A few years ago, one of the most popular television shows around the Raymond household was Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. You put together the design aspect of renovating and remodeling a very run-down house, under this timeline of doing it all in one week, and having to do it with hundreds of volunteers and several strongly opinionated designers, and you put that together against the backdrop of a needy family who deserves a better place to live, what you get is compelling television that could touch even the hardest of hearts.
What you got to see in one hour is not only the unbelievable makeover of the house, but you see how that impacts the life of a needy family. Undoubtedly, the remodeled homes on that show dramatically changed people’s lives. When everyone would shout, “Move that bus,” and the family saw their new house for the first time, not only were they crying, but you would be crying too watching in your living room. But still the title is misleading. It really should have been called, Extreme Makeover: House Edition, because people can change a house, but only God can change a home.
Over the next several weeks, we are going to be doing our own extreme home makeover. No, we’re not going to go remodel your house, but we’re going to see how God can remodel your home. There will be something in this series for everyone, because one thing that is true for all of us, we are all a part of a family, no matter how broken or damaged it might be, we are related to somebody. You are a son or daughter. You are brother or a sister. You are a husband or a wife. You are mom or a dad. Most of us are a combination of these things. And families are the first environment in which we must learn to live out our faith. Often times, they are the primary environment we have to make real what we already believe. But families can also be the most challenging environment to practice what we preach.
If you have ever seen the television show, you know that in order to rebuild or remake a house, the first thing you need is – blueprints. You need a good set of plans. In a house remodeling project, you have to know what needs to be torn out and what stays. Which walls are weight-bearing? Are there any places the foundation needs to be strengthened? Where does new plumbing and new electric need to be run. And to make sure that all of this works right and looks good, you need a good set of plans. The same thing is true for your home and your family. The blue prints for your family can’t from Hollywood, godless academia that no longer even believes in the legitimacy of the family as God created it, or from our culture. The blueprints for our extreme home makeover must come from Heaven.