A home can be a godly one or an ungodly one depending on who is in charge, the one in control and the one ruling and directing the affairs of the home. Where Jesus is in charge, then it will be a godly home. All things will be done in the fear of God. These are God’s expectations from our homes. In fact, godly and healthy homes are God’s plan and purpose for all people.

CHARACTERISTICS OF A GODLY AND HEALTHY HOME:

1. It is a home built on love, truth and the perfect will of God.
2. It is where Jesus Christ is the Lord, being served and worshipped in spirit and in truth. (John 4: 23).
3. It is where the husband is loving, kind, compassionate and faithful to his wife and children. (1 Peter 3: 7).
4. It is where the wife is devoted, loving, faithful and submissive to her husband. (1 Peter 3: 1-6).
5. It is where children are brought up in the fear and admonition of the Lord. (Ephesians 6: 1-4).
6. It is where the couple is united in love and is ready to make the home a haven of peace on earth. (1 Peter 3: 8-11).
7. It is a godly and healthy home built on love that will not give up on the other in spite of disappointment, hurts, mistakes and failures. (1 Corinthians 13: 4-7). (SOURCE UNKNOWN)

“I am eternally grateful for all the wonderful things God has given me and shown me – not material things but life, friends, family, insight into my life, and the ability to love and be loves. The list is endless! He is truly the greatest and He is truly the way to all that is good!”     (CHERYL ANN, 35, USA)

“I want to thank God even for the afflictions, pain, hardships and discouragement I have met with over the year, for through them I have realized God’s ever-loving presence no matter how hard things may be.” (SARLOMIE, ZIMBABWE)

“I am thankful for everything He has done in my life, for my parents who first taught me about Jesus, for my drug-addicted brother (who made me learn to rely on Him in every kind of hardship). I’m thankful for the opportunity to ser4ve Him even when I think I don’t deserve to. I am thankful that when I am weak His strength is perfect.” (TRESIA KRISTIN, 24, INDONESIA)

“I thank God that He has met my needs…I was poor, but now I’m rich in Him…He has met my needs completely.”   (DEBORAH TURNER, 38, ENGLAND)

“Provision and care for me and my family these past years. Answers to prayers and deliverance from all my fears.”  (KOLA OGUNLANA, NIGERIA)

“I am so thankful to God for opening my mother’s heart of stone that she has gone to church with me thrice already. I am claiming her salvation. Thank You, God!”   (SHANICE, SINGAPORE)

“I thank God for Jesus, because I know that even if I was the only sinner on this earth, He would still have come down and died on the cross for me.” ((SHOBIN, INDIA)

“Thank you for helping me through my lowest times, and thank you for blessing me so I can reach my highest. Thank you for giving Your only Son so that I can live my life according to Your will, and thank you for giving me abundant happiness in my life.”                    (JESS DAW, 17, AUSTRALIA)

“Thank my Heavenly Father for giving this life to me. I thank You for Your guidance and help in my life.”    (BABU PAUL, 42, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES)

“I’m so thankful that my 80-year old dad got leukemia, because through it he has placed his faith in Christ. Though he has always been a ‘good’ man and a great dad, he has been changed by the power of God. God can, in all things, work for the good of those who love Him!”   (KARIN, 43, USA)

“My thanks to God is thanks for all the food that He gave me! Thank you God.”   (BRENT LANDRY, 3, USA)

What about you…what are you thankful to God for?

Hope has two beautiful daughters Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.  (AUGUSTINE)

Down through the centuries in times of trouble and trial God has brought courage to the hearts of those who love Him. The Bible is filled with assurances of God’s help and comfort in every kind of trouble which might cause fears to arise in the human heart. You can look ahead with promise, hope, and joy. (BILLY GRAHAM)

Even a coward can praise Christ, but it takes a man of courage to follow Him.   (ANONYMOUS)

It takes courage: To refrain from gossip when others about you delight in it. To stand up for an absent person who is being abused. To live honestly within your means and not dishonestly on the means of others. To be a real man, a true woman, by holding fast to your Christian ideals when it causes you to be looked upon as strange and peculiar. To be talked about and yet remain silent when a word would justify you in the yes of others, but which you cannot speak without injury to another. To refuse to do a thing which is wrong, though others do it. To dress according to your income and to deny yourself what you cannot afford to buy. To live always according to your convictions.  (ANONYMOUS)

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.
(MARY ANNE RADMACHER)

I love that word “encourage” – when you do it, you literally put “courage in” to that person. Someone who may be more battered than you know, closer to going down or giving up than you could imagine. You never know when your encouragement might literally be the difference in that person’s life. When you’re bruised and hurting, it’s that person in your corner who can get you back in the ring for another round. (RON HUTCHCRAFT)

Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don’t have the strength. (THEODORE  ROOSEVELT)

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.  (BILLY GRAHAM)

Money will buy a bed but not sleep; books but not brains; food but not appetite; finery but not beauty; a house but not a home; medicine but not health; luxuries but not culture; amusements but not happiness; religion but not salvation; a passport to everywhere but heaven. (THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS)

It is not persecution of the church in China that I fear. The church has always been able to weather persecution. My fear is love of money in the church. (A CHINESE PASTOR)

You say, ‘If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.’ You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled. (CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON)

Givers can be divided into three types: the flint, the sponge and the honeycomb. Some givers are like a piece of flint – to get anything out of it you must hammer it, and even then you only get chips and sparks. Others are like a sponge – to get anything out of a sponge you must squeeze it and squeeze it hard, because the more you squeeze a sponge, the more you get. But others are like a honeycomb – which just overflows with its own sweetness. That is how God gives to us, and it is how we should give in turn.                             (ANONYMOUS)

All things are God’s already; we can give Him no right, by consecrating any, that He had not before, only we set it apart to His service – just as a gardener brings his master a basket of apricots, and presents them; his lord thanks him, and perhaps gives him something for his pains, and yet the apricots were as much his lord’s before as now. (JOHN SELDEN)

When we surrender every area of our lives– including our finances–to God, then we are free to trust Him to meet our needs. But  if  we  would rather hold tightly to those things that we possess, then we find ourselves in bondage to those very things. (LARRY BURKETT)

Our love for God is tested by the question of whether we seek Him or His gifts (RALPH W. SOCKMAN)