Is your family life a little piece of heaven? What is the aroma of your home? Well, sometimes, it is not exactly heavenly. But how can you inflect your family heavenward? In this podcast, we talk about the sacred design for a family. Of course, the devil is continually working to spoil it. But it does not have to be spoiled.
Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture. And we're here to talk about family life. And the title of this podcast is Home Life is a Little Piece of Heaven. How about that?
Well, we all know that it's, it ought to be a little piece of heaven. We're going to talk about how to inflect your family life in that direction. So I have with me, of course, Jason Dome to talk about this. We've been raising families kind of like in the same community. We raised our families kind of together in a way.
Definitely. Scripture is sufficient in every category, but it just feels especially sufficient for family life. And I think it's because the way the world views family life and constructs family life is about 180 degrees away from the council of scripture, and people are drowning until they get hold of what the Bible says about it. Amen. I remember one time when our kids were growing up, family life was a little piece of, well, not exactly hell, but it wasn't going that well.
Our children were picking at each other, being just not nice. I remember that being your children. That was my children. Yeah, that was my children. And so we had one of these circle the wagon moments where we were going into lockdown and we were going to get it together.
We were going to get off of this yucky phase that we were in. J.D. Janett calls it boot camp. Boot camp, yeah. So we battened down the hatches.
I had all of us sitting on our living room, cross-legged, and I said, is this the kind of family you want to have? Of course, everybody said, no, we don't want to have a family like this. And so I went around and I said, what kind of family do you want? What kind of family do you want? So they were all shared.
And my littlest one, she was very little at the time, she said, I want a happy Christmas tree family. A little slice of heaven. A little piece of heaven. So that's what we want to talk about, having a home that is a little piece of heaven. Because God actually has designed our homes to be like that, to be pictures of heaven.
You know, the Bible opens with a family in heaven creating a family, a family in a garden, a perfect garden. And of course it's spoiled, but the first thing that God does is he creates a family. And then he tells those families to replicate. And then now there are 12 families, 12 tribes of Israel. And then the Lord Jesus Christ says that in his Father's house are many dwelling places for his family.
And you have the family in heaven, and there by a river of water with fruit trees that bear fruit every month, and all their tears are dried. But from the beginning to the end, you have a family. And it really is a picture of heaven. Parents should have it in their mind's eye to create a little piece of heaven in their family life. So what is that supposed to mean?
05.50 Well, for our viewers and listeners, I mean, I think we wanna start by saying kind of how you led the podcast. We understand it's not all heaven all the time, But the fact is, scripture can actually put us on a trajectory towards more heavenly family life that have the pleasures of God. There are pleasures of God to be had when we obey the Scriptures and order ourselves after what the Scriptures says. That's really what we're talking about. Yeah, a home has an aroma to it.
The Apostle Paul talked about this fact in a Christian's life when he says, for we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. We are the fragrance of Christ. Aromas are pleasant. They bring back memories. They cause your mind to go to different events in your life.
But a home life does have an aroma to it. And what kind of aroma is that? Well, it should be the aroma of heaven, the aroma of love, the aroma of patience and kindness, and well, the aroma of the spirit, really. And the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. That's the aroma of heaven.
There's no law against those things. There's no law against those things. And so that's the kind of aroma of heaven. So if you're going to have a little piece of heaven, it's dependent upon the filling of the Holy Spirit. Because the Spirit of God is really the great creator of family life.
Yeah. There are two consecutive family Psalms, Psalm 127 and Psalm 128. Psalm 127 starts with this, Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Now, Psalmist isn't trying to discourage us from building our houses, but he is trying to discourage us from building our houses independent of the Lord. So you better be building your house, trying to establish the good things in your house, but you better not be trying to do it just in your own strength unless the Lord builds the house, you're doing that in vain.
So we should be building our houses, but it really has to be done with dependence on the Lord. I think this is where this all starts, building a house, but not without the Lord. Yeah, and that the Spirit of God is the builder. He is the one who fills the parents. Now, if the parents are not converted, then they won't have the capacity to fill their home with the aromas of the Holy Spirit.
They can fill their homes with nice things, but not the true aromas of the Spirit. And that's where, you know, it's so critical that God would capture the hearts of the family members so that it really is a little piece of heaven in that sense. Not saying that every Christian is always acting so heavenly, but at least there's a capacity for it. 05 So the next of those consecutive family Psalms is Psalm 128. So let me just read verses one through four of Psalm 128.
Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways. When you eat the labor of your hands you shall be happy and it shall be well with you Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your house Your children like olive plants all around your table Behold thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord." So all of this building a house dependent on the Lord begins with this fear and awe and reverence for the Lord and walking in his ways, who walks in his ways. So the ways of the Lord, then what I just read talks about happy, healthy, and growing. Anybody not want a happy home, a healthy home, a growing home? Well, the psalmist is telling us how to do that.
Fear the Lord and walk in His ways. And helping your children to walk in His ways, to help them turn away from wrath, turn away from selfishness, turn away from laziness, and bring the proper disciplines in a family is one of the really critical ways that you have a little piece of heaven. You know, discipline doesn't seem joyful at the moment, but it brings forth the peaceful fruit of righteousness. It brings forth a little piece of heaven. Mm-hmm.
So what's so great about heaven anyway? Well, heaven is a place of unbroken love, of perfect love. The apostle Paul says that love is the fulfillment of the law. So the law is perfectly kept in heaven, but that just means everyone loves each other all the time in a perfect way, and receive the love of God in an unbroken, undistant way at all. So, that should send us to 1 Corinthians 13 to just listen to how love is practically described in 1 Corinthians 13, 4 through the first part of 8.
Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself, is not puffed up. Does not behave rudely. Does not seek its own.
Is not provoked. Thinks no evil. Does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, love never fails." If you troubleshoot your house and kind of the problem parts of it, you could trace them all to a lack of the things that are described there, a violation of love. But if you think about the sweetness of home life, whatever amount of sweetness that you've experienced, you can attribute it to the things that are right there. And they come from the Lord.
The sweetness is a direct line from the Lord. You know, the apostle Paul said something like that to the Ephesian church. You know, he said that Christ is the head of all things, and then he said, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. It's His fullness. And I think that takes us back to Psalm 128.
That's the fear of God. The person who fears the Lord is the person who's filled with the fullness of God. So If you want your family to be a little piece of heaven, the parents, first of all, need to be just filled with the fullness of God. They can't skimp on that. They've got to prepare their hearts to be full of God and everything of the Spirit of God so that there's this wellspring of life that really flows from parents.
And if it's not the fullness of God, if it's a desire for the world or whatever, you won't have a little piece of heaven. Every member in a household has love killers in their heart. And let me just name three, selfishness. Every member in the house has selfishness bound up in their heart. Every member in the house has pride wrapped up in their heart.
Every member of the house has inclinations towards things that aren't good. The Bible calls them lusts that aren't good. And Those three things, the list of love killers is longer than that, but you don't really need more than that to know that those are the types of things that pit the members of a household against each other and keep home from being a little slice of heaven. Really, home can be. For many people, if you said home ought to be a little piece of heaven, their experience is 100% contrary to that because these love killers have been permitted to run rampant, and So we need to be prepared to confront them.
Yeah. I'll add another one. Your home can be far more a little piece of heaven if your hope is in God. In Psalm 78, Asaph makes it really clear that parents are to help their children hope in God, that they might hope in God, so that their hope is on Him, not on anything in this world. When you, as parents, have your hope in God, and God alone, then you've got a fighting chance, because you'll be confident in God, not in the circumstances, not in the troubles that come into your life, but helping your children hope in God.
They need hope. And the world is not offering them hope, but God is the God of hope. So I want parents to help their children to place their hope in God and in God alone. Amen. So your family can be a little piece of heaven, but there are disturbances along the way.
And the way that you deal with those disturbances is by being filled with the fullness of God, the fruit of the Spirit, all the marks of love that you read about earlier. God really did design your home to be a little piece of heaven. It's a picture. It's a metaphor. It's a type.
Your home is the type, and heaven is the antitype. And God is building a home, a forever home, And it starts right there in your house right now. Amen. So, okay. Well, your home can be a little piece of heaven under the power of the Holy Spirit and the work of the Word of God.
So I pray that your home is like that and that you as parents take it there by the power of the Holy Spirit. Well, thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast and I hope to See you next time. See you next Monday for our next broadcast of the Church and Family Life podcast.