Keys for a Successful Family Life - Part 2 — Don Courville

Keys for a Successful Family Life: Christ in the Home

OK, let's pray and then see what God has for us. Heavenly Father, it is so good to be here and with you. It's it's going to be the best when we're with you someday in eternity. And that's the great unknown, except what you've given us in the word and from testimony.

You're the one that came back from the dead, Lord Jesus, to show us that you have conquered death and you give us life in you. We live and move and have our being. And you say in your word, he that hath the son hath life, he that hath not the son hath not life.

These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that you might know that you have life and that's eternal life. You want us to know the blessing that we have in Christ.

Now, open up our word, your word to us this morning, Father. And we ask that the Holy Spirit, precious Holy Spirit, you would be the ones to anoint our ears, to hear our eyes, to see our hearts, to understand, rebuke the devil away from us, Father.

And I pray that your word would accomplish that with you, please. And I pray that you would bless us and may we be a blessing to you in Jesus name. Amen. The title of this message is Does Christ Live Here?

Christ’s Presence in the Home

And referring to your home, does Christ live in your home? And our passage of scripture this morning is Mark chapter two. Mark chapter two. And I think we might just read these verses. You want to stand with me?

And let's just read, get your final stretch. Mark chapter two and verse one. And again, he entered into Capernaum after some days and it was noise that he was in the house and straightway many were gathered together in so much that there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door.

And he preached the word unto them and they come unto him, bringing one sick of the palsy, which was born of four. And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was.

And when he had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee. But there were certain of the scribes sitting there and reasoning in their hearts, why did this man speak blasphemies?

Who can forgive sins but God only? And immediately, when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, he said unto them, why reason ye these things in your hearts? Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, arise and take up thy bed and walk, but that you may know that the Son of man had power on earth to forgive sins, he saith unto the sick of the palsy, I say unto thee, arise and take up thy bed and go thy way into thine house.

And immediately he arose, took up the bed and went forth before them all in so much that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, we never saw it on this fashion. OK, you may be seated. After the Lord healed him, he told him to go to his house.

I'm going to talk about Jesus being in the home and hopefully we can gain some principles about Jesus being in our home, in our lives. One thing here, when Jesus is present, the glory of God will be present and things are going to happen.

So when Jesus is there, his glory is there and his presence brings the glory and the blessings and the power. Is there the testimony that Jesus lives in your home? He lives in your heart. He should be in your home.

And we're going to try to, again, inculcate some principles of maybe raising children, having a home life. One of the things I noticed in verse one, and again, he entered into Capernaum and after some days it was noise that he was in the house.

That's a Greek word that's used two other, three, maybe two, three other times in this book in Mark for here. So they heard that Jesus was there. They heard that he was there, he was present. And then the crowds came and they packed into the house and there wasn't any room to get this one guy in.

They wanted to get healed. So Jesus in the home draws people. Jesus in our home and in our heart, we should have some drawing to Christ. And so does the testimony of Christ in your home draw people? Are they comfortable to come there?

Would they feel welcome? I remember hearing a teacher years ago sharing about, and he had struggles, they had a dog that would jump on him and get hair, jump in his car and get hair and everything. And he was always going in this and that.

But he had a little girl that always wanted to bring people home from church. And he, no, no, no, no. I think her name was Cindy. We're not going to do that. And she was always hurt because they would never bring anybody home.

He probably wanted to just come home and relax, take a nap or whatever. But through the process of time, he learned that that was her gifting, hospitality. She wanted to do that and exercise that. And he realized that he wasn't receiving his children's giftings.

He wasn't appreciating them and listening to them. And so he got turned around. And then she was so happy when they would invite people home to the house. And again, he entered into Capernaum in some days.

I did something this morning. I went through the book of Mark and I looked up and I marked and I won't go all the way through here every place where the word house was used and how many times Jesus did things in a house.

And I think it just to take up most of our time if we went back through there all the way, but I'll flip back over to one I marked and 14 and being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper when I left her anymore as he.

But that was what they called him. As he said it, meet. There came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spiked nude, very precious. And she broke the box and poured it on his head. This blessing happened in the house.

