The Most Important Place on Earth: What a Christian Home Looks Like and How to Build One
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The Most Important Place on Earth: What a Christian Home Looks Like and How to Build One
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780718088101 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Nelson, Thomas, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 07/12/2016 |
| Sold by: | HarperCollins Publishing |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| File size: | 816 KB |
About the Author
The author of over twenty books, Robert is known as a relentless champion for the family, relationship building, and biblical truth. His favorite “audience” is one friend, a corner table in a small café, and a steaming cup of coffee (extra cream but no sugar) between them.
A graduate of Taylor University, from which he received an honorary doctorate in May 2005, Robert has two grown daughters, two sons-in-law, five grandchildren, one grandson-in-law, and a great-grandson named Ezra. He and his wife, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, live in Southwest Michigan.
Read an Excerpt
The Most Important Place on Earth
What a Christian Home Looks Like and How to Build One
By Robert Wolgemuth
Thomas Nelson
Copyright © 2016 Robert D. WolgemuthAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7180-8810-1
CHAPTER 1
WHY A CHRISTIAN HOME?
Different Is a Very Good Thing
Thunderstorms were standard fare in August. Like a huge charcoal-gray tarp being pulled across the sky from the plains to the west, you could see them approaching. A chill stung the air. Then the thunder. Deep rumblings that felt as if they were coming more from the ground than from the sky. And like flashlights clicking off and on under a blanket in the distance, lightning would illuminate the spaces inside the darkened canopy.
In 1974, television weathermen didn't spend as much time as they do now issuing "chances of rain" odds. But when we'd see the tarp and feel the chill and hear the rumblings and witness the lights, we knew that the chances were exactly 100 percent.
On this particular Friday afternoon in Chicago's western suburbs, there was something unusual about the August storm. It wasn't the wind or the thunder or the lightning that screeched across the late-afternoon sky that made it so dazzling. They were there, all right, but they weren't that peculiar. The singularity of this storm was the sheer volume of the unrelenting rain. Hour upon hour it came down. Cats and dogs. Buckets.
My family's homestead in Wheaton was at the vortex of the fury. My late wife, Bobbie, and I were living in our first home in Glenview, Illinois, fifty miles northeast. Our piece of the same storm was real, but far less spectacular. Aside from the inconvenience of having to dash from our detached garage to the back door in time for dinner, I thought nothing of it. We received no reports about what was happening at the homestead.
After dinner and a little family-tumble playmaking with our babies in the living room, we tucked our daughters in for the night. By that time, the storm was finished. As Bobbie and I crawled into bed, I remarked how brilliant the full moon seemed to appear, casting distinct shadows from the trees onto our lawn.
Rrrringggg. Rrrringggg.
The telephone on our nightstand startled me fully awake. I looked at the clock. It was just past midnight.
"Hello," I said in my best you-didn't-wake-me-up voice.
"Robert?" I heard the man say.
"Dad?" I knew that voice very well. He was calling from Los Angeles.
My dad told me that he had been in meetings all day and had just returned to the hotel. A message was waiting for him at the front desk. "Call mother at home immediately," the note read. "The water is past the boys' bedroom floor." The desk clerk had written my brother Ken's name at the bottom of the note.
"Is it raining there?" my dad asked.
"Not anymore," I answered. "But we had a pretty good storm a few hours ago."
"I've tried to call home," he said, "but mother isn't answering. The message says the water is past the boys' bedroom floor! I cannot imagine that."
This was long before cell phones, so I found a piece of paper and a pencil, took his number at the hotel, and promised to drive to Wheaton first thing the following morning to check on mother ... and the house.
I hung up the phone, glanced over at my wife, who had remained quite undisturbed in spite of the phone call, and went right back to sleep — something my mother was not doing.
The house where we spent most of our growing-up years — 103 East Park — stood at the intersection of Park and Main Street. Although it wasn't a steep grade, Park Street elevated gradually as it snaked east for a few blocks. Having delivered newspapers as a boy to the homes on that street, I was very familiar with its sloping topography.
My brother and sister, Dan and Debbie, nineteen-year-old twins, had been home that afternoon. And like normal home-for-the-summer college students, they had Friday-night dinner plans with friends. Mother was alone.
