This week in our series "A House On Fire", we continue to explore the parable that Jesus introduced in the Sermon on the Mount when He compared our lives and how we live to a house. This week uses the metaphor of a thermostat/smart home hub as a means of highlighting the primary, but not sole, responsibility of women to lead in creating, establishing, and regulating a healthy emotional and spiritual environment within themselves and the lives of those in their families. Roles and responsibilities are not singularly exclusive to men or women but are mutually shared by men and women, with each being given a primary area of focus/responsibility by God in creation. Women are called to reflect God's "likeness" (His characteristics, what He's like) and lead their families in growing in and living out the "likeness of God" in their own lives through compassion, grace, patience, love, faithfulness, forgiveness, and justice. Ultimately, the goal is for men and women to co-rule equally and in doing so, together reflect God's image and likeness in a way that demonstrates His love and righteousness to the world around them.

Being a King requires action. We usually move between tyranny and passivity, but being a man as God intended men to be is “the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility.”

It’s the job of men, as image bearers of God, to do all that we can to provide for our families so that they can experience the fullness of God’s blessing. We keep watch and protect those in our care from anything that wants to steal, kill, and destroy them and/or God’s desires for their lives.”