Several years ago I ministered for almost a decade in the Chicago land area. As I would minister and get involved in the lives of others I encountered something that I really never understood at the time. People would say that so and so was my brother, sister, mother, or father, when in reality they weren’t even related. Such a level of family brokenness was encountered that the need for a family was sought through the lives of those around them.

It wouldn’t be until this past year that I would begin to understand the very thing I failed to understand some years ago; the longing for a family. I began to attend a church where my former pastor serves as senior pastor. After every service my wife and I would go to lunch with his family. This became a very special time for me. Following one of those lunches my wife and I were traveling back home and I started to weep, almost uncontrollably. For the first time in my life I felt part of a family. I had never even felt this feeling once in my entire life. I didn’t even know how to respond. A sense of belonging was shed abroad in my heart for the first time. You see, several decades earlier something in me had died. I had never formed any real emotional bonds with my family. But now, God had done something in me through a family by just spending time and reaching out with God’s love.

The Bible teaches that the need for a family is God given and is meant to be satisfied not by one’s own family alone, but also by God and His church. After all, the Bible teaches us that God is our Father, Jesus is our elder Brother, and fellow believers are our brothers and sisters in Christ. Christians are called Children of God, and believers are born of God. There is a reason the church is called the Household of Faith. We are to grow together as believers and be part of a family. That is the degree of intimacy God intends for His church.

Surprisingly, this may be the greatest tool for evangelism that church has. Even someone like myself who has walked faithful with the Lord for years longed for this sense of family, how much more someone who has been beaten down by life would need the loving care and nurture of a loving Church family. May we as a church reach out to people and invite them to become part of the family of God.