Bible Text: Psalm 115 Vs 12, Isaiah 32: 17 -18, Psalm 144: 12-15

Isaiah 32:17-18 – “The fruit of that righteousness will be peace; its effect will be quietness and confidence forever. My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest”

Your home shall be a peaceful habitation in Jesus name, Amen.

There are 4 pillars upon which anyone who has a meaningful existence must be standing for a peaceful home; these are:

1. Faith: If it is an important aspect of individual life we must not joke with faith in our homes. Pay attention to your spiritual life. Your faith will affect your dispositions and the decisions you make. It will affect your financial decision and marital decisions.
2. Fitness: Anyone that would go far must be healthy. Pay attention to your health. Whatever you eat, pay attention to it. You want to enjoy marriage be healthy, a sick husband or wife cannot play his or her role in the home. To enjoy good health you need more education, not more medication. Trust God for your health, your maker knows your makeup. If you don’t take care of yourself, you may be calling yourself home before God calls you home.
3. Family: This refers to your parenting style and how you are starting your home. Ensure your style and direction is based on biblical principles.
4. Career: This refers to your purpose on earth. I have tagged this finance.

How are you presenting yourself? Do work hard and arrive on time to meetings or even though you call yourself a new creature you still use or follow the African timing. 2 Corin 5:17, As a new creature lives as one.

Emphasis will be made on Faith and Family Pillars to explain the essence of a Christian home and features of a Christian family.

In Christian family there are certain features that are evident; these are:

1. Presence of God: God’s presence removes tension and deflates pressure within the home. The Holy spirit regulates actions and activities of couples, such that as a spouse when you are supposed to be angry, to be selfish, to be secretive, raise your children anyhow, the Holy Spirit will not permit.
2. A Christian home is a nest that provides rest for its habitants.
3. There is a man in this home who is a committed husband and a devoted father, in a Christian home you have to be a promise keeper. It is amazing when you see people who are in courtship how they are all over and paying the price and after the wedding ceremony; it all stops. You need to continue to make efforts.
4. A Christian home includes a devoted and loving mother. How a woman should behave, to love and take care of the home is orchestrated by the Holy Spirit.
5. It is a place of mould and grooming Godly children. A child that is well rooted in the word, the ways of the world will not influence that child irrespective of where you are bringing him or her up. That is why we say Christian home not African or European home.
6. It is a home of honour where children honour their father and their mother.

Genes 18:19

7. It is a place of genuine love where there are true friendship and togetherness.
8. It is a home of a love of where you say it and demonstrate it. After an argument “what are you going to eat?” is not synonymous with “I love you”. When you offend your kids saying “Be careful” is not synonymous with “I am sorry” and “I Love you”
9. In a Christian, couples run their affairs by Biblical teaching
10. A Christian home upholds good and godly values. Godly virtues are inculcated by children.

May the Lord make our home a place of peace, transparency, friendship and genuine love in Jesus name, Amen.

When marriage starts, most times it starts with fantasy (i.e the myth that spouses would not offend each other, everything is rosy), then gradually reality sets, the man or woman begin to do certain things (e.g snoring, becoming big etc.), if  reality is not managed well, resentments sets in.

Reality: You begin to see differences; maybe you are very sharp, very good in finance, you are not a laid-back person. You realize the man or woman is a laid-back person. The reality in all phases, if not managed with communication, you begin to grow apart and may become sworn enemies. It begins with a crack in the wall of your home if you don’t mend it before you know it; you are living with a total stranger.

You are living in a singleness marriage, you are doing your thing, and he or she is doing his or her thing. But if the differences are handled properly you enter into a level of consolidation. It is a situation where you accommodate and tolerate each other.  You adjust and know truly that no one is perfect and if you are able to move and conquer this phase you enter into a period of rest. A phase of comfortability and joy.

