Passionate Homemaking

I have been study­ing the book of Acts lately, and I have been struck by the empha­sis on the growth of the early church and how it labored together result­ing in a flour­ish­ing move­ment of Christ through­out Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. How was this taking place? How were they living out the gospel in their lives?

Acts 2:41-46
“So then, those who had received his word were bap­tized; and that day there were added about three thou­sand souls. They were con­tin­u­ally devot­ing them­selves to the apos­tles teach­ing and to fel­low­ship, to the break­ing of bread and to prayer…[they] had all things in common…shar­ing them with all, as anyone might have need. Day by dad con­tin­u­ing with one mind in the temple, break­ing bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with glad­ness and sin­cer­ity of heart.”

Five things that I high­lighted above stood out to me that I was medi­at­ing upon this pas­sage. How can we walk in the exam­ple of the early Christians?

1. Devot­ing our­selves to the apostles’ teaching

The early Chris­tians lis­tened dili­gently and heeded the teach­ing of the Scrip­tures. They were eager to grow in their under­stand­ing of the truth. They applied their hearts to it, seek­ing to apply its truth into their own lives. They did not limit the hear­ing of the Word to one day a week, but the church was flour­ish­ing because they daily were dwelling in the Word and hear­ing it. How can we apply this today within our own homes as wives and mothers?

- Daily devo­tions
The feed­ing and nour­ish­ing of our souls is of first impor­tance as we plan each day. Being a wife and mother can be a weighty and chal­leng­ing task. Skip­ping out on your devo­tions because of your lengthy list of “to-do’s” for the day is not the answer. Sit­ting with Mary at the feet of Jesus is the key to be renewed in our minds and be strength­ened to ful­fill the duties of the day. Martha was dis­tracted and busy with other things, although they were impor­tant, they can come after sit­ting at Jesus’ feet. Whether it be for 5 min­utes or 30 minutes…the fact that you take that pur­pose­ful time to spend in the Word, the smoother and more effec­tive you will be through­out your day. Fill up your tank daily!

Resource: I have found this Bible read­ing plan an excel­lent resource for just encour­ag­ing you to read for 5 min­utes, 1 chap­ter a day and get through the whole New Tes­ta­ment in a year. Check it out here. This does not of course have to limit you…but if you are lack­ing in this dis­ci­pline, it might help give you a little plan to get started.

-Listen to ser­mons
I have found it so ben­e­fi­cial to listen to a sermon a day while I do my kitchen cleanup, dinner prepa­ra­tions, house­clean­ing, etc. Now it doesn’t always fit in so easily, but that is my goal. I have sub­scribed to a few dif­fer­ent sermon pod­casts through i-tunes, such as ser­mons from Covenant Life Church, Desir­ing God, Mars Hill Church. Each week they come out with a new sermon that uploads to my pod­cast sec­tion. I can either down­load these to my i-pod (which is cur­rently under the weather ;( ) , or I just listen from my com­puter. I love it! It is so edi­fy­ing to my soul. It’s like I am daily fill­ing myself with the apostles’ teach­ing, just in a more con­tem­po­rary manner.

Points 2-5 to come…