God's Model Home

Take a moment to listen today to what your children are trying to say; Listen to them, whatever you do or they won't be there to listen to you. Listen to their problems, listen to their needs; Praise their smallest triumphs, praise their littlest deeds. Tolerate their chatter, amplify their laughter; Find out what's the matter, find out what they're after. If we tell our children all the bad in them we see; They'll grow up exactly how we hoped they'd never be. But if we tell our children we're so proud to wear their name; They'll grow up believing that they're winners in the game. So tell them that you love them every single night; And though you scold them make sure you hold them, and tell them they're all right, "Good night, happy dreams; Tomorrow's looking bright." Take a moment to listen today to what your children are trying to say; Listen to them whatever you do; And they'll be there to listen to you (Dr. Denis Waitley). Almost all of us have heard the adage, “There’s no place like home.” Scripture and social science testify to the undeniable truth of that statement. For good or ill, no place and no people impact us like those at home. The quality of our home life can make us or break us, hurt us or heal us. More than perhaps any other single factor, how things are in a home impacts how things will be for the people who live together in that home. Be careful to note the subject under consideration is the home, not the house. The house may look like a dream on the outside even as life for those inside it has become a nightmare. Life in the home will be as good or as bad, as strong or as weak, as healthy or as unhealthy as the people who make it up. It is not the house that shapes the happiness, stability, emotional and spiritual well-being of the people who live in it. Rather it is the home itself – that is, the cumulative sum of characteristics, personalities, priorities, values, attitudes, actions and behavior of the people who make it up that determines, more than anything else, the quality of the home, family and married life. The crying need in America at this very hour is not more model houses, but more model homes. Poet William Cowper called the home “the only bliss of Paradise that has survived the fall.” True enough when home life is as God designed it.

[Psalm 127:1] “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain”. Many homes today are neither built nor maintained according to God’s Word (thus we stand guard over a country the Lord may or may not still be watching). In the worse case scenarios – abuse, addiction and abandonment make some homes more like outposts of hell than a foretaste of Heaven. A house, someone observed, is built by human hands, but a home is built by human hearts. Ephesians 5:18 thru 6:4 sketches out God’s plan for insuring that your family will live in a home, not just a house. Note this scan of the various attitudes, roles, relationships and behaviors in a home where God guides and abides: joy, spirituality and happiness (5:18-19); gratitude instead of complaining (5:20); cooperation instead of “it’s all about me” (5:21-24); love and selfless giving (5:25); concern for moral purity and holiness (5:26-27); emotional nourishment where every family member is appreciated and valued (5:28-29); intimacy, unity and devotion to others (5:30-32); respect, courtesy, obedience, honor, well-being, training, teaching, nurturing, loving discipline, concern for the Lord’s will and His way (5:33-6:4). No matter the kind of house, there’s no place like that home - a home the Lord watches over as you guard it from the wilds of the world.