Harmony in the Home

By Norine Kane

The Christian family should be the very foundation for our faith. It is the starting place to begin to apply the Word of God to our lives. Psalm 46 states that God is our refuge and strength and a very present help in trouble. Did you know that God set the home in place to be a refuge, to renew our strength when we are weary? It should be a place we can go when we are in trouble to find help for our problems. Does your home represent a haven of rest and refreshment? Sad to say, many of our homes don't present this picture at all. Some family members may go as far as to say their home may be the last place they would want to go after a hard day at school or the office. Harmony in the Home won't create a utopia where there are no problems, but it will promise a more harmonious way to deal with them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098068264

Book preview

cover.jpg

Harmony in the Home

Norine Kane

Copyright © 2021 by Norine Kane

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Developing a Love Relationship with Jesus

A Time for Prayer and Sharing

Worshipping and Serving Christ Together

Loving One Another without Expecting Anything Back

Teaching Children How to Exercise Faith

Disciplining Your Children God’s Way

The Family Playing Together

Introduction

Harmony in the Home is a book on how a family can become united in one accord. Its content will help family practice the presence of Jesus in the home. There are insights for each family member, including God’s promises to the children.

Harmony in the Home involves the whole family, not just the husband and wife relationship or parenting the children. Each member is shown how to relate in the home setting. Every chapter is a step-by-step instruction guide to bringing the desired results of peace and harmony. The first chapter shows you how to build a strong foundation. Each consecutive chapter is another addition or room of enlightenment on God’s Word to give spiritual revelation. These rooms are full of the workable accessories that bring practical application to God’s revealed Word. The final touches of décor that display the overall beauty of the home is the atmosphere created by the presence of God, because these principles are practiced. There are review questions at the close of each chapter that will establish the reader’s understanding, which can also be a great tool for use in Bible studies, cell groups, or Sunday school.

Strengthening families will always be my deepest desire and my planned pursuit. My prayer is that families everywhere can gain the insight needed to become one heart and one mind, striving side by side for the purpose of the gospel. In this great body of believers known as the church family, the spirit of unity and harmony can only be achieved by the strength of the individual families that make up this great unit.

Chapter 1

Developing a Love Relationship with Jesus

The most important element in bringing harmony and peace to your home is to cultivate a love relationship with Jesus and to train our children to know God’s love. If we master these two elements, all else will fall into place.

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. For He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Colossians 1:15 NIV).

If we want our lives to be worthy and pleasing to God, bearing fruit in every good work, then we cannot cease praying and seeking to be filled with all spiritual wisdom and understanding. We must unceasingly pray this for our children as well.

As parents, our first responsibility in Christian service is to disciple our children. We often quote, Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you (Matthew 6:33). We assume this means we can get involved in church duties and ministry and God will add well-adjusted, God-serving, Bible-quoting children to us. But that’s not among the things that get added. Proverbs 22:6 clearly mandates that we are to train children in the way they should go. It says that in the way they should go, they are not always going to go that way. When we cultivate good habits in our children, we are sowing seeds with expectancy of a fruitful harvest. We must teach our children to spend time with God every day. I do not believe we should give them a choice. Many parents fear that if they enforce Bible reading and prayer, that child won’t learn anything. Yet, these same parents compel their child to go to school to learn history and math when he does not feel like it, and in spite of the reluctance at times he still learns.

I believe God’s Spirit will move in the heart of your child or teen, and reveal Himself to them as a result of the obedience of the parent in teaching their child the disciplines of scripture study and prayer. I have observed this process so many times with my own two daughters. They would resist when it came time to turn off the television and spend half an hour with the Lord. But many times they have come to me later to share something God had shown them.

We cannot discipline our children to spend time with God every day unless we are setting the example. Our prayer should be, Lord, discipline me that I might be able to discipline my child. Discipline your son for in that there is hope; do not be a willing party to his death (Proverbs 19:18). Death here, I believe, means he will operate under the law of sin and death, if he is not trained to renew his mind and become acquainted with God