It is possible to have a strong, stable, and loving family when built on the right foundation. The ultimate foundation is following Jesus Christ. But after we have committed our live and family to God, what is next? Listed below are 4 DO’s and 1 DON’T to have a strong family foundation.

DO Know God the Father’s Heart for You

God the Father is the best example of a good relationship. Our Heavenly Father is gentle, nourishing, and tender. When we experience a good relationship with the Father it flows down to our family.

He is the perfect Father. He is the example to. As we get to know the Father and He parents us, we learn how to parent by acting how he acts to us.

First, remember God the Father loves you and is pleased with you. If you have never experienced an earthly Father’s love it is hard to imagine how much the Heavenly Father loves you. God the Father said to Jesus at his baptism, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased”. He says the same thing over you! This does not mean you are perfect. But this is His heart. How do we know this? Jesus prayed, that we would know that the Father loves us as he has loved him.

Few people have experienced the Father’s goodness. We often view him as distant, unemotional, and harsh. This causes us to not want to approach Father. As a result, we lose our best example of how to parent our children.

Do you find yourself afraid to go to the Father? If so, it is important to work through the issues that keep you from Him. Those issues show the parts of your soul that need to be healed. If we don’t deal with these issues, they will affect our family relationships.

Sit in the Father’s presence and discover what He is like. If you have not experienced His love, ask Him to reveal His Heart. He will take you on a journey of discovery that will surprise, amaze, and free you. Your relationships will be transformed.

DO Ask God the Father to See Your Children as He Sees Them

Do you want help as a parent? Father God is the best parent. Realize, He has a full understanding of your children. He has a dream for them. He knows their weaknesses and strengths. He has created them for a purpose. Ask God to share what He knows with you. He will! Ask Him to see your children as he sees them – strengths and weaknesses. This will help you nurture their strengths and work on their weaknesses.

When you ask this, you will see your children as valuable, created with a purpose, and a good future. When you see your children in this way, it makes a huge difference. You realize that you are holding them for a time, until the Father God takes over, and guides them further into the rest of their lives.

1 Thessalonians. 2:11-12 (NIV), “For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.”

DO Hear God’s Voice for Your Family

I guarantee that God will speak to you about your family. He is in the speaking business. Men, this means you too. You hear God differently than women, but you hear God. Your style is different. She may talk more than you but that doesn’t me she can hear better than you. You are to lead together. Men, you are as spiritual and prophetic as your wife.

DO Fight to Keep Enemy Out of Your Family

You set the spiritual atmosphere in your family. Spiritual atmosphere is the mood or spirit in your house. Is it peaceful, angry, or tense? Do you want the atmosphere to change? You do it by changing who you are on the inside which eventually affects what goes on around you.

We start by learning what to get rid of in our life and what to keep. This includes attitudes, habits, actions, etc. This ongoing process keeps the enemy out of your house. I try every day to pray for each family member blessing them with the 3 Ps.

The 3 Ps are Prosperity, Protection, and Peace. As a pray each P, I ask God if there is anything I need to remove or add in my own life. I then repeat the process for each family member.

Prosperity–Father, prosper everyone’s body, soul and spirit.

Protection–Father, protect my family members physically, protect their soul from emotional wounds, and protect their spirit from attacks.

Peace–Father, let every member experience your peace.

One way to change the atmosphere in your home is to connect emotionally with each member. Ask about how they feel, what are their dreams, what are their challenges. The goal is to connect with their heart.

Discuss issues you find in your children that are not Godly. Your children need you to do this. They may not like it, but that is OK. Do not make your priority for your children to like you. Your priority is to be their parent. That means you help them mature, look like God, teach them how to live before God, and find their purpose.

DON’T Ever Leave Your Marriage

Say to yourself and your spouse out loud, “I will never leave you. Divorce is not an option.” There is something about saying it out loud that strengthens the commitment. This is not just a commitment to your wife, but to your kids, to God’s institution and way of doing stuff on earth.

The American society makes it easy to dissolve a marriage. It is easy to leave, but it takes strength to not leave. Marriage is often full of disillusionment. Having been married for 34 years as of this writing, my wife and I have had our share of disillusionments. But rarely have I met a couple who gets a divorce that end up being happier with the next partner. They just get a different set of problems.

Jesus models this for us. Ephesians 5:25-30 (NIV 1984) Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church–for we are members of his body.