From His Heart

Speaker 1

Today on From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve, let's discover what home sweet Home is intended to be.

Speaker 2

God has a lot to say about the home. He has lots to say about what He designed it to be, and this is how it can be: a place of love, joy, and peace. A place where you want to go, a place where you enjoy being. A place that is truly a safe place, a refuge.

I want to share with you three encouragements so that you can experience love, joy, and peace at home. And home can once again become a slice of heaven. There are treasures and hope that you have always dreamed of.

Love can heal every scar with real truth and real love.

Speaker 1

Is your home a place where peace is found? Or is your home a war zone to be avoided at all costs for fear of further casualties?

This is From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve, where today we're going to remember that Mother's Day is coming. And we'll learn how we should create a home that is a sweet place to live. We'll start by learning how to patch up the wounds, start the healing process, and then discover how you can have a safe, peaceful, joyful home sweet home guaranteed.

This extremely honest, uncompromising truth we'll hear today on From His Heart will help you find victory for your marriage and for your family. The message is called Home Sweet Home. With Mother's Day upon us, let's learn to do without the anger and retaliation by following the Lord's instruction.

Open your Bible now to 1 Peter, chapter 3, as Pastor Jeff Shreve begins the message Home Sweet Home.

Speaker 2

If you have your Bible, please turn to 1 Peter, chapter 3. We want to talk in our series on marriage and family called Built to Last, about Home Sweet Home.

Now, when I was a kid growing up, I was born in 1962. I know it's shocking to many of you because you thought it was like 82, but no, it's 1962. I grew up in the 60s and the early 70s. That was my childhood. Now, anybody who grew up at that time period knows that we had like five channels on television. You had ABC, NBC, CBS, and a couple of UHF stations. And then, if you were desperate beyond desperation, you watched public television. I mean, it was just five or six channels; that's all you had. We didn't have any kind of electronic games, so as a kid, you spent a lot of time outside because there wasn't just a ton to do inside. I came from a big family; I'm the fifth of six kids. So, you always had playmates and people on the street.

One of the things I remember is playing a lot of tag, and we would play variations of tag. One of the variations was freeze tag. Freeze tag was really fun because the person that was "it" would touch somebody, and then they would be frozen. The others would have to touch them before they got caught so they could unfreeze them. But the thing about tag was, when you played, you always set up what was going to be home, what home base was. Home base is critical in tag because when you're touching home, nobody can get you out. That's a safe place, a refuge. If you're being chased by the "it" person and you touch home, then they can't get you out.

That's such a vivid picture, and it sets in the minds of kids what home is supposed to be. Home is supposed to be a safe place, a good place, a refuge. But for so many people, home is not like that. You know, God has set it up in His plan and design. Home is supposed to be a slice of heaven. When He set up the marriage and family unit, He said, "This is supposed to be." He calls it the grace of life. In 1 Peter, chapter 3, verse 7, marriage and family and children—that's the grace of life. It's supposed to be a wonderful thing, a place where there's love, joy, and peace.

Out in the world, when you go to school or work, that's where you slay dragons, fight, and face opposition. But then you come home, and that's where you can rest, recharge, laugh, and have joy. But so often, it's not like that. So often, it's not a slice of heaven; it's an outpost of hell. One man told me just recently about his first marriage that failed. He said, "I hated to come home." Why? Because he was going to come home to screaming, yelling, and nagging, and he'd just as soon stay at work.

Debbie and I lived across the street some years ago from a family, and their son, who was about 8, was always on the street. I mean, it would be into the night, and he'd still be outside. I never understood it; it was like that kid was never in his house. Then I found out about his house. His house was turmoil, with yelling and screaming between mom, dad, and daughter. He couldn't take that, so he just thought, "I don't want to hear all that. I don't want to be around that. It's just so much turmoil." He just wanted to be outside where it was safe. That's sad because home is supposed to be a safe place.

God has a lot to say about the home. He has lots to say about what He designed it to be and how it can be—a place of love, joy, and peace; a place where you want to go, where you enjoy being; a place that is truly a safe refuge.

