“Dysfunctional”

A term often used today to describe families in which there are more problems than peace, more confrontations than joy, more anger and bitterness than respect and affection, or more manipulation and self-centeredness than nurture and support, is the word ‘dysfunctional’. When something is dysfunctional it is not operating properly; it is has become impaired, and is not working as it was intended or designed to work.From the beginning, God designed the home to be a foundational part of paradise, to function in beautiful harmony, with no complicating factors like stress, guilt, infidelity, or even pain. But when Adam usurped God’s plan for his own, when he placed his own will and ambitions and self centered ideas over God’s design, things began to unravel, and quickly. With the fall, things began to break, and Adam’s world began to break down. Humanity, in that most basic relationship of society, marriage, experienced shame, denial, and blame for the first time. The Lord made provision for personal redemption through the very first shedding of sacrificial blood, but, being holy and just, God was obliged to end Adam and Eve’s paradise experience by their expulsion from the Garden.

In Genesis chapters 1 and 2, God created a perfect world, and entrusted it to Adam. In Genesis 3, Adam betrayed God’s trust, and created dysfunction. He began to break things, and plunged us all into a state of brokenness. The very first family, because of sin, became dysfunctional, and it didn’t take long for dysfunctional parents to produce problem children. That process has continued ever since, as sin passed on all men, and death by sin. But the God of all mercy, when “the fulness of times was come, brought forth His Son, made of a woman”, to redeem them that were under this state of dysfunction (Gal. 4.4). Christ, the second Adam, reversed the curse on creation; He came to destroy, literally to undo, the works of the devil. Isaiah tells us that “by His stripes we are healed” from our brokenness. Through the blood of His cross, the Son of God brings healing and restoration to those who will embrace Him. By grace through faith, the One who came to “bind up the brokenhearted” can stop the dysfuntion, and bring purpose and peace to the troubled. Get functional; receive Christ as your Savior and Lord, and honor Him with your all that you are.