It was a blessing to everybody there except the critics. And of course, the disciples broke out. Why didn't we give all of this, sell this and give this money to the poor? And the Lord tells them, you know, you're always going to have the poor, but me just don't have that often.

But that happened in the house and a lot of different things just in the book of Mark. I went through of things happening in the house. So is Jesus free to do things in your house? We're going to look at a few things about this when Jesus comes and when Jesus dwells in the house, there should be blessing and there should be the presence of Christ there to where people can be blessed.

But we can miss him. We can just miss him because we're selfish or greedy or or whatever, or been out of shape, carnal or whatever. So one of the things I noticed that Jesus lived, it said he dwelt at Capernaum.

They asked him, and I think that might have been Peter's house. Would Jesus be welcome to come into your house and live there? The next section, Lord willing, I'm going to mention some more things in this area.

A Home Open to the Word

But in straight way, verse two, in straight way, many were gathered together and they heard that Jesus was there. Many just packed into the house. Ladies, how would you like to have the whole neighborhood come into your house this morning?

Give me an hour notice. But boy, they're just rolling in and they're everywhere and they couldn't get this guy to Jesus that they wanted to have him heal him. So there's no room in straight way. Many were gathered, verse two, together in so much that there was no room to receive them.

No, not so much as about the door. And he preached the word unto them. Our home should be a place where the word would be free to come out. There should be a testimony. I think it was G. Campbell Morgan, his son that got married and they had a home and Mr. Morgan went into the home, went through the whole home and he come back and he told his son that everything was nice and pretty.

He said, but, you know, son, there'd be no, there's no way to tell whether Jesus lives here or the devil. And what he's saying, there just wasn't any evidence on the walls or anything. After you go into Jason and Angie, they got these plaques all over and a lot of them were given to them.

Then it's just wonderful. You get the word of God plastered everywhere. And I think the Jewish people, the Orthodox probably would put something on their door, let you know that you were Jewish. But he preached the word and they come and they are going to wreck this lady's house.

These guys come up on the roof and tear a hole in the roof. Now, nowadays, they might need to get something to cut the metal, because if you got a metal roof or whatever and get a sawzall and just cut it, but they're going to make a mess.

I imagine probably had a sod roof, I guess, or however it went. And you can imagine people, what's going on here? And some ladies, hey, you're messing my hair up. What are you doing? And then here comes this body down in the middle.

And can Jesus mess your house up? You know, if you got kids, it's going to be that way. We've got 12 grandchildren, our latest one. She's just a professional house wrecker. And she goes through the kitchen, just go through, just everywhere.

It's just a mess everywhere. She loves it. And yesterday, she baptized her teddy bear in the toilet. Her favorite teddy bear, I guess, is going to the washroom. But I mean, that's the way it is. And some people will not allow their children to make messes where everything's got to be always in place.

It's not going to be a happy home, probably. A happy home is going to be a mess and with children around. And so this is sort of the way it is. Can God make a mess in your home? Can God make a mess out of your life?

Can he just do what he wants to do and you're going to be okay with it? Well, not everybody there was okay with that. Jesus usually had his critics hanging around. And so these things sort of go like that.

Guarding Against Criticism and Hypocrisy

Now, there was a little boy one time that read about a famous character that was trying to be a saint. And his name was Simon Stilitz, I think it was. This crazy guy got up on a tower and lived there for 40 years to be a saint.

So this little boy is reading, oh, okay, I want to be a saint. So he got the kitchen stool and he put it in the middle of the kitchen and he stood on top of it for an hour. And his brothers and sisters come along and make wisecracks and everything.

Mom's sort of, you know, what are you doing? And he's there standing there trying to be a saint like Simon. And finally, after an hour, he gets up and he goes up and he gets his little diary and he writes this in there.

He said, I have discovered that it is exceedingly difficult to be a saint while living with your own family. Isn't that true? It's extremely difficult. And so what we have here with Jesus, they bring this guy, they cut a hole in the roof, make a mess of things probably because they couldn't get to the Lord in verse four because of the press and they let him down and Jesus sees their faith and he tells this guy, your sins are forgiven.

