When you enter a house, first say, “Peace to this house.” If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you. Stay there, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house.
During Jesus’ earthly ministry, He sent some of His followers out two by two to do His kingdom work.
He said to them, basically, “Go and find a house and say, “Peace be unto you.” And if your peace settles on that house, then you can stay there. If it doesn’t, shake the dust off your feet and go on” (Matthew 10:12–14; Luke 10:5–11).
At one time in my life, I felt repeatedly drawn to these scriptures, and I didn’t know why. I finally realized that God was trying to help me understand what Jesus was saying to His disciples in today’s scripture. I needed to learn that in order to minister with His anointing (the grace and power of the Holy Spirit in me), I needed to live in peace.
As I continued to study and meditate on these verses, I realized that in order to serve Him most effectively, all of us need a peaceful base of operations, a place from which we can go out and to which we can go back. For most of us, this place is our home. If our homes aren’t peaceful, we need to do whatever we can to gain and maintain a calm, peaceful atmosphere, because strife and confusion adversely affect the anointing of God that rests on our lives. Even if you can’t have peace in your home because the other people refuse to be peaceful, you can remain peaceful in your heart.
Let me encourage you to do all you can do to ensure peace in your “home base.” That way, everyone who lives and works from that place will do so with God’s grace and peace—and they will have success.
Prayer of the Day: Lord, show me anything I need to do to establish and maintain peace in my home, and help me create a peaceful atmosphere for all who live there, including myself.
