Working at Home for the Glory of God Part 1

2 Cor 5:9Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him.

What we do in this life is based on what our goal or aim in life is. We make choices in life. Either we choose to please ourselves and live with self on the throne or we choose to please God and live with Christ on the throne. Ultimately, if we choose to live for self, life will be hard and we really won’t be happy. But if we choose to die to self and live for Christ we will be truly happy.  When we walk in the counsel of His word, we are blessed.  A wasted life is one in which we live for ourselves. I have made it my goal and aim to please God. That means dying to self because life isn’t about me. It is about Christ. My goal is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. I agree with Caroline Mahaney who said, “My goal as a mother is that my children would treasure Christ and live passionately for His glory. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

 My ultimate goal is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. By choosing to stay at home with my children I am glorifying God and enjoying Him. I feel it is the best way to train up my children in the fear and admonition of the Lord and to love my husband and my children and to be a good worker at home doing good to my husband. It is my joy and my delight to die to myself and serve my family so that they may know and love Christ. Unfortunately many women have been deceived into thinking that staying at home is drudgery and a waste and that a career outside the home, submitting to another man instead of their own husband is somehow more glamorous!  They also believe the lie that making money outside the home makes you more valuable than doing a hard job for no pay in the home. They even think that someone who does the same type of job for pay outside the home is suddenly more valuable than a mother who serves her husband and children in the home just because she earns money for doing the same thing for some one else’s children while hers are in day care. Mathew Henry so aptly words what many women think,

“Those whose home is their prison, it is to be feared, feel that their chastity is their fetters.”

Satan has blinded the eyes of so many. God has called women to be creative, godly women whose dominion is the home. Scripture supports that. TV, movies, media etc. distorts that. I once believed all those lies and was outraged at the thought of staying home with my children! I was so blind! I am so very grateful to the Lord for picking me up out of the pit, saving me and setting my feet on solid ground and turning my life around to point to Him and instead of myself. Life is too short to live for me. Children grow up way too fast for me to spend their childhood off pursuing my career instead of loving them and teaching and training them. It is the responsibility of the parents to train and teach their children. It is not the daycare’s or the government’s job. Life is not about me. Some people say that women stay home just to be able to be lazy and do nothing while their husband does all the ‘hard’ work! That is a lie! Women who want to stay at home so they can just be lazy are just plain lazy people who will be lazy in anything they do. They need to repent of laziness just like anyone else who is lazy on their job! It is an interesting fact, as Dr. Leonard Sax points out in his book, Boys Adrift, that it is the men in our society who are being lazy and not working and not being responsible. In fact even those who are calling themselves a stay-at-home -Dad, often don’t do laundry or cook or care for the children. Instead many women work hard outside the home and pay a nanny to take care of her children, a housekeeper to clean her house and cook her meals. Then she comes home to find her husband playing video games and not having done any work at home. Those who can’t afford a cook, not only work hard outside the home but come home to all the housework and taking care of the children and cooking the meals etc. Many women are just enabling their husbands to continue to be irresponsible by doing his job for him as well as theirs.  I think many men would step up to the plate if their wives let them, but that is another topic.  Back to motherhood and mom’s who choose to stay home. Motherhood is not for the lazy! It is not for the selfish! Working at home loving my children and my husband, teaching and training my children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, managing the home and serving others, is not drudgery. It is not a prison. It is not laziness. It is far from boring. But it is death. It is a death to self that brings forth beautiful life. It is a freedom to live joyfully serving others and glorifying God.