How Noah can Help Your Family Discover its Unique Family Mission

This is the first part of Chapter 3 in the unfinished Book: The Ruling Household.
Here’s a link to The Intro.

Noah: A Father Prepared for Apocalypse

“But Noah (Rest) found favor in the eyes of the Lord. These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. And Noah had three sons, Shem (Name or Fame), Ham (Warmth), and Japheth (Expansion).” (Genesis 6:8-10 ESV).

No father faced more danger than Noah. Imagine the odds, everyone in his entire generation died. Only he and his family survived.

The world is a far more dangerous place than most of us living at this time in history in the West care to contemplate. One asteroid, one super volcanic explosion, one engineered virus, or one more world war could reduce the human race to a small fraction of its current size. And if none of these disasters strike in your lifetime consider the lives of your children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren. How can a father hope to protect his family? Isn’t it hopeless?

We’re given a model in this man of rest, Noah. In Noah, we discover some of the greatest secrets to building a strong multigenerational family in the shadow of a coming apocalypse.

Noah found favor by remaining blameless as he walked with God.

Noah partnered with his adult sons to protect their future family.

Noah never saw himself primarily as an individual. Even as we’re introduced to the story of Noah we learn it’s not about Noah but “these are the generations of Noah.” We learn that this story is not just about Noah and not just about his children but it’s about all of us. 

As Peter writes, “God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 3:20-21 ESV).

All of our stories are nested inside of Noah since we are all his spiritual descendants having undergone baptism and we are all his physical descendants having come from his family line. Some of us come from the fame of Noah (Shem), some from the warmth of Noah (Ham), and some from the expansion of Noah (Japheth).

Noah is also the first full family narrative we get after the story of Adam and Eve.

And we learn much about how God views family after the Fall from the narrative of Noah.

We learn how the father determines the fate of the family.

How adult children can partner with their father’s vision.

And how the father can bestow blessings on curses on all of his future descendants.

Let’s look at each of these principles and ways we can apply these lessons today.

How A Father Determines the Fate of the Family

The book of Genesis is the greatest multigenerational epic in history.

There are no individuals in Genesis. Every person is a part of a family line and we are given enough details to trace the spiritual DNA being transmitted from generation to generation.

Genesis 5 exists to give us an account of Noah’s spiritual DNA.

He came from the godly line of Seth who was in the likeness of Adam who was in the likeness of God.

He came from the line of Enoch who walked with God.

And his father Lamech who lived 777 years gave him the name Noah (rest) and proclaimed over his life this blessing, “Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.” (Genesis 5:29 ESV).

So as we turn to chapter 6 we’re not surprised to see Noah finding favor with God. While the rest of the world is drowning in the rebellion of Cain and the corruption of emerging demonic/human hybrids Noah is walking with God like his forefathers.

But what should a father do who lives in a wicked generation? How do we build a multigenerational family in the shadow of a coming apocalyptic event that will destroy the world?

The first thing we learn is that every woman and child in a family with a corrupt father was doomed.

The only wife and the only children who had a chance to avoid what was coming were under the protection of a father who walked with God.

That’s hard for our Western hyper-individualistic ears to hear but it’s clear from the story of Noah that as the father went so went the family.

But God sees Noah’s devotion and  is determined to save him and he starts by giving him three sons, the perfect team to accomplish his family mission.

Tool: How to Find Your Family’s Unique Mission

God gave every family the five-part mission to be fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue and rule.

Jesus gave every one of his followers the mission to be fruitful and multiply through discipling the nations.

But God also hands out unique missions to families.

Noah is a perfect example.

Noah lived in a strange time, at the end of an age, and his family's mission was to survive and to ensure the survival of the animal kingdom.

God added to the general Genesis 1:28 mission a special family  mission, to preach and prepare for the coming flood.

I’m often asked how a family might discover if they are stewarding a unique mission.

At our Family Teams Workshops, we facilitate that discovery by having participants journal through these three questions:

1. Is there a problem that really uniquely bothers you? There are countless problems in the world so why does this particular problem seem to strike you personally? That’s a good indication that this is not just a problem but your problem.

We read that “Noah warned the world of God’s righteous judgment.” (2 Peter 2:5 NLT). He saw and took personally the rebellion of humanity in his day. If there are issues that you can’t stop thinking about or that elicit a strong emotional reaction that is often an indication of the seeds of a unique mission.

2. Are there experiences in your past or your family’s past that are especially meaningful to you? Our past can often be a map pointing the way to our future. Western people often see time as only linear. It goes in one direction. But in the Hebrew mind, there is a cyclical nature to time. Themes repeat.

It was no coincidence that Noah was in the line of Enoch, the man who walked with God. Are there people, events, trials, or places that God has woven into your story in a unique way? These can lead you to the discovery of a unique mission.

My wife and I met in Jerusalem. We could have written that off as a coincidence but we saw that God had placed that location into the foundation of our relationship and therefore it holds a special place for our whole family. Our family has a special mission to that city and we’ve spent years in Jerusalem as a family seeking and stewarding this calling.

We have friends whose marriage survived through the sin of adultery and now, whenever they hear that someone discovered their spouse has been unfaithful they snap into action ministering to that family and giving them hope that it’s possible to survive this sin and make it to the other side. Their past has given them a mission for their future.

3. But maybe my favorite question to uncover our mission is to look at who God has blessed our family with and to discover our mission in the unique makeup of the members of our family. God is sovereign over bringing together a husband and wife (“Therefore, what God has brought together…” Matthew 19:6 ESV)  and God is sovereign over the womb (“God…opened her womb.” Genesis 30:22 ESV) 

Why did God give Noah three sons? Would having three daughters create an identical family? Imagine if Noah had only daughters and when they came of age, married them off to other families and was left to build the ark all by himself. Would God be in heaven scratching his head thinking, “If only Noah would have had sons but what can I do about the random chance of gender at conception.” No, God gave Noah three sons because it was necessary for Noah to have sons to accomplish his unique family mission.

This is also true when we consider the gift of a spouse. A married couple is no longer two but one. One newly married man I was mentoring had a dynamic ministry when he was single but as he continued on the same mission after he was married his wife and kids were being left behind. We walked through an exercise of uncovering what kind of ministry he and his wife would be most effective at if they were to work together. It was substantially different from his individual ministry but we recommend that he dial down the individual efforts and intentionally dial up team efforts instead. A basic part of being a father or mother is to do ministry in and through your team and not primarily through solo efforts.

I think it was Mike Breen who first pointed out that we can think of mission as an individual pursuit, what he called “family AND mission”, we can abandon all mission beyond the home and embrace “family AS mission”, or we can pursue mission together or “family ON mission.”

During the missionary movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, families were trained to think of their missionary work as the individual calling of the father. Countless missionary children were sent to boarding schools and wives were frequently abandoned at home or in strange regions for months or years at a time. It was the golden age of family AND mission and it destroyed the faith of many of the children in the next generation.

One of the most wonderful joys of my current life is seeing my adult children vastly expand the family mission as their gifts and passions are integrated into our expression of our family mission.

No child was given to your family by accident. Their gender, their personality, their interests, and their special needs are all indicators of the kinds of assignments or mission God is giving to your family team.

Take some time and with your spouse journal through the above three questions above and as you discuss the answers take a stab at writing a unique family mission statement. Give your team something to aim at and to work at together.