FAMILIES
See also: Children; Church; Fathers; Husbands; Mothers; Parenting; Wives
God sets the lonely in families …
The Bible, Psalm 68:6
Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law – a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.
Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me …
The Bible, Matthew 10:34–37
If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
The Bible, 1 Timothy 5:8
I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.
The Bible, 2 Timothy 1:5
A healthy family is sacred territory.
Author unknown
It is clear that a family without love is godless, but a family ruled by the clouded emotion of blood-ties will have no love to God and Christ.
J. Heinrich Arnold
Family is certainly not dead in America, but it looks and behaves very differently than it used to.
George Barna
It is an evident truth, that most of the mischiefs that now infest or seize upon mankind throughout the earth, consist in, or are caused by the disorders and ill-governedness of families.
Richard Baxter
If you desire the reformation and welfare of your people, do all you can to promote family religion.
Richard Baxter
The union of the family lies in love; and love is the only reconciliation of authority and liberty.
Robert Hugh Benson
A happy family is but an earlier heaven.
John Bowring
A saint abroad, and a devil at home.
John Bunyan
In family life, be completely present.
Tao Te Ching
The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.
Confucius
It is my view that our society can be no more stable than the foundation of individual family units upon which it rests. Our government, our institutions, our schools, indeed, our way of life are dependent on healthy marriages and loyalty to the vulnerable little children around our feet.
James C. Dobson
The mind of Christ is to be learned in the family. Strength of character may be acquired at work, but beauty of character is learned at home. There the affections are trained.
Henry Drummond
Earthly fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, children and earthly friends, are all “shadows.” But God is the “substance.”
Jonathan Edwards
Men are what their mothers made them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The family was ordained by God before he established any other institution, even before he established the church.
Billy Graham
The foundations of civilization are no stronger and no more enduring than the corporate integrity of the homes on which they rest. If the home deteriorates, civilization will crumble and fall.
Billy Graham
Unless [our love and care for our family] is a high priority, we may find that we may gain the whole world and lose our own children.
Michael Green
The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.
Theodore Hesburgh
The great high of winning Wimbledon lasts for about a week. You go down in the record book, but you don’t have anything tangible to hold on to. But having a baby – there isn’t any comparison.
Chris Evert Lloyd
They offer their children to God in baptism, and there they promise to teach them the doctrine of the gospel, and bring them up in the nurture of the Lord; but they easily promise, and easily break it; and educate their children for the world and the flesh, although they have renounced these, and dedicated them to God. This covenant-breaking with God, and betraying the souls of their children to the devil, must lie heavy on them here or hereafter. They beget children, and keep families, merely for the world and the flesh: but little consider what a charge is committed to them, and what it is to bring up a child for God, and govern a family as a sanctified society.
Thomas Manton
All the wealth in the world cannot be compared with the happiness of living together happily united.
Margaret of Youville
Well-ordered families naturally produce a good order in other societies. When families are under an ill discipline, all other societies [will be] ill disciplined.
Cotton Mather
No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.
Margaret Mead
A godly parentage is a costly boon. Its blessing not only rests upon the children of the first family, but has often been traced in many successive generations.
Andrew Murray
Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice.
Reinhold Niebuhr
To the Puritans, family life was enormously important, for they maintained, “a family is the seminary of church and state and if children be not well principled there, all miscarrieth.” So “keep up the government of God in your families: holy families must be the chief preservers of the interest of religion in the world.”
J.I. Packer
Every effort to make society sensitive to the importance of the family is a great service to humanity.
Pope John Paul II
As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
Pope John Paul II
The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.
George Santayana
The family should be a place where each new human being can have an early atmosphere conducive to the development of constructive creativity.
Edith Schaeffer
Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.
George Bernard Shaw
Some parents, like Eli, bring up their children to bring down their house.
George Swinnock
He who loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home and broods a nest of sorrows.
Jeremy Taylor
All happy families are like one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Leo Tolstoy
God is the first object of our love: Its next office is to bear the defects of others. And we should begin the practice of this amid our own household.
John Wesley
If you wish your children to be Christians you must really take the trouble to be Christian yourselves. Those are the only terms upon which the home will work the gracious miracle.
Woodrow Wilson
“The family that prays together, stays together” is much more than a cliché! And when the family adds the dimension of praying together in church, the truth becomes even stronger.
Zig Ziglar