Devi Titus: My name is pronounced Devi. It’s with a “v” not a “b” as in victory. I tell everybody that on the telephone. All of the people who call, I say, “My name is Devi Titus.” They say, “Debbie,” and I say, “No, it’s Devi as in victory.”

Our topic today and the reason you have packed in to this room: “How to Make Your Home a Place of Love and Peace.” Stop and think about this. God is love. Jesus is the Prince of peace. God is love, and Jesus is the Prince of peace. We were created in the image of God, which means we were created in love. That creates within the human heart an essential emotional need to be loved. Jesus is the Prince of peace. When the angels came and proclaimed His birth, what did they say to the shepherds on the hill? “Peace on earth.” In other words, when Jesus came, He brought what? Peace on earth. So if we are in the image of God, and we are created to need love, and peace came on earth through Christ, then peace and love were created by God to be essential human emotions.

You know what else God created? He created the home to be the institution to develop those two essential human emotions—love and peace. Everybody say it with me—love and peace. So really, that’s all that needs to take place within your household—love and peace. Why? Because home . . . I live in Ohio, and we have a lot of country craft stores. You’ve seen the little country craft things that say, “Home is where the heart is.” You’ve heard that, haven’t you? Well, I have another word to add to it. Yes, home is where the heart is, but is what? Home is where the human heart is formed. Stop and think about that for a minute.

God created the institution of the home to be the institution where the human heart is formed. Church is not where the heart is formed. It’s formed at home. It’s either hardened, hurt, or hindered at home, or it’s made sensitive, safe, and secure from home.

Last year I spoke to 33,000 women face-to-face, and I didn’t count you, so I’m going to add another 700 or so this weekend. Thirty-three thousand women, face-to-face. What drove me a few years ago to start the ministry called The Mentoring Mansion, which essential was a ministry to invite you to my home, eight to ten women at a time. I would leave great conferences like this and grieve in my heart because I want to tell you ladies, you are the cream of the crop of Christian women. I’ll tell you why I know that—you’ve paid money; you’ve made sacrifice; you’ve set time aside; you’ve given your commodity—you are the hungry of the hungry. You’re not here this weekend out of traditional religion. Maybe we go to church on Sunday out of traditional religion, but the women I speak to are not traditionally religious women. They are the seekers you are, and I applaud you for the sacrifices and what you’ve given is the gift of time. I always ask the Lord, “Help me not to waste your time.”

Thank you for trusting me with your time for one hour. I pray every single one of you will take a nugget home that you will never ever forget. You’ve been to enough conferences that you can’t remember when you get home to tell your friends what you just heard. It was inspiring at the moment, but we want to take a truth home that can matter. I’m telling you one truth about your home. Home is where the heart is formed. Many of you are so well-versed in the Word. There’s been enough background already on biblical womanhood that I’m not going to go into in-depth biblical defense scripturally, although I will teach you some deep principles from the Word. I think most of us are already there. We just need to know how to go home and make this work in our life. We know Jesus is the Prince of peace; we know God is love. Now I’ve told you that all the human heart needs is peace and love. That’s all your kids need, that’s all your husband needs, and that’s all you need.

The Word says whatever is not of peace is not from God. So if you’re making a decision and something takes away your peace, don’t do it. If you’re going to say something and it’s going to take away the peace of the environment, don’t say it. Is that right? Why? Peace and love are the only two essential human emotions, and we are called, as women within the home environment, to be the guard, to be the keeper of that environment. That’s what that word, keeper, means in Titus 2.

That word, keeper, means to guard, just like the guard in the Old Testament was the guard at the gate of the city. You know what his assignment was? His assignment was to stand at the wall, at the gate, and he was politically empowered to be the one who would look beyond the walls of the city and discern if there was going to be any encroachment of the enemy to come in to take away the peace of the city. In other words, the enemy would attack the city. The guard at the gate . . . Oikos, that’s the word, keeper of the home, that’s the Greek word for keeper. God has positioned the woman to be the guard at the gate of your household. He has given you the discernment—it’s not feminine intuition—it is discernment because of the dominion that He has established you within the environment of your home to be the keeper of peace.