And in verse eight, six, but there were certain of the scribes sitting there and reasoning in their hearts. Now, not everybody in the home was there to be blessed by Jesus. They were there to be critics.

And it's a wonderful passage to show the deity of Christ that only God can forgive sins. And he forgave him of his sins. And then to prove that he was God, he healed him. But is there criticism? Well, here we got critics.

We could, without realizing it, teach our children to be critics. In the South where I was raised, down in Louisiana, the old joke always, you know, around was people go home and they would have fried preacher or whatever and criticize all the sermon and everything that was said and the kids pick up on this.

And so they learn to be critics. And here in the home, there is a rejection of Christ and we need to probably guard our children from these things and hypocrisy in the home, these type of things. So reminds me of one story about a carpenter that was brought in to one of the deacons in the house.

He's doing some remodeling back and he comes to the deacon. He says, Hey, did you know, and it was an old house, I have discovered there's a stash of whiskey back over in here. And the deacon, what? Well, the previous owners years ago must have had that in there.

And the carpenter said, yeah, it's a really amazing too. It's just a miracle that that's preserved because there's a little bowl of ice there too. Ah, in his home, he thought he had it hid, but be sure your sin will find it out.

Undermining Authority in the Family

Now, let me share some things with you about in the home. And then some things can be dangerous in the home. One of those would be the first one would be probably undermining the head of the home, undermining the head of home.

If a mom would undermine the dad or the dad would undermine the mom as they work together, it could be devastating. The children can say, Oh, mom, dad just did this and this and mom behind his back doing that.

That's one of the dangers that can be in a home and children can pick these things up. When we put up a home in Wyoming in our first church, we started passing there in 75 and across the street, our neighbor had put one up a couple of years before his dad was the banker and he worked for his dad.

And then after a couple of years later, he come over and he said, you ought to sell your new home. Why do I want to sell my new home? He said, I'm going to sell mine and make some good money. And what he's trying to tell me is there's going to be a problem and they did.

They shut down the economy and it took us four and a half years to sell our home. But there's a problem in his home and that is they had brought his mother in law to live with them and she undermined him and undermined her authority.

And the daughter always kept her allegiance to her mother until finally they divorced, brought into the home that which would destroy the home. And these are sometimes very delicate things, very touchy things, but it was sad.

They had a little boy and so, but his authority was undermined and it was a sad thing. OK, so dads are not perfect and they're going to make mistakes. So mom's going to have to have some wisdom there with the children as we maybe do dumb things sometimes.

But Christ is the head of the home and we need to remember that, even things that we can have in the home. I know when I was a kid, we played Monopoly and you can play Monopoly and whatever, but it could be that it could be teaching greed and selfishness and things like that if we're not careful.

And so if we do do things like that, we need to teach the kids. You know, now, Johnny, you wasn't supposed to beat your sister to pieces, you know, because she beat you. Don't have anger. This is just a game.

You're just having fun. But there are some things that come in to the home. And without realizing it, we can be undermining the principle of peace and security and things like that. Now, my parents are all gone.

And most of, you know, my dad died the day after I finished last year. But they played this card game. I think it's just maybe a fun game, but it was called Rook. Maybe you play that correctly. You got these different colors.

And there were two other neighbors. They would come over and it's just a fun game. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. But they would always have a bowl of rock candy and whichever color was going to be trumped.

These guys had a signal amongst themselves. They would get a piece of that color. And so his two buddies would know, OK, I'm strong and green. And I watched that go on. These guys know how to cheat. Whoa.

Did you ever cheat? Do kids learn? You know, they don't do what we say most of the time, but they're going to do what we do. And that's a scary thing. And so years later, I had to call back and I actually wrote a letter and sent some money back to my junior high principal because I, I didn't, it wasn't cheating, but I stole.

Working in the concession stand, I'd stick a little money in my pocket, taking, selling candy to the kids and, and God had convict me. I had been a thief and we could lie and we can learn some things that we shouldn't.

So these are difficult things. There was one little boy who was caught at school all the time. He was stealing paper and pencils. He'd slip in the office if he could and whatever, he'd get this. And finally they called his dad in and he said, your kid will not quit stealing pencils and paper and different things.