Reason to build a Christian God

1. Please God: Isaiah 33 – You refuse to have sex before marriage, you want to have morning devotion at home because you want to communicate with your maker and make Him the author and finisher of the faith in your home.
2. You want to be healthy. A bad marriage is bad enough. You need peace which means you need to do it right. When you are happy is like medicine to you, when you are not it dries your bone. You can imagine living under the same roof with somebody who is an enemy. You don’t like the person, you don’t want to see the face, even if you appear happy outside; going back home may begin to bring you sadness and ill health.
3. You want to be a role model for others to emulate. If you are doing things right automatically you become a counsellor. Whether you are speaking or not speaking someone is following in your footsteps. When we go to campuses to speak on marriage and we ask how many will want to marry someone like their father or mother; you will see them rejecting it by fire. This is because no good example has been laid down. I get irritated when parent involve their children in their issues, it is not a good idea, they were not there when you met so don’t bug them; leave them alone. Maturity is very key in a marriage. Learn to handle issues amicably.
4. You want to enjoy benefits and blessings associated with a Christian home. It is only in a Christian home you can pray in unity. The devil discourages you from praying together.
5. You want to enjoy your old age, you want to be at peace, If you and your spouse have managed each other well, at old age you will be at peace. The Bible says, the path of the righteous is like a shining light, it shines more and more unto a perfect day (Prov. 4:18). You don’t want to end up in a care home, you want to have people around you.

All those choleric attitudes that have no rule, no control, no room for others (e.g that is me I can never change) change it for you can do all things through Christ that strengthens you.

6. You want to make your home heaven on earth, build a Christian home. You cannot be a man and managing three homes in different locations; only you. If you have that skill use it for something better.

Make up your mind that your home will be heaven on earth. Ask for the grace to be the wife and the husband that the Lord wants you to be.

Four factors needed to have a Christian home

1. Divine factor: Job 22: 21 & 22 – “Submit to God and be at peace with him; in this way prosperity will come to you. Accept instruction from his mouth and lay up his words in your heart”. Let God direct your path so you don’t encage yourself.

You may be in a peaceable environment and people around you; may be at peace but still, you would not be peace. As a Christian, if you hook up with a non-Christian, he cannot love you genuinely.

A non–Christian is selfish and self –centered. Only God teaches how to love genuinely. If you are still in this meeting you don’t care about others. You need to grow up.

2. Individual: It is achievable when you and whoever you are marrying is ready to have a Christian home. There has to be a personal conviction to make it work and goals are achievable.

Luke 6:45. “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of”.

A guy who womanises, who has been drinking, he cannot change after marriage except he is convicted from within to change.

For married couples, your spouse is not as bad as you think, if you change your spouse will change become a lover boy and she will become a lover girl. The way you use to do those days go back there and you see her give you the generosity of those days. Stop pursuing what is not profitable. Godliness with contentment is a great gain, your husband is a blessing to you, your wife is a blessing to you. He or she is the person that can tolerate you.

3. Biblical Factor: 2 Timothy 2:15. “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth”.

There are some principles in the Bible we cannot compromise. These Biblical principles are:

A). Pray together: Learn to have family devotion together, interact and share the word.

24. B) Maturity is another principle. Gene 2: 24. You have disagreements with your spouse you call your parents to report; that is childish. People who are ready to respond positively when there are issues, they are ready to sort out things, treat each other as adults are the ones required in marriage.
25. C) The principle of Purity: Heb 13:4. You are not married, you have been living together as husband and wife for years without no form of marriage in sight. There is already a problem.
26. D) Forgiveness: Learn to forgive. Break the record of offences.
27. E) Agree –  Amos 3:3, you have to agree and have godly policies, how do you want to raise your children up; these are things you must set before you start having kids. Agree and talk about it. What do you permit in your home? Godly policies are very key in your home.
28. Godly parenting: Godly children without blemish, not that one will be bad others will be good, you check their temperament and know how to raise them individually, in a Christian home we groom, mould and project them to the world. Don’t do mass production, they have individualities.
29. Submission, respect, and unity: Leaning and Clinging to your spouse are very important. Galatians 6:16. When you like to be secretive, abusive and report there will be trouble. Walking according to the rule of God there will be peace.
30. Joint Factor: You have to both partner with God as husband and wife to build the marriage of your dream. “If you are willing and obedient you will eat the good of the land “you need to be open to knowledge and wisdom. Isaiah 1:19.