So what we do as women? We are not the ones to create the confusion and the chaos. We are the ones who have the spiritual authority and assignment to establish peace in the environment of our home. He says, “I want you, Devi, the older woman, to teach these younger women that God has given you an assignment that you stand at the gate of your household. He’ll let you see the enemy way before he attacks.” Then you’ll go to your head, and you’ll say, “Honey, I just have this feeling that the kids that we’re giving permission for our kids to go out with on Friday night, this isn’t a good thing.” What are you doing? The Holy Spirit is giving you insight at discernment to be able to keep what in your home? Love and peace. So the enemy cannot come in and take that away from you.

He has said your husband is the head of the home. Just hang with me one minute, okay—are you with me? We get tweaked in our thinking, and by tweaked, what I mean is we can just be slightly off—not much off, slightly off. If you’re slightly off in the beginning of time, everything looks okay. Watch me for a minute. If we are slightly off the mark of the plumb of the Word in our understanding, it can look like we’re obeying, but what is going to happen is if you’re slightly off here, you will end up here. You won’t end up on the mark.

I’m going to tell you something—the Word does not say the husband is the head of the home. Ephesians 5, quote the Scripture, “The husband is the head of the wife.” Hello, let’s not misquote it, because if we misquote it, we will misunderstand it. Are you with me? I want you all to say it out of your lips: “The husband is the head of the wife.” Some of you are (gagging or choking sounds). If you can say home, you can say, “Honey, you need to be taking the headship—take the headship, take the spiritual responsibility. You need to be leading devotions with our kids because you are the head of the home.” But the Word doesn’t say he’s the head of the home. He’s the head of the wife. So we want to be sure that within our home we have these things aligned.

So He says, “You submit to his headship, but, women, here’s what I want you to know. I have positioned you as the keeper, as the guard at the gate of the city, under the headship of your husband so that you don’t take peace or love out of this home.” Why? Home is where the human heart is formed. How do we want to form it? As a pastor’s wife in ministry, working with families for 37 years, the issues that we deal with in counseling, every single one of them, without exception, are all traced back to the home. Every personal issue that you deal with in life: relational issues, sin issues, anger, bitterness. I think it’s time, with the redemption of the Cross, that we learn how to live beyond that. I’m tired of having to give altar calls for bitterness and anger to Christian women.

The prophet Samuel came to Saul and he said, “Saul, don’t you realize that rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, for it is better to obey than to sacrifice.” And what is sacrifice? It was their form of repentance. It’s much better for you to not have to repent. It’s awesome that we can, but it’s better that we don’t have to every single day, five times, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, twelve times a day. That’s not victory, and for the most part, you’ve sown seeds of chaos, confusion, strife, a lack of love, and a lack of peace, and you can’t get them back.

How do we do it? I am teaching you out of The Home Experience book. The “Use What You Have” principle is chapter three. What I’m doing this afternoon is I’m fulfilling about four principles in this, so you can go home with something tangible that you can do.

I came home from a large Christian women’s conference in 2000. There were about as many there as here because it was a millennium celebration. I was a plenary speaker. The worship was incredible. The administration was awesome. Everything about the conference was amazing. Usually I come home saying, “Oh, wow. That was so awesome. Thank You for Your Holy Spirit. Thank You for Your presence. Thank You for Your redemption, for the power of the cross, for the blessing. Thank You that there’s hope in our lives.” But I didn’t come home that way.

I came home very, very frustrated because I realized that there’s this great chasm between what we know to do, what we teach you should do, and then we go home, and we don’t know how to do it. We didn’t grow up in a home with peace and love, how in the world do you create that environment? If you’ve never had a home experience, it’s difficult. How do you create a home experience that exhibits that? If you’ve never really been loved, really loved in a biblical way by a man in a biblical, sensitive, Christ-like way, how in the world do you know how to relate?

I realized this was the case, so I went to the Lord, and I just said, “God, there’s got to be something in this Word that we’re not seeing, that none of us who teach You are teaching. What is it?” The Lord led me to Exodus, to a principle that was so profound. It’s about the table. I just want to talk to you about three basic things so you can go home and make a difference in the environment of your home.

