Peace is one of those things – well, who doesn’t want peace in their lives. Freedom from conflict. But imagine, imagine what a blessing it must be, to have peace at home.  A family that thrives on peace instead of being lost in conflict.

 

What a Blessing

If God offered you anything you wanted in this world, anything at all, what would you ask for? Tough question. It takes a bit of thinking about – a new car; a bigger house; good health; a long life. There are so many things to choose from. What would you choose? Can I tell you something, after the basic provisions of enough air to breath, water to drink and food to eat and a roof over my head, do you know what’s right up there for me? Peace, just being able to live life in peace.

If you have a Bible, open it up at 1 Kings in the Old Testament, chapter 22 and verse 17. This is what it says:

Then Micaiah said, ‘I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains like sheep that have no shepherd’. And the Lord said, ‘These have no master, let each one go home in peace’.

There’s something … something about being able to go home in peace. To kind of walk in the front the door, close it behind you, be in this sanctuary called “home” and to be able to withdraw from the world with our families and have peace.

In fact my hunch is, if you and I did a survey and a peaceful home was one of the things on that list, many a person would choose that because there is such a blessing in a peaceful home. Many a home is torn by strife – discord, disrespect, dissension – and many a family is disintegrating. What if we could have a peaceful home? What a blessing that would be.

When you look around this world there are many homes that are far from being peaceful. They’re a long way from that. And depending on where you live, either divorce is running at almost one in every two marriages or – if divorce isn’t quite the cultural norm – many of the so called families are no more than warring adults and a bunch of angry, ill-disciplined children.

There’s no peace in those places. You can’t have peace when the people aren’t living a peaceful life. There’s an interesting statement at the beginning of the Old Testament book of Proverbs. Proverbs is Wisdom Literature. Have a look at Proverbs chapter 1 verse 7:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

When it comes to peace, I had an interesting email from a rebel fighter in a war-torn part of Africa last year. He listened to a program of ours on the radio about the fear of God. Have a listen to what he said:

"Recently I was attending a peace conference. While I was in my hotel room I turned on the radio. As I was listening to your program, I realized that with no fear of God in our hearts there will be no peace. No peace at all.

This eight minutes were enough to take me to a turning point in my life as well as in my peace effort in this region. I left the room as a changed man. I’d been on the battlefield for 13 years now. I don’t know how many people have died because of my gun but what I know is that I decided to lay down my arms."

Isn’t that an amazing testimony? But do you get it? Peace comes when we fear God. Peace comes when we decide to do it His way. Peace comes when we lay down our guns and stop shooting because deep in our hearts the fear of God has taken root – a right fear; a good fear – when we decide to start living our lives His way, the right way.

There’s a name for that. It’s called righteousness and righteousness has a real impact on our home lives. Again listen to the prophet Isaiah. I’m reading from Isaiah chapter 2 beginning at verse 7. Listen to how he puts it:

The effect of righteousness will be peace and the result of righteousness quietness and trust forever. My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, a secure dwelling and in quiet resting places.

Man, what an incredible blessing. Peaceful habitation, a secure dwelling and quiet resting places. Let me ask you something. Is that something that you want for your home, for your family? When you walk in the front door and close it and shut out the rest of the world out there, is that the sort of home that you want to have.

I believe that it is time for us to start building a godly home; to take seriously our responsibility to play our part in making our homes godly. I don’t mean being perfect. We are imperfect people and so are going to have an imperfect home. Sure. But you know something, as we start to get the fear of God happening in our hearts as we honour God, as we start to decide to live our lives His way, something happens.

It’s a bit like that rebel fighter. Peace breaks out. It won’t happen over night. It may take months or even years to sort through some of the messes we’ve created and I know that we can’t change the past but we can change from this moment forward.

What a blessing a peaceful home is. I’ve lived in both. A house of conflict and a house of peace and let me tell you, peace is so much better. There’s a price to pay. I can’t have all my own way any more. You know something, that’s good, that’s something I had to learn and I’m still learning but I’m absolutely determined to do the best I can to make the home I live in peaceful. Not just for me, but for my wife, Jacqui and my beautiful daughter Melissa. They’re entitled to peace too, you know.

Now there are going to be times when the three of us rub one another the wrong way, when it just doesn’t quite work. But today on the program we’re going to be taking a look at some really practical things we can do to have a godly family and peaceful home.

I was talking recently to a real estate agent who was selling a house for a couple that had just separated. Every week they have the sales meeting with the real estate agent to see how the sale’s progressing. He was telling me how difficult those meetings were. He said you can cut the air with a knife. These two detest each other. They couldn’t see eye to eye on anything. Why is that? How did that happen? How did things get to such a low point?

Let me tell you, that’s the inevitable outcome if we live in our families for ourselves, selfishly. What I can get out of it. It starts not long enough after a couple’s married, tiny cracks appear, battles start that turn into raging wars and it tears families apart. Life wasn’t meant to be lived that way. We weren’t meant to live in a war zone called family. And part of what needs to happen in our homes is that each one of us needs to bring ourselves under the authority of God Himself. Godly people have the opportunity to build a godly home.

It’s no slam dunk by the way. It’s no certainty but at least we have the opportunity. Ungodly people have got no show. Let me ask you again, what do you want? Do you want what the prophet Isaiah was talking about?

The effect of righteousness will be peace and the result of righteousness quietness and trust forever. My people will abide in a peaceful habitation in secure dwellings and in quiet resting places.

Is that what you want? Or do you want a home of discord and dissension.

 

Husband and Father

Now I truly believe that the husband, the father, the man, has such a great role to play in bringing peace. We men are a funny breed. There is something deep inside us that makes us the protectors and the providers for our families. Most men, not all, but most men are programmed, hard-wired, to provide and protect. Okay, these days women often go to work and bring income into the house (and that’s great), but it tends to be the man – the husband, the father – who carries the burden of protection and provision around in his heart.

It’s kind of how we blokes are. And even though we can get it wrong (we can become dominating, and reclusive and uncommunicative and in fact, downright abusive) you know there’s something special about the way God’s made us. There’s something inside us that’s wants to lead … and that, that is a real asset to our families. I don’t know about you, but I want a peaceful habitation, secure dwelling, peaceful resting place just like Isaiah spoke when we looked before the break.

And funnily enough it fits so well with the thing we men carry around inside us somewhere – to be the protector and the provider. Because if we really thought about it, that’s the sort of home we’d like to provide for our families, I certainly would. And that snug fit, that kind of hand in glove thing that’s happening here between God’s promise of a peaceful home and the man’s desire to provide and protect, you know what that tells me? It tells me that we men – husbands and fathers – have a big role to play in bringing this blessing to pass

That’s something I’d like to unpack right now, because if the truth be known there is more than one man listening today, for whom it’s time to step up to the plate and be a man. To be the man God made him to be; to protect, to provide, to bring peace and blessing to our homes.

The notion these days of the man being the head of the household, well, it’s not very politically correct. It’s not particularly popular. But the reality is the man’s protector/provider kind of strength fits in well for that role. Not to dominate people, not to abuse power, but to be a godly leader in the home.

And there’s the key – it’s in that adjective, "godly", because an ungodly husband and father can be such a destructive force in the hom