Isaiah 33:6. You must have the wisdom to relate with in-laws. It is not a battle you want to start and win. Always apply wisdom.

7. Don’t glory in your infirmities; don’t glory in your anger. For example, when you say words like “go and do research in my family we can get angry; that is the way we do in my family etc

If you have come from a family where polygamy is normal, disassociate yourself and be different.

Ecc. 9:10- “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom”.

you must make effort, make contributions, don’t be laidback, demonstrate love and learn new things. Don’t just be bragging that you are the head of the family. Do it well, do everything well, do your parenting well, study the scriptures.

You need the mercy of God. Rom. 9:15.  God’s mercy is the final blow to everything in life. Maybe you have missed it in life ask God for mercy.

Prayer: May you continue to enjoy peace in your home and God will show you mercy in Jesus name; Amen.

The sermon, God’s Will for Christian Families, by Pastor (Mrs) Yomi Adewale of Family Boosters Ministry, Lagos, Nigeria was delivered on Sunday, August 12, 2018.

Text: Ruth 1:1-22

This happened in the days when judges ruled: needless to stress that the rule of judges and not kings as should have been the case was brought about as a consequence of the error of a man called Judah, the son of Jacob. This error denied ten generations of kings access to the throne because a father satisfied his lust.

Elimelech was a man in the lineage of the Messiah from the city of Beth-lehem-Judah. (Bethlehem means the house of bread or the place of food.) It was an irony that there was famine in the house of bread and Elimelech whose name means “My God Is King” would relocate to somewhere else, and of all places, Moab; outside of the Commonwealth of Israel. He left with his wife and two sons to live in Moab.

Soon after, Elimelech died leaving his wife Naomi ( Naomi mean” pleasant, lovely” hence -“my pleasant one or “my lovely one”) and their two sons Mahlon (meaning “weak, sick”) and Kilion (meaning “frail”)

The two boys married Moabite ladies Orpah (“back of the neck” or ” to turn back”) and Ruth (“friendship”). Within the space of a short time, the two boys died leaving no children. Having been in Moan for ten years, Naomi decided to return to Bethlehem having heard that the famine was over (Vs 6). Orpah ‘turned back’ to her people while Ruth befriended Naomi to the end (vs 14).

In vs 13, Naomi said, “…the LORD is afflicting me!” (NET). Why would she claim so and not that the hand of the LORD was against her husband and children by killing them? Obviously, she knew she was in the heat because it was her decision to relocate in the first place. Don’t ever undermine the power of a woman: if a man is tired of a place or church and desires to move and the wife does not consent, trust me, they will remain there. If the woman got tired and decided to move and the man does not want to, still trust me, they are moving. For whatever reason Naomi wanted out of Bethlehem during the ‘temporary’ scarcity, I cannot say: maybe she thought she was smart, or she wanted her ailing children treated abroad or maybe, she was just an impatient person. Whatever the reason, DO NOT MAKE PERMANENT DECISIONS OVER TEMPORARY SITUATIONS.

When Naomi got back to Bethlehem, she met the same people she left behind, they did not die. Rather she suffered losses. She said “I left here full, but…return empty (vs 21). Her decision to relocate did not pay her.

How many people have left the churches where God planted them at the slightest provocation or offences. Whatever the offence, if God planted you there stay there (Ps 92:13). You don’t resign from your job because of provocation or offences, do you? Why leave the church? Why leave your country or city for a reason that might not stand the test?’ The LORD Jesus said “offences must come” (Matt. 18:7). Patience and self-control are the fruit of the Spirit.

