A man scolded his son for being so unruly and the child rebelled against his father. He got some of his clothes, his teddy bear and his piggy bank and proudly announced, “I’m running away from home!” The father calmly decided to look at the matter logically. “What if you get hungry?” he said. “Then I’ll come home and eat!” bravely declared the child. “And what if you run out of money?” “I will come home and get some!” readily replied the child. The man then made a final attempt, “What if your clothes get dirty?” “Then I’ll come home and let mommy wash them,” was the reply. The man shook his head and exclaimed, “This kid is not running away from home; he’s going off to college.” That boy knew where the good stuff was…. in his family.
We know that our families are important, but often we don’t treat them as valuable. Yet if we lost them, we would be devastated. I remember a song that said, “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone!” How true! Our families are a treasure to us, even though there are people in it with problems, quirks and issues. But valuing the family will honor the Lord.
For each family member, God has made a way for your life to be blessed, if you will do what He says in his Word. Mothers, fathers, and children can all grow into the great life God has for them if we honor God and do what He says. Look at what Jesus said was the way to have a good and secure home.
Matthew 7:24-27 (NASB95)
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.”
There it is. What kinds of homes make it? The ones that listen to the Word of the Lord and act on it. When we take the Bible at face value and not just read it and define it, but act on it, we become one of those wonderful homes that make it through the crises of life. Every family has the storms, the floods, the wind. And they don’t just kind of gently creep up on a home… they “slam against that house.”
When we value God’s Word, we really end up valuing our families. Husbands and wives are to value each other and consider one another as a treasure.
Eph. 5:33 (NKJV) Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Perhaps you’ve heard the story of Johnny Lingo, a man who lived in the South Pacific. The islanders all spoke highly of him. He was strong, good-looking, and very intelligent. But when it came time for him to find a wife, people shook their heads in disbelief. The woman Johnny chose was plain, skinny, who walked with her shoulders hunched and her head down. She was very hesitant and shy. She was also a bit older than the other married women in the village, which did nothing for her value. But this man loved her.
What surprised everyone most was Johnny’s offer of marriage. In order to obtain a wife, you “bought” her by giving her father some cows. Four to six cows was considered a high price. The other villagers thought he might pay two or even three cows at the most for this homely, awkward woman. But he gave ten cows for her!! Everyone chuckled about it, since they believed his father-in-law had put one over on him. Some thought it was a mistake.
Several months after the wedding, a visitor from the United States came to the islands to trade, and heard the story of Johnny Lingo and his ten-cow wife. Upon meeting Johnny and his wife the visitor was totally taken aback, since this wasn’t a shy, plain, and hesitant woman, but one who was beautiful, poised, and confident. The visitor asked about this transformation, and Johnny Lingo’s response was very simple. “I wanted a ten-cow woman, and when I paid that for her and treated her in that fashion, she began to believe that she was a ten-cow woman. She discovered she was worth more than any other woman in the islands. And what matters most is what a woman thinks of herself.”
One of our greatest fortunes is our home. Let’s treat it that way.