A four-part blog series
Making Waves: 4 Keys to Building a Kingdom Culture in Your Home
Last fall, my husband and I went to Hawaii for our 15th Anniversary. We were told by friends how big the waves are there, and we were so excited to see these epic waves. At first, we weren’t seeing big waves at all. This was a little bit disappointing at first. The truth is that big waves don’t start as huge 100 feet waves. They start small and then they grow. This is also true in our families. We can’t expect to start a massive wave right away. We have to be willing to be in it for the long haul. We must commit to consistently make small waves and trust that God will turn them into larger ones. Kingdom culture is opposite of what our culture pushes and says is important.
Discipleship is a journey of spiritual transformation. Spiritual transformation is different from behavior modification in that it happens from the inside out. As Niebuhr himself said, “Belief in him (God) and loyalty to his cause involves men in the double movement from world to God and from God to world.”[1]
Kingdom culture is therefore biblical and godly beliefs, languages, habits, relationships, and values. It is an ideal, a godly pursuit for the Christian and the Christian family to strive to cultivate a spiritual ecosystem within the home conducive to spiritual connection. Spiritual connection leads to spiritual transformation. At least that is how Jesus describes it in John 15.5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
What makes up a kingdom culture “ecosystem”? Similar to how therapists and psychologists anchor all emotions to six basic/primary emotions (fear, sadness, disgust, happiness, surprise, and anger), I will attempt to anchor the basic aspects of kingdom culture to adoption, grace and truth, worship and hope for eternity.
- Adoption.
Kingdom culture is anchored in the reality that we were once strangers (Col. 1.21), alienated by our sin (Eph. 4.18), but God in His great mercy while we were still sinners (Rom. 5.8) gave His son as a redeeming sacrifice so that we could be made sons and daughters of God (Rom. 8.14-15; John 1.12). The first anchor of kingdom culture is adoption. Every human is made in God’s image, but sin separates us from being called God’s sons and daughters. Only by faith in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus do we become the sons and daughters of God.
A culture of adoption in the home, and in the church, is built on the foundation of God’s unconditional love. Consistent behaviors of unconditional love regardless of a child’s actions is vital to building a kingdom culture within the family. If a child feels shamed or controlled into loving God or doing the right thing, the child will ultimately suffer in their connection with God. To instill this culture of adoption, parents must first experience then embody adoption. The first and greatest understanding for a mother and father is that they become sons and daughters of God themselves. Without first experiencing spiritual adoption, a parent cannot fully embody or model it to their children.
This spiritually adopted reality then shapes the entire focus of raising a child. Yes, we hope our children are well-adjusted, well-rounded, and well-prepared for life as an adult. However, the primary responsibility of Christian parents is to embody, nurture, and empower our children with a genuine faith and relationship with their heavenly Father that will last into eternity.[2]
Embodiment is unconditional love received from God then modeled through consistent unconditional love over a child’s life. Embodiment undergirds nurture. Nurture of a child’s own faith and understanding of God’s unconditional love freely given to them. Nurture, of course, daily intersects with embodiment. Nurture will look less like “pouring into them” and more like encouraging, comforting, and “offering hope.”[3]
This was the essence of kingdom culture that Paul saw translating from the home in 1 Thessalonians 2:11-12 “For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children,encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.” Embodiment and nurturing ultimately leads to empowerment. A child that moves from adolescence into early adulthood with a personal understanding of their own faith, a sense of their purpose and calling, and their inclusion in God’s global eternal family is empowered to live out the great mission story of God’s redemptive purposes in the world.
- Grace and Truth
The second foundational aspect to a kingdom culture within the home are really two seen together, grace and truth. In recent years there have been some who have sought to pit grace and truth against one another. This is mainly a response to what some have called the “hyper-grace movement.” A belief that some espouse abuses the grace of God, of which Paul strongly states is a great misuse of God’s grace, “Shall we continue sinning so that grace may abound? Of course not!” (Romans 6:1-2). This reality in some circles has caused some to believe that grace and truth are opposites; they are not even close to opposites, though.
