What Do You Envision for Your Home this New Year?

Knowing where we are headed helps us know what steps to take to get there

Dec 30, 2024

Greetings Glory Carriers!

Are you in the thick of your holiday slumber, like me? This is my favorite week of the year - in between Christmas and New Years - because where we live, the city empties out and a quiet hush comes over it like no other time of the year. While my husband has been busily working on his sermons to preach these couple Sundays, the kids and I have been enjoying daily swims, taking walks, playing cards games, doing puzzles, reading, watching movies and staying in our pajamas for inordinate amounts of time. I don’t think my kids have said ‘I’m bored’ so many times in their life. It’s glorious.

And yet, this is the time of year when I notice a natural wandering of my thoughts towards a new and fresh year. What will it hold? Where should my focus be? What does God have in store? Is there anything he might be calling me to change or do differently?

What about you? What questions are stirring in your heart and soul?

One thing that helps me step into a new year is to prayerfully ask God to give me a word, theme or verse - something to anchor my soul and practices around - that will give shape to my own heart and my home.

Last Year, God Surprised Me…

I was in a pretty ‘stuck’ place this time last year on many levels. I felt like there were things that had crept into my life - by way of habits, addictions and attitudes - that were getting in the way of my relationship with God and being able to discern his path forward. I’ll be sharing more specifically what some of those things were in future posts, but suffice it to say for now, the phrase that came to mind for my theme for this past year was ‘throwing off everything that hinders’ from Hebrews 12:1:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us…”

It was a year of taking an honest look at anything in my life that was hindering my ability to live out fully and freely the plans God had for my life. I asked God to reveal what those things were and one by one, began to tackle them.

It wasn’t easy. In fact, it was painful coming to terms with some of the things I had allowed to fester in my life to the point of becoming a hindrance. And it took the year of making some deliberate choices and changes, but I can look back over the past 12 months and say… it was so worth it. And I can stand here before you today and testify to the transforming power of God whose strength comes to us in our weakness - and our willingness.

Is there anything in your life that is hindering your walk with God and keeping you from living His plans for you?

Throwing Off the Old Paves the Way for the New

Maybe this is the year to start throwing them off one by one. Because in God’s economy the ‘throwing off’ mechanism always serves a purpose. A purpose of removing something old in order to pave the way for something new. I love the prophet Isaiah’s words of hope and promise after a season wandering and unfaithfulness,

See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland. (Isaiah 43:19)

For me, removing and dealing with unhealthy habits and addictions this past year, paved the way for clarity and creativity to come back into my life. It paved the way for God to bring new desires and dreams around which new habits and rhythms were formed. It is why I am here writing to you now. And it is how God birthed a new vision and clarity of focus in Homes of Glory.

Homes of Glory is About Making Spiritual Growth & Formation a Priority in the Home

I have always been passionate about spiritual growth and formation. But as our own children have grown and entered their schooling years, we’ve realized more than ever how important discipleship and spiritual formation are in the home - something that neither my husband nor I had growing up. In this very different and ever-changing world (from the one in which we grew up) with its shifting values at every turn, we are struck my how many decisions we must make daily, weekly, monthly and yearly around how we will choose to order our days for our family. As the Psalmist said,

“Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90:12)

Our days with our children, while they are under our roof, are numbered. So how will you, how will I, spend them?

I can’t think of a more sobering question at the dawn of a New Year.

Homes of Glory was created with this question in mind, among others that arise amidst the daily grind (and gift!) of raising our children:

How will we address the various challenging topics arising in the culture?
How will we raise our children up with strong faith? What is truly needed for such a time as this?
How can we keep faith formation at the center of our home and family life when so many other things are vying for our time and attention?
How do we create a strong home rooted in the gospel while also living it out by serving and engaging our community?

With these questions in mind, it became clear that my aim would be not only to help families navigate living out their Christian values in a culture that clashes up against them, but also to help families intentionally and creatively choose rhythms and habits to practice in their home that promote family togetherness, deep spiritual formation and yes, even fun. That we may have homes that act as hubs of God’s radiant glory, shining His light out into this dark world.

