First the Heart, Then the Home

In Deuteronomy 6:4 we find the Shema, one of the most central confessions and prayers of the Jewish faith. It begins: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might…” 

The heart. Worship, right relationship with God, begins with our WANTING; our hunger, our genuine, wholehearted desire for that relationship. “This is how you will live rightly and abundantly and blessedly, Israel”, God says, “Train your heart to love me, and seek me with all the stuff inside you… Heart, soul, mind, strength…” That’s where it starts, this life of the Kingdom of the Heavens. Right here in Deut. 6, we find Duncan Campbell’s “Altar of the Heart”. 

Beyond dealing rightly with our own hearts, what follows next? Moses continues in Deut. 6:7 “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” 

First the heart, then the HOME. This is Campbell’s second Altar of revival; the HOME, as the location of our seeking and longing for and practicing the “with-God” life.

In American evangelicalism we’re familiar with the idea of “inviting Jesus into our hearts”, but have you ever considered inviting Jesus to be the living Lord and Savior, not just of your soul, but of your home? Most of us would say we have, at one time or another, invited Jesus into our hearts; but is he welcome, is he working, is he Lord also of our homes/households/family life? Because this is the next space, the next altar, the next door upon which the Lord Jesus is knocking, waiting to be invited into. As we consider this, as we allow the exhortations of Deut. 6 to work on us, we can frame the question this way: What is the central organizing principle of your HOME?

This is worth seriously exploring, because your home/household/family life (whatever shape that may take) DOES HAVE a central, organizing principle, whether you bother to identify it, or not. And the lesson we take from scripture is this:

Either Jesus and his Kingdom is the center (the “organizing principle”) of our home, or something else will be.

Like a pearl, naturally forming itself and constructing its value around one central grain of sand, the world, life, our hearts and minds are just FULL of other things/desires/pursuits that will happily insert themselves as the central value/pursuit of our households if we let them. Can we honestly say that JESUS is the center, the organizing principle, the great longing and pursuit of the altar of our homes… or is it something else? 

Rev. Chris Bannon
Area Coordinator North, Revive New England