I met with a realtor yesterday. We will soon be putting our house on the market. Since accepting the position as preaching minister at

Our House in a snow a winter or two ago. It is For Sale!

Central Church of Christ in Tuscaloosa, I have been driving about 94 miles round trip to my study. Thinking about selling our house brought to mind an old article I read years ago.  The article asked, “Is Home for Sale?”

Well, is your home for sale?  Not the physical structure in which you dwell, but your home – your family unit. Homes (families) sell out every day because of moral and spiritual indebtedness – make that bankruptcy. We sell out because of societal pressures, tolerance of sin, materialism, unfaithfulness, bitterness, immorality, and the list goes on.  Even if we never move away form our house, we might have already sold our home.

How can we tell?  What are conditions that lead to selling our homes – our families?

1. Preoccupied Parents:  Parents that are so busy with their lives and what they think they need to do that they do not spend time with their children.  Even youth sports can keep us from spending time with our children.  The time I am talking about, the time that we are neglecting is: reading to / with them; helping them with school work or projects; praying with them; sitting down to a meal with them; baking cookies with them; laughing hysterically with them at nonsensical childish things; just spending large quantities of time with them.
2. Distant Extended Family: The mobility of our society puts miles between grandparents and grandchildren, cousins, as well as aunts and uncles. There was a time with families lived nearby and we learned from each other, grew up together, got into trouble together, and learned the importance of faith and family.
3. The Invasion of Media Sources: Today many families have multiple TVs, computers, tablets, smart phones, video gaming systems, streaming movies, and all forms of amusement at their finger tips. We seem to spend more and more time with devices and visual stimulation than we do with each other in conversation and play. There is a place for all of these media devices in our lives, but they can quickly control our time and separate us from family.
4. A Lack of Knowledge of God’s Will: Hosea records that God’s people then were destroyed because of a lack of knowledge (Hos 4:6) and we learn at the end of Joshua and the book of Judges that God’s people are always just a generation away from turning away from God. Faith based traditions and Godly actions keep families (homes) together.

Maybe you are looking at the four items above and wondering what you can do to keep from selling your home, from selling your family to the world. I have a couple of suggestions:

• Know God’s Plan for the Home: God created family. He knows what is best for us. Look to His Word as a guide for our individual lives as Mom, Dad, Son, or Daughter. Follow His guide for life as a family (cf. Eph 6:1-4).
• Get Together as a Family: Turn off the electronics, gather together in a common room, pull out a board game, a book, better yet the Bible, then do things together.  Leave the house, go out to eat or on  a family picnic. Go to the lake or the forest. Tour a museum. Talk about what life was like back when.  Spend TIME together. Go visit the grand parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.  Be a family!

– Scott