Home Sweet Home — David Wilkerson

I believe that the Holy Spirit has anointed the message he gave me for you this very moment. I think this is the most important message God has ever asked me to preach, and I think it comes at a very good time, the occasion calls for it.

We see here what happens when a family is reunited, when a home glorifies Jesus Christ. My subject this afternoon, home, sweet home. Home, sweet home. Whoever invented that statement must have lived a very long time ago.

The Broken Home and the Loss of Family Shelter

There's nothing very sweet about many homes today. We talk much nowadays about juvenile delinquency. We talk about unwed teenage mothers and mixed-up kids in our prisons that are filled with lonely, neglected kids.

We talk about the hundreds of abandoned children who are now herded like cattle into city shelters without any future hope. Take, for example, this article I clipped last night from the Pittsburgh paper.

The story, and you heard of it, of a 17-year-old boy who wrecked a juvenile home in a wild spree, took a radiator pipe and broke the windows. And probably they had to use tear gas to try to succumb him.

And when they interrogated him, some psychiatrists have come to the conclusion that he has brain damage. But he told the whole world in one sentence the reason he went on a wild spree. I believe it's a message for you and it's a message for me.

He said, I had nothing to lose. And I believe that was his way of saying, I have already lost the only thing that could have kept me, and that was my home. As I read this story and as I read other stories like it in our newspapers every day, account after account of young people who go berserk, of kids that go on drugs, of delinquents and neglected and broken lives, I think of this very one thing.

The home was broken. The home was broken. I'm thinking now of a young lady that came to me last night. I was in a restaurant and she recognized me, wanted to talk to me. She said, I'm the saddest girl in Pittsburgh.

She said, I work and then I go home and I have but one thing to live for. I go home determined to keep my dad and mom from killing one another or to keep my brother from beating up my sister. And with tears in her eyes she said, we used to have such a happy home.

My dad was a good Baptist. We had a good life. We were happy but something happened to my father. He got tired of it all. He became bored with mother. They began to bicker. He began to drink and she began to run around and she said, I hate to go home.

I'm 21 years of age and I would leave now. I wouldn't take it for another day but I believe that I have to be there or dad and mom will kill each other. Satan is wrecking the American home. Our homes today are being split by divorce and adultery and fighting and jealousy and cursing and hatred and drinking, wife swapping and husband stealing.

And it's always the kids who suffer. It's always the children who suffer. Dad today is often a tyrant and the house is a prison and mother is nothing but a perfumed doll who is interested in her own passions and her own quest for lust and pleasure.

The Traditional Home as a Shelter and Fortress

Let's go back for a while this afternoon to the good old days when we had a right to call it home sweet home. I want to talk about those days when home used to be a shelter from the storm. When the home was a fortress against the devil's devices.

It was a rock of Gibraltar against the invasion of sex and sin and ungodliness and unworldliness. It was a fortress. The home was a place where dad was a real man. He wore the pants in those days. He carried a belt in his hands.

It was his badge of authority and power. He spoke the word and everybody obeyed. Dad used to be the boss. He kept all the evil young mind evil minded young men away from his virgin daughters. Not one evil young man could come near one of his virgin daughters in those days.

He taught his sons how to work and how to love and how to live and how to be honest. He didn't want some Ivy League expert tell him how to raise his kids. Dad was determined to tell every boy and girl as long as you live under my roof you'll obey me.

I heard that all through my teenage years. David as long as you're not 21 years of age as long as you live in this house you'll do what I say. Dad put his foot down. Nobody argued and all you said was yes sir.

But it was mom who really made the house a home. Her arms were always open and dad did the hurting and mom did the healing. Dad poured in salt and mom poured in oil. Mom would scrub and rub and bake and sew and clean and wash and iron and bathe and weep and pray and love and care.

Mom was a magician. She could turn sheet cloth into curtains. She could take those worn out towels and make the prettiest patches for the britches that you ever saw. She could take four poorly furnished rooms and make it look like a palace in Spain.

Her daughters confided in her. They called her blessed. They unburdened their hearts to her. They didn't try to hide a thing. They confessed everything because they were convinced mom was a mind reader anyhow.

I used to come home and I would be scared to death and mom would say all right David come on in here. And I knew I had to tell her because if I didn't tell her she'd tell me. Where I've been, what I've been doing, dad used to come once every day across the table and sniff every one of our breaths.

