20 Reasons Your Home Matters

By Barbara Rainey

Each of you woke this morning in your version of home: a two-story townhome, a one-level ranch, a fixer upper, an urban high rise, a studio apartment. Whatever it might look like to you, it’s a place called home for everyone living there.

Here are 20 reasons that the work you do within those walls—morning after morning, midnight after midnight—truly does matter. Keep it up!

1. Your home is, most importantly, the birthplace of faith. God created marriage and designed the family as His best formation center for faith to grow. Not only should you teach and train your children in the ways of the Lord, but you also should let your children see you following Jesus. Let your children see you reading the Bible and using it as your standard for life. And let them see you modeling your life after Jesus. (See Deuteronomy 6:4-6.)

2. Home is where you write your family’s story. As the nucleus of your family life, home is where all the experiences outside the house are processed, healed, and given to God for His purposes and transformational work. Home is where your family interprets life.

3. Home is where your presence makes a difference. Make the commitment to make time together with your spouse and with your children. Simply being with each other grows marital friendship, protects children’s behavior, and facilitates important social and relational lessons for our kids. Don’t underestimate presence. Jesus didn’t when He promised He will be with us forever.

4. Your home is the incubator of traditions. Make holidays important. Have special seasonal rituals. Serve the same meal on birthdays every year. Sing the same song each Christmas Eve. Commit to a weekly Saturday morning family time. Attend church every week together. The choices are yours and traditions are a great way to express who you are and your creativity. Remember, traditions are a glue that helps hold a family together.

5. Your home is where you nurture your child’s imagination. Imagination is the well-spring of creativity and thankfully it is a gift given to every person as part of our “made in God’s image” genetics. We serve a beautifully creative God and displaying creativity in our homes reflects Him.

6. Your home is where your children get to “practice” being grownups in the safety of your influence. Encourage their steps toward responsibility, maturity, and adulthood.

7. Your home is where you love your spouse and practice divorce prevention. Divorce has a high cost financially, emotionally, physically, and even spiritually on you and your children … for generations to come. Do what it takes to keep your vows. You and your children will feel secure knowing your home will last.

8. Your home is the foundation for who your children will be. Though your biological children inherited your DNA, they are unique individuals chosen by God to be raised by you. Make your home a greenhouse of grace.

9. Your home is where you discipline your children, training them to be dependent on God alone when they leave home. Boundaries are good. They help our children recognize sin and ultimately their need for a Savior to cover their sin. Your authority points your children to God, who is our ultimate authority with a holy standard.

10. Your home is where your kids learn gender roles and identity. They’re never too young to learn that they are God’s wonderful, valuable creation, knit perfectly together as distinctly male or female by Him.

11. Your home is where your children learn to be a wife or husband, a mom or dad. Show them how to love your spouse unconditionally, how you work together, how your masculinity and femininity make a complete whole.

12. Your home is where your children learn to apologize. Are you modeling it? Learning that mistakes are normal but must be acknowledged and repaired is crucial to becoming a healthy mature adult.

13. Your home is where children learn the value of hard work. God gave Adam and Eve work to do in His garden. Work is a necessary, fulfilling part of His plan for us and learning to work serves others. You short-change them if you do too much for them.

14. Your home is the anchor for your family’s security and togetherness. Going home at the end of the school or workday needs to invoke a warm, safe feeling. Can your family exhale when they walk in the door? Your home is a shelter from the storms of life.

15. Your home is the genesis of new life. Growing little lives into mature adults is the greatest calling God gives. No job is more important. But it’s not just babies but all new life that moms and dads encourage. Like when a teen is rejected by a friend or a club, parents have an opportunity to listen and encourage and coach and provide hope that God has something better in the future.

16. Your home is an embassy. Your home is to be everything an embassy is in a foreign land: welcoming, helpful, inviting, and a clear visible representation of the Kingdom (God’s Kingdom) it belongs to. It is a light to your neighbors.

17. Your home is where your children’s treasure bank of memories is filled. Give your children warm remembrances of their childhood by loving them well, celebrating all the milestones of life, and spending lots of hours reading good books snuggled on the couch together.

18. A happy home directly affects the emotional wellbeing of you and your children. Happiness at home won’t be a constant, but it’s not impossible either. God intends for us to enjoy one another, to enjoy the benefits of home, to experience His peace and rest at home.

19. Home is where a woman lives out her most important female designs and purposes. Even if she is never a wife or mother, a woman is still a nurturer of life. And her home is the place she can love other people, nurture them and use her home as her embassy and outpost of God’s kingdom. Women intuitively know how to make a dwelling a real home.

20. Your home is a place of healing. Sickness and injury are a normal part of life and home should be the best place to be cared for, nursed, and loved as a recovery happens over time. Your home should be “the best hospital in the world.”

Stick with it, dear friend. In the trenches of home life, your work truly matters for today and for eternity!

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