I’ve been thinking quite a bit about a conversation I had over Christmas. Some friends and I were discussing behavior and habits and why we often react to certain situations in certain ways. A guy in the group was explaining that he had issues with a particular family member. When pressed on the nature of his problem and why he couldn’t treat this family member with respect, he said, “But you don’t see the ‘home face’ that I see at home when no one else is there”. That sort of hit me as an interesting way to explain his problem. He was pointing a finger towards this person’s faults, yet he was also pointing out that people are not always whom they seem to be to the outside world.

Since that day, I’ve been spinning that phrase around in my head and wondering just what sort of ‘home face’ I have and what the family members in my household would say about my countenance and presence when I’m at home. I think every spiritual leader of a household needs to reflect on and recognize with humility the influence they have over the home, not only through their own actions, but also through their countenance, presence, attitude and demeanor. The effects of this are far reaching, as you might imagine. How is my ‘home face’ when I arise in the morning? Is it set on Christ or on the pains of the day? Does my family see my face in the morning? As I come home into my house after a day’s work where God has provided, do I see it that way and does my face look that way? Or rather, is my face and spirit downcast because of my perceived misery in my cushy job?

How is my face to the outside world? Meeting and greeting friends, entertaining, working, going to church, what do those people see? Do they see a whitewashed tomb? Something that is white and clean and perfect on the outside and yet dead and decaying on the inside? When I come home and things have been “rough” at work (I seriously doubt sometimes that the majority of us here in America know what ‘rough’ really means) do my children see a man with a face defeated or a face of a man whose hope is in Christ Jesus who died to satisfy God’s wrath set aside for my sin?

I’m ashamed that there are far too few times I am that last man described. But sometimes I am worse, because the initial greeting is joyful and jovial, but moments go by and sometimes things darken as I think about the things ahead and they overwhelm my thoughts or take me down because I have taken my eyes off my Savior and put them on things of less value or less importance and essentially made them into something to fear or worry about.

As parents, we are always teaching, intentionally or unintentionally. Our children are always watching us, looking to us, reflecting us. You hear it in their speech, in their play, in their joy, in their anger. Throughout the Bible we are called to teach and bring up our children and to impart to them the things of God. We see this in Deuteronomy 6, Psalm 78, and in Jesus as He warns against anyone hindering a child in coming to Him. We are called to teach them to put their hope in Him and His work and His salvation. And yet, if that is not where OUR hope is, they will see right through it. Then unknowingly they will be tempted to follow that which they see and not that which we meant for them to learn from our active teachings. We tend to think about the ways that we are actively teaching our children, whether it be Bible knowledge, Godly character, Bible memorization, prayer, praise, or worship. But we fail to see that we are always teaching because they are always watching. It is not we who will save our children, for only God can do that, but we are a vessel of Grace that the Lord uses to teach and bring our children to Himself. This is an incredible miracle; that He would welcome broken sinners into His work.

Another thought on the ‘home face’ we have in our households that only our families see: For those of us with spouses, how is our ‘home face’ to them? And for those of us with both spouses and children, think how much impact and influence we possess in our times at home. For our actions and countenance at home with our spouses and our children sends waves into the future. The way that I treat my wife at home is impacting how my daughters will view men that they might consider for a husband. Likewise, the way that I love and cherish my wife (or not) is shaping the way that my son will look at and treat women and it will impact how he acts in his marriage and how he treats his wife. And the way that I treat my daughter or son at home is shaping how they will then go forward into the future and treat their own children. Will our children repeat a cycle of parenting in relational sin or will they break a cycle of messed up parenting by God’s grace? We, as parent, are a piece of what God uses to impart that grace.
The greatest two commandments, we are told by Jesus in Matthew 22:37-39, is,

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

I contend, here, that our closest neighbor would be our immediate family, and the first of those, our spouse, and then our children. They do not mysteriously sit outside this commandment as people we can mistreat or withhold grace from. We must actively love them as we would love ourselves. But without first truly loving God, fearing God, and hoping in God and the work that Christ accomplished on the Cross, we will have nothing but a downcast ‘home-face’ and a lack of hope with which to lead our family. We must constantly return, again and again, reminding ourselves that our hope is in Christ and His work and not ourselves and not in the things of this world. Then with that knowledge and our face turned towards heaven, we can share that same hope with our family. May God have mercy and grace on our homes and may He shine through our faces.