How to Have a Happy Home

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Short Description: Home should be a place of security, love, and acceptance, which is only possible if God is at the center of family life. This redesigned favorite gives practical tips for making God a priority in the life of the home.

Full Text: What is a home? Is it no more than a short order restaurant, or a residential hotel, or just a place to hang your hat? Is it just a house with a big mortgage to pay off? No, a home is a family—people living, growing, learning and creating together. A little boy explained it well when he told an interviewer after his house had burned down, “We still have a home. We just don’t have a house to put it in.”

Home should be a happy experience—a haven from the problems of the world, a place of security, laughter, love, acceptance. But, as indicated by the rising divorce rate and a host of family problems, homes are too often places of tension, growing frustration and division—a tug-of-war between very unhappy people.

How can the energy and creativity of your family be harnessed for a happy home? Let’s go back to the source. The home is God’s idea—not a human invention or a cultural phenomenon. In the plan of creation God designed the home as the foundation of society, to meet the mental, spiritual, physical, emotional needs of men, women and children.

According to God’s Word, the family is a lasting relationship. The Bible states that in marriage a husband and wife become “one,” building a permanent relationship. The family is not designed for temporary convenience—to be kept together so long as it’s fun and pleasing. The family’s strength is its permanence. God designed the family as a lasting relationship in which, with His care, humans could weather the storms of life together. The home is God’s loving shelter for growing to maturity.

Although the family is a lasting relationship, it is not an automatic success. The daily parts and pieces of life just don’t automatically fall into place. Loving and living with your partner and children takes determination and practice, plus time and imagination, sacrifice and planning, and much more.

But love and determination by themselves aren’t enough to build the relationship God intended. Centuries ago a man who had faced many family problems wrote, “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it” ( Psalm 127:1a).. God not only designed the home, but He desires to be at the center of family life—guiding, sustaining, filling the home with His love, peace, forgiveness.

But for such a transformation to happen in your home, you must personally yield your will to God. You must confess that you, as all people, “have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). As a result you are alienated from a holy God who must punish sin (Romans 6:23). But God, in His matchless love, has provided for your need by sending His Son Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for your sins on the Cross (1 Peter 3:18).

If you have never received the risen Christ as your personal Savior, do so now. Not only the future of your family but your eternal destiny depends on your relationship to God. Why not make God the center of your life and home?

As you seek to make Jesus Christ Lord of your life and home, search the Bible daily for guidance in your family life. For God’s instructions to each family member, read Ephesians 5:15-6:4 and Colossians 3:12-21. Pray that God would help you fulfill your family responsibility, realizing that He wants to help your family weave your lives into one harmonious design.

Encourage your family to begin a time of daily prayer and Bible study. As your family shares praise and personal needs in prayer and searches God’s Word, you will be growing closer to the Lord and to each other.

Equally important, attend a Bible-believing church together, so that you may find the encouragement and fellowship of other Christians, and instruction in God’s Word.

With Christ as Lord of your family, you can have a happy home. As you daily yield to Him, your home will be filled with God’s love and wisdom. Your home will be more than just a place. It will be a family—living, growing, learning and creating together with God.

© 2003 Good News Publishers. Used by permission.
Translated by permission of Good News Publishers
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