by Kevin Burton
Many of us recall best, our culinary mishaps from Home Economics class in high school. But there were other elements to that training.
In Home Ec your teachers tried to train you to build a safe, efficient, nourishing household for yourself, and an eventual spouse and children.
In the better schools this went beyond just cooking, to sewing, gardening, child rearing and perhaps more.
You have arrived at a third-period Home Ec class at the Earthly School for the Spiritually Blind. Nothing against cooking pigs in a blanket, but we have a different focus.
The goal is that each household member is properly fed, clothed, protected and trained. Here is what that looks like in the spiritual sense.
This series has dealt with Bible study in a previous post (“Can’t Grow Unless You Feed Your Spirit,” July 11), and will talk about prayer in a future post. Bible study and prayer are of course the two best ways to feed your spirit.
In this post we focus on a few other related things, beginning with these questions:
When you make your grocery list what strategies are behind it? Would you accept just any food the store wanted to sell you?
Isn’t it important then to be intentional about what spiritual morsels are consumed under your roof?
What kind of philosophies are aired in your house through the literature, music, television shows and social media content chosen for consumption?
You may also think of it as spiritual wallpaper. What does that look like in your home?
Let’s talk about household members being properly clothed.
Whereas a heavy winter coat may protect you from the cold, the Apostle Paul talks about spiritual protection in Ephesians 6:13-18, NKJV.
“Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.”
“And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints.”
You would never send your child (or yourself) out the door in the morning without appropriate clothing. How much more important does this become in the spiritual sense?
Probably the best-known verse on child rearing is Proverbs 22: 6 (NKJV). “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
As heads of household you set a tone for what flies and what does not in that home. These were God’s instructions in the book of Deuteronomy.”
“Therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.”
“And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, like the days of the heavens above the earth. (Deut. 11:18-21 NKJV).
This is how Joshua said it:
“Now therefore, fear the Lord, serve Him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the River and in Egypt. Serve the Lord! And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of]the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:14-15 NKJV).
Class notes, third period, Home Economics: Putting your spiritual house in order is even more important than ordering the physical house. The old maxim “you are what you eat,” has tremendous spiritual implications.
One for the spiritual road: Isaiah 61:10 (NKJV), “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,
My soul shall be joyful in my God;
For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, As a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.”
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