Dwelling in God’s Heart – The Family Room

Dwelling in God’s Heart – The Family Room.

“Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.”  (James 4:8).

“I am inside My Father, and you are inside Me, and I am inside you.” (John 14:20).

Even though the phrase “accept Jesus into our heart” is not in Scripture, we get the picture. Accepting Jesus into our hearts means we receive Him into the very core of our being, into the centerpiece of who we are, affecting everything about us. When we receive Jesus into our heart-home, our identity becomes His, the essence of our personhood is intimately wrapped into the essence of Christ’s Personhood. When we make our home in His home, He miraculously become a resident inside each of us as well. And when we experience that Double Union with Jesus Christ, we discover that our spiritual location is inside of the very heart of God. In other words, if the Son is inside the Father, and we are inside the Son, then logically we are inside the Father! By dwelling in the Son’s heart, we dwell in the Father’s heart as well. By living inside the “Person after God’s own heart,” we find ourselves inside God’s heart! As Paul claims in Colossians 3:3, believers are “hidden within Christ, inside of God.”

Way back in 1954 there was a creative little evangelistic tract produced by Inter-Varsity Press, written by a pastor named Robert Boyd Munger. He entitled his brief tract, “My Heart – God’s Home.” I recommend it if you find it. Following up on Revelation 3:20, Pastor Munger imagined a believer opening his door and escorting Jesus through the home of his heart, now that Jesus has taken up residence in him. Now that Jesus dwells in him, and He has moved into his heart, what will Jesus see there? So the believer in the tract proceeds to give a tour of his heart-home with Jesus as he welcomes Christ into his heart. Together they tour the person’s study, dining room, living room, workroom, recreation room, bedroom and hall closet. I thought this was an engaging idea, but now I would like to give the other side of the story. Jesus lives within us, to be sure. But we also live within Jesus, hence inside the very heart of God. So if the Father was to give us a guided tour of His heart, what would we find? What will be waiting for us to discover in the many rooms of God’s heart? We could easily entitle this, “God’s Heart -My Home.”

Like anyone’s home, God’s heart will reflect His attitudes, motivations, personality, character traits, His heavenly “tastes” in interior décor. God’s deeply held convictions will be revealed in His heart-home, as they are in our own hearts. Using Scripture as our guide, we will explore God’s heart as we make ourselves at home and abide in Him. We will explore everything from the front porch to the front door, the living room to the dining room, from the kitchen to the study to the chapel. And many more rooms as well, like the bedroom, the bathroom, and the nursery. There may even be a sneak peek at the family room, the children’s playroom, and the school room.

THE FAMILY ROOM. The Jewish faith as instructed by Lord Yahweh is the most child-centered faith there is. The home is sacred, the parents are expected to put their children first, their faith development at the top of the priority list. It’s fascinating to observe that Jesus, being fully Jewish, was raised in a multi-sensory, experiential style of learning. The Sh’ma makes this clear. This Scripture developed into the central statement of faith in the Jewish faith. “Listen, O Israel! The LORD (Yahweh) is our God, the LORD alone (or, the LORD our God, the LORD is one)! You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your foreheads as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). Notice the importance the LORD places on teaching the children in the home, on their knowledge of their faith and their education. Every Jewish parent took these commands in the Sh’ma to heart. The God-fearing family was the centerpiece of each Jewish home. Education according to the teaching methods of Moses was constant, holistic, and involved eating and cooking, talking and listening, asking and telling, reading and writing, looking and touching, smelling and tasting, memorizing and discussing, experiencing and imagining. Jesus knew these teaching tactics intimately since He was raised in an obedient, practicing Jewish home. God wanted parents to be the first teachers, to teach the whole child in and around the home, all the time. The conscience was just as important as the intellect and the imagination. And every year the children would be taught through a cycle of biblical feasts and festivals and activities. These reenactments would bring their history and faith alive since they centered on biblical events and principles. The more family time spent in the home as a mini-community of faith, the better. The parents who did not succeed in putting forth the effort at being a good parent were despised and singled out and reproved by God. In the Biblical culture, raising a faithful family was considered a holy task, perhaps even the most holy.

The training ground in the home for how to treat each other is in the family room, where all the members of the home mingled and interacted.  One might say that the “one anothers” were learned first in the family room. Jesus’ word to the wise is to simply love one another. But what does that look like on a daily basis? In any home or community in which we live, whether at work, at home, in church, in a small group, with a cadre of friends, we need help and heavenly knowledge on how to get along, how to thrive with each other. And this is when the One Another’s come into play. The epistles love to unpack what love looks like. Scripture explains that love is when the Spirit of Jesus is put into practice, especially with one another.

If a thriving home is a shiny diamond containing many facets, the One Another’s are those facets. The One Another’s reveal what it looks like to lay down your life for your family and friends, to put yourself on the shelf in a daily martyrdom, sacrificing yourself for someone else’s benefit out of love. These One Another’s described below describe what it takes to live in a healthy home or community. With the transforming power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, we can indeed enjoy a life together that reflects the eternal Kingdom of God, a home community that has a heart for one another.

1. Bear One Another’s Burdens: To lift up and carry; to take up and walk with; to intercede for someone else, whether through prayer or caregiving, whether tangible or intangible; to relieve someone of something that weighs heavily on them.
2. Build Up One Another: To edify; to strengthen; to empower; to affirm certain qualities; to help someone or a group to grow to maturity; to construct a building, an edifice, of faith and character in another person or group.
3. Warn One Another: To admonish; to caution; to place into someone’s awareness; to reprove gently; to call attention to; to alert another person’s thinking; to offer sound advice and guidance.
4. Encourage One Another: To “paraclete” each other: Called to come alongside someone in need, in order to help and bear burdens by Pointing to God, Advising,Reminding, Advocating for, Comforting, Listening, Exhorting, Teaching and E
5. Restore One Another: To set right; to repair; to refit; to mend; to rejoin; to bring back to its original state; to heal.
6. Honor One Another: To show deference to; to prefer over one’s self; to highly esteem; to greatly respect; to revere; to focus on the importance of another.
7. Bear With One Another: To put up with; to make allowances for; to willingly endure; forbearance; to tolerate; to have patience with; to accept someone despite their weaknesses.
8. Exhort One Another: To urge to continue in the Faith; to beseech in strong terms; to come alongside to offer encouraging guidance; to inspire courage and hope; to call upon someone to act; to give affirming words that strengthens others.
9. Confess to One Another: To acknowledge openly; to freely admit to wrongdoing; to announce one’s guilt; to concede one’s shortcomings; to repent of sins; to agree with God that one’s sin is a sin.
10. Wash One Another’s Feet: A simple act of hospitality; a house servant’s task; involves placing someone else’s dirty, smelly feet into a bowl of water and carefully using one’s hands to cleanse those feet of all dirt, grime and sweat, and then drying the feet with a clean towel; a common, menial act of service and humility; exercising the ministry of touch to the untouchable; the powerful sacrament of servanthood.
11. Harmonize with One Another. When separate parts intentionally combine into a beautiful whole; to reconcile apparent differences into a combined unity; to adjust in order to fit together; to be of the same mind; to unite in the same direction in will, affection and conscience; to join together in unity of spirit and purpose, with one heart and one passion; to be agreeable and get along; mutual understanding.