Home is Where it Happens

These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, promised you. Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.   Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.   Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

- Deuteronomy 6:1-9 (NIV)

Home is God’s design, no matter where you are in your parenting journey. We need to establish a home built on God’s word, God’s ways, and God’s work. We need homes that are steeped in the things of God. We need to reverse the slow fade of Christianity. While the cross has not lost its power, the home is beginning to repurpose its power away from Christianity and towards other pursuits. We are the byproduct of those early years of our experience inside the home. Home is where it happens.

We can have a major impact on reversing the slow fade of Christianity. The church, however, cannot fix what the home neglects to do. Local churches are simply a collection of homes. So, the power of the local church is found in the home. If we heal the home, then we heal the world.

In Deuteronomy 6:1-9, Moses puts the responsibility on us individually to saturate our lives with the word, the ways, and the work of God if faith is going to be perpetuated. Moses does not tell the Israelites to go to the synagogue to saturate their lives. He tells them to do it in their homes. Essentially, Moses is telling them that faith is perpetuated in the home. In other pursuits, we cannot forget God, whether in business, academics, or sports. We are always Christ followers first. We have to saturate ourselves in the things of God. We cannot saturate our homes with fear, social injustice, or drama. If so, that is what is going to be perpetuated. We control what we saturate our homes with, and we need to make the things of God the focus. We must be persuaded that for us and our house, we will serve the Lord.