As I said, August thunderstorms were common fare. But after several hours of the deluge, mother grew more and more concerned. From the upstairs corner bedroom, she looked out toward the street. A huge puddle filled the intersection from curb to curb. And the streets — especially Park Street from the east — were virtual white-water rivers carrying more of the wet stuff in their wake.
Trying her best to not sound too alarmed, mother called Ken, my brother, who, with his wife, Sharon, and two baby daughters, lived two miles from the homestead. True to form, Ken dropped everything.
By the time he got to our home, the water had risen toward the east and was halfway up our driveway. The rain continued without pause. He parked in front of the neighbor's house and ran, getting completely soaked by the time he reached the front door. Mother was reassured to have a man in the house and asked Ken to go to the basement family room to see if any water was seeping in. Ken obeyed, quickly looking for any unwelcome leaks.
"It looks okay," he hollered up two flights of stairs to our mother. "Everything's fine down ..."
Ken stopped talking. At that moment water came bursting into our house, pouring down the basement steps like a waterfall. Struggling to climb through the virtual rapids, he made his way upstairs, soaked to the waist. "We have to call dad," he said as he reached my mother.
Under normal circumstances, mother resisted calling dad with bad news when he was out of town. These were anything but normal circumstances. Quickly dialing the West Coast hotel, Ken learned from an operator that my dad wasn't in his room. He left his panicked message at the front desk.
The rain did not subside. What had been our yard was gradually becoming a small lake. Then the lights went out.
Hearing someone at the front door, mother looked up to see a large and imposing man walk straight into the house without knocking. She did not recognize him, nor did she speak.
"Get out of this house," he ordered. "Get out of this house. This is a flood."
Not knowing that the phone lines were down as well as the power, mother told him that she couldn't leave because she was waiting for a call from her husband.
Lightning shocked the night sky with light once more, and a clap of thunder rumbled.
At that moment my mother lifted her face and her hands heaven-ward. "Precious Heavenly Father," she began to pray in a voice as strong and confident and resolute as if she knew exactly what she was doing. She did.
"Precious Heavenly Father, I love you very much," my mother continued. "Please stop this rain!"
The neighbor stood in startled amazement.
As if a giant spigot had been turned off, the rain stopped. Nothing was left of the raucous storm but stillness.
In the darkness my brother saw the man's eyes widen as though he had seen a vision. "You're an amazing woman," he said. He turned and was gone.
In just a few more minutes, mother and Ken stepped through the front door. The clouds gave way to the brilliant rays of a full moon. They were both stunned at how dazzling the full moon seemed to appear through the purified air, reflecting perfectly onto the sea that covered what had been our lawn.
The following morning, just as the sun was rising, I drove as quickly as I could to Wheaton. Along the interstate, as I got closer to our homestead, I saw places where water had gathered in open fields. Clearly the rain had been more severe there than at our home fifty miles away. But nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when I turned onto Park Street. The image is as clear in my mind today as it was in that moment.
Our home was standing quiet and alone in the middle of a huge lake. Water was tucked up under her all the way around her foundation. In the stillness, our home cast her exact likeness in the water that surrounded her.
I had never seen the home where I grew up from this beautiful yet precarious perspective. Ironically, today, as I look back on that place, I see it again ... in yet another beautiful, precarious way.
This was my home. It was a Christian home. And this was the place where I learned exactly what "Christian home" meant. It was like no other.
Let me roll the clock back a few decades and tell you what I mean.
WHAT'S GOING ON IN THERE?
My three buddies impatiently paced back and forth across our yard. Between anxious glances into our kitchen window, John Strandquist, Bobby Shemanski, and Roger Morris halfheartedly tossed the football to each other. They were out of earshot, but the shrug of their shoulders and the shuffle of their feet let me know that their patience was wearing thin.
The three were waiting for me. But it was going to be a while, and they knew it. They'd done this many times before. When you're twelve years old, thirty minutes might as well be a month.
Looking back, I've often wondered what those boys were thinking. Oh, I know what they whined when I finally emerged from the house to finish the game, but what was really going through their minds? In fact, I'd love to take you with me and travel through time right now to visit my backyard during those minutes.
