A home transformed by God's love

"4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates." Deut.6:4-9

This passage in the book of Deuteronomy is one of the most important ones in the whole Bible. In this short verses God establishes a firm foundation with His people to be transmitted to future generations.

• God is the only true God, and He is one.
  
• The purpose of the law is a love relationship with God
  
• We were designed to love Him with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our strength.
  
• The Word of God must be in the parents' hearts first.
  
• The Word of God must be transmitted to our children in the context of daily life.
  
• The purpose of this teaching is to live consecrated lives to God.

The applications of this passage to our modern families can be truly life-changing. The majority of believers are so used to going to church rather than being the church. Our "God talk" usually happens in the church building rather that in normal life situations. This has caused a dichotomy between the secular and the holy, an unacceptable divorce of faith and life. How do we fix this? Where do we start? This passage gives us the answer: start with your heart, start at home.

God's word encourages us to take our faith and love for the Lord to our domestic life. Let our faith impact our family relationships, our children and grandchildren.

According to the Scriptures, it is not the responsibility of the church to teach our children about God, it is always the parents'. We need to imprint upon them a faith which is born in our hearts.

How can we begin to do this? The following is a good start.

How to have a weekly family night

In order to obey this word from Deuteronomy, we recommend for both parents to do personal daily devotions: J1. By doing this, God's word will be upon your hearts and will have His word to share with your children.

If you do not nourish yourself with God's word, you will have no word of God to speak, for it is out of the overflow of the heart that the mouth speaks.

Then, set up a convenient day for a weekly family night. Make sure all family members are committed to participate. During this night do not allow phone interruptions, computers or other commitments which could interfere with this special family time.

Our family night has three simple and transformational principles:

Love	Obedience	Truth

We dedicate this night to get closer as a family and to express our faith and love for God.

These are some specific suggestions about your family night. Make sure you have the three principles of: love, truth and obedience in each family night.

1) Love: We start our family night strengthening our relationships by cooking a meal together and eating. The family which eats and prays together stays together! We give thanks to God for His provision. During the meal we could ask the following questions:

How was your day? How can we pray for you? What are some of your needs? What are you grateful for?
We can also select a family member for the night and all of us can express our love an appreciation to that individual.

We conclude our meal celebrating the Lord's Supper, inviting the resurrected Christ to fill our hearts and our home with His love.

2) Truth: During each family night is very important to include the word of God. We are not talking about preaching but rather a dialogue about the Scriptures. Those who are journaling can share a portion of their journal.( J1)

If you have little ones, a Bible video followed by a brief discussion is great.

We ask: What did you like the most and why?

Sometimes you can have a role play about a bible story. Or you can have the washing of feet and talk about servant leadership.

You can pray for each other to be filled with the Holy Spirit and anoint each other with oil. Kids just love these family nights.

3) Obedience: We answer one of the following questions:

• What will I believe and obey from the word of God? What is God asking me to change in my : a) Heart b) Words c) Actions
  
• With whom can I share what I learned in the week ahead?

We conclude our family night with a prayer asking Jesus to live His life through us, to bless us and to make us a blessing. We pray for protection and for family unity.

Now, we invite you to do it, and allow the Holy Spirit to transform your family. We recommend doing it at least once a week.

There is a warning: expect opposition from some family members to have a family night. With wisdom and perseverance you will overcome!