What Are You Waiting For at Home?

No More Delay: What Are You Waiting For | Day 20

“But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” Joshua 24:15, NIV

Come on in this morning, because we are not leaving the house. This series has taken us through crowds, roads, and towns that would not listen, but today the room is smaller and far more familiar. It is the kitchen. It is the hallway outside a child's door. It is the drive home from somewhere ordinary.

When We Sit and When We Rise

Moses gave Israel instructions for exactly this kind of room. “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7, NIV). Notice what is missing from that instruction. There is no mention of a curriculum, a special hour set aside, or a program to enroll in. The teaching was meant to happen inside the ordinary shape of a day already being lived. Sitting. Walking. Lying down. Getting up. Nothing on that list required a plan we do not already have the materials for.

That is both convicting and freeing. We have quietly assumed that meaningful faith conversations at home require the right moment, the right words, and the right amount of preparation, and so we wait for all three to line up before we say anything at all. The delay we allow here rarely comes from a lack of love for the people under our own roof. It comes from a quiet assumption that there will always be another bedtime, another car ride, another ordinary evening to finally say what has been sitting on our hearts. Solomon warns against exactly that assumption. “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.” (Proverbs 27:1, NIV). We are not the ones who guarantee tomorrow's supper, let alone tomorrow's conversation.

None of this rests on our own consistency, which is a relief, because most of us can list the mornings we meant to pray with someone and did not. The Holy Spirit is the one who creates and sustains faith through the Word, not through our follow through. What is asked of us is simpler than we make it. Say something true about Jesus at the table tonight. Pray out loud in the car instead of only in our heads. Let today's ordinary room be the room where it finally gets said.

As for Me and My House

Joshua stood in front of the whole nation near the end of his life and did not leave the household's direction open for later discussion. “But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” (Joshua 24:15, NIV). Joshua could not believe on behalf of his children any more than we can believe on behalf of ours. What he could do, and what he did, was set the direction of his household plainly and publicly, today, rather than leaving it to be sorted out sometime after he was gone.

We see a household move the same direction generations later, in the middle of the night, with no time to plan anything. After an earthquake shook open a Philippian jail, a terrified guard asked Paul and Silas what he needed to do. “They replied, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.’ Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house.” (Acts 16:31-32, NIV). Notice that the word was spoken to everyone in that house, not only to the man who asked the question. Faith was never passed down to them secondhand through his belief. It reached each person the same way it reaches us, through the same gospel spoken plainly into the room they were standing in. What happened next did not wait for morning. “At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his household were baptized. The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God, he and his whole household.” (Acts 16:33-34, NIV). One night. A whole house. No committee, no calendar check, no waiting for a more convenient season.

That same promise had already been spoken plainly at Pentecost, and it still stands over our own households this morning. “Peter replied, ‘Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, for all whom the Lord our God will call.’” (Acts 2:38-39, NIV). That promise was never handed to a narrow list of the already qualified. It reaches out to everyone the gospel touches, which is why a called servant of the church stands ready to bring the water and the word of baptism to a child in our own family the same way Peter offered it that day, not as a reward for readiness but as God's own gift, freely given.

All of this rests entirely on Jesus Christ, who is the reason any household has ever had good news worth carrying home. He is the one whose finished work makes the promise true for a jailer's family in the middle of the night and for a family sitting down to supper this evening. He did not wait for the perfect household or the perfect parent before he went to the cross for every person under every roof. He already secured what our own faithfulness could never secure, and he is the one still speaking through whatever ordinary sentence we finally get around to saying at home.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank you for reaching my household long before I had the words ready to explain you well. Forgive me for the conversations I have postponed at my own table, thinking there would always be a better evening for them. Thank you for a promise that was never resting on my timing.

Holy Spirit, work through whatever plain sentence I manage to say today, in the car, at the table, at bedtime, and let it be enough because it carries you rather than my own polish. Bless the household you have placed me in, and give me the courage to say today what I have been saving for tomorrow. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

Whatever room you are sitting in this morning, that room already qualifies. You do not need a better one. Say the thing tonight that you have been meaning to say for months, and trust that the same promise which reached a frightened jailer at midnight is still reaching your own address this evening. Tomorrow this series comes to its final morning, and it closes with the one question this whole journey has been leading toward all along.

To God be the glory.

Pray, praise, and give thanks, for God is good and His mercy endures forever.

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