"What's taking Robert and his family so long?" we'd ask them. "What in the world are they doing in there? Why can't they just finish dinner like normal people? What is it about that family?"
The first few questions would have elicited spontaneous preteen speculation — big family, mother's painstakingly prepared meal, stern father — but this last question would have been the one to make them stop and think. What is it about that family?
Since time travel is still under development, I'll have to take a shot at telling you what was happening.
This was dinnertime ... "supper time" back then. It was sacred. A time of enjoying my mother's healthy fare and catching up with each other on the day's activities and accomplishments. And it was a time for Bible reading and prayer — "family worship," my dad called it. Impatient friends pacing in the backyard, and my own restlessness, had no influence whatsoever on the proceedings.
From my first conscious thoughts as a little boy, I knew one thing about my family — one thing for sure. My family was different. We weren't like most others. Growing up, I vacillated between security in and embarrassment about this. At times the raw strength of my parents' love for me filled me with confidence. I felt safe there. This was almost palpable as I sat around the dinner table, interacting with my parents and my brothers and sisters — making John, Bobby, and Roger wait.
But as a youngster who wanted to be accepted by his friends outside those safe confines, I would have preferred a normal family, a cool family like the other kids'. I knew that my family was different ... not normal and definitely not cool.
Today I'm very grateful for this.
DIFFERENT IS OKAY
For sixteen years, my late wife, Bobbie, and I lived in Orlando. Our home was exactly 8.5 miles from the entrance to a park that calls itself "The Happiest Place on Earth." This place — known around the globe as Walt Disney World — was founded by a man who also grew up in a home known for its distinction in the neighborhood. Walt Disney was born in Chicago in 1901, the fourth son to Elias and Flora Disney. Two years later a little sister, Ruth, was born. And soon after that, Elias and Flora, "unsettled by the raucous, saloon-centered nature of their neighborhood," decided to leave the city for the quieter climes of rural Missouri.
I wonder what Disney's buddies down the street would have said about that family. "Different" comes to mind — which is precisely why over sixty million people visit the Orlando area every year. Disney World is like no other place, confidently fashioning itself as the "Happiest." Not simply "A Happy Place" or even "One of the Happiest Places," but "The Happiest." Walt Disney knew that different was okay. In fact, different was exactly what made his vision so very attractive to so many. Different became a prerequisite.
On July 17, 1955, when Disneyland in California was christened, Walt Disney said, "Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and the hard facts which have created America ... with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world. ... I don't want the public to see the world they live in while they're in the Park (Disneyland). I want them to feel they're in another world."
As the ideas in this book were taking form, several possible titles came to mind. I thought of calling it So You Want to Have a Christian Home, the name of a series I taught in Sunday school in the mid-nineties. Building a Christian Home also became a possibility, using my years in construction as a metaphor.
Then I thought about this place down the street from our home in Florida — dare I refer to it as an amusement park? — that has the brazen audacity to proclaim itself the happiest, the premier, the best in its class.
Why can't our homes be different in this wonderful way? Why can't they be places where our children feel as though they're "in another world," where "dreams and hard facts" are celebrated? Who wants to be normal? Everyone else is normal. This kind of different is good. So I'm taking a chance and tacking signs above the front door of my home and your home. They read, "The Most Important Place on Earth." The superlative works just fine here.
Ironically, every home, regardless of what's going on inside, might as well have this over its front door. For the children who live in these homes, it's a fact, good or bad: it is the most important place on earth. Sit down over a cup of coffee with any family therapist in the country and usually he or she will tell you that, for a kid, it's at home — whatever it looks like — where everything in life makes up its mind.
One of my earliest sports heroes was Bill Glass, number 80 all-pro defensive end for the Cleveland Browns. Following a successful career in football, Bill founded an organization that focuses primarily on ministry to prisoners. Bill tells of standing in front of inmates crowded into prison auditoriums to hear this former athlete speak. His delivery was spellbinding. Normally inmates pride themselves on being aloof and unaffected. But not when this gentle giant stood before them. Bill commanded their attention.