Now, in 1 Peter, chapter 3, the Lord talks about marriage. The book of 1 Peter is written to Christians who are experiencing difficulties, struggles, and hardships. It's an encouragement from the Apostle Peter to keep walking with God, keep trusting Him. Yes, you're suffering a little bit, but it's necessary; God is using that. But keep being an example of the Lord Jesus Christ, an example to lost people of what it really means to be a Christian.

He talks about how you and I are supposed to walk in terms of the government and how we're supposed to live in that sphere. Then he talks about our job relationships, and in terms of master-slave, he uses that and how you're supposed to be a good slave if you're in that situation. Then he talks about marriage. He discusses how wives can win their husbands who are disobedient to the word, even without a word, just by their chaste and respectful behavior.

In 1 Peter 3, verses 1 through 6, he gives six verses about how a wife is to be to her husband. He gives one verse, verse 7, about how a husband is to be to his wife. Somebody asked, "Why six verses for the wife and only one for the husband?" One of the commentaries I read suggested that women are just more verbal. It's just succinct for a man. But he talks about how to do marriage and family.

Then in verse 8, he says this to sum up: "Let all be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kind-hearted, and humble in spirit. Not returning evil for evil, or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead. For you were called for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing. For let him who means to love life and see good days refrain his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking guile. Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and His ears attend to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil."

I want to share with you three encouragements from 1 Peter 3:8-12. Three encouragements so that you can experience love, joy, and peace at home, and home can once again become a slice of heaven. Now, these are all things that you, by God's power, can do.

Do you remember a couple of weeks ago when I had everybody lock their fingers and make a little circle? You remember that? I said that the only person you can change is the person in the circle. Well, we're working today on the person in the circle. We're working on you. Just like that old ad, "Only you can prevent forest fires." It seems like a lot of pressure, but it's only you that can do that. You have to do your part.

So in the home situation, let's work on you and talk about what you can do, by God's grace and power, to make a difference at home, to make home a place where it truly is sweet.

Encouragement number one: you can develop a godly attitude. Look at verse 8 again: "To sum up, let all be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kind-hearted, and humble in spirit." He names five things—five attitudes that you can have, that I can have, that are attitudes that God has. You can develop a godly attitude.

Now, it stands to reason that if you're going to have a godly attitude, you need God to be able to do that. Because if something's going to be godly, it requires God's help. In order for you and me to have a home where there's a godly attitude, you have to be filled with the Spirit. You have to be controlled by God's Spirit. You have to cry out to the Lord, "Lord, enable me to do this."

The scripture says in Ephesians 5:18, "Do not be drunk with wine, wherein is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit." It goes on to talk about husband and wife relationships and kid relationships in Ephesians 5 and then in Ephesians chapter 6. What does that say? It says you need to be filled with the Spirit in order to do this thing called marriage and family. God wants to enable you to do it.

By God's Spirit, you can produce a harmonious atmosphere. When I yield myself to the Holy Spirit, all of a sudden, the Holy Spirit is sitting on the throne of my life. He's in charge. The Holy Spirit can produce a harmonious atmosphere in my life and in my home as Debbie and I both yield to the Holy Spirit.

"To sum up, let all be harmonious," he says. Now, that word "harmonious" in the Greek is a compound word. It literally means to be like-minded. "Homo," which means the same, and "frond," meaning like-minded. God is saying, "Hey, if you'll have the same mind, then you can have harmony in your home." If you're playing off the same page of music, then you're going to have harmony in the home.

If Debbie is yielded to the Holy Spirit of God and I am yielded to the Holy Spirit of God, well, the Holy Spirit doesn't fight with Himself; the Holy Spirit gets along with Himself. So there's going to be harmony in our home. When we both want not what self wants, but what the Savior wants, what the Spirit wants, we're yielded to Him. It's not a pretty sight to be in a home where there's disharmony. God says, "If you will yield to my Spirit, then I can make your home harmonious."

Because your wife wants what the Spirit wants, your husband wants what the Spirit wants, and the kids want what the Spirit wants. It creates a harmonious atmosphere.

Secondly, the Holy Spirit not only produces a harmonious atmosphere, but He produces a kind and caring heart. "To sum up, let all be harmonious, sympathetic, kind-hearted, brotherly." Wow. Sympathetic, brotherly, and kind-hearted—three things that talk about kindness and caring.

