30-Day Personal Devotion Challenge Day 21

Good Morning Church Family – Day 21

Read Colossians 3:18-21

Devo Thought: Have you ever walked into a house and immediately realized that everything in the house has a place? The house is picked up and relatively clean. The furniture and décor all seem to work together. There is room to walk and talk. There are places to sit and eat. It all just kind of works together. In this point in Colossians, the Apostle Paul turns his attention to the household. In the Roman world, a moral code had value as along as it had clear application in the world around a person. Morals and ethics are played out in society, not only on paper. The first and most immediate society in Roman culture (and in ours as well) was the household. Even within the household, there were levels of society playing out. At its most basic, there was the level of the immediate family (fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, children). How do all these people work together to create a Biblical household, where the ethics of the Christian life are played out? The Apostle Paul lays out some basic guidelines to living faithfully in the family. The foundation is a mutual obligation to one another; everyone is important, and everyone should also realize the importance of others in the household. Wives submit to and trust in the leadership of their husbands, while husbands are called to love their wives sacrificially (I’d encourage you to go and read Ephesians 5 for depth here). Children obey and trust their parents, which pleases the Lord. Fathers (parents) are kind to their children, not antagonizing or provoking them to anger. In short, we all watch out and care for one another, thinking of others before we think about ourselves. This is the house that is in order. It’s not the one that looks clean and put together on the surface, but it is the one that has been moved to love and respect one another because of the love Jesus has given to them.

Prayer – Let us pray for our families.