My house is well-used. We cook, eat meals, sleep, play, bathe, and do chores in it. We watch movies, laugh, cry, fight, celebrate, wrestle, and sing. We welcome guests and pack for vacation, bring home new babies, and show the plumber to the leaking toilet. We homeschool so the kids learn in this house, I write here, my husband works from his home office some days and pursues his PhD in the evenings. There’s a homeschool prayer group that meets on Tuesdays and soon we will be hosting a small group as well.
This home is well-used and well-loved but it’s just 4 walls, right? All we must do to keep it running is repair things when they break and clean on a semi-regular basis. We paint and we decorate. We replace the shower tile when it cracks and lets moisture into the walls. We cut the grass with a lawn mower and fight the weeds with our fists and a weed eater. We plant bushes where we want them and dig up bushes when we don’t want them anymore.
Turn on the TV, check out a magazine rack, or head to any hardware, homeware, or furniture shop and you will see the endless options, fascination, and obsession with making our homes beautiful and comfortable. There are so many promises about how we will love our home more and fight less with our spouse if we just pick a new paint color or change out the houseplant on the entryway table. Don’t forget to add a new mirror, candles, a wicker basket, and a string of wooden beads. Get a new table too while you are at it. They say that’s important to make your guests feel welcome and loved.
Here’s the real question though. What do your guests really feel when they walk into your home? How do you feel when you walk into your home? Is it joy, peace, strife, or anxiety? When you lay your head on the pillow and turn off your bedside lamp what happens next? I would like to suggest that it’s more pertinent what is happening spiritually in our homes than physically.
We are so good at focusing on the physical aspects of our homes. It’s easy for us to see an issue with the kitchen faucet and the new stain on the rug. We signed the documents! There was a dollar amount for our homes and a price tag on the rent. We know about the physical but how do we learn about the spiritual condition of our homes? Our education began with a visit.
Someone we love came to stay with us many years ago. It was a great visit and we all enjoyed ourselves but when they left the whole family was irritated with each other. When I say irritated, I mean irritated with each other. My husband and I were fighting, and the kids were talking back at an unusual rate. I felt awful and anxious and quite frankly angry, but I knew I didn’t have a good reason for it.
I wanted to ignore it, but there was something so obviously wrong and the Holy Spirit was showing me. Finally, on the way out of the house one day, I resolved to do something about it. While the kids sat in the car, ready to head to an activity I went back in and posted an eviction notice.
“Praise Jesus!” I yelled. “This house belongs to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords!” I paused, not knowing what to say next. “Anybody and anything that isn’t with Him get out now.” I walked through the house, all three floors, sang to Jesus, and told everyone and everything else to go. Since there were no people, I didn’t have to worry about freaking them out. Even I was a little freaked out by what I was doing.
As I got to the top floor and the guest room, I felt fear come over my whole body. Weird! The rest of the house had just felt like my house, but something was going on in the guest room that I didn’t understand. I got louder and pushed the door open and sang to Jesus till I felt nothing but Him. I left the house feeling a little silly but excited, hopped in the car with the kids, and spent the day anxiously awaiting what the climate in my house would be like when we got home.
Spoiler alert! It was good. No one argued, no one whined, we just came together as a family at the end of the day, cooked, ate, and had a nice evening for the first time in a long time. I asked my husband how he felt, and he casually said, “Fine.” After I told him what I had done that day, he thought about it again and said, “Yeah, I feel fine. That’s new.”
Our struggle is not against flesh and blood! It’s not against our house guests or our family or the politicians we grumble about. It’s not against the cashier, your boss, or your neighbors. It’s against the unseen enemy who prowls around looking for a person, home, or organization to harm. That thing in our house had probably been harassing our guests as well. The enemy hates us all!
I believe one of the reasons the Holy Spirit used that incident to teach me was that I was less familiar with that particular demonic presence. It can be harder to recognize the ones that were welcome in the home that we grew up in or the school we attended. The ones we invite accidentally or on purpose with our thoughts, choices, and actions. If I am always watching shows on witchcraft in my home, then I always have certain elements of my enemy who are welcome to hang out. If I compromise with substance abuse or pornography or belittle my children and husband, I am permitting the enemy to come to take up residency in my thoughts and relationships.
8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
1 Peter 5:8
We have learned something. The faster we recognize and kick out the garbage from our house the more we like it here. It doesn’t matter who brought it in, we can oust it! The more we obey God in our house with our actions, words, watching habits, and reading habits the better! The faster we repent, forgive, love, trust, and care for each other, our guests, and the Lord of Hosts the easier it is to cook, clean, eat, sleep, do homework, and write. The more we worship God individually and as a family, the more we dive into the Bible, the more we pray, and the more heavily the presence of God rests on these four walls.
It’s crazy! He has been with me since the moment of my salvation, but He feels so close and so heavy when it is a place and a family that cherishes and submits to Him. Do we blow it and invite the enemy in sometimes? Yes. Do people bring things in with them and leave them behind like little hostess gifts they didn’t mean to give? Yes. The solution is always the same. God.
Some people can tell when they enter my house that something is different. They sleep better, relax more, and have an easier time connecting with God when they seek Him. I love telling people what that is. Who that is. It’s the loving and powerful presence of the One who knit them together in their mother’s womb and the absence of the one who seeks to kill, steal, and destroy.
The best part about all this is that I am not special, ask anyone who knows me well. The Holy Spirit just managed to get through my thick skull that this house is more than four walls and that I need to treat this home carefully for my sake, and the sake of my family, friends, and neighbors. All I have to do is lift Him up daily. I pray, read scripture, and sing to Him. I go after trespassers with glee when He points them out. This house is His after all!
My people will abide in a peaceful habitation,
in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting placesIsaiah 32:18