"Sympathetic" is a word that literally means having a fellow feeling, mutually commiserative. That's kind of interesting, isn't it? What does it mean to be mutually commiserative? It says in Romans chapter 12, "Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep." That's what it means to be sympathetic, to be mutually commiserative. When you're having a bad day, someone comes alongside and commiserates with you.

You know, guys, especially our wives, it's so hard for us. When they tell you about their struggles, trials, and hard days, and how the kids were unruly, they don't want you to fix it. They don't want your solutions. All they want is your shoulder. All they want is your sympathy. All they want is for you to commiserate with them and say, "Man, that is a hard day. I am so sorry, darling, that you had such a hard day."

For a woman, that makes them feel so good. They're like, "Ah, he gets it; he understands." For us, it's like, "I didn't do anything; I just told you how bad it was." To us, that doesn't fix anything. But to a woman, it's this thing. Think about a woman; it's kind of like a plant. She's there working with the kids all day, especially a stay-at-home mom, and she's just starting to drain. You know how plants can be if they don't have water; they're just hungover like this.

When she tells you about her hungover type of situation, what do you do? You tell her all the things that she's doing wrong, and she's just even more hungover. But if you sympathize with her, if you commiserate with her, if you're kind and caring, it's like pouring water on a withered plant. All of a sudden, she just feels so much better.

Ah, to have in your home kindness and caring. It says to be brotherly, sympathetic, brotherly. You know, the word for brotherly is "philadelphos," from which we get our English word, the city, Philadelphia. Philadelphia is the city of brotherly love. "Philadelphos" is that brotherly kind of love, that friendship kind of love.

Then to be kind-hearted, which means you have compassion; you're tender in your heart toward another person, especially toward your mate, especially toward your kids. Compassion means to suffer with, and you suffer with them. Debbie and I are getting ready to do a family life conference in Jacksonville, Florida. I remember several family life marriage conferences ago when one of the guys we were doing the conference with talked about how couples, husbands and wives, tend to quit being friends.

He said, "Hey, you know, one of the things that you need to do is rekindle your friendship. Your spouse should be your best friend outside of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's the person that you want to spend time with; it's the person that you want to be with." He said this about friends: "What is a friend? A friend is someone who enjoys your company and does not have a plan for your immediate improvement."

You notice that about couples, married couples. All of a sudden, I want to get together with you. Why? So I can fix you. That's not what a friend does. A friend is just someone who enjoys your company. We need to get to that place where we're friends again, where we enjoy one another's company. The Holy Spirit can produce that kind of kind, caring heart, kindness, sympathy, and compassion that homes desperately need.

And you know the thing about the Holy Spirit? He wants to do all those things, but He only works when you are humble because it says lastly in verse 8, "a humble spirit." The Holy Spirit won't work in a proud heart because God is opposed to the proud. He gives grace to the humble. God is like a football player; He lines up in His stance. If you're filled with pride, He's going to knock your block off. He says, "Listen, I'm opposed to the proud, but I give grace to the humble."

If you want the Lord, by His Spirit, to be in charge of you so that you would have harmony, kindness, compassion, and those wonderful things, then you have to humble yourself before the Lord and say, "Lord, I can't do this by myself. Lord, you do it through me. You love my spouse; you love my kids." Kids say, "Lord, you help me love my parents. Do it through me."

You can develop a godly attitude.

Second encouragement: not only develop a godly attitude, but you can develop godly communication. This is critical. You know, we drive past homes in nice neighborhoods and see this pretty house, this beautiful house, this great house. We look at it from the outside and say, "Oh, just think, if you could live there, how wonderful would that be?" Maybe not so wonderful. We don't know what goes on behind closed doors.

Debbie and I watched a movie Friday night called "Foxcatcher." It's about two wrestlers and John Dupont, the multi-millionaire who lived on this huge spread. Everything looked good from the outside, but John Dupont was psycho. Hanging around John Dupont, you were taking your life in your own hands, as one of the wrestlers found out when he shot and killed him.

Things can look different from the street than what's really going on. What we see so often in homes, if you go behind closed doors, you hear some of the most horrible communication—communication that doesn't build up, that doesn't encourage, but just tears down and is awful to listen to.

