This is a war manual. The purpose of the family is to establish and expand God's kingdom, and Robert Andrews' book is about arming and equipping yours to do battle for the Prince of Peace. If you're looking for the feel-good book of the century, look elsewhere; if you want a book that clearly and biblically delineates the purpose and ideal structure of the Christian family while convicting and encouraging self-examination, this is the one you want.
Andrews begins at the beginning (where else?), identifying the factors that influence families. He constructs a biblical theology of family starting with Adam and Eve and exploring the nature of the husband-wife bond and why it is so significant. He talks about leadership, the role of sex, the importance of raising godly children, the centrality of communication, pretty much everything you'd expect in a good book about the Christian family that is so notably absent in most.
Some may find his conclusions startling, but he is never combative and his arguments are always well-reasoned and Scripturally supported. You won't find caveats or indecision when he says men are the leaders in the home, nor does he hedge when it comes to the role of women—they are to be homemakers, devoted to the domestic concerns of their husband and children.
But The Family: God's Weapon for Victory isn't "old-fashioned," it's just Christian. He doesn't make things up out of whole cloth and then offer a "one-size-fits-all" garment for every family. Instead, he takes the universally relevant and applicable Word of God and studies it to find out what it has to say about the family as God intended it to be. He traces the formation of a Christian family from finding a spouse to establishing a home to raising children in the fear and admonition of the Lord to helping them find spouses of their own.
No one does everything perfectly—but the point of this book isn't to make you dwell on and mourn your failures. The purpose is to provide a model of family structure that will lead to godliness. Andrews holds no punches, but he writes with the grace and conviction of a man dedicated to his own family and the God they serve. The biblical and practical wisdom he evidences are public battle cries designed to strike fear in the hearts of the enemy and courage in the hearts of the faithful.
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