Thanks to Chip and Joanna Gaines

With thanks to Chip and Joanna Gaines,

Magnolia Homes, Waco, Texas

WORD of mouth praise from grateful homeowners keeps bringing new clients to Chip and Joanna Gaines. Between them they have the education, experience, network and financial means. Along with their sub-contractors they do each job with energy, enthusiasm, and expertise flavored with down-home humor.

They take their clients all the way from wanting and needing a new home for their family, through finding the right property, closing the sale, allotting sufficient funds to renovate according to their needs and desires, then furnishing and decorating it.

The business was renamed . . . Magnolia Homes.

The magnolia flower itself is a beautiful, fragrant and attractive symbol for them.

Magnolia seed pod

But there is something else about the atmosphere in and around Waco, TX where the Gaines Family lives, farms, and does its renovation and decorating business. Joanna has also launched a winning skin care line.

Chip and Joanna along with their children, have endeared themselves to the Waco community, the people of Baylor University (their alma mater), and the 100s of thousands everywhere who enjoyed their reality show, Fixer-Upper, on HGTV.

Anyone who has ever planted a seed or tuber in soil and nurtured it into a fruit-bearing or decorative plant, knows that the resulting 'fruit' and healthy seeds for future plants are the true reward.

It is an experience of partnering-with-God!

'His God teaches him.'

Whose God?

Isaiah 28:23-27 NASB

Give ear and hear my voice,
Listen and hear my words.

Does the farmer plow continually to plant seed?
Does he continually turn and harrow the ground?

Does he not level its surface
And sow dill and scatter cummin
And plant wheat in rows,
Barley in its place and rye within its area?

For his God instructs and teaches him properly.

For dill is not threshed with a threshing sledge,
Nor is the cartwheel driven over cummin;
But dill is beaten out with a rod, and cummin with a club.

Are we saying that the work of a farmer/builder and his family is based on their relationship with and understanding of their Creator? . . .

that when the divine law of loving God, loving family and neighbors, and integrity in business is obeyed, the resulting expansion is 'fruitful'? . . .

that faith, love, integrity and hard work will be rewarded with childlike joy along with houses and lands? . . .

how about two silos and a bakery in Waco, TX transformed into a business and hospitality center attracting folks from near and far?

Thanks to you, Chip and Joanna Gaines for making the Scriptures come alive and visible in a delightful way - with both down-home and cosmopolitan charm.

And you understand the importance of 'demo-day'. . .

(Hmmm . . . kind of like 'draining the swamp'?)

Chip and Joanna, we love you. Y'all are blessed and you are a blessing!

Raylyn Terrell, founder

Lindsay House Publishing