And his dad said, well, I don't know why he does that. We have plenty of that stuff at home. And the little boy said, well, yeah, dad, you bring it home from work. And his dad had taught him to do that and he's just following.

So these are, Abraham lied about his wife. Isaac, what, lied about his wife. The chain just goes on. Jacob deceived his dad and then he was deceived. It just goes on right down the line. David was immoral and his children turned out immoral.

Just, it's a sad principle on that. And so that's the idea of undermining authority and some lessons there. Appearances, let's talk about that one. Appearances, it was noised that he was in the home. Sometimes we can teach our children that it's better to look good than to be good.

And we can want everything looking good on the outside, but we have focused on that more than focusing on the inside. And so kids can grow up in church and they become professional little hypocrites. Look like a Christian, talk like a Christian, but inside the heart, it's better to have the heart right than have everything look just perfect outside.

But appearances, appearances. And as I was studying on this, I was sitting there at our dining room table and think, well, what does our house look like? And then again, I started off over at the door.

Oh, OK. And I wasn't looking for how appearances, you know, we got things laying around, anything flats going to collect some books or magazines and stuff. But I looked, oh, there's some tracks over by the door.

And I come around, I wrote these things down that I saw. Oh, OK, there's a Bible over there. And I got to be delivering. OK, there's a shelf with a plaque with with a scripture on it for me and my house.

We will serve the Lord. And I come on around. Well, the appearances were there that there's there are Christian things. But if we come to the heart, does the heart match the appearance, what we put out?

And so it comes back to the heart. And our children, it's really difficult sometimes to balance these things out. The house can be a wreck, but Jesus is there. Jesus was there. They'd tear the place out, but Jesus is there.

I wrote this out just a principle for myself. And I had some things over here on this back of the page that it doesn't matter how big the mess or how many problems, as long as Jesus presence and that testimony is there.

Focus on that primarily with our little children around, you know, there's always going to be the messes that are there. Years ago, and I wrote this down, this story about a man that was visiting in St. Louis.

And this is a pretty powerful little story. It's nothing big or anything, but there was a policeman on the corner and this stranger in town wanted to go to church. There was a church on three corners there, and the stranger asked the policeman, you know, I want to go to church, but I don't know where to go.

And out of these three churches, I don't know which one to choose. Do you have any suggestion? And he said, I wouldn't suggest you go to any of those. But he said, there's a church down the street when those people come out, they are happy.

But when these people come out of these three churches, they're not too happy. They're like they were when they went in. If I was you, sir, I would go down there and go to that one where they come out happy.

So when people come out of our happy house, they should be happy. We should have the blessing of God there. And not just the appearance, but actually the spirit of it. So when Jesus was there, people are going to go out happy, especially the guy that was healed.

Faith as a Family Influence

Attitudes, attitude of faith. Will our children in our home pick up the attitude of faith? Are they going to pick up worry and complaining and these different things? And it's hard sometimes when we got some difficult things that were going through because our kids are going to pick up our attitudes.

Do they see, oh, mom and dad have faith. And we have some really hard challenges sometimes. And we could worry about this and that. Years ago, our second born son, the one with the fish, we had some eye problems with our children, and he needed surgery on his eye to straighten it out.

And it was going to cost $5 ,000. So we set up the appointment, and we didn't have $5 ,000 or any way to pay that at that time. And so I think it was the day before I called him up and said, we're going to have to cancel this.

We don't have the money. And then the next day, I went off on a little short trip to somebody somewhere, and I come back and got in my van and went back to the house. And I found an envelope in our van with a cashier's check of $5 ,150.

I think it was. It was above. And I called him back up and I said, is that appointment still there? They said, well, yeah, it is. At that time, I said, we'll do it. We chose to trust God at that time.

Now we had another daughter. Her eyes are really bad, too. And we got to the it was a critical point. And the doctor said, wow, you got to do something now or it's not going to be correctable. And so we had to go ahead and do the surgery.

And it come out with a big bill. I think it was $3 ,600. And we had did something unusual for that doctor. If I got things right, time work. But we did something unusual. And I don't know if it was a little bit later or whatever when we come back.

