One time my daughter Sarah said to me, “Mother, you know at camp this year, I went forward because I felt like I didn’t have the assurance that I was saved. But I don’t want people to know about it because it could look bad on us.”
I said to her, “Sarah, I don’t care how it looks. The important thing is your relationship to God. It really doesn’t matter what other people say. It matters that we please Him; that’s the most important thing.”
And I believe the same thing about our home relationships. It doesn’t matter what people say. It matters whether we please God, and there is only one way to please Him – by faith in His Word.
We must look to what God’s Word says about our situation rather than what we see happening around us. Frequently, when everything is going wrong in our family relationships we tend to look for someone to blame. “What’s happening in my home?” we ask. “It’s my wife! If she weren’t such a nag, we’d have good family relationships.”
Or we say, “It’s my husband! If he weren’t such a bum, we’d have a marvelous home.” Or perhaps, “It’s that rebellious son (or daughter) of ours! If it weren’t for him, we’d have a peaceful home.”
We always like to put the cause of our disharmony in the home on some other member in the family. But the Bible teaches us that we set the atmosphere in the home, and we do that by taking the Word of God and praying and confessing it for our home.
You are the one to set the atmosphere in your home – not your mate, not your children, and not the devil. Don’t say, “Well, it’s circumstances.” You have power over circumstances!
by Harrison House Authors
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers
Encouraging, optimistic, always upbeat and energetic—even in her 90s, Marilyn Hickey actively ministers internationally, most recently in Sudan, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, India, China, and Pakistan, as well as domestically in the United States through Bible Encounters and speaking engagements. Marilyn has had audiences with government leaders and heads of state all over the world. She is the first woman to join the Board of Directors of the largest church in the world, Dr. David Yonggi’s Church Growth International in South Korea. She has traveled to 146 countries and plans to visit many more in the years to come. She and her late husband Wallace were married over 50 years, and have two children and four grandchildren. Marilyn holds the following degrees of education: Bachelor of Arts in Collective Foreign Languages, from the University of Northern Colorado, and an Honorary Doctorate of Divinity from Oral Roberts University.
In 2015 Marilyn was honored at Oral Roberts University with the prestigious Lifetime Global Achievement Award. This award recognizes individuals or organizations that have made a significant impact in the history of ORU and in the world in positive ways as an extension of the university and its mission.