Elimelech should have been the great-grandfather of David and a progenitor of the Messiah but he lost it to a woman who could see beyond the mundane and attached herself forcefully and by faith into the genealogy of the Lord Jesus Christ. Ruth was a woman of the Spirit, willing to go to where Naomi ran away from. She became the mother of Obed, David’s grandpa through Boaz, Elimelech’s brother. Elimelech lost it and his brother had to raise the seed for him through Ruth. Even if Obed bears Chilion’s name, we know the seed is Boaz’s.

Elimelech’s one mistake erased his entire generation from God’s program for them. Let’s be careful about our choices and decisions in life.

Final Note:

That interesting four-chaptered book was not dedicated nor named after Elimelech, nor Naomi, neither Boaz nor Obed but to a total stranger, a gentile woman, a Moabitess, RUTH, who knew to plug herself into God’s program when those for whom it was prepared failed.

Seek To Know And Stay In The Centre Of God’s Will.

The sermon, Don’t Miss Your Place In God’s Program, by Pastor Peter Yakubu, founder, Prevailer’s Arena, Lagos Nigeria, was delivered on August 5, 2018.

Text: Jude 1: 1-4 Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, [and] called: 2 Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied.  3 Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort [you] that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.  4 For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.

The times we are in are evil. It is the last days. Things that we do not imagine will happen are happening in our days. Instead of condemning evil things, they get celebrated nowadays.

As Christians, God is counting on us. We have received a common salvation, we are however not making it common and popular to people around us. We just keep to ourselves alone. This is not the mind of God, He wants us to publish the good news by proclaiming our faith everywhere.

In order for us to be preserved in this evil times, we must do the following:

Continue to maintain His presence.

Moses knew that the only thing that could preserve Israel as a nation was if God’s presence remained with them (Ex. 34:33-35). The presence of God was distinguishable in the life of Moses, His face shone and reflect the glory of God, such that other people could not look at him.

When the presence of God is with us, the more secure we will be. Moses was kept secure because he dwelt in God’s presence.  Every enemy he had were subdued before him (Num, 12: 1-10).

David also dwelt in the presence of God, he was kept secured by God from all attacks: animals and humans (Psalms 127: 1-6). Refuse to be a nominal Christian. Make yourself known to God. He will make Himself known to you.

Be a servant of God. Serve God.

Those who serve God, He keeps alive to serve Him more (Mal. 3: 17).

The Bible records that Phineas did serve God and God promised to preserve him and his household (Num. 25: 11-13). Let serving God be the reason why you are living.

God blesses those who serve Him; He heals them and prolongs their days (Ex. 23: 25-26).

David was a great servant of God (Psalms 89: 20; 105: 15), no wonder he was greatly blessed by God.

Daniel served God wholeheartedly, he was blessed mightily by God. We must add value to the kingdom of God through service.

Activate your faith in God.

The extent of faith you have in God determines the security of your destiny. Job had great faith in God, his security was strong. His blessings that the enemy took were doubled by God (Job 14:14; Job 42: 10-17).

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were men of great faith, God defended them. Those who threw them into the fiery furnace were burnt, but they were preserved. The king had to give honour to their God (Dan. 3:16, 28).

What can help you in these times?

The strength of your relationship with God.

Queen Esther had a strong relationship with the king, she got what she wanted (Esther 5: 3-8). Our relationship with the king of kings must be strong.

The quality of the word of God in you.

How much words do you have? This is what you can use to fight the enemy when he comes against you.

What is the seriousness with which you take the word? Your power and life rest on this.

May God preserve you in Jesus name. Amen!

The sermon, How To Be Preserved In These Times And Seasons, by Pastor Yomi Obadimeji, senior Pastor of RCCG Strongtower, Manchester was delivered on July 22, 2018.