Family Building Blocks: Creating an Open Home

What a person desires is unfailing love; better to be poor than a liar.

Proverbs 19:22 (NIV)

Deep down, we all desire unfailing love; we want to be loved despite our weaknesses and mistakes. A truly loving home, then, is one where each member of the family can freely expose their sins, weaknesses and mistakes without fear of rejection.

Unfortunately, because the truth can be messy, we often learn to lie and hide our true feelings from each other. Husbands lie fearing they will lose the respect of their wives. Wives hide their real thoughts when they fear they will lose the love of their husbands. Teens & adolescents lie for fear of losing their freedom or their parents’ approval if they speak their mind.

Lies ultimately make us feel lonely. Why? Because deep down we want to be loved for who we are; if we lie about who we are then we’ll never be sure others really love us.

To build a strong, loving and honest home, we have to learn to value truth.  We can overcome our fear of being honest by learning to see truth as an opportunity for us to exercise and receive love in our homes.

Truth: The Opportunity to Know Love

For I am always aware of your unfailing love, and I have lived according to your truth.

Psalms 26:3 (NLT)

Being really honest about who we are is an opportunity to receive unfailing love from God. The only way we can have the courage to walk in truth is if we have an awareness of God and his love. Unfailing love makes us secure because we know that if we’re willing to do what God wants then we won’t be rejected, shunned or misunderstood. Love means God can accept us where we are at without settling for us staying there.

If you’re having a hard time valuing truth in your home, start by working on being honest with God. Study scriptures on truth and light and work on being more honest with God about your sins and feelings.

Truth: The Opportunity to Show Love

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

1 John 1:7-8 (ESV)

Truth is an opportunity to love and be loved in our homes. Ignorance is not bliss. Sin can be difficult to talk about, but lying about it does not help. We and those in our homes will often suffer through intense feelings of insecurity, guilt, confusion and loneliness to avoid telling the truth to others about our hearts and sin.

Truth allows us to forgive and be forgiven. It also gives us the opportunity to be known and know what is really going on in each other’s lives. In a Ted Talk called “The Lethality of Loneliness,” John Cacioppo explains that loneliness serves a purpose – it signals us that there is an area of our social lives that needs care and attention. Distance, loneliness, coldness or constant anger in our homes are signs that we are not being truthful.

Truth: Opportunity to Grow

Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

Psalms 51:6 (ESV)

When we admit truth about what we think and feel, God can help us gain wisdom through the scriptures and our friends to change and grow as people. We can choose to avoid the truth about challenges we have in our emotional health, marriage dynamic, and raising our kids but this leads to us not changing. God can teach us through the Bible and friends what actions we need to take to grow.