From the Home Place

November 8, 2025

At 4:30 this morning, Coffee and I rolled out of our beds to be greeted with a fresh coat of snow and 30 mph wind out of the north-west. It sure didn’t take the ‘ol pup long to get finished outside, and I’m not looking forward to going out there either.

As most of you know, last Spring, Miss Deb and I bought a really old house when we moved to Lusk. The first day we looked at this place, I told Miss Deb, “Yep, it’s a real fixer-upper.” After making the purchase, we immediately went to work on some needed repairs on the inside of the house, and then we moved outside to start on a gigantic task. Not only was the roof in desperate need of being replaced, the rest of the house also needed a huge investment in its “curb appeal.”

After six-months of daily working on the outside, we have vastly improved the curb appeal on the front and sides of the house, yet the back side is still in need of a lot of work. Work that will hopefully be “buttoned-up” this next week for the winter and restarted next spring.

Here’s the lesson, too often our Christianity is just like this old house – in need of repairs. As previously talked about, to repair our faith-journey, we have to start on the inside, making updates and repairs as needed.

Then we can start working on our “curb appeal.” That is how folks who are on the outside of our lives see us. Do they see me, taking care of me, concerned primarily about me, or do they see a servant of God whose focus is upon pleasing Him and blessing others? And just like the repairs to our old house, the outside is what folks see first.

Most people will never really know the remodeled inside of you, but they can easily see any improvements to the outside of your life. How we talk and act in public does really matter. All summer and all fall, folks drive by our house on a very regular basis to “inspect” what we have done to improve the outward appearance. Out of the several hundred eyes that have watched our improvements on the outside, very few eyes have stopped and looked at the improvements on the inside of our house.

In my opinion, our inside is improved by Bible studies, sermons and personal growth. Yet what is on the inside determines what folks see on the outside. Though we cannot regulate what folks think or say about us, we can do our best to hopefully tip their opinions in a positive way.

That is why our “testimony,” our outward life, our curb appeal is so very important. As Jesus would have said, our true inside is what people tend to see on the outside. So, do people see me as a hypocrite or as a child of God? Their answer is usually determined by what they see on the outside.

The tricky part of this reality is that God looks at what is truly on the inside. In my opinion, He examines motives of actions more than the actions themselves. I can do all sorts of “good” things, but if I do them for self-gratification, then those actions are nothing more than straw, easily burned up in the fire of judgment.

Yes, how folks see our lives on the outside is important, but if the inside is a mess, we most likely are not too pleasing to our Heavenly Father. May I suggest that each of us read Galatians 5:19-23 and honestly answer which of characteristics best describe our lives? This passage is a real simple test of what the inside of my house looks like. But please note, whether we walk by the flesh of by the Spirit, determines what people see as our “curb appeal!”

It has taken all summer and fall, but the outside of this house looks way different than it did before. I know that there is still more work to do on outside next spring, but for the rest of the winter we will be continuing to work of the inside our house. Perhaps our Spiritual lives require the same focus?

Add Isaiah 61:10 to today’s reading list; perhaps this cold, windy day would be a great day to work on the inside of this house, and on the inside of our spiritual lives as well?

Working on home repairs with you, Neal