Firm Foundation

I have a degree in construction and have been working in the construction arena for over 9 years now. My work in this area has mostly focused around the hiring of architects, engineers and contractors to build facilities or install equipment. My actual building experience has been limited to volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity, helping friends out, or occasionally a small home improvement project. I wish I had better skills at carpentry and building things but I don’t. I do know if something is built well and is sturdy from my construction degree and engineering knowledge. I really enjoy the business and have built a number of projects that I am proud of being a key player in the construction of. I’d like to say I built them but in reality I just hired the people who built them and then managed them during the construction. It’s really a lot of fun and it’s cool to see something come out of the ground. The whole construction process is pretty messy but when it’s all over it’s so awesome to see the finished product.

There are several key factors that go into the construction of a facility; the foundation, the structure and the roof. They are all integral to the functionality, appearance and sturdiness of the building. The area that is probably the most key to the building is the foundation. The structure and roof can be modified or repaired if needed but once the foundation is in place there’s no changing that. I once was involved with a project at my last company where the foundation that the facility was built on was not very good. The concrete that was used for the foundation was below specifications and it caused problems. The basic problem was that the concrete had too much water in it when they poured it and caused the foundation to be porous. This acted like a huge sponge and ground water and other junk from the ground would sieve up through it and cause problems with the flooring. So carpet, tile, and concrete sealants would not stay intact to the foundation. There was little we could do about it after the building was finished and we had occupied it. I came into my new job as construction manager with this problem and needing to figure a way to try to fix, repair or make some modifications to the flooring. I won’t bore you with any further details on how this was accomplished but I’m glad to say that we figured a way to make this huge sponge of a foundation workable.

Buildings use to be built mostly with masonry and there was a cornerstone of the building where the structure started. This cornerstone was kind of the foundation where all the structure ultimately rest or weighed on. This corner stone must be solid to be able to withstand a lot of force. For many people their life has been built on a weak foundation (belief in Jesus) and or a bad corner stone (the church). For me my life has suffered not from unbelief in Jesus, but from having a weak corner stone. Jesus is the rock (1 Corinthians 10:4), He is my foundation, and He is where I find my identity. But my life hasn’t been sinless. I grew up in a religious church that made me numb to Jesus. I can’t necessarily blame the men who were teaching me. They weren’t evil men who were out to get me or dry up my heart. They just assumed that I knew the gospel already. They assumed that there was this invisible foundation that I already possessed. They didn’t point me to the cross that saved me and that through confession and repentance I was saved not from religion.

Growing up in Texas there was a lot of people that would just attend church but didn’t belong any where. They were just consumers, outwardly showing their faith but inwardly never truly being transformed by the grace of Jesus Christ death to forgive them for their sins. I was one of those consumers not totally believing that I was really transformed by Jesus. Instead I would think that my short comings, historic failures, and past sin some how disqualified me from approaching the thrown of grace with confidence. I come before the thrown of God not with confidence in my moral uprightness, but in the confidence that comes with the grace given to me that through the righteousness of Jesus Christ death my sins are nailed to the cross with Him and I am forgiven. This is such an unbelievable gift and has been hard for me to really grasp because of my religious up bringing. There is nothing else that I can do except look to the cross and through confession and repentance I will be saved.

This illustration is how my relationship with Jesus Christ has suffered from my faith not being built on a solid foundation. I have been blessed over the past several years while living in Seattle with an amazing church (http://www.marshillchurch.org/) that has taught me things that I never heard before in my other churches. Has it kept me from sinning, unfortunately no, but I have learned and been reproved by the church about my insufficiencies and that I need to have a stronger belief in Jesus and press in to Him more and use the church to build a better structure for my life upon the foundation of Jesus Christ.

Broken Excuses

The world today is one filled with brokenness, idol worship, and lies. There are those who are constantly beating on us that we are not good enough and we can do better. There is bar that has been set by the world that says you must achieve these things in life to be considered successful. The problem with the bar that has been set is that it’s not a bar that God has set. The bar that God sets for us is to love God, be Christ like and to love others has He has loved us. “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world – the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions – is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.” (1 John 2:15-17) “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of the God overcomes the world” (1 John 5:1-4)

One of the many problems in the world today is that people don’t love God and thus don’t love others. People are more worried about keeping up or being better than everyone else. They worship their status, job, house, vehicle, money anything that makes their status look better, trying to reach this imaginary bar that the world has set for us. The challenge that we as Christians face today is all the marketing and publicity that is in the world making all these idols preeminent over God. Instead of worshiping these idols that you think are going to make you feel better we need to come to God. The problem with idols is that they lie. They make you think you are something or someone you really aren’t. But God doesn’t want or require you meet any other bar than to love him and love others. It seems so simple but if the world were based on just those two things we would no longer be this broken world that full of lies and excuses that says we aren’t good enough.

For us to break this sin and influences of the world we must come to Jesus! Isn’t it humbling to be told that we must come to Jesus? But truth of the matter is that there are so many other things that people turn to in the world other than Jesus to find their worth. When you hear the words “Come to Me” (Matt 11:28), do you think something must happen to me for that to happen? It does… You must allow the Holy Spirit to show you and reveal Himself to you. But we are blocked by the world today and have our idols that we worship and hold on to that keeps the Holy Spirit from coming into our hearts and transforming us. The good news is that the Holy Spirit will search out that immovable object within us, but He cannot budge it unless we are willing to let Him do so.

