Every home has a culture, whether anyone sat down and decided on it or not. If you want to know how to build a godly home, the end of Joshua's life gives you three decisions: remember what the Lord has done, remove the idols among you, and refuse to go back. The question is not whether your home has a culture. The question is who is building it.
The Decision to Create and Protect Your Home's Culture
How do you make a decision to create and protect a God-fearing, God-honoring, and God-following culture in your home? Joshua faces that question with an entire nation. The whole of Joshua 23 and most of Joshua 24 is Joshua reminding the people of what the Lord has done for them, and then asking them to decide who they will serve. Three things stand out in that passage, and each one lands directly on the kind of home you are building.
Remember What the Lord Has Done
In Joshua 24:17-18, the passage recounts everything the Lord had done. He was the One who rescued them. He performed miracles. He preserved them. He drove out their enemies. The first thing you can do is to remember what the Lord has done for you.
So what do you need to rehearse in your home regularly? What are the stories of the faithfulness of God that you need to tell your kids? What battles has He won in your family? What provisions has He made for you? What significance has the gospel made in your life and in the lives of your family members? Those stories have to be told often if they are going to permeate the culture of your home.
When you remember well what Jesus has done, worshiping Him becomes easy. You will come into the sanctuary, wherever you worship, and it will not be difficult at all to engage in the songs, whether they are old or new, familiar or unfamiliar, because your mind will already be set on all that God has done. When we remember well, we worship well. It is a statement of fact.
You already know how this works between people. If I walked into your home and recounted something you had done for me, something shifts. I have a love and an affirmation for that person because I remember something good that happened out of our relationship, and when that happens, my heart has no choice but to respond. It is no different with God.
Israel, though, is a lot like us. We tend to forget yesterday's faithfulness when we are facing today's challenges. It is a natural human tendency, and it happens to me all the time. If I am going to remind myself in the trials that He is good and that He is with me, the easiest way to do that is to remind myself of what He has already done.
How Do You Help Your Family Remember God's Faithfulness?
Here are three practical ways you and your family can remember all that the Lord has done in your lives.
The first is to build an altar. By that I do not mean putting stones in the middle of your living room, although you certainly could. In my in-laws' home there is something like this, and I had almost stopped noticing it. My father in law passed away this year, and when I went back to visit recently, I looked up above one of their entryway doors and saw a shelf that has been sitting there for years. It holds all of the accolades from my father in law's military career. I thought, I wonder if we could do that, but in a more intentional way with the things of God. A shelf, a wall, or a special place in your home filled with reminders, little trinkets, or stories, whatever would jog your memory about what God has done. Then you take your kids back to it often and say, you might not remember this, but let me tell you a story. We have to rehearse these things.
The second is to create celebrations for spiritual anniversaries. We are really good at celebrating birthdays, but what about days of salvation? What about days of baptism? What about answered prayers or major spiritual milestones? Are those on your calendar, rather than just National Dog Day showing up on social media? Imagine what it would look like if you created a culture of remembrance around spiritual milestones.
The third is something friends of ours do, and I love it. They keep a God did it jar in a central location in their home, with a pen and some paper sitting right next to it. Whenever something happens that reminds them of God's goodness and His faithfulness, they write it down, fold it up, and put it in the jar. Then when a holiday like Thanksgiving comes around, they pull a few of those out and say, let us look at what God has done for our family this year.
Those are just suggestions, but you get the idea. Be intentional. If you do not intentionally remember, you will eventually forget. We are not only meant to think about what God could do in the future. We need to rehearse and remind ourselves of what God has already done.
Remove the Idols and Turn to the Lord
The second thing is to remove your idols and turn to the Lord. In Joshua 24:23, Joshua tells the people that they are witnesses to what they have said, and then he tells them to destroy the idols among them and turn their hearts to the Lord.
So what are the things your family culture tells you are idols in your home? Be honest here. An idol is anything that pulls you away from the relationship that God desires to have with you. It is anything that takes the place God should occupy in my heart.
What Counts as an Idol in a Christian Home?
Consider a few. Sports. If you prioritize watching, coaching, or even playing sports above being in God's presence and being with God's people, you might want to reevaluate that decision. Money. If your security comes simply from what you accumulate rather than from the God who provides everything, it might be creeping onto the altar of your heart. Technology. If your phone gets more attention than God or the people sitting right in front of you, you might have some work to do. Success. If my identity is wrapped up in what I accomplish rather than in who I am as a son of the Most High God, I have some issues to work through. Control. When I trust my ability to manage every situation more than I trust the sovereignty of God in that situation, something has shifted.
Do you see how subtle idols are? The enemy uses those things. He uses our own very good, God-given abilities to convince us that we do not need God, in the same way he did with Eve in the garden. That is when idolatry takes place in our life.
Notice what Joshua says once the people make their commitment. He does not say to move the idols off to the side. He does not say to put them up on a shelf. He says to destroy them, damage them, and get rid of them.
This one stings a little. I identify with all of those on some level personally, because it is too easy to accept what culture calls a standard and not be concerned about God's standard at all. If that is you today, hear no judgment in this at all. It is an invitation from God. Would you repent of those things, destroy them, and turn your face in His direction, so that you can effectively disciple those in your home?
Once You Decide, Don't Go Back
Finally, in Joshua 24:27, Joshua tells them not to go back. He made a covenant and recorded these things in the book, and as a reminder of their agreement, he took a huge stone and rolled it beneath the tree. That stone would be the witness. It had heard everything, and it would testify against them if they went back on their word to God. Once you make these decisions, do not turn back.
This one is tough, too, because I admittedly turn back on almost a weekly basis to some form of idolatry in my life. Even as I write this, I know I have personal work to do. My selfishness and my pride. I listen to my own voice rather than the voice of God in certain areas, and it takes me to places I do not want to go.
Here is what I keep coming back to: when we return to our old ways, our sinful pleasures, and our old thought patterns, the culture of our home fails to honor the Lord and becomes more of an obstacle to honoring God than an instrument in honoring and worshiping Him.
Who Does Your Home Serve?
What is the culture of your home? Examine it. Be honest about it. Remember everything that the Lord has done for you, and then remind yourself who you really want to serve. Do you want to serve this culture, or do you want to serve God?
Paul puts the question plainly: "Am I trying to win the approval of man or of God? If I am trying to win the approval of man, I can no longer be a servant of Christ" (Galatians 1:10). God is going to ask you to do things that run counter to what the culture asks of you, and the question is whether you have built a home that responds to Him because of who He is and what He has done.
Once you have made the determination, the way the people did, that this is who we are going to serve, then go remove the idols, anything that stands in the way, anything that takes the place of Him in your heart. It is time to destroy it and get rid of it. That is how you build a godly home. And once you make that call, do not go back.
