Keepers at Home ~ Chapter Twenty

Teaching women to be keepers at home has become my favorite topic because it's so important to having a strong, healthy marriage and emotionally stable, secure, and happy children. "Increasingly, child development experts are saying what many mothers and fathers have known all along - that to be fully human a child needs to be intensely loved and cared for by someone who won't 'pack up and leave at five o'clock.' That someone is the child's mother." {Brenda Hunter, PhD} When the Word teaches us that younger women are to be keepers at home, it is not a suggestion; it is God's will for wives.*

We are told we blaspheme His Word if we are not keepers at home. Debi believes one of the many reasons for this is because if we aren't protecting our children in the safety of our own home, terrible things can happen to them; abuse, neglect, harm, lack of affection and love,  security, etc. Handing our children over to strangers is not wise at all. A young mother's place is in the home, keeping it, guarding it, watching over those entrusted to her.*

Many women have husbands who want them to work outside of the home. What are these women supposed to do? Debi wrote, If you are willing to obey in all areas and you do not build a spirit of rebellion toward your husband or God, your appeal is more likely to fall on sympathetic ears.* If you are kind, loving, patient, submissive, reverent towards him, joyful and trying to please your husband, your husband will be much more prone to listen to you!

Ask him if there is a way you can stay at home while you and the children engage in some work that will bring in an income. Ask him if there is a way you can cut back on expenses so the family can get by on his salary alone. Ask for a trial period. Show him how you can save on unnecessary expenses. Shop at secondhand stores. Move to a less expensive house, if necessary. Have one less automobile. Don't buy new furniture. When the refrigerator quits, buy a used one out of the local paper. Don't go on expensive vacations. Use your vacation time for the whole family to paint the house, instead of hiring someone to do it. Ask an older friend to help you see where you waste money. Most men would allow their wives to stay at home if the wife could show that it was her heartfelt, Spirit-led desire to be obedient to God in the matter of child training and if she could learn to be more frugal and content. Pray and ask God to change your husband's heart and your financial situation. Be prepared for an extreme change in your lifestyle. God will rescue a trusting heart.* 

Women are prone to being lazy, wasting time on the Internet or television, and gossiping. God warns women to not do this in 1 Timothy 5:14. Instead, we are to be busy at home. Keep a clean and tidy home. Don't let anything interfere with this {unless you are sick or injured}. Take good care of your husband and children. Fix them healthy and nourishing food. If you don't waste your time and work hard, you will be able to accomplish all of these things. 

Keeping the home is more that staying at home; it is having a heart that is fixed on the home. A help meet will be engaged in creative enterprises that challenge and inspire the children. She will guard the home against outside influences, and she will always be on watch to protect the children from their own inventions of evil. She will not be idle and neither will her children...She will be frugal in all her endeavors, and she will teach the children to love serving Daddy. She will keep the home so that when Daddy comes home, it is a sanctuary of peace, love, and order.*

A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband; 

but she that maketh ashamed is rottenness in his bones.

Proverbs 12:4

*Quotes from the book. There were a lot this week since 

they were so good and I love this topic so much. :)