Making a House a Home

Making a House a Home

17     Better a dry crust with peace and quiet than a house full of feasting, with strife. (Pr 17:1 NIV)

Introduction:

A palace without affection is a poor hovel, and the meanest hut with love in it is a palace for the soul.

   Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899)

Even though you may live in a great and wonderful house, it may not feel like home, and though you live in a cottage, it may feel like a castle if love is there. A house is not a home, and feeling at home does not always mean you have nice house. Home is where the heart is, and your heart is there, because it is there that you feel at home. In order to make a house a home:

I.        Desire Tranquility

A.      To Still Your Spirit

B.      To Sweeten your fare

II.      Detest Hostility

A.      It Strains Your heart

B.      It Spoils Your possessions

III.   Distribute Hospitality

A.      Atmosphere preferred to Affluence

B.      Peace mitigates Poverty

Conclusion:

4     What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

(Jas 4:1-3 NIV)

Giving of yourself, and being unselfish, with your love, energy and sacrifice are what makes a house a home. Selfish motives, a lazy spirit, and placing your needs above others is the way to destroy a home, peace, and love. Better to have the loving home, than to have every other appetite fulfilled, because it is the appetite for love, and peace, and harmony, that cry out the loudest to be satisfied.

Anyone can build a house: we need the Lord for the creation of a home.

   John Henry Jowett (1864-1923)