A former southern California pagan, Roger Helland is a Canadian pastor, pray-er, and pursuer of God’s presence. Committed to a fusion of the Scripture and the Spirit, Roger explores how to seek, experience, and host God’s manifest presence in all dimensions of life. His new book, Pursuing God’s Presence, is a practical guide to daily renewal and joy to transform you and the world. It’s a grace to welcome Roger to the farm’s table today… 

Guest post by Roger Helland

I recall valuable advice a pastor offered to my wife and me about couples with young children: “Don’t let the children become the center of your family life. Let Christ be the center.”

Easy to say, but tough to do—like wrestling with an open umbrella as the wind rages.

It’s a spiritual strategy to place Christ, not the children, at the center.

Couples with young children (and teens) can barely manage the mayhem and velocity of those kids. They get them out the door and back to the dinner table, into the bathroom and off to bed as they administrate the merry-go-round of homework, friends, music lessons, sports, birthday parties, sibling rivalries, chores, church, and interruptions, matched with endless needs for hugs, talks, and godly discipline!

Where’s Jesus in it all?

Jesus stated, “Make your home in Me as I do in you” (John 15:4 MSG). Jesus is a homebody in the home of our hearts. It’s a spiritual strategy to place Christ, not the children, at the center. What I call a “home-based Bethel.” The Hebrew bethel means “house of God”—a place of God’s presence.

Home-based Prayer

There were times as parents when Gail and I ran out of gas and slammed into brick walls.

One evening we sat on our couch after a stressful season with our teens and mused how we ever got there. We felt like dead batteries and dry wells. That occurred when we failed to pray together and allowed our packed lives to crowd Jesus out.

Jesus announced, “My house shall be called a house of prayer” (Matt. 21:13 ESV). Our homes flourish when we make them houses of prayer that host God’s presence.

Our homes flourish when we make them houses of prayer that host God’s presence.

Parents are to be home-based disciple-makers.

Paul says, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right” (Eph. 6:1 ESV). May dads not exasperate their kids but bring them up in the instruction and discipline of the Lord (Eph. 6:4 ESV). Love, affirmation, and consistency, mingled with gentle but firm words, make it easier for children to obey their parents.

We discovered we couldn’t use force, correct, or lecture godly values, attitudes, and conduct into our kids. Through example and godly discipline, unconditional love is the top way to shape their character, centered in prayer and God’s presence.

Pray the fruit of the Spirit into their lives. Pray they would hear God’s voice, love and obey His Word, and respond to His Spirit. 

Home-based Holiness

Homes that gleam with God’s holiness host God’s presence.

How? Not through a catalog of rigid rules pinned to the refrigerator door or through endless correction.

It happens when you settle the question: What’s my center? Your center can’t be the children, the parents, the rules, the activities, or the church. Peter urges, “But in your hearts honor [consecrate] Christ the Lord as holy” (1 Pet. 3:15 ESV).

A home-based Bethel will house holiness in the hearts of Mom and Dad that cultivates an atmosphere of peace.

Hebrews 12:14 can fuel home-based holiness. “Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord” (nkjv). 

What’s your family culture like?

Like ours was, most families are busy and bustling with energy. The TV’s on, the pot’s boiling over, Mom’s talking to her sister on her cell, the kids compete for the iPad, the doorbell rings, the dog wants in, and Dad’s mowing the lawn.

Dinner times can become pit stops in the race of competing food preferences, running late for Girl Guides, and a senior sibling bugging a junior one. Weekends buzz with friends and fixing the toilet, shopping, and doing the laundry mixed with chores and church.

But in the chaos, is there peace? Or are there tension and tempers?

A home-based Bethel will house holiness in the hearts of Mom and Dad that cultivates an atmosphere of peace.

Home-based Fear of God

How can you encounter God’s presence and flourish in your marriage and family?

Psalm 128 trumpets the answer: fear God—revere, worship, and obey Him.

As an ascent psalm, where families traveled up to Jerusalem for an annual worship festival, “The quiet blessings of an ordered life are traced from the center outwards in this psalm, as the eye travels from the godly man to his family and finally to Israel. Here is simple piety with its proper fruit of stability and peace.”¹

“Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways! You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you.” Psalm 128:1-2 ESV

“Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways! You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. The Lord bless you from Zion! May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life! May you see your children’s children! Peace be upon Israel!” (Ps. 128 ESV)

Those who fear the Lord enjoy blessing, prosperity, and well-being in their work and personal lives. The man who fears the Lord relishes the finery of a wife and children pictured as fruitful grapevines and olive shoots.

In the ancient world, these symbolized the fruitfulness and vitality of God’s blessing (Deut. 8:8; Jer. 31:5). When my wife and I enjoy Christmas feasts with our family, we bask in the savor of God’s favor and feel Psalm 128.

For men who fear Him, God blesses their families. May the Lord bless you from Zion—the place of His presence. May you see the church, the heavenly Jerusalem, and the Israel of God prosper and know peace, wealth, and well-being. May you see your grandchildren thrive, considered a chief blessing in the ancient world. 

May we luxuriate in home-based bethels.

 1 Derek Kidner, Psalms 73–150, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 1975), Logos.

[ Our humble thanks to Chosen Books for their partnership in today’s devotional. ]