Rare is the house that has remained untouched by the re-modeler's hammer, saw, and brush. Remodeling has become a favorite American passtime.

We are much more apt to remodel the place where we live than we are to change the ways we live, however. Few families ever consider the need to remodel their home -- the ways they live, the relationships which exist within the walls of that house.

Yet that would prove to be a much more profitable venture than moving a wall, adding a porch, or enlarging the family room.

This sermon is about remodeling your home. It is about changing the ways in which we relate to each other as family: husband to wife; man to woman. It is based upon the premise that families do change, and that those patterns of relating which have served well in the past may not be the best ways to relate in changing circumstances.

This sermon suggests that the biblical model of family is the only adequate model of family relationships in the kind of changing, pressurized environment in which we all struggle to survive as individuals and families.

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Each of us enters marriage with an idea already in mind of what marriage and family is all about. That idea is our "model," or pattern, for marriage.

I heard about the wife who constantly referred to her spouse as a model husband, a model father, a model citizen, a model businessman. One of her friends suggested to her one day that no man she had ever known could be so perfect.

The wife responded: "Why, you have completely misunderstood what I have been saying about my husband. I have been describing him perfectly. The dictionary defines a model as 'an imitation of the real thing.' Believe me, that describes my husband perfectly."

At the outset of premarital counseling sessions I attempt to determine a couple's models of marriage. I usually ask: "Where have you gotten your ideas of marriage: from home, books, movies, magazines, music, school, church?"

Then I ask: "In thinking of an ideal marriage, whose marriage do you envision? What makes that marriage ideal: Identify the elements of that marriage which you would like to bring over to your own."

Interestingly enough, fewer and fewer engaged couples are indicating a desire to model their marriage after their parents. Sadly, if the truth were known, most parents are not surprised at that. Few parents want their marriages to be like they are either.

One wife said: "I feel like such a hypocrite. If you asked the people in our church to list the 10 most happily married couples they know, our names would probably appear on every list. We're sociable, we entertain frequently in our home. We do this, that, the other -- all the right things we're supposed to do.

"We play the role -- I mean, REALLY play it, but our marriage is miserable. We get along ... from a distance. I can never tell him how I really feel about anything. He always gets mad and jumps at me. Or, he clams up for a couple of days. I don't think we've ever had a really close relationship!"