What is the atmosphere of your home?
Every one of our homes has an atmosphere. I once heard someone use this expression and it really struck me.
Sometimes you can feel it when you come into someone’s house–it might be the sweet atmosphere of love and cheerfulness or it might be the rancid atmosphere of tension and depression.
How will your children describe the atmosphere in your home when they grow up? Will they remember your home as being a place where they had lots of fun? Will they remember the atmosphere as being warm and joyful? Or will they remember clouds of coolness, criticism and irritation?
Will they remember Dad laughing and wrestling with them and playing hide and seek with them or will they remember him as the irritated guy who kept yelling, “Why doesn’t anybody in this house ever turn the lights out?”
The key to a cheerful loving atmosphere in our homes is for us to seek the Lord. As we spend time with Jesus regularly in his word and ask him to fill us with his own joy and his own affection for our family he will transform us. The joy of the Lord in our hearts will manifest itself in our homes.
Obviously, this applies to every believer, married and single alike. In fact, there is not just an atmosphere in our homes, but an atmosphere around every one of us and an atmosphere in every one of our churches.
It is the transforming power of the gospel, the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control that perfumes the air we breathe in our homes, apartments, and churches.
May the fragrance of Christ sweeten the atmosphere around us wherever we are.
photo by timsackton
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Thanks for a great post, Mark!
I have found this to be so true in my life. When I became weary with cooking meals, doing dishes, and all the other mundane things that go into making a house a home for my family, the Lord graciously reminds me of the truth of what it is I am doing (serving Him by serving my family). I can't trust my feelings to give me a correct interpretation; I have to run to my Father and ask Him to give me the desire to serve with a cheerful heart.
Thanks for the encouragement.
Thanks for your comments Elaine! I can't even imagine you not being cheerful, since you radiate the joy of the Lord – but I believe you that you run to our Father in prayer to help you serve cheerfully. And thanks for mentioning that we are serving Him when we serve our family.
Great post with great advice. Love and laughter is an unbeatable combination.
Thanks Eddie! Is that a space helmet in your photo? If so I believe the laughter part….unless of course you are a professional astronaut.
Our children always loved having their friends here – and the friends seemed to love being here, so I think it is fine.
One telling thing, though, is that we once had Mormon missionaries in, shared lemonade and cookies, and we chatted for about a good half hour before they left in a tizzy. (I told them that I had read the Book of Mormon – they were pleased; that I could show them in the NT that Moroni was going to give Smith the tablets – they wanted to see this as they were unaware of the passage; showed them Galatians 1:6-8 and told them that God had warned us in advance that an angel would come preaching a different gospel – they were VERY upset). When they left, they said that they sensed an evil (can't remember the exact word they used as this was about 30 years ago perhaps it wasn't that strong a word) spirit in our home and wouldn't come back.
That upset my husband very much. But I took it to mean that the Holy Spirit was unknown to them and foreign.
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