Exodus 15:2, “The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him a habitation.” 

Oh what a mighty vision! Dear homemaker, it would be hard to find anything more significant in life than to make your home a habitation for God. When you dedicate your home to God, you are setting it apart as a holy place. This takes more than one celebration. This takes daily work.

Hyman Goldin writes, “Every home can thus be turned into a holy shrine where godliness prevails… every member of the family is a priest unto God; the home is a shrine; and the table is an altar of God.” We need to get into the habit of being consciously aware that our home is a sanctuary for God. When we have this vision before us we will be more likely to work at keeping it a holy place. We will have the vision to make our home, not only a haven of love, peace and joy for our family, but a sanctuary for God’s presence.

We will see our table as a consecrated place to establish the family altar each day, where we open the Word of God and pray together. Oh for godly homes all across this nation, sitting at the table to eat their meals together. Not only eating together, but also establishing the family altar where they pray for one another and for the nation. Can you imagine what could happen in our nation if Christian families all across the country began to pray together at their family altar? Not the fathers and mothers praying, but each one of the children, crying out to God for His mercy and salvation upon this nation! 

Have you established the family altar in your home? This is the best way to daily dedicate your home to the Lord. Of course we can’t forget the old adage, “The family that prays together stays together.”

Oh for God’s protecting, powerful eye to be upon our homes night and day. God has given us this promise. Actually, it was given for the temple that Solomon built for God’s presence, but today God wants our homes to be temples filled with His presence. However, it is not a mandatory promise but conditional. The promise is to those who will humble themselves, pray, seek God’s face and turn from their wicked ways. Yes, you know it, don’t you? It’s 2 Chronicles 7:14, but have you read on to verse 16? “Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to prayer made in this place… my eyes and my heart will be there perpetually.”

If we are a humble, praying family, not only does God promise that He will forgive our sin and heal us, but He promises that He will keep His eye and His heart upon our temple home continually. Oh what a wonderful blessing.

Do you want God’s eyes and His heart to look perpetually on your home? Keep a humble spirit. Be a praying family. Pray together around your table at every breakfast or every evening meal.

Love from NANCY CAMPBELL

PRAYER:

“Peace, unto this house, I pray,

Keep terror and despair away;

Shield it from evil and let sin

Never find lodging room within.

May never in these walls be heard

The hateful or accusing word. Amen.”

AFFIRMATION:

Deuteronomy 20:5, “What man is there who has built a new house and has not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man dedicate it.” 

We have been talking about dedicating our children to the Lord. God also wants us to dedicate our homes to Him.

When King Solomon spoke to King Huram of Tyre about materials for building a temple for the living God, he confessed, “Behold, I build an house to the name of the Lord my God, to dedicate it to Him…” (2 Chronicles 2:4) He was speaking of building a temple for God to dwell. There is no temple left today but God now wants to dwell in our bodies, which are temples of the Holy Spirit. He also wants to dwell in our homes. He wants our homes to be set apart to Him.

Have you dedicated the house you live in to the Lord? It may be a new home, or a home you have purchased from someone else. Either way, you need to dedicate it to the Lord. It is especially important to cleanse and dedicate a home that has had previous owners. You cannot know what has taken place in the home and you don’t want to give the slightest opportunity for Satan to take a foothold in your home.

The owner of every new house in Israel made a celebration and dedicated it to the Lord. Speaking of the Israelites dedicating their homes, Samuel Chandler writes, “It was common when any person had finished a house and entered into it, to celebrate it with great rejoicing, and keep a festival, to which his friends are invited, and to perform some religious ceremonies, to secure the protection of Heaven.” John Calvin writes, “By consecrating their houses to God, they declared that they were God’s tenants, confessing that they were strangers, and that it was He who lodged, and gave them a  habitation.”

If you haven’t already set apart your home, don’t wait any longer. Put on a feast, gather in some friends, and ask them to pray with you over your home. Walk into every room and ask God to cleanse it and for His power to flow into the room. Invoke God’s blessing over every inch of your home and set it apart for His presence and His purposes.

