Lisa Barry: Every time I meet a family where the children are well behaved and happy, I always want to know their secret. Real-life examples are powerful motivators, aren't they? What would you improve in your family if you had a chance? Maybe you'd like to see a decrease in sibling rivalry or a greater commitment to family devotions.

Today, on Gateway To Joy, we'll have the opportunity to glean some great ideas from Elisabeth Elliot, who learned how to shape a Christian family in her very own home. Now, let's go back to Denver, Colorado, and Elisabeth Elliot.

Elisabeth Elliot: It says in Phillipians 2:5-7, "Your attitude should be the same as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death--even death on a cross!"

"He humbled Himself and became obedient to death--even death on the cross." And if we are going to truly shape a Christian family we are going to have to give up our right to ourselves. Trust and obedience leads to happiness and peace.

Now I've got nine points here for those of you who like to take notes and like to have some idea where I'm going. Number One is: The Authority of Christ. "We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." That's from Ephesians 2:10. The Authority of Christ. Now there was never any question as to who was the authority under the Lord Jesus Himself in our home, and that of course, was my father.

But my father was gone five days a week and my mother had to be the one who had the authority. And so, if any of us was disobedient you can be sure that we were punished. And I remember very vividly one punishment that I received, and I certainly deserved it.

I had been very nasty to the old man who lived next door to us. I can't remember what in the world I had said or done. But I remember my mother coming out onto the porch and pulling me into the house, going through the living room and the dining room and the kitchen and taking me out to what we used to call "the shed." It was a sort of a shed in the back.

And she got the roughest rag she could find and she got a block of that horrible tasting yellow soap and she washed my mouth out! I mean she scrubbed the inside of my mouth. I can assure you I never sassed that old man again. I am quite sure I probably did a lot of other things that I needed to be spanked for. But that was just one of the unforgettable occasions when the authority of my mother was very clear and very obvious.

Now there were times when there were really bad things, and the worst thing we could hear would be our mother saying, "You're going to have to talk to Daddy when he comes home!" And that, of course, was scary!

But how wonderful to be under "The Authority of Christ." We are His property. We are His redeemed. He loves us with an everlasting love. And He has instructed us how to live in order to please God

Now Number Two is: Order. And we, very early on, understood and accepted the "Order" in our home. We children had to have our beds made when we were old enough to make a bed. And that was pretty young. We had to learn how to do things like that.

We had to put our shoes very neatly on the floor of the closet. We had to pick up all of our toys before we could go to bed at night, and there were certain places that we could have toys and other places where we could not have them. Not the entire house was going to be used as a playroom. And so we had to learn "Order."

Another thing was extremely important which was "Punctuality." And my father taught us that when you fail in punctuality, when you don't get to a place on time where you belong, that is stealing somebody else's day. And so he was very strict with us about this matter of "Punctuality."

I Corinthians 14:40, says that, "Everything is to be done decently and in order." And as I look back to the home in which we lived, I can see how day by day by day everything was done decently and in order. My parents taught us how to put our shoes in a row, how to hang up our clothes, how to make our beds.

Well, it's not easy, is it? As my mother used to say, and she got this from the Scriptures, "It's 'line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little'" (Isa. 28:10)--constantly, everlastingly, picking things up, everlastingly telling us to do things the way they were supposed to be done.

But these orders that we were given were visible signs of invisible realities; punctuality and order is another way to talk about thoughtfulness. Because if we're not punctual, then we're stealing somebody else's time, aren't we? My mother said we wanted a place for everything and we want everything in its place.

And we had in "the kitchen drawer" (a particular drawer in the kitchen) all the little things that we needed, like tape and scissors and pencils and pens and all the crayons and things like that. All of those things were in a certain drawer there in the kitchen. And if we opened that drawer and there wasn't any pencil in there or there wasn't any pair of scissors, then we could be quite sure that it was not because our parents had failed to put them there, it was because we children did.

So, "Hey, who took the scissors out of the kitchen drawer?" of course, it was Nobody. Nobody ever knew who it was! But believe you me, we heard about it. And there had to be a place for everything and we had to get rid of the clutter.

