Your Home Is An EmbassySample

Welcome Well Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.  -2 Corinthians 5:20 Think of your home as an embassy, both for your family and for others. An embassy is a tiny piece of the home country on foreign soil.   When your children come home from school, they are not coming to your home but to the embassy of the King whose rule extends from your lives to the dwelling He has provided for you. When you and your husband return home from work, your embassy is waiting for you to remind you of your true Home that is not on this earth! Paul exhorts us to be ambassadors for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20)—to live in such a way that those who don’t know God will want to know Him by our lives. That isn’t just a command for when you’re in the workplace or out running errands. It’s a definition of who God has designed us to be day in and day out.  Early church Christians felt so strongly about the body of Christ and our homes as a place of belonging that the Benedict of Narcissi made rules about the way visitors to the monastery would be greeted. A porter stood guard at the door at all time—even sleeping nearby—so that when someone knocked, the porter could get to the door as fast as he could to greet the waiting guest. Every visitor was to be greeted in a way that displayed to him the gentleness of the reverence of God and the warmth of God’s love: a welcome that declared the visitor a gift from God. The porter told every visitor, “We are so grateful God has brought you to us.” The monks knew that the way we answer the door is the way we deal with the world. We need to enthusiastically and sincerely welcome guests. Walking through your home’s threshold, any guest, even your family, should feel, “You’re in the household of God, made up of ordinary people who have been transformed by Jesus Christ.” If our homes are empowered by God, then what we use them for will honor Christ.  Our homes will be open places of refuge to our families, neighborhoods, and communities.