Your House Can Be Saved

Your house can be saved

At this point in my life I rest assured in the assignment that Jesus placed on Trudi and me. We are called to preach the gospel with an emphasis on family issues. As I see it, the core dilemma the entire world is dealing with finds its roots in the breakdown and destruction of the family.

God began the Bible with the marriage of Adam and Eve. There is never a hint of the serpent coming around until they got married. But after the wedding we see Satan show up. He knew if he could bring chaos to this new marriage he had a good chance to derail them from their assignment to have children and take their place of dominion on the earth. The enemy sees your family as a threat too. That why things have come against you.

Christ came to restore everything Adam lost, but having a blessed marriage and training kids that love God is not an automatic deal. You will be opposed. Challenges come to all of us. Nobody has a perfect marriage. Everybody has some kind of baggage we have to deal with because we all sinned. Raising kids can be hard as they face the different stages of growth in life.

In whatever family crisis you find yourself in today, I want to give you hope. Here is a powerful scripture that you can pray, stand on, and believe to release the Holy Spirit’s help for your family.

Acts 16 contains the account of Paul and Silas being beaten and thrown into prison for preaching. The situation was serious. But they made the decision to look beyond their pain and chains and focus on God and his promises. They began to pray and sing praises to God, and as they worshipped (wow! This lets us know that God lives in our praises. Praise causes Jesus to show up) a miracle happened.

There was a great earthquake! All the prisoners shackles fell off. The jailor that was in charge was about to commit suicide because he knew that he would be blamed for the jailbreak. Paul stopped him and told him, “Don’t kill yourself. Nobody has escaped.”

Acts 16:30 (NLT) Then he brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

Acts 16:31 (NLT) They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, along with everyone in your household.”

This is a powerful verse. Here is the essence of it. If you will believe in Jesus you can be saved. But God took it a step further. If you will believe it, he will also save your kids, your spouse and even your relatives. Let me share how this worked for me.

I received Christ as a young man. I experienced such a transformation I couldn’t help telling people about it. My dad was not a Christian so I wanted him to know God like me. As I shared my testimony he stopped me. He said, “I don’t want to hear this. In fact, I don’t want you talking to me about this ever again.”

It broke my heart. What can I do now? If somebody shuts you down and refuses to listen to you, you have to respect their wishes. But I found this verse of scripture (I really don’t remember how, but I did) and I began to pray this promise over my dad.

Every day when I would pray I would end my prayer by saying, “Lord, because I believe in you I am praying that my entire family, including my dad, will be saved.” One day maybe a year into claiming that scripture I felt the Holy Spirit say to me, “You dad will be saved.” I’ll never forget it. This assurance came over me and I just knew that the day would come.

I continued to pray this prayer over my dad daily. It was about 10 years later (yeah. It took a while) that I got a call from my mom. They had been on a trip to a farmers convention (that’s what he did for a living) in Virginia. A man got up at the convention and shared his testimony about how he believed in Christ.

Mom told me they went back to the hotel and began to discuss what the man had talked about. Mom told my dad, “You don’t have to be in church to get saved and know you’re going to heaven. I can pray with you now if you’d like to.” My mom led my dad to Christ that day, fulfilling the prayers I had prayed for 10 years.

This word “saved” in the Bible is a powerful word that implies much more than going to heaven when you die. In the original language it is the Greek word “sozo”. Some of the meanings of the word are, save, rescue from danger, deliver, to make well, restore to health, to preserve, to make whole. This word would cover any marriage or family situation you might be facing, including physical healing, protection from danger, restoration from family wounds, prodigals coming home, and pretty much any family issue that has been invented.

I encourage you today to simply claim this promise. Commit to it. Pray it and put your faith on it. It may not happen as quickly as you want, but your timeline is not necessarily God’s. God’s Word cannot lie and is always at work if you will just work it.

For all our financial partners and those of you that pray for us, thank you. Have a blessed April everybody.

Ken and Trudi