to confront and handle failure and mistakes. You make them feel they are superb they don’t miss anything. In the end it is a low self-worth and lack of confidence to face the real life. Also it could lead to crookedness. They could fail and cover it up. Be honest in your commendation.
“I know you did well, but you could do better.”
Don’t exaggerate. Exaggeration today lays the foundation for frustration tomorrow.
Be involved in your Children’s choices.
a. Life is a product of choices. Until you have oversight over their choices, you have lost control over their outcome in life.
b. Input determines outflow. Whatever enters into a person determines what flows out of him. “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh.”
c. Correct the children when they are young, it is in the interest of their lives and future.

Pray: Father, I receive the wisdom for the family. Help me to do what you want me to do. Help me not to fail my generation. Help me to play my role well as a father, as a mother, as a child in Jesus name.

Sermon By Dr. Paul Enenche of Dunamis International Gospel Centre.