Verse 9 says, "Not returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead. For you were called for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing. For let him who means to love life and see good days refrain his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking guile, from speaking lies and deceit." It has to do with your mouth.

So you have to make some choices. The first choice you need to make, I need to make, we need to make, is to make the choice to not verbally retaliate in marriage. Make the choice that no matter what my spouse says to me, no matter what my parents say to me, no matter what my child says to me, I am not going to return evil for evil, insult for insult. I am not going to retaliate in kind.

This is how this works in family life. We throw out an insult, and then how does it come back? The natural response when someone insults you is to hit them back, get them back, insult them back. But you don't want to insult them back. Just the same way they insulted you, you want to put a little on it.

It would be like this: If Debbie and I are starting to get into a quarrel, I say something to her. I throw a verbal pebble at her—just a little dig, a little zinger, you know, thinking that will stop it. Well, she takes that in her naturalness, not by the power of the Holy Spirit, but just in her naturalness. I threw a pebble at her, so what does she do? She throws a rock back at me.

Well, I just got hit with a rock, so what do I do? Oh, rock? All right. Well, let me tell you something about your mother, and I throw a boulder at her. She's like, "My mother, huh?" So she takes the boulder and pulls out the bazooka. She's shooting at me with the bazooka.

All of a sudden, this is what happens in so many marriages. You go from pebble to rock, rock to boulder, boulder to bazooka, bazooka to nuclear. Somebody says, "I'm going to leave if you keep this up. I'm a woman; I'm going to leave. I just get a divorce." That's your trump card; you can't go any higher than that. She's either going to back down or bow up.

As I told you, one friend of mine, that's how he and his wife got divorced. It went from pebble to rock, rock to boulder, boulder to bazooka, bazooka to nuclear, nuclear to "let's go nuclear." They divorced, all because of something little. So make the choice to not verbally retaliate.

Speaker 1

Things can heat up and escalate quickly when tempers flare between husbands and wives, and I hope you can be with us next time. For more practical advice from God's Word on how to navigate the waters of marriage and make your home truly "Home Sweet Home." That's the title of the lesson today from Pastor Jeff in honor of Mother's Day that's coming. We surely know that that is all that mothers want for their home, and that is a sweet home.

The message is from the series "Built to Last: How to Build a Successful Marriage and Family," a powerful six-message series that you'll want to get. It'll also help you build a home that will honor God, is packed with peace, and provides the tools to build deeper, loving relationships with your wife, husband, mother, and father. If you've not been open to that, you can be the catalyst for change. Just go to fromhisheart.org, click the resources link to get your copy of the series "Built to Last."

This month, for your support to From His Heart, we have a special gift from Pastor Jeff to you. It's his new 10-message series "Before There Were: The Cost of Compromise," and it's yours for a gift of any amount to From His Heart. It'll help you build your walk with God by learning how to completely surrender to His will for your life and learning to avoid the influential draw of the world's sinful ways. You must be uncompromising in that faith. All 10 messages cover the Book of Judges and are our thank you for your support of any amount this month. Simply call 866-40-BIBLE (866-402-4253) or go online to fromhisheart.org and just request it when you make your gift today.

Thank you for your willingness to invest in Kingdom work through From His Heart. Hey, when you do go online, be sure to sign up for Pastor Jeff's weekly Real Hope email encouragement letter that you'll get in your inbox every Friday morning. And there too, you can become a friend of the ministry on our social media channels. The web address again is fromhisheart.org.

Well, we'll close today's pre-Mother's Day broadcast with a special verse for us all to cherish our mothers and also cherish God's plan for us before we were even conceived. Psalm 139:13 says, "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb."

Well, thank you for listening today. I'm Larry Nobles, and we trust you'll be here tomorrow for part two of the message "Home Sweet Home." That's on Friday, right here on From His Heart.

Speaker 2

His heart there is treasure there is blessed There is hope that you always bring love he can heal every scars of true.

Speaker 1

From his heart is the listener supported Broadcast Ministry of Dr. Jeff Shreve speaking the truth in love to a lost and a hurting world.

Remember, no matter what, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Find out more at from his heart dot org.