"You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." - Deuteronomy 6:9
My favorite chapter of Voddie Baucham's
Family Driven Faith is Chapter 7,
Mark The Home As God's Territory. In it, he talks about how a Christian family's home should look different from the homes of others. I want to share just a few things that we do in our own home, that set it apart from just any house. We'll break this down, just like the book does, with our
5 Senses:
SIGHT: What can we see in our homes, that mark them as God's?
We have Scripture all over our home. A great place to start with this, is with
Watchwords. I don't have all of them hanging up right now, but I do have most of them framed in various rooms throughout our home. We have
the same verse hanging in our Kitchen, that my Mother had hanging in her's. We have Jesus and His Disciples eating
The Last Supper in our Dining Room, and we have
God's Laws hanging in our Family Room. In our bedroom, hangs a Wedding Picture of our Marriage being Prayed over. And my favorite verse, Jeremiah 29:11 also hangs in our room.
Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep (the exact same picture that hung in the hallway when I was a child) hangs in the Hallway that leads to the Children's Rooms.
The Golden Rule is framed and hanging in our School Room. And, I have long wanted to Write and Frame, "Come, follow Me, and I will make you Fishers of Men," and hang it in the Kid's
Fishy Bathroom.
We have a Cross hanging.
I've felt heartsick for Jesus' parents looking at
Destiny, and hope to hang it in my own home before long, and have meant to make
this for our bathroom for months.
This is a sure way to mark our home's as God's. Your children and guests will remember your home as a place where they saw Jesus' face, or God's Word. I know, because I can still see Philippians 4:13, written in my Dad's handwriting, in a little photo cube sitting on his workbench out in his garage. I see and remember it, just like it was yesterday.
HEAR: What do we hear in our home's that mark them as God's?
We study the
Hymns. We sing them, and play them. We
read the Bible aloud to our Children, their Father and I both. We teach them the
Bible Songs, and sing along with them, as we do the motions.
KLOVE plays in our van.
Audiobibles are the norm. And
this is on my wishlist for my sweet babies.
This will mark our home's as God's as well. You'll know it and hear for yourself, when your children start to sing praises to Him while they're playing, doing chores, or finishing schoolwork.
TASTE AND SMELL: What meal can we prepare each Sunday, that when our Children smell and taste these foods years down the road, they will be reminded of the Lord's Day?
I recently switched from making Cinnamon Rolls to making
Cinnamon Toast each Sunday for Breakfast. If ever there is a morning when I make these two
meals on a whim, my younger children will ask me,
"Is it a Church Day?"
TOUCH: What can we feel with our own hands that reminds us of God in our Homes?
I don't know about you, but when I've experienced a few "dark" times in my Walk With Jesus, and haven't been in The Word for a while, it always feels so nice to hold
my own Bible in my hands. My Bible that I've had for years, that I've underlined, and bookmarked, and read to my Children, and desperately searched over.
All of our Children have their own Bible. I hope their's mean as much to them, as mine does to me. I see this a little each night, when we get ready for Family Worship, and they search out each other's Bibles, wanting only their own.
Which brings us to what Voddie Baucham calls a Multi-Sensory Expression of Faith, The Family Altar. Next week, I hope to share what we do for Family Worship.
