Household Prayer: Marriage, Households, and the battle of the cosmos

Brothers, I’m praying for our marriages. It’s St. Valentine’s and National Marriage Week. I always do a St. Valentine’s day devotional for family worship and this year as I see the continued battle against God’s design for sex, marriage, and households it brings new clarity to Valentine being martyred for defying an order by Emperor Claudius II not to allow marriages. The cosmic battle started early in creation and has continued since (Gen. 3:15). So I pray we understand the profound nature and purpose of our marriages and the armor needed to protect them (Eph. 5-6). May we be faithful to our marriages and call to build Godly households.

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”” Genesis 3:15 ESV https://bible.com/bible/59/gen.3.15.ESV

Build Godly households

“What is Christianity left with when we no longer live in households? I think that we are beginning to see it. If you’re a political or social liberal, you’re left with the de-gendered god of “social justice”; on the other hand, if you’re just the typical consumer of religious goods, Jesus is now your personal “life-coach” and success guru. What you don’t have in either case is a traditional household, or biblical Christianity.” The Household and the War for the Cosmos: Recovering a Christian Vision for the Family by C.R. Wiley https://a.co/h4hnotY

“We want to rebuild the walls and reset the gates of society. This must start from within. It must start in our own lives, and them move out to reform our households, and then the household of Fatih… We want to restore masculine piety: the duties we have to God and neighbor as men. Because as a man goes, so goes his household; as a household goes, so goes the Church; and as the Church goes, so goes society…”

“God made man to establish His own presence and rule in the physical realm. To bring heaven to earth through His living image. Man and woman… are united in the bond of marriage, and this bond exists to establish a community that builds upon itself… to produce households… households: the total sum of a husband and wife’s fruitful work, bound together by covenant love… ‘The household is the realm that is created around the family’…”

“Culture begins and emanates from the household. It is where the next generation of men is shaped and trained, until they leave their father and mother, join themselves to a wife, and start the process anew. It is through households that dominion is exercised… A man, his wife, and their grown children are a force to be reckoned with – especially as those children in turn build households that fit together into his, establishing an extended house of considerable resource, influence, and power.” 

“As households multiply like this, cities are formed. Soon the relationships of this network of households must be managed and protected, and so the natural role of the patriarch is extended into the office of the magistrate; civil government is established. Cities form alliances with other cities and form states. States covenant with other states and form nations. Thus it is that commonwealths, kingdoms, and even great empires spring forth…”

It’s good to be a man: A handbook for Godly masculinity by Michael Foster and Dominic Bnonn Tennant https://canonpress.com/products/its-good-to-be-a-man/ or https://smile.amazon.com/Its-Good-Be-Man-Masculinity-ebook/dp/B09HLB8GS3/