And those were the days when dad could smell a block away one sniff of tobacco from one of his kids and then they went into the woodshed and had a personnel meeting and dad knocked it out of them. They had no television, no swimming pool, no stereo, no recreation room in the basement, no sport car, no motorboat, no club membership and no money for expensive hobbies.

But they had something we don't have in our homes today. Even though we have all these other things they had peace and contentment. They weren't bored with life. They could sit around all night and sing songs and pool taffy and pop popcorn and love every minute of it.

The Family Altar and the Bible-Centered Home

Every home in those days that was Christian had a family altar. Every single day the family gathered in the front room to read the Bible and pray. And that Bible was everything in my home. It was the answer book.

It was a medicine book. It was a cookbook, the education book, the prayer book, the history book. It was the heart of our house. And even the walls in my house used to preach, God bless this home, in God we trust, and in the kitchen God supplies every need.

You remember those wall plaques we used to have in our homes? Now it's God bless this mortgaged home. Jesus was always the invited guest. He lived in our house. And when I was a little kid I looked in every closet trying to find him because mother said he was there.

In my little mind I pictured him as being a visible guest. He was the invisible guest, my friend, in every Christian home. Now those are bygone days. I'm not going to talk about them. I want to talk about right now.

Whether the Home Is Divided

I want to talk about your home. I want to ask every parent, every dad and mother here, this very moment, three of the most important questions anyone has ever asked you. Question number one, concerning your home.

Is your home divided? The Bible says every city or house divided against itself shall not stand. Division and strife will tear apart any house, anywhere, any home. Today division in the home is a national plague.

It strikes on every block. It strikes in every tenement house, an apartment building, every new housing community. Dad goes one way and mother goes another way. They eat and then they run and when they do spend a few hours together they don't know what to talk about and they get tired of one another and usually end up fighting.

I'm not talking about every American home. I'm talking about what many people have discovered has become the typical American home when nowadays the wife has to be a little bit of Esther Williams and Gina Lalibergita and all the movie stars all rolled up into one or dad starts getting roving eyes.

And dad has to be a little bit of Gregory Peck and Dr. Kildare or mom loses interest. The one great thing that kept homes together in past years but is missing in the modern home is love. O-V-E, love.

There are thousands upon thousands of dads and mothers who live under the same roof, who go about the everyday activities of life, but too often the only reason they live together anymore is because of the children or they don't want a scandal or because of some religious stringent background that would hinder them from going their separate ways.

I've been in them all over America, homes without any sign of love. That first love is dead, it is gone. There is no sign of love anywhere. It still brings a warm glow into my heart when I think about my dad and mom when I was a kid on a hot July night how we used to delight and slipping up into the back porch on the swing and catch dad and mom stealing a kiss.

There is nothing that puts security in the heart of a child any more than to see dad and mother in love. I used to, when I was a teenager, knew a little bit more about life and I'd watch mom put on a few pounds.

I'd warn her about it and I'd say, Mom, be careful now, you want to keep dad interested. And I'd go to dad and say, Dad, now that she's 15 pounds heavier than when you married her, do you still love her?

He said, David, with a twinkle in his eye, 15 more pounds to love. I love every pound of it. Now, I'm not trying to make a Romeo and Juliet out of any of you, but I'm going to tell you this, and I believe God told me to tell you, that unless there is love in your home, it is divided and you cannot make it in this generation.

Materialism, Debt, and the Search for Happiness

And of course, there are a lot of our homes are divided today because we have Cadillac appetites and Ford pocketbooks. Have you ever heard of keeping up with the Joneses? Well, forget it, they're miserable.

The Joneses today are staying up all night scratching their head trying to find out how to pay for all the things they didn't need. The Joneses today are bickering and quarreling and yelling and hollering and screaming because they tried to buy happiness.

They thought that emptiness in the pit of their stomachs, that emptiness in the home would vanish if they'd go on a shopping spree and they'd replace all their gadgets and gimmicks and put in wall-to-wall carpets or move into a bigger home.

New furniture, new cars, new clothes, carpets, anything. But they found, sadly, that these things did not buy happiness, did not feel that emptiness in the home. And believe me, there are some mothers that are more married to their furniture than there are to their husbands.

I've been into some preacher's homes and I've been told to take my shoes off because there's a new carpet in the front room. That's right. American Christians are strange people. They sing about a mansion over the hilltop, one that's lined with silver and gold.