Number one: peace requires order. First Corinthians says “God is not a God of disorder, but He’s a God of peace.” So I created an environment whereby you can learn about basic order. We’re not talking about perfection. When you look at Psalm 23, you see the result of David’s relationship to the Shepherd was that “goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” What is that? Character—goodness and mercy. There are a lot of good, merciful people who are not born again; they’re not Christians. There are a lot of Christians who aren’t good and merciful, or I should say Church attenders, because there’s a huge difference.

The Shepherd stayed with him until his character was massaged and strengthened, and then it grew. Then, “I’ll dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

How many of you want that for your kids? When you finish with them and they go to college at 18, two things that you want for them is that “goodness and mercy will follow them all the days of their life, and they will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” What creates that? Spiritual desire. You can’t make your kids spiritual, but within our home we are to cultivate an environment that they will desire spirituality. Why are you here? Because of desire. You came to this conference because you have a desire—desire to know more, desire to know God in a more intimate way, desire to learn—it’s desire that brought you here.

You cultivate an environment of desire. So within the home, order is discipline. Now, we think of discipline as correction, but Jesus created a model of discipleship for you and me to learn to live a life in discipline. Did you get that? Discipline. You think of academic discipline—there’s a goal. Disciples of Jesus, followers of Jesus, are not free-for-all people. There’s a structure; there’s a culture within Christ that we come into the disciplines of Christ to become a disciple. But within our homes and our families, the institution that God created for the heart to be formed, you can’t let a human heart become a law to itself. It requires discipline—a disciplined structured environment. When you’re shaping a human heart within the home, there has to be a sense of order, system, and routine.

Now, that’s a principle, isn’t it? It’s a principle of discipleship—there’s order, systems, and routine. You do that by teaching, training, etc. That will create an environment, those systems, the order. Everyone knows what to expect that day because there’s been a system with the calendar. You know which days are going to be more stressful, which days are going to be busier, which days are going to require this, and you adjust to each other in love to maintain the order of the day because you put a system into play.

So as the keeper of the peace in the home, it’s your responsibility—not your husband’s—it’s your responsibility to create the environment of the home that is the opposite of chaos and confusion. I don’t know what’s creating chaos and confusion in your life. Is it your calendar? Is it your money? Is it the way you spend it or don’t spend it? I don’t know where your point of chaos and confusion is, but you will know. Your point will be different than mine.

When we teach a principle, it’s different than an instruction. If I now told you in order to bring peace into your home, you had to structure your system like my system, I would impose legalism, and the law never brings life. You won’t do your home like I do mine, but we will all know that it’s important to maintain order in order to have peace and love. So if you are the one who hasn’t maintained the order—let’s say you grew up in a chaotic environment. You do not know how to take care of a house; you don’t really know how to clean. You don’t know how to clean a bathroom; you don’t know how to create a structure that everybody helps. Well, one of the chapters in here is called “The Also Principle.” You can look at that, and I will show you how. Within that there is actually a principle that helps us to see how the inheritance of Abraham, that God promised Abraham, could be passed to the generations by the development of character. Character is formed in an environment of two things: love and peace.

Let me show you something. I want to read to you something out of the university studies—I don’t know if you’re enjoying this, but I’m loving it. I love it. In fact, after being frustrated after that big conference, I came home and said, “God, give me a message.” This is the message He gave me out of Exodus. It was frustrating to me because I knew it was hard to leave these environments and go home and start making these things happen. I had come across this information, you’ve read it, it’s been out for more than a decade now. There’s always a university that is studying the same or similar things and coming out with new findings.

The American Psychological Association published a study that illustrated the crucial role of the family meal in lives of teenagers. The study found that adjusted teens, those with better relationships with peers and more academic motivation and few, if any, problems with drugs and depression ate dinner with their families an average of five days a week. This is university study.

Another university points to the organized family meal’s main ingredient: communication, one key to raising emotionally healthy children.

Another, University of Minnesota, drug use, sex, violence, emotional stress were less likely in households where parents were present at crucial times, particularly during meals.

