Drilling Down into Family

So maybe I over-play the importance of family background. Maybe it's because I work with college students who are often on the front-end of processing their family dynamic--both the good and the bad.

But I think that for most of us the best things about us and the places of our deepest brokenness can be traced back to some degree to the influence of our family.

So as our guys group is doing some reflection on the hand of God in our lives to this point, we thought it would be important that we take the time to drill-down into several important categories.

And to start with, we'll drill down into our family backgrounds and how that's influenced our own family experiences to this point.

The goal here is not to wallow or blame or death by analysis. The goal is to look clear-eyed at all the factors that shaped us and to allow the Lord to sift through those and help us to see what was good and what was bad.

And ultimately, of course, our goal is to look forward to what God might want to do in our own lives, in our own families.

So I sat down about a week ago and brainstormed a list of reflection questions for us to consider. Many of them were questions that I was glad someone asked me along the way.

Not every question is for every season. I'm not naively supposing that we're all going to engage all of these questions equally, or even engage all of them at all. The point is to get us into the ballpark of a conversation and to lead us into prayerful discovery.

Eventually I think that all of us need to know and be able to answer each of these questions. But for now, we're just putting a lot of stuff out there and seeing what strikes the deeper chords. Here's our "drill down" reflection questions for the category of family:

1. Are there family spiritual blessings/inheritances that you might more actively claim for yourself or for your wife/kids?

2. Are there family curses that need to be broken? Is there generational sin that Christ is inviting you to participate with him in absorbing rather than passing along?

3. As men, our fathers play a huge role in influencing our understanding of husbanding, fathering, worshipping, working and of God as "Father." How would you specifically summarize your dad's influence in these areas? Are there particular stories or conversations or experiences or images of your dad that epitomize or gather up something that he taught you--for good or for bad?

4. All families are a mixed bag of blessing and sin. How would you say that your family of origin is a blessing and a curse to your current marriage/parenting? Have you forgiven where forgiveness is required?

5. Anything else in your history that shapes how you engage with your wife/children? For example, significant extended family influences, other families that you interacted strongly with, or issues from childhood like abuse of some sort?

6. Given your interests, gifts, personality, and experiences, what do you think are the strengths of your husbanding? What are your weaknesses in husbanding? Where have you seen the most growth to this point? These might be good questions to ask your wife!

7. Given your interests, gifts, experiences and personality, what do you think are the strengths of your fathering? What are your weaknesses? Where have you seen growth? Again, asking your wife might be helpful here!

8. In chartingyour marriage to this point, what have been the most formative experiences you've shared? How have those impacted you positively or negatively?

9. How would you gather up and describe the season of your family right now--ages/stages of children and this season of your marriage?

10. How is it with your soul right now in terms of husbanding as first earthly priority and fathering as second? Glad? Weary? Expectant? Prayerful? Other?