But the way they work and slave today to build themselves a little cottage below, you'd think they were going to live here forever. I have found that the secret of a happy home, the secret of keeping a house and home together is very, very simple.

One, stay in love. Two, stay out of debt. Three, wake up and live. So many people are wasting precious years. You and I have so much to be happy about. There is no reason for that restlessness. There's no reason for that division in your home.

Resisting the Spirit of the Age and Parental Pressure

If you could just be satisfied and content with such things as you have, leave that poor man alone, dear wife. He's done enough now. Just be satisfied with what you have. Question number two. And believe me, the Holy Spirit has a way of using the sharp edge of divine humor to get the truth into your heart.

Question number two. Has your home been overpowered by the spirit of this age? Has your home been overpowered by the spirit of this age? The Bible says, How can one enter into a strong man's house and spoil his goods except he first bind the strong man and then he will spoil his goods?

Our children are being spoiled today because the spirit of this age has entered into so many strong men's homes and overpowered and bound them, leaving the house spoiled. Satan today has a well-calculated plan.

I call it creeping compromise. It doesn't happen overnight. It's here a little and there a little and suddenly it dawns upon you that you have lost control, that there is bondage and pressure in your house and that the spirit of the age has made its way into your home.

Too many parents today have given up to this spirit and are pushovers for their children. The kids look on the house as a hotel, dad's just a paycheck, and mom's a cook and a caterer and the car is a love nest on wheels.

They blast their rock and roll record music from morning to night. They bring their cursing drinking friends into the house, roll up the carpets and dance. They raid the icebox. They stay out half the night and come home just to eat and sleep and get their clothes washed.

Dad's glued to the newspaper and mom's absorbed in her creepy television soap operas. And when they finally get up enough nerve to try to say something to the children today, the children look down the end of the nose and say, don't be so Victorian, don't be so old-fashioned.

We know how to take care of ourselves. Just keep your shirt on, dad. And dad goes talking away, having become a coward, surrendering to the spirit of this age. Our homes and parents are being overpowered by status symbols and foolish competition.

This seems to be inbred in the American system today. It seems like our kids live under such pressure nowadays because our parents want the best. They want to be on the top and they don't allow their kids to fail anymore.

It seems like every parent today wants an engineer, a scientist, a doctor, an astronaut or a president. The poor kid would make a first-class mechanic and be happy. But dad and mom aren't happy until he lives under pressure, until he pushes and pulls and strives to be what they want him to be.

It is a proven fact and we discussed this on a television program recently. The juvenile delinquency starts in many cases in a classroom where a child living under the pressure of his parents, trying to produce and make the best of grades, incapable of doing it, knows that he can't do it.

Shame to bring home poor report cards. Shame because dad and mom aren't happy with him. He wants nothing more than to please dad and mom. He wants the smile of approval. But dad frowns and mother frowns and stews because the boy, the girl hasn't produced according to their own image.

And the child has given up. He becomes the class fool. He closes his mind and then he becomes a delinquent because he can no longer keep up. He falls behind with no chance of ever catching up. And this has happened time after time after time.

And I've talked to them. Dad and mom had pressure on me. We send our kids off to college because that's a status symbol. And parents today think they failed if they can't afford a college education. And it seems like everybody wants to go to college.

Everybody wants a degree today. I've always believed that God makes a way for a praying man. I'm not against education. But I'm against a young man being shipped to college when he belongs in a garage or behind a counter.

And since when is that so bad? Since when is it so bad to be like dad? Dad may not be an engineer, but he provided. There was happiness in that home and he made it. He didn't make it with a degree and he didn't go to college.

And I'm sick and tired of all these status symbols. When it comes time for my children to consider a college education, the only ones of my four who will get there are those who have the ability and who come to me and say, Dad, I want to go.

I'm not going to try to make anything out of them that God doesn't want them to be. And our homes today live under this pressure and this competition of our age. Every time I'm going home anymore, I meet nothing but geniuses.

Every kid's a genius today. Just ask mom. Just ask mom. Let's be honest, dad, mom. Let's look at our children for what they really have. And let's let them live their own lives with our guidance and our help.

And don't try to squeeze them into your mold. Your home can be happy if you'll take off the pressure. Come on, take off the cap, let all the pressure out. Your home can never be happy. Your children will never grow strong in character and will until there is an atmosphere of peace and contentment without the high-pressure system of this generation.