Nearly every time in his talks to prisoners, Bill Glass asked, "How many of your parents told you that this is where you'd wind up someday?" He posed this question hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times, and the response was always the same. Almost every man or woman in his audience raised a hand. Sure enough, they didn't disappoint their parents. Their homes were the most important places on earth, and they had successfully walked the path set before them as children. They did exactly what they were told they would do.
THE METER IS RUNNING
You get one shot at this home-building thing. Only one. And time is not on your side.
Being a weekend-warrior-construction kind of guy over the years, I have made friends of the folks at the tool-rental centers close by every home we've owned. Tools ranging from jack-hammers to heavy-duty pumps to trenchers to compressors to nail guns have been loaded into the trunk of my car in front of these establishments. But from the moment I pull out of the parking lots of these places until I return the tools, I carry a nagging sense of hurry deep inside. I know that the meter is running. Every hour costs me something, so there's a sense of urgency about the task. It's not recklessness — many of those tools are dangerous if not used properly — but it's certainly single-mindedness about the work I have to do so I can finish and return the borrowed tool.
From the moment you tenderly unwrap the blanket around your first baby after the trip home from the hospital, the nagging sense in the pit of your stomach should be exactly the same. The hourglass has been upended. You have one chance at this.
I know that being a parent isn't all that's happening in your life. You've got your marriage to work on; your career is in need of your constant attention; there are errands to run and meetings to make. And you're exhausted.
Now I'm adding to your load by laying on a dose of guilt, telling you that you've only got one shot at this family-building thing.
But if you'll let me visit the rented tools one more time, the message here is not shame and blame. But it is urgency. Focus. Purposefulness. Intentionality. Care.
WHY A CHRISTIAN HOME?
Right here in the first chapter I'm going to tell you — in case you've not figured it out already — that this is a book about building a Christian home.
"Why a Christian home?" you might ask. "Why not a Cleveland Indians home or a Chicago Bears home?" Some people live in a University of Tennessee home. Because Bobbie and I lived in Nashville for sixteen years, on autumn Saturdays we'd see folks from UT homes drive up and down the street with orange flags sticking out of their windows. So why not a Vols home? Being a football fan is a good thing, isn't it?
Why a Christian home? How about ... an American home? Would that be good enough? Or maybe a healthy home or a positive-thinking home or a musical home? I've visited friends who had laugh-a-minute homes. I went back to those as often as I could.
What is so great about a Christian home? It's rather simple. In a Christian home, there's something special. It's called grace. To be sure, there can be good stuff in these other kinds of homes. You can be a loyal fan, you can be a patriot, you can be a healthy eater and a positive thinker, but there's no power — no lasting redemption in any of these others.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Most Important Place on Earth by Robert Wolgemuth. Copyright © 2016 Robert D. Wolgemuth. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, ix,Author's Preface, xiii,
Introduction, xvii,
1 WHY A CHRISTIAN HOME? Different Is a Very Good Thing, 1,
2 A GOD PLACE God Lives in Your Home. What Does that Mean?, 25,
3 THE MOST IMPORTANT PEOPLE IN THE MOST IMPORTANT PLACE What Is It Like to Walk into Your Home?, 50,
4 AMAZING GRACE It's What Sets Your Home Apart, 74,
5 THE POWER OF WORDS Real Bullets at Home, 96,
6 THE POWER OF WORDS PART II The Family Vitamins, 120,
7 JUST FOR LAUGHS The Best Medicine of All, 138,
8 DISCIPLINE IS NOT A DIRTY WORD It's the Stuff of Champions, 159,
9 SAFE AT HOME The Refuge You Are Looking For, 187,
10 PARENTS AS PRIESTS: PULPITS OPTIONAL Mom and Dad, Why the Robes?, 207,
Epilogue, 233,
Acknowledgments, 237,
Appendix A: How to Lead Your Child to Christ, 241,
Appendix B: Grace Wolgemuth's 26Bible Verses, 251,
Notes, 253,
Questions for Discussion and Application, 263,
About the Author, 289,
What People are Saying About This
"What could be more important than showing people exactly how to build a Christian home for their families? Robert has written an exceptional book. I recommend it to you."
Beth Moore
Bestselling Author & Bible Teacher