More Daily Encouragement for the Smart StepFamilySample

Redeeming the Next Generation

For kids, a healthy stepfamily is a great blessing. We’ve known for years that divorce leaves a negative emotional residue on a child’s heart that can be witnessed over time. Two examples of this negative impact are cohabiting as adults and having a higher divorce rate than kids who grow up in intact families. But thankfully, that’s not the end of the story. 

Research now confirms that a healthy stepfamily not only prevents another divorce in a child’s life, but it gives them a healthy model of marital relationships that equips them for marriage as adults.* In other words, after divorce a strong, stable, healthy stepfamily lowers the divorce rate in this generation and in the next. It reverses the “curse”. 

What Satan tries to destroy through divorce, God can take back in just one generation. When you’re having a bad day, hang on to that good news and keep going.

God, please touch our family with your redeeming power and help us prepare and equip our children for future healthy marriages of their own.

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 [1] Tianyi Yu and Francesca Adler-Baeder, “The Intergenerational Transmission of Relationship Quality,” Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 47: 2007, 3, 87–102. 

© 2018 by FamilyLife. Excerpted with permission from Daily Encouragement for the Smart Stepfamily by Ron L. Deal with Dianne Neal Matthews, Bethany House Publishers. Get more daily encouragement with this 365-day devotional that will keep your family blending and bonding throughout the year.