07 Establishing Our Home in the Lord

We didn’t realize how much of our home we had surrendered to noise until the Lord began to open our eyes…

Paul and Shelby, servants of Jesus Christ, establishing a home under His lordship.

To all who desire to build their homes on the rock of Christ — grace to you, and peace.

After the Lord started refining us in the earliest days of our marriage, He began shaping the atmosphere of our home. Scripture says, “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Ps. 127:1).

We learned quickly that the culture of a home is built one choice, one habit, one agreement at a time.

Because we were together constantly — working from home, raising children, homeschooling — sanctification came quickly. Weaknesses surfaced fast. Grace was needed daily. And every victory, no matter how small, became part of the foundation the Lord was laying.

We discovered that the spiritual environment of a home is not neutral. Anything we welcomed into our home that did not renew our minds toward God’s truth was quietly drawing us away from it.

It was in those days the Holy Spirit began whispering, “Abide in Me.”

It was an invitation to seek Him with our whole heart.

We began reordering our lives with a single-minded pursuit of Him. Some days this meant prayer and Scripture in the morning. Other days it meant listening to the Word while holding a newborn. Some days it meant crying out to God in exhaustion and asking Him to fill in the gaps where we were weak.

But then we noticed a piercing contradiction:

We would spend time in the Word… and then turn around and fill our minds with movies, music, and social media that celebrated sin, normalized rebellion, exalted fear, or treated sickness as identity.

We were renewing our minds with one hand — and un-renewing them with the other.

Around 2020–2021, it felt as though the Lord allowed a veil to be lifted. We became more aware of the spiritual atmosphere around us — shaped either by the peace of Christ or the subtle influence of the enemy through fear, distraction, and agreement (cf. Eph. 6:12). What once blended into the background suddenly became clear.

The Lord showed us that seemingly small habits can quietly steer the direction of an entire life:

• What you dwell on forms your desires.
• What you believe becomes what you practice.
• What you practice shapes who you become.

Scripture commands us to “set our minds on things above” (Col. 3:2). When we think upon the things of God, we begin to reflect the things of God. When we meditate on righteousness, righteousness is formed in us. But when we entertain sin, rehearse fear, or dwell on darkness, those things take root in the heart.

James warns that “the double-minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8).

We realized that if we claimed to trust God yet entertained fear in our thoughts, speech, or actions, we were walking in double-mindedness. If we proclaimed faith yet consumed what fed unbelief, our hearts were divided.

And Scripture is plain: “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6).

Faith cannot flourish in a divided mind.

These years became a quiet construction phase — foundations laid slowly, imperfectly, faithfully. We did not know it then, but the Lord was preparing us for everything that would come next: for the Word to engulf our lives, for deliverance to become real, for healing to break in, and for the Holy Spirit to become our daily bread.

God-willing, we will write again soon.