Grace and truth are not pitted against one another – they are working hand in hand to set the sinner free. Grace and truth are more of a paradox as Randy Alcorn explains, “Grace and truth aren’t really contradictory. Jesus didn’t switch on truth, then turn it off so He could switch on grace. Both are permanently switched on in Jesus. Both should be switched on in us.”[4] This beautiful and indispensable paradox must be held with deep commitment if our families are to reflect God’s kingdom because void of either grace or truth spiritual disintegration happens quickly.
Alcorn continues, “Truth without grace breeds a self-righteous legalism that poisons the church and pushes the world from Christ. Grace without truth breeds moral indifference and keeps people from seeing their need for Christ.” This paradoxical reality is carried home in many moments of discipline and correction like my parents did for me when I lied and said I was staying at a friend’s house and stayed out all night at a party.
Just as God called Adam to the carpet to answer for his disobedience, mom and dad did with me. I was faced with the truth of my sin and deception, corrected yet loved with grace that I frankly did not deserve given my rebellion. One of the incredible revelations of recent years to me regarding the garden of Eden was the presence of God’s grace in kicking Adam and Eve out of the garden. What actually appears to be a part of the consequences is actually a part of God’s mercy and grace. If God had let them stay in the garden they would have stayed in their fallen state for eternity. Grace is present in truth delivered, and truth is holding grace upright the entire way. The paradoxical relationship of these two make up an essential part of a kingdom culture in the home.
- Worship.
A third aspect of kingdom culture is the orientation and purpose of worship within the life of the family. A family oriented around rhythms and practices of worship will be a family that honors God and remains set apart from the world. Most families within the culture will find themselves oriented around activities, hobbies, performance, and like rivers and streams, they flow in the path of least resistance. Yet a family with an established kingdom culture will orient themselves around worship. They are anchored in worship as they fellowship in regular gathering and breaking bread with other believers.
Generosity and acts of service will flow regularly from the home as a natural response to their love of God. Their home will be marked by a lifestyle of prayer and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Worship isn’t simply habits and practices, though, it encompasses our entire life as Paul states in Romans 12:1 (ESV). “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Worship is both foundational and formational for the individual and for the family.
- Hope of Eternity
The fourth and final aspect of a kingdom culture within the family is the hope of eternity.
It should not come as a surprise that hope is an essential anchor of the spiritual ecosystem for the Christian family for the entire Gospel leads to the hope found in the empty tomb and the promise of a new heavens and new earth in the age to come. Hope abides in the home through faith in the face of difficulty, resilience against the waves of hopelessness, and joy in the midst of trials.
Hope for eternity isn’t a silver lining for the family of God to endure until we eject but as N.T. Wright puts it, “the anticipation of the time when God will fill the earth with his glory, transform the old heavens and earth into the new, and raise his children from the dead to populate and rule over the redeemed world he has made.”[5] Hope for eternity is about participation in the mission of God today and anticipation for our reign over the redeemed creation.
Furthermore, hope sets the family on course for daily renewal in recognition that something greater is happening in the course of time than work, play, and all that meets the eye. The apostle Paul said, “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18 ESV). This reality changes the culture of a home.
The Christian family endures the pressures and sees the eternal fruit that the pressing produces, and therefore has hope. Additionally, a family fixed on eternity won’t get bogged down in the temporary struggles of everyday life. They will feel them and endure them all the same but will not be bogged down by them. A family with a kingdom culture anchored in hope fixes their eyes on Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2).
Jesus is of course the reason for our hope. “We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain,where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek” (Hebrews 6.19-20 ESV). The author of Hebrews means to remind us that our hope is anchored in Christ Himself. The reality of the world we live in, as we surveyed briefly in the previous section, can easily overwhelm, exhaust, and lead parents and children alike to despair. The Christian family with a robust and mature kingdom culture however does not lose hope. They face the future with confident expectation for a hopeful end because the God who promised is faithful. “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful” (Hebrews 10.23 NIV).
Let’s make waves in our homes that change our communities, our schools, our friends.
[1] Niebuhr, Christ and Culture, 29.
[2] Clark, Adoptive Church, 38.
[3] Clark, 39.
[4] Alcorn, The Grace and Truth Paradox, 17-18.
[5] Wright, N.T, Surprised by Hope, 179.
Written by: Kyle and Taran Nelson. Kyle and Taran pastor in Jacksonville, FL with their three children.