And we had the bill 3 ,600, but we had given him a gift. And it happened to be Doctor's Appreciation Day. And I made an appeal to him. We learned about making appeals at that day. I said, Doctor, is there something you could do about this bill?

I can't even remember his name. Ended up, he had a brother down in our country where we were living. And he said, let me check on him. And he come back and he said, could you pay $1 ,000? Oh, yeah, we could do that just like that, $2 ,600.

We do those things by faith, God on earth's faith. Our children will see that. They'll catch that. You want to be a kid, you got to have faith. So we need to face our problems with faith and not fear.

This worry and coming up with solutions of ourself without checking with God and stuff, it'll influence our children. I know of one father who has a hobby, and he spends a lot of time on his hobby. He has several children.

And I often think, wow, how much time is he putting into this hobby that he could put into his children? Fathers, we have a hobby. It's called children. And mom needs some help and whatever. And it's easy to put our work in there where we just don't take time like we should.

I had one story one time that I'd read about, any of you ever played marbles? Fathers, when I was a kid, we played marbles down there. And we'd draw a circle in the dirt. And then we'd had a shooter or an error.

And I'd have my thumb wore off. And we didn't play for funsies. We played for keeps. You shoot, and if you hit that marble and it went out of the circle, some of you fathers, it was yours. So hopefully, you went home with more marbles.

And this mother got to the little kid and said, now, that's not right. You shouldn't be doing that. And that's just not right. You take your friend's marbles. That's the way we do it, mom. And then the little boy said, well, mom, you going to take back that vase you won at the bridge club?

I guess bridge is some kind of game. I don't know. Never played bridge. It's a card game or whatever. Well, mom, you got that. He knew that she had got that belt the same way he got the marbles. And so consistency.

Consistency Between Public Faith and Home Life

Let's talk about consistency. That one we should bang on a few times. That's a hard one. That's the hard one. A degree of firmness, sticking to the same principles, is what I have on consistency. Let's see if I got anything else.

In this area, consistency in the home is difficult. Just really will be difficult. Whenever Jesus came into a home, he was consistent to be a blessing. He was consistent to rebuke if it needed to be done.

He was just very consistent. There was a pastor that had a girl that had got saved, went to their church, and after a while, he decided to visit the home. And she was known to be a bubbly Christian and just would help wherever and often everything.

They were just really excited about this girl when she got saved. And so the pastor went to the home one time and visited there with the parents. And here's what the story come out, that she was a very bright Christian.

She had a lot of grace in her life. And her mom said, I'm so glad that she's got saved. And I'm so glad that she's going to church. But I am very sick, and I just wish we could see her around here a little bit more.

In other words, the consistency of her life was out, but not in the home, out helping others and everything, but not in the home. So consistency can be a challenging area in our life. And so if our Christianity doesn't work at home, it may not work.

And they come into him bringing one sick of the palsy, which was born of four. There was a testimony that they could always count on Jesus, if they had something. And they brought him to Jesus. They just brought him, and he healed him and helped him out.

I think Job was consistent. When the things happened in his life, what'd he do? He fell down and worshipped. That was his habit, to worship God. He'd say, naked I came into the world, and naked I'll go.

But he was consistent in that area of his life of worshipping God, covered his children with an offering and sacrifice in case they had not done something right. At church, our children see when we go to church, and they see our priorities.

They see that we can maybe get up at 4 or 5 in the morning to go hunting or fishing, but maybe not that consistent to get up and spend that time with God, whatever. There again, they catch what we do more than what we say.

To them, probably because of inconsistency, the world doesn't believe in Christ. We're professing Christians, talking but not living it like they should. There was my dad. He was French, 100 French, South Louisiana.

And half the family came from Nova Scotia, the Acadians, Acadian. And where they used the term Acadian, Acadian. And there was a story in France of a pastor. And this is sort of, does Jesus live in your home?

He went to visit this home. And he didn't stay long. He just asked this question of the wife, and then he left. And he said, does Christ live here? And then he left. And the husband come home a little bit later, and she said the pastor came.