You know, our homes would be a lot happier if dad and mom quit putting on a dog. That's right, putting on a dog. God give us some parents with enough guts to stand up against this spirit of the age and believe that God still leads and God still guides and can take our children when we pray for them and take them through life and present them in the full stature of Jesus Christ.

Building the Home on Christ the Rock

Hallelujah. Question number three, and with this I'm going to bring my short message to a close. Is your home built on the rock? Is your home built on the rock? Jesus said, Whosoever cometh to me and heareth my words and doeth them is like a man which build a house and dig deep and laid the foundation on the rock and when the flood arose and the stream beat vehemently upon that house and could not shake it for it was founded upon a rock.

Now we're in a generation, my friend, of storms and floods and streams and winds and tornadoes, spiritual pressures of all description and believe me, it's going to get worse. It'll get worse. The devil's going to throw everything in hell at your home in the months to come.

The only way your house is going to stand, the only way your home is going to make it is if you have been digging and you have found the rock. Christ Jesus, dad, this scripture places responsibility on your shoulder.

It's responsibility of dad, the man of the house. Bible says the man dig deep. Scripture talks about another man who built on the sand and I believe the Holy Spirit is going to place this responsibility on every dad in this auditorium this afternoon.

I believe there'll not be one single father, one single dad be able to leave this house this afternoon without being convicted by the Holy Ghost about how you're building your house. And listen, it is never too late to change.

It's never too late with God. You may have already failed. Maybe some of your children are in sin. Maybe you have lost your first love. Maybe the glow is no longer there in that home. But I sense the anointing of the Holy Spirit this very moment.

The Holy Spirit calls to fathers, to dads, to dig deep and make sure that their home is on the rock, that Jesus is in that house. Dad, you can come to meetings like this and sit and enjoy the presence of God.

You can turn on your radio and listen to Miss Kuhlman and the other radio speakers and you can say it's good. I wish my kids would serve God. But it's not enough to sit and imagine a good home life. It's not enough to think about it.

The responsibility is yours. And on the judgment day when your home comes crumbling down, when you've lost everything and your children stand before God and point an accusing finger in your face, Dad, you answer.

You'll answer then if you don't answer now. And it's never too late to change. I would to God this afternoon that Dad and Mom would take one another by the hand and pray, Oh God, pull down all the barriers, all the brick walls.

Restore that first love. Make our home a house of love. Take out all the restlessness. And let Jesus come to our house.

Let Jesus be the guest.

Repentance, Restoration, and Love in the Home

This afternoon, I told you this is the most important message I've ever preached. I've said that before, but each time he places more emphasis on these direct truths. I've been in meetings where dads and mothers, gray-haired, they've lived together for 30, 40 years.

Their children are grown. And I'm thinking now of a mom and dad. The boy's in jail. The daughter's in trouble. The house has been ruined. The home has been ruined. And then when I give an altar call, feeble and old and gray, they come weakly forward and cry, weep.

And I go down. They throw their arms around me and said, Oh, David, pray for my boy. Pray for my girl. We've lost them. And all I can think of, and it strikes me, the very core of my heart, where were you 20 years ago in a meeting like this when the Spirit of God challenged you.

You could have kept your children. You could have had a happy home. But here they are now without love, without feeling. Their first love is gone. And they're just stuck with one another. And I believe when dad comes to God.

And, Mother, I want to tell you this. When your man surrenders his life to Jesus, you don't have to worry about him loving you anymore. That comes with it. When he surrenders his life to God, something happens.

Oh, hallelujah. Something happens. Nothing is as sweet as old brother and sister Myers, 85 years old. They get out of the car and come. I can still see them. I watch them. He gets around, opens the door, and they smile.

And they come walking into my meetings. Walk right up the front. All through my preaching, though it's against my principles, I can't stop now. He's got his arms around her. And he looks at her, 85 years old, for 63 years.

Seven children raised for good. And he's still, they're both like the rock of Gibraltar. Nothing has touched that. And I'm going to pray. A lot of dads and moms fall in love again here today. I feel it's that important for your children,.

That God give you that first love,.

That God give moms some more understanding, some more patience. And I pray this afternoon that dads and mothers, hand in hand, obey the Holy Spirit. Wouldn't you want God today to make your home that home, sweet home?