Good morning my dears,
I recently read this article on the CBN. It resonated with me, both as an interior designer, and as a Christian wife and homemaker.
Designing for the King: Bringing Christ into the Home
by
Deana Murphey
"What do you generally think of when hearing interior design? If you’re like most people, you think of decorating a space and making an environment beautiful. More importantly, interior design carries the responsibility for everyone’s emotional and spiritual well–being. I see a real need to not only make our places of habitation functional and beautiful, but also to bring order to the environment so that it can be the safest, happiest, and most fulfilling environment we know.
Imagine living in the same environment year after year without adapting it to personal lifestyle changes, desires, needs, comforts, growths, or expansions. Imagine designing only to fulfill your selfish motives. Imagine not engaging in the design decisions of your home. Imagine your home void of family unity and deprived of peace and safety. Imagine expecting a spiritual foundation in the home while only living and designing by the world’s standards. Imagine your home environment as one of chaos, fussing, and arguing with no signs of peace.
Chaos? But I’m a Christian!
Yet this is occurring in Christian homes today. A beautifully designed living or working environment is not necessarily an orderly or peaceful place. A simple solution may seem to be designing your environments in the latest trends; rearranging some pieces; making upgrades; purchasing new furnishings, big screen TVs, and toys; changing the colors; copying the designs of someone else; replicating a design from TV or a magazine; or perhaps removing a wall to expand a space. Then your new upgrades may temporarily appear to reorder the fragments of your emotional life. But without inner restructuring, you will, over time, become discouraged with the further likelihood of being frustrated and stressed, which, in the end, leads to chaos.
Chaos is an appalling, unsettling word, creating feelings of confusion, disorder, disarray, turmoil, and pandemonium. No one wishes to be associated with such a word, let alone connect it with your living spaces. Chaos suggests designs that disconnect you from your lifestyle, history, memories, values, personal tastes, disciplines, social needs, godly desires, and God. Chaos connects you to selfishness and leads you into deception. You then become void of peace, wholeness, individuality, morals, and celebration of self. You live in chaos as a result of the way you think, which results from what you have been exposed to. You must change this because it robs you of the values of life. It opens the door to fear, and fear is a direct weapon the devil uses to deceive and steal from you.
The Christian Home
Your home environment should reflect the same nature and genius of God. It should embrace order and life. And it is much more than just having everything neatly placed, put away, or organized. Many people think of chaos as untamed space filled with clutter that can alter the crisp composition of a design. But there’s chaos in people’s homes, whether it’s visual, atmospheric, audible, physical, or environmental, simply because of the way the world system is set up. But if you are a born-again child of God, though you are in this world, you are not of this world. And your assignment here is to first bring order to the chaos within for a clear behavior path to bring order where you live.
What if you could move beyond the limitations of your mind, remove the anxieties and negative emotions, and design your home to please all of its inhabitants, enhance your relationship with your family, and develop a deeper friendship with God? You can infuse your living environments with peace, experience joy, and become energized with the power that’s linked with design solutions and spiritual well–being.
After five years of researching, studying and praying about the Christian home, I finally was led to create a step-by-step guide on designing a sanctuary to escape the stress of this world! Do you want to reverse the chaos in your life? Would you like to create a home that is beautiful, yet functional? How about designing a healthy, stress–free, peaceable, orderly, fun, and spiritual environment?
The Answer
There is only one way to accurately answer these questions. You must go to the place where design originated—creation in the Bible—to see how design was divinely introduced and brought order to a chaotic environment—and ultimately to your life. It is best summed up by the InterVarsity Press Bible Commentary on Matthew 15:
Among those who accept the Bible as God’s Word and as canon (a measuring stick), the test of a statement’s authority should be its conformity to biblical principles. Yet many of us, for all our insistence on the authority of Scripture, pay surprisingly little attention to it; little time researching context, background or other factors essential for understanding the Bible. We may work hard to assimilate various trends of popular culture yet spend little time assimilating our lives to the Bible’s teachings.When divine order and structure prevail where you live, it is evident that first the same emanates from within. This is how God designed you and the way he desires you to live—out of the good treasures of your heart. The present world does not reflect the kingdom order originally intended for your enjoyment on earth. Designing your life and your home the world’s way enslaves those who participate in it, thus controlling you and becoming your master, falsely promising freedom. The Bible clearly reminds us that no man can serve two masters, either he will hate one and love the other (Matthew 6:24, NIV). However, all of God’s children have the creative ability to eradicate chaos and create order in the earth by design. The design begins within your heart and spills over into your home environment. This becomes the spiritual aesthetic element in your home.
Integrating your Faith
The spiritual application of design also begins within. My Designing Within S.Y.S.T.E.M. helps you Shape Your Spirit To Eliminate the Mess so you can:
- Fill your thoughts on God’s word;
- Direct your conversations based on God’s truths; and
- Determine your actions in accordance with God’s direction
“The most important of the Lord's work you will ever do will be the work you do within the walls of your own home.”
Harold B. Lee
~Kiki Nakita ~
