There are many books, articles, and blogs providing direction on how to become a spiritual leader in your home. These writings come at this topic from many perspectives and make it evident that the all the efforts to be obedient to God and to emulate His character and the instruction provided to us through His word are valid efforts to becoming a more effective spiritual leader in our home, church and community. For this blog, I am sharing my experience and one simple tool that I have used to help me in leading my family and believe can help you.
Two men shared with me in the last week that they really want to be the spiritual leader in their family, but don’t know what that looks like or how to move forward. In both conversations these men had strong wives that had assumed a big role in leading their family and the men were struggling to discover what their role should be, what actions can they take, and how they can compliment the work of their wives. Recognizing that there are innumerable situations and actions we can discuss, I am offering two simple solutions to start with in your journey to determine what it means for you to lead in your family.
Know where you are going and what you believe. To this effort I contend that you must have a vision or picture of what success looks like to you and must have nailed down your core beliefs and values to guide you and your family. Write them down. Describe the characteristics that you wish to develop and what that will look like in your family. Write down what you believe regarding the primary relationships we share in life. (God, ourselves – physical, spiritual, and mental, relationship to other people, and material things) These are the non-negotiable truths and boundaries that you can use to guide decisions for you and your family. When written down these become a standard or template for making good choices in your day to day life. How do I regard the authority of Gods word and how does that impact my day to day decisions? What activities do I pursue? What movies do I watch? Who do I keep as friends? In my book and other articles on this blog I go into detail of how to develop a vision, mission and core values for your family and encourage you to read these. Read Deuteronomy 6: 1-9
Put it into practice – Simply put, as the leader of your family, the greatest action you can take is to live these out in front of your family. Pursue the path toward your vision by making choices in your daily life that follows your core beliefs. This is the greatest single thing you can do to be an effective leader in your family. Read Matthew 22: 34 – 40
I visited with one of the two men referred to at the beginning of this article yesterday and was encouraged to share in his excitement to know a couple simple actions he can take to start the journey to being the spiritual leader in his home. Know where you are going, know what you believe, write it down and put it on your refrigerator for all to see, and put it into practice in your life. As with Jesus’ instruction that loving God and loving others are the two great commandments and on these two commandments depend the whole law. Follow these two suggestions and the rest of the characteristics of being a spiritual leader will follow.
