Knowing God Ministries: "Making your House a Home " Part 2

…in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

Philippians 4:6

Yesterday, we discussed two tangible ways to make your home a house for the Lord. Today, we have one more action step and will also touch on the hospitality aspect of your home.

3. Pray

Daily, be in prayer for your family. And WITH your family.

Here are some ways the Black household shares in prayer:

Each morning before my husband and daughter leave the house my son and I say goodbye to them at the door. We stand in a circle and my husband prays over the day.
We take turns blessing the meals we share together.
As we tuck our children in bed each night, we pray out loud with them. My daughter blows me away sometimes with the praises, thanksgiving and petitions she brings to the Lord.
Often as I head to bed, I stop at each child’s bedroom and once again quietly pray protection and thanksgiving over them.

4. Hospitality

Because the home is such a significant part of a family, I have worked to make our home a place of refuge, a safe haven where people (my husband and kids, but also our extended family and friends) feel welcomed and loved. This is the real meaning of hospitality: simply making those that come into your home feel comfortable, secure and most importantly, loved.

I will admit to you that this has not come easy to me. I am not the neatest person and I seem to be able to find things better in clutter. However, my husband is very much the opposite. I had to learn how to make my house a home. I still daily pray for the Lord’s guidance and direction. God has been so faithful in changing my heart and attitude toward how I look at my home.

“She watches over the affairs of her household” Proverbs 31: 27a

One of the best affirmations of my “homemaking” came from a five-year-old. My daughter had a play date with a friend from school who, at the end of the play date, turned to my daughter and said “Your house is so cool!” I really don’t think she was meaning “Oh, I love all the furniture and stuff you have in your house,” I really think she was saying “So cool” because of the way she FELT as she spent time in our house. She felt safe, happy and an overall peace.

I am learning so much from our home:

I am so very thankful for the Lord’s provision in our home, for the peace and protection it provides.
I have learned the gift of hospitality from my home, learning how to open my home and focus on those that we invite in.
Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Romans 12:13,
In my home, I am learning to serve my husband as his helpmate and show him love. By the dinner I prepare for him after a hard day at work. By making it a safe haven for him from the stresses of the outside world. A wife of noble character is her husband's crown, but a disgraceful wife is like decay in his bones. Proverbs 12:4

The Lord has molded and shaped our home over these past years: cribs in a bedroom transition into a "big person bed"; rooms are painted, pictures in picture frames are swapped for new ones; furniture is moved and then moved again. It is ever changing and evolving with our lives, but the constant and consistent, never changing aspect of our home is that WE WILL SERVE THE LORD.

And so I pray this scripture over my household and yours:

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more then all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen

Ephesians 3:14-20