Or, when your friends move into a new or used home, give them a surprise celebration. Gather friends, take food for a feast, gifts for their new home, and then pray and bless their home with them. When I was young, growing up in New Zealand, people gave a Tin Canning to a new married couple when they moved into their home. They called it a Tin Canning because people took jars of food they had canned and loaded the young couple with food for the coming year.

In parts of USA, they call the same celebration a Pounding. I guess this was because everyone took a pound of something to the new couple, e.g. a pound of sugar, flour, butter, cake or whatever. This is a wonderful way to bless a new married couple, but more importantly to take the opportunity to dedicate and set apart the home.

If you are a songwriter, you could write a song for your new home, or you could write a song for someone else as they go into their new or used home. King David, the Psalmist of Israel, wrote a song of thanks and praise when he moved into his new home in Jerusalem. The title of Psalm 30 says, “A Psalm and Song at the dedication of the house of David.”

When King Solomon and the children of Israel dedicated the house of the Lord, Solomon put on a great feast that lasted for 14 days! (1 Kings 8:62-66)  Set apart your home with feasting, singing and prayers of dedication.

Love from NANCY CAMPBELL

PRAYER:

“Lord, please help me to be aware each new day that my home belongs to You. Help me to see it as a holy shrine for your presence. Amen.”

 

AFFIRMATION:

Nehemiah 12:43, “Also that day they offered great sacrifices, and rejoiced: for God had made them rejoice with great joy: the wives also and the children rejoiced; so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard even afar off.”

We continue to talk about how they dedicated the temple and how it relates to dedicating and training our children.

4. With joy and gladness.

Training our children is a solemn responsibility, but God wants us to do it with joy.

In Ezra 6:16 they “kept the dedication of this house of God with joy.”

In Nehemiah 12:27,42-43 they celebrated “the dedication with gladness, both with thanksgivings and with singing, with cymbals, psalteries and with harps.”

At the dedication of Solomon’s temple there was “one sound to be heard in thanking and praising the Lord. “ (2 Chronicles 5:13)

In the same way that God rejoices and sings over us, His children, so we should rejoice over our children. (Zephaniah 3:17) We should take great joy in training our children to be separated unto the Lord. We should rejoice in the privilege of motherhood and co-working with God to fulfill this great task. (Psalm 113:9; 3 John 4)

God wants our homes to be homes of joy. In Isaiah 32:13 he calls them “the houses of joy.” Joy is the atmosphere in which He wants us to train our children. He wants you, the mother, to be filled with joy – and consequently the children to be happy and joyful.

Isaiah 51:3 gives a description of Zion. “For the Lord shall comfort Zion… joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and the voice of melody.” This is also a description of God’s people, and personally, of our homes. Do you notice that we are to have two sets of twins in our homes?

The first set of twins is “joy and gladness”. The MLB translation says, “Joy and gladness shall abound in her.” It’s not enough to have a bit of joy from time to time. Our homes should constantly abound with joy and gladness. This is the kind of atmosphere that will cause our children to hanker after God, to love His will, and to desire to fulfill His purposes. 

The second set of twins is “thanksgiving and voice of melody.” The NLT translates it, “Lovely songs of thanksgiving will fill the air.” Does thanksgiving fill the atmosphere of your home? Are your children filled with thanksgiving and songs of praises? If you have a thankful spirit, your children will be thankful. If you are filled with the praises of the Lord, your children will have the spirit of praise. You set the tone, mother.

Hang on a minute. Here is a third set of twins. Psalm 118:15 says, “The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tabernacles of the righteous; the right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly.” Most other translations call them “joy and victory.” Do joy and victory live at your home? What is the song of joy and victory? The right hand of the Lord does valiantly! Our confession and our song should proclaim that the Lord is in control!  His right arm does valiantly! We believe that He will work deliverance for us. The homes of the righteous should be temples of praise. Name your doors Praise! Call your walls Salvation that carry the words and songs that fill your home. (Isaiah 60:18)

Is your home filled with joy and thanksgiving? If not, cast out the evil twins of gloom and despair, negativity and unbelief and self-pity and bitterness. Instead, welcome in joy and gladness, thankfulness and melodious song.

Love from NANCY CAMPBELL

PRAYER:

“Oh God, help me to raise my children with joy. Help me to fill my home with thanksgiving all day long. Amen.”

