Church and Home

Hearths, those places of inviting warmth, holders of the ordinary magic, be they kitchens, fireplaces, backyards, be they a modern city loft or a lost cottage in the woods, be they quiet or filled with laughter and singing, be they messes of creativity or clean spaces of control, be they two or twenty, hearths are our occupation. These are our hearts. These are where we belong. But where do we go to be refreshed? Where do we draw deep from wells of living water for help and hope? How do we keep these bits and pieces of haunting beauty in their proper place: temporary treasure in a burning world? Things we can’t save and can’t take with us, but things we build and use and delight in. Where do we women go and what do we love so that we can come home and be home? If we place our hope in our homes we will see our hope fail. So where do we find our true hope refreshed, weary souls filled? How are we renewed in the fight?

Church.

Preaching, Prayer, the Lord’s Supper, and Baptism.

The means of grace.

The means of grace are defined on Ligonier’s website as:

“In His grace and in His wisdom, God has provided ways by which we can regularly have our faith in His promises fortified. Historically, we have referred to these ways of strengthening our faith as the ordinary means of grace. Prayer, the preaching of the Word, and the sacraments are not elaborate or fancy methods of giving us what we need to confirm our trust in Christ. To an outside observer, they do not seem special at all. After all, they make use of rather common things such as human speech, bread, wine, and water. But by faith and the work of the Spirit, these common elements are used to do an uncommon work — the confirmation of our trust in Jesus and the strengthening of our wills to flee from sin and rest in Christ alone.”[1]

Because of the many homemaking books I read, I’ve been thinking about being a woman in the church. (Okay, honesty moment, this has become a huge soapbox for me and I’m having to watch myself or I start beating people up with said box. Never beat people up with soapboxes!)

Gently, quietly, with the utmost tenderness, I think the most important thing in our homes should be our church attendance.

Almost every book I’ve ever read on homemaking written by Christians spends a huge amount of time talking about how important our morning, personal, alone Bible reading is. How we need to start every day in the word, or gasping shock, how can we be Christian moms and homemakers? *Annoying church lady voice*

Sadly, they spend very little to almost no time on being ready for church. They don’t instruct us on how to get a family out the door on time. They don’t instruct us on how to be ready ourselves to hear the preaching on a busy Sunday morning. They don’t discuss Lord’s Day rest. If we took most of them at face value, we’re fine skipping church, being late, being disruptive. That’s not important as long as we get our coffee and read our Bibles every day, extra stars for journaling.

Here’s a thought, prepare for some straight-up shock value: we could be healthy believers without doing regular personal Bible studying in the morning during the week.

I’ll give you a moment to pick yourself up off the floor.

Thousands if not millions of believers before us were brought safely home without having a Bible in the house, without starting each morning with a cup of coffee and some quiet time and posting it on Instagram. (It’s not sinning to do this, I do this, but it is wrong to think it’s a means of grace.) Before now, believers made it safely home without a leather journal in a coffee shop. How, you ask? How could they possibly be holy? They didn’t miss the preaching of the Word. See, us and our bible alone is dangerous. It leaves us open to misunderstanding what we’re reading. Come hear the faithful preaching of the Word by faithful, confessional men.

Now!!! I’m not saying don’t read your Bible every day. Don’t run screaming that that’s what I’m saying. I’m trying to bring a gentle correction to what we HearthKeepers are bombarded with on social media and in books. Bible reading is a blessing. But we shouldn’t make it a burden with which we beat ourselves. It’s a liberty that we enjoy if it is a season of life where that is possible. It’s not the law. Reading the Word is a good thing, and a very good gift, but the Primary—Primary, the place where Christ is, where our King meets with us—is the Preaching of the Word by faithful men.

When the Lord does provide times for us to read His Word privately, we should think about our goal. Our goal should be equipping ourselves to better participate in the hearing of the preaching. Read some theology. Ask your pastor for some good theology and start training yourself. This is equipping ourselves to hear the preaching. Read the passages used in the sermon. Listen to your pastor’s past sermons. Be familiar with the Word. Our 10 minutes of quiet morning time should be used to train our minds, rather than trying to produce some sort of spiritual high.

