Much is made these days about getting things done under the banner of personal productivity. Bookstore shelves are filled with self-help titles on the topic. Common among those writings are encouragements to identify objectives and set clear, specific goals. Many say that is the single most important facet of preparing for success and without clear objectives and goals your chances for effectiveness and productivity are slim and you may be destined for aimless futility.

Well, what may be true of personal productivity is certainly true of the home. But instead of goal setting, for the Christian family, let’s instead call it vision – an idea of what the results of successful parenting could look like. It is the thing we will aim all our prayers and efforts at in relation to our home and family while we are parenting.

Let’s be clear here. This is not a suggestion to simply have a positive outlook or to use the power of visualization. Also, it is not a suggestion to aim at someone else’s fabricated standard of what the successful Christian home should be.

No, not at all - rather, this vision is one that is first established on a biblical foundation and then personalized by the God given complexion of a particular man and his particular wife and extending to their particular children – perhaps, ‘unique’ is a better word than ‘particular’. That vision is also influenced by the idea of a woman being a man’s help-meet. By implication, if God saw man as needing a helper then that must mean God saw man actively doing something wherein he needed help.

Husbands/fathers, a question for you here… What is the work you are about that is worthy of God supplying you a divinely appointed help-meet? What is your personal, practical, and effective purpose? I hope your answer goes well beyond “the pursuit of the American dream”!

The construction of a family is a holy and eternally significant occurrence – so terribly undervalued today. Perhaps that devaluation has developed because so little significance seems to come from homes, even Christian homes. If fathers were fixed on a clear objective, had a clear vision for what his home is all about, what it was formed for, and what it is doing - and not just any objective, but one that was god-centered and rooted in eternal worth and significance - then working as a harmonious family unit suddenly has a point beyond stopping the domestic madness or keeping the kids from growing up to fill our prisons.

The answer to the question, “what does a Christian home look like in today’s world”, will begin to materialize to parents with a vision that has purpose.

Tags: goals, home life, husbands and fathers, identity, purpose, uncertainty, vision, wives and moms