How is a family supposed to operate? Love and lead, submit and serve, obey and honor
Dillon McCurdy · September 21, 2026 · 8 min read
The Family series, part 2 of 6
Nine words
God's desired plan for the home fits in three lines. Husbands love and lead. Wives submit and serve. Children obey and honor.
Notice this right away: the only party anyone can actually control in that structure is the children. Husbands can't control wives, and wives can't control husbands — and they really shouldn't try. Husbands are to lead and wives are to follow. And in most cases, if not all, poor following comes from poor leading.
Leaders love to blame followers for not following well. Usually the blame belongs to the leadership. If the husband were a better leader, the wife and children would be better followers — not the other way around. It is first and foremost the husband's job to lead his family and love his wife. Then, and only then, can he have some expectation of them following. (We've written more about the husband's role in Husbands, love your wife like Christ loves the church and the wife's in Wives, submit as unto the Lord.)
Leadership comes from relationship
You don't lead a family by decree. You lead it by getting your family on board with your plans, goals, and aspirations. Let me borrow an idea from business, because it belongs in your home.
Companies run on key indicators — purpose, goals, plans, and reviews. Aligning purpose and goals in a relationship is vital to its longevity and success. So ask yourself four questions.
Do you have a purpose for your family? Companies have them. McDonald's: "to make delicious feel-good moments easy for everyone." Chick-fil-A: "to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us and to have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A." Starbucks: "to inspire and nurture the human spirit — one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time." If a coffee company can write down why it exists, so can your family. My business's purpose is one sentence: to do a good work for God's work. What's your family's?
Are your goals aligned with that purpose? Purpose lets you identify and drive goals. Every one of those companies has goals that serve its purpose. My business has a specific giving goal with a year attached to it, because the purpose demands one. What goals does your family have, and do they line up with why you exist?
Do you have a plan to reach them? Goals are only reached when there's a plan and a process. Chick-fil-A has strict processes — "my pleasure," the drive-through line, how the food is made — because the processes get them to the goals. What's the process in your home for reaching what you say you want?
Are you checking? A plan that's never reviewed is just an intention. Plans have to be executed, audited, and adjusted. If you never check whether the plan is accomplishing its purpose, you won't reach the goals and you won't fulfill the purpose.
Why families drift
Often the breakdown of a family is poor alignment on purpose and goals. We see it in a lot of marriages where the two people were never clear on these things beforehand and drifted apart because they were pulling toward different destinations — one loves everything about family, the other loves freedom. We see it in Israel coming out of Egypt: they never aligned with God's purpose for them, so they wouldn't go along with His plan. We see it in Moses striking the rock: he didn't reach his purpose because his plan wasn't God's.
So work together, and talk about it often — what your family's purpose is, what your goals are, and what the plan is. Cover the whole life: spiritual, relational, financial, physical, mental, educational. Then implement it. Then check it.
The one thing you can't plan for
A plan that's never reviewed is just an intention. That cuts more than one direction. You can have the finances mapped, the schooling figured out, the calendar humming, and still be pulling the whole crew toward a destination you'd never pick if you looked at it honestly. And nobody plans their way into heaven anyhow. It's given. Jesus paid for your sin, came out of the tomb, and hands eternal life to anybody who quits managing and just trusts Him. Settle that one first. Everything else in your house sits downstream of it.
Now the doable thing, husbands especially. Twenty minutes this week. Sit down with your wife, phones in another room, and answer three questions on paper. What is our family for. What are we aiming at this year. What do we actually do Monday through Saturday to get there. Then put a date on the calendar to check it. Poor following usually comes from poor leading, right? And leading starts with somebody being willing to go first.