We can’t run around feeling holy when we don’t make Sunday a priority in our hearts, minds, and homes. It’s hypocritical. Believing quiet time is the primary means of grace is tyranny. The Preaching, Praying, Lord’s Supper, and Baptism, all corporate, are the means of grace. God is so good and kind. He isn’t demanding or dictatorial. Don’t make Him that way with a false standard of holiness. God is so good and kind. He protects us. We are busy with a thousand earthly things. What happens if we are dependent on our own ability to correctly understand the scriptures, theology, and church history? Do you have time to correctly investigate the scriptures? Learn the languages? God gave us men, called men, who are paid to spend their whole lives searching out the scripture. Don’t put yourself in the dangerous position of doing that for yourself. This doesn’t mean don’t study theology, just understand the boundaries God has so wisely given us.

Dear HearthKeepers, think about how healthy our churches would be if every wife centered her entire home life around the Lord’s Day. If every day we worked towards the Lord’s Day. If all our child training centered on being ready for the Lord’s Day. How would that affect how we tend our hearth and home? What if being at church on time for the whole day was vitally important to us? How much healthier would our churches be if we didn’t just think “oh, that’s one of my husband leading things” but made it our responsibility to actively and with purpose support him in that. The Lord’s Day and hearing the preaching of the Word are our greatest privileges and duties. We should act that way.

When my husband was in the process of becoming a pastor, my Mom gave me some invaluable advice. “If you’re going to do this, if you’re going to be married to a pastor, then you need to love the church as much or more than he does.”

The church takes so much from its pastors, and rightly so. To be the wife of a pastor you have to be willing to watch and work as the church takes everything from your man. You must love the church as much or more than he does.

Even if you aren’t married to a pastor, I still think the advice applies. What if we sought to love the church as much or more than our homes, families, husbands, lives? What if we put it first over all? How would it affect our thinking? How would it affect our homes?

On the other hand, do we know, do we realize, that one of the biggest ways we serve the church is through our homemaking? We are serving the church when we tend our hearth and home. Granted, for me, that’s easy to see. I’m a pastor’s wife. My sister is a deacon’s wife. My mother has been a pastor’s wife my whole life. My brother is a pastor. It’s very obvious. But fellow-laywomen, we serve the church when we take care of our homes. We don’t need a ministry. We don’t need to be on a committee. We need to take care of our homes, husbands, and children. That serves the church. When we do the hard work of teaching our children to sit quietly, when we set a good example by making church our focus, when we raise wise daughters and strong sons, we are raising up the next generation of Pastors, teachers, deacons, pastor’s wives and deacon’s wives, laypeople, by God’s grace. We are serving the church when we take care of our homes. When our husbands’ homes are well-ordered, when we make that our goal, he can serve his church without constantly running home and so can we.

If you struggle with church attendance due to providential hindrances, don’t go flagellate yourself, please. I’m begging you. Start layering. Go back to one tiny step with the goal in mind of being in church. Look to Christ and trust him. Be content, calm, and strive to be in church with all your might. If you are struggling with church attendance due to laziness, love of ease, lack of discipline, repent and start anew in the grace of Christ, striving with all your might. It is all of grace and all of Christ, and not of you!

If you are not struggling with this right now, if you are providentially and sanctification-ly in church every Sunday all day, don’t be filled with pride. This isn’t a gold star. We don’t get participation trophies or medals for showing up and doing our duty. Pray. Pray and help. Pray for an increase in Prayer Meeting, Morning Service, Fellowship Lunch, and Sunday School. Pray for our churches and look for ways to encourage and ease burdens. Don’t judge what you can’t see. Don’t look down on others. You can’t see! Pray.

Love the church.

Be in church.

Root yourself in the Preaching, Praying, Lord’s Supper, and Baptism.

Study theology.

Then flourish in your home. Flower in your home. Leaf out in your home because your roots are deeply sunk in the rich loam of the Word. Be refreshed for home by the Means of Grace.

So, my soapbox? All of this summed up: Be in Church.

[1] https://www.ligonier.org/learn/devotionals/means-of-grace/