Now, Number Three was: The Authority of the Word. And we knew that our parents meant exactly what they said. And I am so thankful for that.

My father would open the Bible, as I've told you, every morning after breakfast. Every evening, when we finished supper, he would open that little book called The Daily Light, a collection of Scripture passages that were put together by a family named Bagster in England about a hundred or so years ago. And it's a wonderful, little, useful book. And that was the one that was used every evening after our supper.

And we had a dear sweet lady who used to come and work for us. Her name was Mrs. Kershaw and she was a widow and she was extremely poor. She was certainly as old as I am now; she might have been a little bit younger then. But she was totally deaf and she lived all by herself in a big old rackety-packety house, and she had only one son who was "a good for nothing." He hardly ever came to see her.

And somehow or other my mother discovered this lady. And she thought, Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could have somebody like Mrs. Kershaw come and just help us with the housework because being poor and alone she really didn't have a whole lot to do by herself? And so Mrs. Kershaw was like a ray of sunshine in our home. We loved Mrs. Kershaw. And she never stopped smiling.

And upstairs was my step-grandmother who hardly ever smiled. And we children were constantly being asked by our mother, "Please go up and talk to Nana." We didn't want to talk to Nana, because Nana didn't really want to talk to us. She was just a rather crotchety old lady. But Mrs. Kershaw would go up there, both of these old ladies deaf as a post, and the conversations were like ships passing in the night.

But somehow or other Mrs. Kershaw would cheer up dear Nana so that we kids didn't have to cheer her up. Mother would say, when we came home from school, "Why don't you just go up and talk to Nana, just for five minutes?"

"Mom, I don't want to. She doesn't want to talk to us!"

"I want you to go up and talk to her."

Well, The Authority of the Word. We had to do what our parents said.

So now we're down to Number Four, which is: Prayer. And we have talked about the prayer at the table. We of course, had prayer at the table. We had prayer following breakfast and we had prayer following supper. So it was a daily offering. And as we grew up, of course, as we learned to read, then we were taught to have our own private devotions.

And we didn't always want to do that either, times when we thought it was rather boring. But my parents were able to just sort of calm and quiet us and say, "Well, this is what we want you to do and we expect you to do it."

Now, Number Five is: Discipline. And it says in Proverbs 15:32, "He who ignores discipline despises himself." Every one of us should discipline ourselves before we can be in a position to discipline anyone else.

The definition of discipline is "training which corrects, molds, strengthens and perfects." And one aspect of discipline is punishment. And my mother had a little rod about that long, just a thin little rod that she kept over the door of every room in the house. And we knew exactly what that was for.

If we were disobedient we could be spanked. But usually all my mother had to do was to raise her eyes to the top of the door and we would be galvanized into action. I love Vance Havner's definition of a spanking: "The posterior application of superior force." Try that on your children. They won't like it but it's a good thing.

Lisa Barry: Now there's a bit of practical application for you! And Elisabeth will pick up where she left off on tomorrow's program.

You know, one of the first steps in transforming a Christian family is to be a transformed woman, and I can't think of a better way to accomplish that than in this brand-new book called, A Woman's Walk With God: Growing in the Fruit of the Spirit. It's written by Elizabeth George.

In one chapter she talks about a barrier to faithfulness, and says this: "As a young mother of two preschoolers I struggled with this feeling of hopelessness. The need to discipline and train my children was so constant, so draining, so demanding, and progress seemed agonizingly slow. I was tempted to come to the erroneous conclusion that it didn't matter if I do it!"

Well, that's honest talk, isn't it? And that's what you'll get throughout this book. We're making it available today for a suggested donation of $10 when you contact us to request it. Call any time, 1-800-759-4JOY. That's 1-800-759-4569. Or you can write to:

Gateway To Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, NE 68501. That's Gateway To Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, NE 68501. And if you're on the Internet, be sure to check out our Web site. That address is gatewaytojoy.org. Gateway To Joy has been a production of Back to the Bible.

Tomorrow Elisabeth offers more practical advice on cultivating a Christian home. So be sure and join us then for the next Gateway To Joy!