How to Fight for Your Family!

June 21, 2026

In the Old Testament, you can find dysfunctional families and some pretty bad examples of parenting! Adam and Eve disobey God and get kicked out of the garden, then their son Cain kill his brother Abel! There’s Abraham who is ready to sacrifice his son on the altar, until God stops him! Jacob: had 12 sons and a daughter. He had a favorite child, Joseph, whom his other sons were jealous of and tried to kill!

You can feel good, if as a parent you can say, there was no killing or attempted killing of children in our family! What was up with all that?!

King David and his son Absalom were a very tragic story. Terrible things happened in their family and between David and Absalom. They end up leading armies against each other.  When his son Absalom is killed, David says, “O my son Absalom—my son, my son Absalom! If only I had died in your place!”  If only he had fought for his son instead of against him! It’s not a good thing for a father and son to be on opposing sides in a war!

There were no attempted killings in my family growing up, and I hope not in your family, either! But emotions get intense sometimes in family life! Sometimes we treat each other as enemies! I remember an intense moment when my brother Joe and I were angry at each other. Joe was chasing me through the house, I slammed door in his face, and his drink splashed all over him! I remember I was angry! And we both ran to my mom and told her what the other had done. I don’t remember what started the whole thing. Most of the time, we got along well. But that time, emotions overtook us.

With all the fighting and anger that comes up in families, I’m glad we have Jesus! He gives us a new way to relate to others. Jesus loved people.

King David was good at fighting, remember, he fought Goliath! It’s great he was good at fighting, but it’s not a good tool to use on your family. There was a lot of fighting against each other in Old Testament families. Good to have fight in you, courage and determination. Jesus calls us to fight FOR our family.

In the sermon on the mount, the teaching Jesus gave, he speaks using the example of brother and sister, of family! He’s probably talking about brothers and sisters in faith, other Christians. But he uses family terms. In Matthew 4: 21-22 Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. (Raca means “empty headed” or stupid.) And anyone who says, “You fool!” will be in danger of the fire of hell.

You might think, come on, Jesus, how can I never be angry with my brother or sister? You don’t know what it’s like to live with them! Jesus knows we are going to feel angry. But he’s saying that you don’t have to act on that. Consider how important your relationship with your brother or sister is! Whenever we’re angry, it’s a King David and his son Absalom moment: it’s time to think about how important this person is, before it’s too late! Give yourself time to cool off and calm down. Because angry name calling can do a lot of harm to the relationships you have with your family and with your friends.

Jesus calls us to recognize that in those moments when you are tempted to call someone a name, doing so is not helpful. It escalates things and just makes them worse! Instead of fighting against your family, Jesus wants you to fight for your family: fight for your relationship. There’s always room to grow closer to your family. It’s easy to take people in your family for granted, like your spouse, or kids. We think, “Oh they know I love them, I’ll just do my thing, and they’ll go do their thing. It’s all fine.”

But Jesus says in verses 23-24,“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, ²⁴ leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.”

Jesus is saying, don’t go do your religious duties and think you’re right with God, when you don’t show love to your family. If you raised your voice to them, if you were sarcastic, drop everything and go say you’re sorry. Don’t take your family and your Christian brothers and sisters for granted.

There are many things we do in life that we can do just a good enough, not great job on, and it’s fine. But Jesus is all about going the extra mile for people. He teaches us that relationships really matter.

So how can we fight for our family and not against them?

We have things in common with our family members. But we’re also different, and don’t like all the same things. Love means showing an interest in the things your family enjoys and going out of your way for them. Maybe your spouse likes to take walks, and you don’t. Once in a while you could go for a walk with them. Maybe your spouse likes to hunt, and you don’t. You could go hunting with them once in a while. If you have a kid who likes to play video games, you could ask to play a video game with them once in a while. We need to fight the idea, I just don’t like to do what they like to do. You don’t have to like it or be good at it. If you never played a video game, and your kid or grandkid hands you the controller, they love to see how bad you are at it! When you do what they like to do, you become part of their world! Your relationship gets closer. That’s fighting for that relationship, fighting for your family.

Another way to fight for your family is to fight against the urge to control and punish them, and instead to lend them your strength. Let’s say you are a parent with a kid who is struggling with something, like they often miss the school bus and are late to school. So, you punish them. Some kids you punish them once or twice and they aren’t late again for the bus. Other kids struggle, even when they are punished multiple times. Your kid is not the enemy and not a bad person if they struggle to get to school on time. You can’t control their behavior by punishment alone. What you can do is you can define a new enemy: your kid is not the enemy. That punishment, the consequences of being late are the enemy. You can tell them, I don’t want you to suffer the consequences and get grounded or lose a privilege. (Of course, you are the one who set up the punishment that they lose a privilege if they are late again. You created the punishment, but you make the punishment the enemy!) You say, “I want to support you, I’m on your side to help you find a way to get on that bus every day and never get punished for that again! For Elaine Taylor Krauss from Impact Parents, her son took forever to get dressed in the morning. She loaned him her strength. She brainstormed ideas with him and together they came up with possible solutions. She fought the urge to tell her son, “You’re doomed to punishment, you can’t get dressed in time. They tried different things, like a timer. The timer didn’t work. But her son loved baseball. He wanted to try getting dressed to the baseball charge song. He let it play a few times, and it got him going and dressed! It was so much better than her yelling at him or nagging him to get dressed, or him missing the bus! So, working with her son was successful! He consistently made it to the bus! The enemy isn’t your kid: you want to be their ally in the quest to never have them face that stupid punishment again! The punishment is the enemy! You fight with your child against the challenges they face. You’re better together.

The goal is to fight for a home with a tone of respect, love and honor. It’s to value one another, and be on the same team, working together to tackle the challenges of life!

My challenge for you this week is to think about one thing you will do to fight for your family. It could be to go out of your way to do something with them. Or to support them by fighting for them and against challenges!

Jesus really valued people! People were more important than rules. People were so important, he said, if you’re in worship but realize you’re have something against your brother or sister, leave worship and go say you’re sorry! Jesus teaches us to fight for those close to us, because those relationships are so important. They are part of our walk with God. When we go the extra mile with them, we receive blessings of peace, joy and love we can’t get any other way! Amen.