#1 Tool For Healing Your Home

#1 Tool for Healing Your Home

As a Christian, growing up in a Christian home, I always heard the term "healing." The Bible talks a lot about healing, Christians talk a lot about healing, and Jesus was known for healing. I always thought that healing only referred to the restoration of physical ailments. A broken leg, the woman with the flow of blood, even "Legion" and the casting out of demons to go from out of his mind, into the right mind. 

And although I don't think that waiting for a physical healing is wrong, I think I missed the point. 

When I first became a mom, I was always very angry. I would yell, cry, and scream at my toddlers wishing they would be little robots that I could control. It was a struggle. I never realized how difficult motherhood was going to be. Nobody ever told me. Everyone always said how wonderful it was, and I wrestled internally with the fact that I got no joy out of motherhood, I didn't connect with my children, and my attention was demanded 100% of the time. Where was the joy in that? When my oldest was 2 and my second child was 6 months, I had an in-home daycare with 7 kids under the age of 3. Things just kept getting worse but then my whole world began to shatter. 

Within a 3-year period, 7 people extremely close to me died, including my grandmother who I was close to and after her death I felt as though I had crashed into a pit of despair.

I hated my life, I hated my home, I hated my husband. The only thing I knew to do was to go back to what had worked for me during my parent's divorce: journaling and reading the Bible. My grandma had left me a book called "Praying God's Word" by Beth Moore. I used this to read a Bible verse a day and journal my thoughts. During this period, I began praying that God would specifically let me quit the daycare. Even though it was our only source of income. I knew my husband would not want me to quit and I wasn't sure how. 

A few months later, I found out "Surprise" that I was pregnant with our third child. I was on birth-control and not planning to get pregnant again. I immediately went to my husband and told him we were pregnant again and the first words out of his mouth were, "Well, I guess you will have to quit the daycare." Now, that was not how I would have wanted God to answer my prayer, but he did answer it, and that led me on a journey of discovering who He was to me. 

Fast-forward five years and thankfully God had done a lot of transformation in my heart and my husband's heart, but our home was still a mess. Fighting between siblings, anger, and yelling were all the norm in our home. There was nothing Christ-like about it. We were desiring to follow Jesus. We wanted to disciple our kids and train them differently than we had been as kids, but we didn't know how to heal our home. 

So, we began to pray about it. The Lord then began to develop this idea in our heart of creating a weekly family worship night. An intentional weekly rhythm we created to practice the spiritual disciplines we desperately wanted to see our kids develop, and connect with them on a spiritual level. Our first family worship night when my kids were 7,5, & 3 was a disaster. Everyone was crying, nobody wanted to pray, and there were so many distractions. It looked nothing like church. I was discouraged, but God spoke to my heart and said, 'Continue in faithfulness'. So we did. Continuing weekly, keeping the family rhythm. Inviting our kids into big decisions, connecting with them in the presence of God, right in our living room. 

By developing a weekly family worship night, healing began to take place in our family. Not only did the kids feel like they were an important part of the family because we asked them to pray with us about big decisions, but we were giving them time to practice the skills we asked them to embody. Praying out loud, reading their Bible, worshipping, etc. 

We tailored the time to what fit their needs when they were young, doing activities and songs that excited and engaged them. But now, they are 14, 12, & 10 and can engage with the Lord on their own. We still invite them into our family decisions, and they are able to articulate their relationship with the Lord better than most adults. Because we were intentional to create a space for them to develop their relationship with God. 

Not only that, but it began to change the atmosphere of our home. Now our Family Room was turned into Holy Ground. Now, the heartbeat of our home was filled with worship, prayer, and intentional connection between family members in the presence of the Lord. Within 6 months, it began to transform the ways we interacted with each other, and how we treated each other. 

If you are looking for a way to heal your home, disciple your kids, and raise Kingdom Leaders I would encourage you to start a weekly family worship night. If you don't know how, check out my FREE mini-course: Raising Worshippers to learn the steps to implement. It includes a 6-week sample schedule for starting your own family worship night. 

Raising Worshippers Mini-Course

The healing Jesus offers does not just have to be physical. While we can often see the physical needs the most on the outside, a lot of time the healing He provides is inside. Inside our hearts, minds, and homes. I bless you today with receiving a touch of healing from Jesus, wherever you need it.