Preparing Your Heart Before You Prepare Your Home
It’s that time. The home you’ve lived in, loved in, and made memories in will no longer be your home. Maybe work is taking you somewhere new, the kids need more space, or you’re downsizing as everyone is out of the house. Whatever the reason, it’s crucial to go about the process of selling your home in the right Biblical order.
I believe this is the appropriate Biblical framework to selling your home.
1. Prepare Your Heart
2. Prepare Your Home
3. Prepare Your Hands
If you’ll allow, I’d like to walk you through each one.
Prepare Your Heart
“Trust in The Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” — Proverbs 3:5.
This is a famous passage in Scripture and its truth in our context is crucial. Before you get ready to sell your home, you want to get ready your heart to trust in a good and loving Father. Proverbs remind us to first trust The Lord and second to not trust in our own understanding. That even means that your trust should not be in your real estate agent (and as a real estate agent myself, that’s pretty hard to admit). Your trust is not in the market, or in interest rates, or in the beauty of your home or your list price or your marketing or anything other than the holy and sovereign Lord.
Now, this is impossible. We are sinners after all. And yet, it is the calling of The Lord to trust in Him with ALL your heart. So, brothers and sisters, before you prepare your home to sell, pause to ask The Lord to grant you the humility to trust in Him and Him alone for what comes next.
Prepare Your Home
“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for The Lord and not for men…” — Colossians 3:23
Another incredible passage. Let’s be honest, it’s all good. But as you go about the preparation of your home, remember, work heartily (completely, thoroughly) because your work is for The Lord not for the new buyer. It honors Him to go the extra mile and do the touch-up paint. It honors Him to fix the leaky pipe even though no buyers would ever find it. It honors Him to throw down some new mulch, power wash the exterior, and get the leaves out of the gutters.
The Lord loves beauty. After all, He created beauty. And when we seek to honor the heart of God, we prepare our homes with as much excellence and beauty as we can. Everything is a reflection of Him so work hard for your home to reflect Him well.
Prepare Your Hands
“Remember not the former things…Behold, I am doing a new thing…” — excerpt from Isaiah 43:18-19.
One of the most challenging parts of being a real estate agent is delivering bad news. Whether the seller is not going to make as much money as they hoped or telling them their home is priced too high or there are lots of repairs to be done, no agent wants to disappoint their client. Yet, as a Christian agent, and as a Christian seller, we should remember not even a single molecule in the entire universe is out of place. And if that’s true, and it is, then not a single dime has gone missing in the Lord’s economy. Put another way, whatever good The Lord has for you (and it is good see Romans 8:28) will come to pass. Even if it’s not the price you wanted. Even if you must do more work than you wanted. Even if it takes longer to sell than you wanted. The Lord’s exact purpose for your home will come to pass. And that is a glorious truth.
You can rest with open palms. Whatever comes you can honor The Lord with your attitude and your action. If your real estate agent is not a Christian, you can show Christ by your response to bad news. If your real estate agent is a Christian, you can show brotherly love in how you encourage their work. If the buyer is being rude and demanding, you can show Christ by being loving and generous. The Lord is doing a new thing and He’s using your home as a catalyst to bring Him glory and orchestrate His plan in this world.
Take comfort, brothers and sisters, as you prepare to sell your home. Prepare your hearts first. Be immersed in the truth that our good God has already planned exactly how the sale will go and we can rejoice no matter the outcome for our God is a good God, worthy of praise!