I began thinking, if the enemy wanted to attack Christian homes, the thing Satan fears the most is the presence of God. He has no defense over the presence of God—none. He can’t stand against the power of God. So if he is creating a strategy of how to defeat people who are committed and believe, “not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit says the Lord,” and you truly believe that, how is he going to defeat your family, because that’s his ultimate goal, because home is the basis for human society. Is that right? Home is the basis for human society. Church is not the basis for human society. Economics is not the basis for human society. Education is not the basis for human society. You tell me what is the basis for human society? Home. It doesn’t matter. I travel all over the world. I teach in other countries, and it doesn’t matter what culture I’m in, the basis for human society—not just American society—is the home.

So if the enemy fears the power of God, he fears the purpose the cross has given you access to within your home as the keeper. Why does prayer work? Because of the cross. So we already have a defense for our children because of the cross, But if in our home we violate His principle, all we know about the cross, but our home is filled with you coming against the authority of your husband, you undermining him, you speaking disrespectfully to him, what you are doing is you are undermining the power of the cross. You have just diffused the power of God’s love to pass to your kids, and your kids will lose respect in their generation for men. You’re going to have girls messed up because they’ve had an example that didn’t demonstrate what you tell them is true. That’s what creates hypocrisy in church-attending children—when they hear one thing and then they come into the home and they experience something other than what they hear.

So I’m saying if the enemy has a plot to defeat Your family, when you have the power of prayer, the power of the cross, you have the power of God’s love in your own life, what is he going to do? He’s afraid of that power. What he’s going to do is keep you so busy that you won’t come where the bread of the presence dwells in the home.

Let me read you something real quickly. Exodus 25 is the first place that the word table appears. It’s verse 23, and it’s in the context of God telling Moses to build the Tabernacle. This was the first tent of meeting or dwelling place for the people to come to to bring the sacrifice and to be redeemed. He was setting up a system that would eventually lead to the cross. So from verse 1 to 25 think of God as the architect here, and think of Moses as the general contractor. The architect is always the conceptual designer. So God had the concept, and He’s telling Moses—it gets into details here, and I’m just really summarizing this because I have a full teaching called The Table Principle. You will definitely want to access this, but I just want to scratch the surface for you for a moment—to show you what is essential and vital for the maintenance of love and peace in our home—the “Use What You Have” principle. What is it that you have? It’s the principle of the kingdom.

So God tells Moses, “I want you to make the Ark of the Covenant.” That was the first piece of furniture to build. Some of you know the background, some of you may not—you can read it, verses 1-25. The architect always gives specific measurements, designs, instructions, chooses the materials, the lighting, the pattern for the wiring, everything in the building, and the general contractor follows. He doesn’t question. He knows that the architect knows what he is doing, and he just follows what the architect says, he gets the skilled craftsmen and great edifices like this great convention center is built. That’s what happened. God told Moses what to build, and He said, “I want you to make a place for My presence right here, and there will be a veil that will divide. My people won’t be able to come into where My presence will dwell in the Holy of Holies,” which later became a model for the Temple, “but on the outside of where My presence will dwell, I want you to make a table.”

That’s the second piece of furniture that God designed and Moses built. Remember, Moses’ grew up in the Egyptian palace. That’s where his home was. The Egyptians had what was called a table, but it was a marble slab on the floor. It wasn’t what you and I visualize as a table on four legs. Now let me just show you the text where the table in the Bible appears for the very first time. The table is the central piece of furniture in the home—or at least it used to be. After I’ve been teaching on the table, I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of ladies come and tell me, “We don’t even have a table in our house anymore.”

He said, “Make a table of acacia wood two cubits long, one cubit wide, and one-and-a-half cubits high, and you shall overlay it with pure gold and make a gold border around it.” He goes on and says, “I want you to make four gold rings on the corners, which are onyx, four feet.” Well, I have an interior design background. I sat when I began studying this, crying out to God, saying, “God, there’s got to be a message that we’re not teaching women in these large gatherings that are related to our womanhood, that is going to be related to the salvation of our families, to the environment of our home.”

If academic research is saying that families who sit at a table, that their children are more motivated academically, this means that there is brain stimulation for learning and desire, interaction created that. If academic research says that if your kids eat at a dinner table five times a week that they’re less likely to experiment with drugs, experiment with sex, wouldn’t you think we would do it? It just seems reasonable, but we don’t. Why? Because we’re so busy doing good things—church, volunteer, doing this, soccer, all the stuff that you sign all your kids up for—that you don’t have time to come to the table.