The Restoration of the Family and Revival in America

Each day seems to bring with it new disturbing videos and reports of individuals and groups behaving badly – from ransacking a supermarket, to brazenly shoplifting from a drugstore, to sucker punching an innocent person on a subway station platform.

Violence is just one symptom of a sick society. Other signs include a disregard or downright hostility toward all things sacred, because of our selfishness, seeing children as burdens rather than blessings, the normalization of aberrant sexual behavior and a general disregard for civility and good manners.

So, what is the solution to this current scourge?

Being in the midst of a heated midterm election season, many of these issues are being discussed on the campaign trail, and understandably so. Policies and politicians do matter. They help set the tone and shape and pass legislation that impacts our everyday lives. Your vote this November matters. Don’t neglect or pass up the opportunity to participate.

But the societal collapse we’re currently finding our way through will not be solved at the polls or by politicians.

The only way to right our ship is by a return to biblical principles, especially a restoration of the nuclear family. Every problem is rooted in the dysfunction of the home. If we solve our problems at home and in our families, we will be properly addressing the fundamental source of culture’s sickness.

This is what my friend and pastor Dr. Tony Evans is getting at in his new book, “Kingdom Politics: Returning God to Government.”

“The saga of a nation is the saga of its families written large,” Tony writes. “Whoever owns the family owns the future. When family structure breaks down, all manner of calamity and chaos enter into society. When family breaks down, crime goes up, poverty goes up, abuse goes up. When the family breaks down, gender confusion and role confusion go up.”

Tony is absolutely correct. We ignore him at our own, and our country’s, peril.

I’m in Mexico City this week to speak at the World Congress of Families. I’ll be addressing many of these themes. We believe Christ is at the center of all things – and it’s His Father who formed the family, which sits at the center of culture. It was His idea. Good things happen when the family is honored – and disturbing and devastating things creep in when you disregard it.

At the center of the war on the family and children is a push to divorce sex from marriage, procreation and parenting. There’s also been a multi-decade’s-long campaign to redefine marriage, as well as the reality of male and female. Bad policies may exacerbate bad times – but this rolling revolution is what’s at the heart of our cultural crisis.

But the good news is we don’t have to be idle observers watching the meltdown and the madness. The Lord has given us breath and opportunities to point people, and our culture, to Him.

“Study the history of revival,” assured the late pastor Dr. Adrian Rogers, and a former Focus board member. “God has always sent revival in the darkest days. Oh, for a mighty, sweeping revival today!”

May it be so.