Today most families are disfunctional due to the lifestyle developed during the past fifty years: both parents work, children sit in front of TV's and computers, 50% of marriages break up, including Christian marriages, most children grow up with single parents…the strong fibre of family life has disintegrated due to the pressures of the world and the zeitgeist surrounding modern society. Most people no longer believe in God and the church is outdated for most of them. They say it did not work for their parents so why would it work for them? Only God can help!
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Enriched Family Life
Dr. Andre & Nola Pelser
August 2002 Home Cell Leaders Teaching Notes
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The 10 Commandments of an Enriched Family Life

1. Drawing Blessing on Your Marriage
2. A Family that Prays together stays together
3. Becoming Effective Fathers & Mothers
4. Raising Blessed Children
5. Operate with Financial Wisdom
6. How to Receive Divine Guidance
7. Standing on Your Healing Covenant
8. Downloading the Benefits of Commitment
9. Belonging to the Spiritual Family
10. Releasing a Creative Life-Style

1. Drawing Blessing on Your Marriage

If you please God by faith in Christ Jesus you can draw spiritual and material blessing from Him that will astound you! Whether you are a single parent or practicing dual parenthood the same system applies. God is not a respecter of persons.
There are no perfect parents. They all make mistakes. But they can all learn to operate along spiritual principles that will release divine blessing in their lives.
In today?s world it is difficult to survive. The state of the world economy is unstable and the securities that used to be available have faded away.
There is one anchor that will hold firm in troubled times like these: His Name is Jesus Christ and His Word (The Bible) has been tested under very trying conditions and has proven to be the Truth. The Word of God has provided a guide for many pilgrims over the centuries.
Although man?s religion has caused people to doubt God and to forsake the organized church due to many palpable reasons, God is still the same today and His Word is just as true!
A magnet that repels can simply be stroked with a stronger magnet to change its polarity so that it attracts. If we open ourselves up to the Spirit of God moving in our midst when we worship and hear the word of the Lord being preached and performed, if we learn how to receive instruction, take correction and rebuke, accept encouragement and comfort from the Spirit, if we have fellowship with God and with one another we are setting ourselves in pole position to change all our negative polarity that repels blessing from us. Wrong attitudes and mind-sets cannot be changed by the will of a person. The creature cannot change the creature; only the Creator of that creature can bring the change. The more we try to change ourselves the less we change. Self cannot change self. Self cannot motivate self. Self must die to let Christ live within. If we want to become followers of Christ we must learn to deny ourselves and take up our cross before we start following.
John the Baptist gave the key: He must increase but I must decrease. I cannot decrease before He increases. That is putting the cart before the horses. Let me explain with a vivid picture that will stay in our minds:
If you have a glass in your hand, the glass cannot decrease. It cannot be less that a glass. But if you pour water into the glass the attention is no longer on the glass but on the water contained in the glass. When the water increases the glass decreases in the sense that the focus has changed. The glass in fact increased in value because it became a container willing to become nothing so that it can satisfy the thirst of others.
In the same way we become less if Christ?s words and the Holy Spirit (Living Water) fill us. If we are willing to become vessels meet for the Master?s use we literally become less as the attention shifts from us to Him. This shift is nothing less than true self-denial. If a glass insists on being a glass and nothing else, it remains useless and on the shelf. If the glass is willing to become subservient to the purpose for which it was made. The water increases. The glass no longer strives to take centre stage.
The purpose for which we have been made is to glorify God. If we accept that purpose we can easily fulfil the requirement of true discipleship by denying ourselves and taking up our cross. That cross is the fact that we become containers of the Spirit of the Living God.

?We must become candidates for God?s blessing, begin to incarnate His beauty in our relationships, and open these relationships to the non-Christian?the best argument for Christianity is ? their joy, their certainty, their completeness.?

2. A Family that prays together stays together

We have heard this saying before but I want to add something to it: A family that prays together stays together and a family that stays together grows together! It is so important that we make prayer to God the basis of all our activities. We should have all our bases covered in prayer. Our children should know that we do nothing unless we have prayed about it. They should have the assurance that God is our senior partner in everything we do. Then it would be normal to approach God in life?s crises too. Then they won?t see God as a ?spare wheel? in time of need, but as the ?steering wheel of our lives!?
When a child is hurt, physically or emotionally, our first reaction after finding the facts should be, ?Let us talk to God about it and commit it to Him. He knows what is best for us.? Once this pattern is established in children?s hearts they should follow that pattern of prayer and commitment. Their first reaction in a time of crisis should be to turn towards the God whom we serve: Jesus Christ our Lord.
If it was important for leaders like Moses and Joshua and David to seek the Lord in prayer and meditation of the Scriptures, if Jesus Christ the Son of the Living God had to pray early in the morning while it was still dark, then how much more do we have to pray?
But people only do what benefits them. Unless we teach our children the benefits of prayer and meditation they will not do it spontaneously but hate it as they would hate any duty forced upon them.
God told Joshua if he would meditate in the Scriptures day and night he would make his way prosperous and have good success. That should spur anyone on to seek the Lord! Jesus encouraged us to seek the kingdom of God first and all things shall be added unto us. John wrote and said it is God?s desire that we should prosper and be in health even as our soul prospers. Solomon understood the blessing of God makes rich and adds no sorrow to it.
A Christian sees farthest who stands on his knees and prays!
Every prayer recorded in the Bible covers a certain need in life. There are 82 expressed prayers. Use those prayers in your family prayer time and pray about anything throughout the day.
Paul?s apostolic prayers recorded in the epistles are wonderful springboards into the life of prayer. If everyone can memorize ?Our Father? we could all go a bit ?farther? and begin to memorize some other prayers as well!
The house of the Lord should be a house of prayer! Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit so we should pray in this temple!
The secret of prayer is faith that we are talking to God and that he is hearing us. We need to find out what the will of God is in His word and