Oh, what did he say? And she said, well, he just asked a question. Does Christ live here? And he said, what did you tell him? Did you tell him that we are respectable Christians? And she said, well, he didn't ask if we were respectable Christians.

He asked, does Christ live here? He said, well, did you tell him that we say our prayers? And she said, well, he didn't ask that. And he said, well, did you tell him we read our Bible? And she said, he didn't ask that.

And he asked, does Christ live here? Did you tell him that we're always at church? And she said, he didn't ask that. Does Christ live here? That question changed their lives. They realized that they had all these outward things, but Christ did not really live there in their home.

Availability and Obedience to God

To secure the blessing of God, he needs to be comfortable in our heart. Our motives and all these things that children pick up on. Let's talk about influence a little bit. Influence. Obviously, Jesus felt comfortable to come into this home.

He felt like he'd be welcome. He felt like it wouldn't be a big deal if they had people all packed in to the house and the roof tore up and the house made a mess. People are everywhere. But influence, influence.

Let's talk about that. I believe our home should be a place where children are happy. I've always tried, I didn't like fussing and fighting and bickering and that type of stuff. Boy, I'd come up right away.

Just like a church should always be a place where the influence of Christ is there and the spirit of love. We can't live with, I was sharing with somebody, with the pastor that was here last night. I don't know if he's here.

I don't have my glasses on today. But how we have to have in our church is a spirit of unity. Because that's going to be our influence that we're fighting or that we're happy that we work together. We've got issues, things we work through.

But it should be a place that is a happy place, it should be a safe place. A place that's clean, pure, a place to escape the world. Where people can come and feel comfortable there and to get some peace.

And so influence, because the world out there is always trying to influence people. It's just a mad world. And here's some things about the world where we need to really be careful. That we try to isolate our children from the world or keep them less like these, from getting into these things.

I was raised in a world. To be honest with you, I went to church three times a week, Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. But most of the rest of the time, it was the world. It was the world.

And I lived for the world. I lived for sports. Almost every sport that you could do down there, I did it. Water skiing, tennis, basketball, whatever. We didn't have soccer, and obviously we didn't have hockey down there.

You know, we had winter on Thursday. It was warm down there most of the time. But it was just sports. My world was like this. But here's the way my world was. It was worldly most of the time. Then I went to church.

And I didn't really get saved until I was probably almost 20. At 10, I went forward and was baptized, and I guess I'd prayed a prayer, but nothing changed. My heart was still in the world. My heart wasn't towards Christ.

And these things, these four things about the world. The world is always changing, but Christ is always the same. The world is always disappointing. That's why the worldly people got to go for more of this, more of this.

They get this entertainment, go to this movie, got to go to another one, got to go here and there. It never satisfies. But Jesus always satisfies. He's always the same. He never disappoints. And the world's always dying.

It's in the process of dying. It's a living death that the world. And the world's always fighting and always had these divisions and envy and gossip. If the world comes into the church, this is worldliness.

The envy, the divisions, the gossip, and all this stuff, our children pick up on this. And many of them just turn away from Christ because of the inconsistency and the influence is not there. I read something just a few weeks ago, a little bit on Marxism and how to get this philosophy of the devil put across to get people into it.

It's very intriguing. But it was figuring out the way to do it was to destroy the home, to get people into the socialism. And so this is what the devil, how to destroy the church, you just destroy the home and you get it done.

And so what the world, one of the things that, one of the major things of this, he said, he's had to get the moms out of the home and into the workforce. And that's worked. And it's weakened our homes.

And Christians get to the point too many times we can't do anything other than that. I'm grateful my mom stayed home, but it was a philosophy that entered into our country. And it's really greatly damaged us.

And a lot of girls, when they go to school now, out into these public schools, whatever, what are you going to be when you grow up? Well, I'm going to be a surgeon. I'm going to be an airplane mechanic, or I'm going to do this and that.

And, oh, I'm going to be a mom. What's wrong with you? The world has just about destroyed us. And when the prodigals out there in the world decided to go do his thing and spend all his inheritance or whatever, it was the memory of back home.

And he came to himself and recognized, he saw himself, that the blessing was back at home. The blessing was at home. We have some things that we have to wrestle with. It's not easy. It's not really easy.