Guarding the Garden: Keeping Your Family by Grace

Bible’s principles for family life are simple if applied. The first is the principle of guarding, taken from Genesis 2:15, where God placed man in the garden ‘to tend and keep it’. Adam tended the garden but did not keep out the intruder, and every household is a garden the enemy will try to enter, through strange relationships, harmful influences or wrong teaching. David guarding his sheep from the lion and bear, Nehemiah guarding the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and Paul’s warnings to the church in Colossians all show that parents must protect as well as provide, and guard their hearts with all diligence. The second is the principle of grace: a house divided cannot stand (Mark 3:25). Instead of ‘my way’, ‘no way’ or ‘your way’, grace leads to ‘our way’, exposing the causes of conflict and making the impossible possible (Ephesians 2:8).