AFFIRMATION:

Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”  

This evening is the end of the Chanukkah, the Feast of Dedication. I thought I would therefore share something with you about the meaning of dedication. “Chanukkah”, a noun, means “dedication.”

The interesting thing is that the word to “train” our children in Proverbs 22:6 is actually the Hebrew verb, “chanakh” which means “to teach, to dedicate, to consecrate, to inaugurate”. Apart from Proverbs 22:6, here are the examples where it is used.

1. Dedication of a house. (Deuteronomy 20:5)

2. Dedication of the altar of Moses’ tabernacle. (Numbers 7:10-11,84,88)

3. Dedication of Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 8:63; 2 Chronicles 7:4-9)

4. Dedication of Zerubbabel’s temple. (Ezra 6: 16-18)

5. Dedication of the walls of Jerusalem. (Nehemiah 12:27)

6. Dedication of Nebuchadnezzar’s image. (Daniel 3:2-3)

7. Dedication and cleansing of the temple in 165 BC (from which we now celebrate Chanukkah) after it had been desecrated with the abomination of Antiochus Ephiphanes who sacrificed a pig on the altar of the temple. This is recorded in the Apocrypha in 1 Maccabees 4:54, “It was dedicated anew, with singing of hymns, and music of harp, zither and cymbals.”

This certainly gives us a new light on the meaning of training our children, doesn’t it? The word “dedicate” means “to consecrate to a sacred purpose.” We train our children for the specific purpose of setting them apart for God’s service and the purpose that He has destined for them. Each of our children is born with a destiny that God has planned for them before the foundation of this world. We do not train them according to our ideas. We do not train them by society’s standards. Our whole purpose in training is to dedicate them to the purposes of God.

How did they dedicate in the Old Testament examples?

1. With Purity.

Ezra 6:20-21 tells us that the priests and Levites who were involved in dedicating the temple “were purified together, all of them were pure.”  The people too – “All such as had separated themselves unto them from the filthiness of the heathen of the land.”

When they dedicated the walls that were rebuilt in Nehemiah’s time, “The priests and the Levites purified themselves, and purified the people, and the gates, and the wall.” (Nehemiah 12:30)

To train dedicated children, we must first be dedicated ourselves. Every temple in the Old Testament was dedicated. God no longer has a temple of wood and stone. He now has temples of flesh and blood. I am a temple of the living God to be filled with His glory. You are a temple of God to be pure and holy for His dwelling. Your children are temples waiting to be dedicated to His purposes.

We must keep our hearts pure from all contamination of sin, rebellion, bitterness and anger. If there is iniquity and rebellion in our hearts, it will cause rebellion in our children’s hearts. (Exodus 20:5) We must be purified mothers to raise holy and set apart children.

2. With sacrifice.

They always sacrificed offerings at the dedication of the temple. At the dedication of Solomon’s temple he personally offered up 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep. This was worth $9,550,000.00! And this was apart from the rest of the offerings of the children of Israel. (1 Kings 8:63)

It takes sacrifice to train children to be set apart for God’s service. It takes forgetting our own agenda and laying down our own lives. But it is for God and it comes with His reward. “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.” (Mark 8:35)

We cannot forget that in purifying and sacrificing, the blood was shed. It is only through the power of the blood of Jesus that we can keep pure and cleansed from the contamination that will blight our lives and our children’s lives.

3. With prayer.

Read 2 Chronicles 6:14-42. We cannot successfully set apart our children for God without much prayer. One of the most important aspects of parenting, and yet the least observed, is prayer. Are you finding parenting a challenge? Prayer is your answer. Are you having difficulties with one of your children? Prayer is your answer. Are you concerned about the direction of your children? Prayer is your answer. Prayer will release your children into their destiny.

If you don’t pray for your children, who will?

We will look at one more point next week.

Love from NANCY CAMPBELL

PRAYER:

“Dear Lord, help me to keep my mind and heart pure before you so that I can raise pure and holy children. Cleanse me with your precious blood from all sin.”

 

AFFIRMATION:

I am set apart for God’s purposes and I am raising children to be set apart for God.