This is a lofty vision, but not an easy one to live out. Believe me, I know. Because I am living it too. It is so easy to get swept up in all the flurry of activity - in person and online - that we can easily lose our way from The Way our hearts and souls were designed for, and especially from the vital call and responsibility to pass on our faith to the next generation.

But all hope is not lost. You and I, our marriages, our families, our homes - and the unique and glory-filled stories He is weaving through them - matter too much to God to be left alone. I believe He wants to invade our hearts and invade the very space of our homes with His glory, so that we in turn may live as ‘glory carriers of Heaven’ in whatever we do and wherever we go. As the Apostle Paul said, all of us who believe are called to

“...reflect the glory of the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)

As this vision was forming in my heart this past year, I pictured homes scattered around the globe, filled with God’s warmth and love and bursting with rays of light, drawing people to Himself through these Homes of Glory. Wow.

I found this image one day and thought it was a perfect visual of the warmth and light radiating from a Home of Glory

That is the vision that God birthed in my heart this past year and which God is calling my family to live into going forward into this New Year. There is a lot more to explore and unpack as to the ‘how’ of doing this, and I’ll be writing about that in the coming year.

But for now, I am just excited you are here. Sincerely, thank you for taking an interest in this weekly publication when there are so many other worthy subscriptions vying for your time and attention. I am honored you are here. And I look forward to getting acquainted with you (if I am not already), hearing your story, and journeying together in this vital mission to see hearts and homes transformed by the gospel for the glory of God.

I am excited, are you?

A Home of Glory Begins with Vision - What is Yours?

Having vision for your home and what you desire God to do within and through it is vital to the mission of becoming a Home of Glory. The Bible says,

“Where there is no vision, the people perish…” (Proverbs 29:18)

Before you go and get your New Year celebrations underway, I leave you with a few questions to begin envisioning what kind of home environment you desire to create this year. Here are some questions posed by Laura Fenton, who writes on simplifying the physical spaces of our homes. I thought these were perfect questions to help us start to reflect not so much on the physical but ‘spiritual state of your home’ and perhaps they will even lead you to identifying a word or theme or verse for your year:

Why do you want to improve your home this year?
What does the best (but realistic) version of your home look like (think habits, rhythms, atmosphere, etc.)?
What do you want more of in your home?
What do you want less of in your home?
What would you change about your home tomorrow, if you could?
If you were going to send your kids off into the real world tomorrow (which some of you may be very close to this!), what would you do now to get them ready spiritually?

Sit with these questions. Pray. Ponder. Journal. You may be surprised what God will lay on your heart as a budding vision for your home and what you feel freshly called to do (or not do) for the benefit and blessing of your home this New Year.

Write to me and tell me about it. I would love to hear what God is laying on your heart and join you in praying it into existence.

Never Forget Who Has First Made His Home with Us

As we seek to make our Homes of Glory, never forget who has first made his home with us. Jesus said,

“My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”

The triune God of the universe, Maker of Heaven and Earth, has made his home with us, that is, in you and in me. And it is only from this foundational and amazing truth that we can even begin to explore what it means to be a glory carrier who, through day to day, moment by moment living under an actual roof in an actual context and time in history, can become (however imperfectly) a Home of Glory.

God bless you, dear fellow carrier of the glory of God. Happy New Year. And get excited for what God has in store for you and your family. It’s gonna be a good one filled with His bounty (Jeremiah 31:12,14). I can feel it.

“With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26)

God loves to fill each humble heart and willing home at a time with the undeniable radiance of His glory - often in the most unexpected ways. May He shine His light ever brighter through your heart and home as you make Him the center of it this New Year and always.

For His Glory from My Home to Yours,

Ali

PS If you’d like to gain a better sense of some of the shaping influences and experiences in my life that have brought me to this point, you can pop over to My Adventure: Faith, Family & Ministry section on my About Page.