Colossians 3:18-21 - "Enjoy Heaven on Earth"

Today, Friday June 18 “Enjoy Heaven on Earth” Colossians 3:18-21 “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.” We are told in Psalm 11:3, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” I don’t need to tell you, but it very obvious that the family is under tremendous attack today in our country! The devil knows if he can destroy the family, as God created it and meant for it to be, he can destroy the church, the community and the country. The foundation of any society and culture is the family unit, a father, a mother and the children. In the act of creating humanity, the first thing God did after He created Adam was to create the family. Genesis 2:21-24 “So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” God meant for the family to be the first place where His glory would be reflected in our relationships with one another. Adam and Eve were placed in paradise.  God desires for the home, the family, to be a place where we enjoy “heaven on earth.” God created the world with order and God means for there to be order in the home. His design and plan for the home is very clear in the scripture: (Colossians 3; Ephesians 5; and 1 Peter 3). The problem is that the very sin that got Adam and Eve expelled from paradise has stained God’s plan and left us with broken homes and broken lives. If we want to restore and experience God’s redemption for our homes Jesus Christ must have the preeminence in them. If the husband and wife both make Jesus Christ preeminent in their personal life and follow God’s order for the home, they can reenter heaven on earth (paradise). A place where the presence of the Lord God Almighty is experienced and His glory is revealed to the world around it! In the New Testament (Ephesians 5), the husband is commanded “to love his wife in the same way Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it”. It appears that the main responsibility for the home has been placed on the husband and father. When he unselfishly loves his wife and children as he should, and leads them to love and make Christ preeminent in their lives, they have no problem responding in love and submission to his godly leadership. Today, let’s pray for homes that will restore the foundation that God intends for them to have! God bless!