How often do we turn back to our worldly desires of our flesh and make up an excuse that we need something to make us better? Or we have asked God for something and gone away thinking “I asked and God totally gave me what I asked for”? But in the end actually going away with nothing, all the while God is standing there with His arms wide open to take you in and for you to take Him in. It’s hard to imagine how tiresome it must be for Jesus to continue to stand there with His arms open waiting lovingly for us to come to Him.

Endurance

When I started to get serious about working out and getting into shape I thought I’d hire a trainer to help me. I never was very disciplined or motivated to work out so I figured if I paid someone to train me I’d have no choice but to do it and he could help motivate me to get stronger. I remember when he first started training me he talked about how I needed to improve my endurance. I could lift the heavy weights but I would give out quickly. I had some natural strength but not a lot of endurance. Gradually over time my endurance improved and I could tell a difference. The weights were getting easier to lift; I wouldn’t get tired as quickly. My endurance was improving and I was getting stronger.

My faith has been much like this. The challenge for me though is I didn’t have a trainer or someone who could coach me on how to improve my faith and how to endure through tough situations in life. I was acting like a believer in Jesus, going through the motions like a Christian, but I did not have much endurance toward overcoming my sin. I would always think I could handle it on my own and stop the sin and I didn’t need to rely on Jesus to help me endure and stop the sin. This ultimately left me suffering through a lot of pain, anguish, guilt, humility, loss, and feeling like I was not good enough. Through this suffering the Lord has been slowly revealing Himself to me and the love He has for me. It’s not been a switch that has flipped but a gradual rebuilding of my faith and endurance to fight sin. The pain I have felt is being emptied out and I’m being filled up with Jesus love. The challenge for me getting past the pain was made clear to me by a friend recently. He said you don’t just stop eating and expect not to ever be hungry again. That was exactly how I had been feeling and it helped me realize that it wasn’t going to be a switch I just flip and the feelings would change. But gradually as I have emptied out my sin and filled up with Christ love I’ve begun to be able to endure through those times that I think back on my sin. As I have built up my endurance toward the sin I have begun to feel true repentance for my sin. No longer feeling like I wish I hadn’t been caught up in the sin but actually feeling guilt and shame for the sin.

As this endurance builds I have begun to feel stronger in my faith and slowly the pain is turning to joy. The apostle Paul writes “…we rejoice in our suffering, knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been give to us.” (Romans 5:3-5) Am I fixed? By no means! I am a sinner and always will be. But as I pour more of myself out and fill back up with the Holy Spirit I build up more endurance and hope that I will be made righteous. I must continue to work out my faith muscles through reading scripture, confessing my sins, being obedient to His will, and asking the Holy Spirit to reveal himself to me everyday. But the joy in all this is there is a living hope in Jesus Christ. He forgives us for our sins and washes us clean to live a new life. A joyful life with Him where everything we desire is in Him. We are completely satisfied with all that he gives and has given and we can be joyful and endure through our life knowing that there awaits for us an eternal kingdom where Jesus reigns and we will live with Him forever.

Jesus Controls

If you totally give everything over to Jesus, He will control all things for His good. It’s absolutely amazing though that we deny this and try to control things on our own. When we do this it only separates us from Him who does control everything. And if you think He is not going to, just wait, He’ll show you. I recently made a huge mistake morally and have been totally humiliated and thrown into the dirt. I thought I could control it and it was going to be okay; oh no, well the beauty of this now is I see how much Jesus really does control things for His good. If only you just take on this belief before you get thrown into the dirt like I did.

Jesus does things as He pleases; He doesn’t need anyone’s approval. He will call you out and reprove you. But through this you are given grace upon grace forgiveness by faith and it makes you realize if you just allow Him to control your life you will only be blessed all that much more. Jesus does as He pleases with us to make us, who are elected, to love Him so much more. As Jesus forgives the sinful woman he says “her sins which are many, are forgiven – for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” (Luke 7:50) Her love showed that she understood what God’s forgiveness meant for her. Jesus forgives us for all our sins and by our faith will we be transformed to “walk in the light, as he is in the light” (Heb 9:22). The shedding of the blood of Christ was a voluntary substitutionary sacrifice of infinite value for the elect; it paid in full God’s penalty for sin (Heb 9:27, 28). We are saved by grace through faith. He has paid the price for our sin. Now we should rejoice and turn our hearts toward Him in glory. When we do this and release our grip on what we “think” we control we will be happy, joyful, and alive with our new life with Him. He then controls us and our desires change, we want to do good things that are pleasing to Him. We don’t do good things to please Him. We are given a new heart and through our faith we desire to do good things that please Him.

Restoration and Finality

Too many times in my life I have been left with no finality on things. This has left big gashes and wounds in my life because I haven’t been able to resolve the matter internally and process all of my feelings and emotions without some sort of finality. I heard an awesome quote from FDR one time that helped “When you get to end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on”. I also like the added statement “and swing” at the end of this quote. But for some reason life doesn’t always work so easy. I feel like I have these loose, frayed ends that just hang there and I have a hard time resolving the matter. This has been a big challenge for me because of betrayal, loss, failed relationships, wondering why it happened like that, or what has happened since. What happens to me is the enemy keeps whispering in my ear “if you had only done this or you should have done that or if I had just said something else”. The enemy lies though to you and wants you to think that there is no restoration for you.

The good news is there is restoration for me. The restoration though must start in my heart. My mind will try to rationalize some thing or figure it out in my head and process it so it makes sense. I am only fooling myself though when I do this. This is where the enemy sneaks in and starts telling these lies. But if my heart is restored and I allow Jesus to come in to my heart all of this can be resolved with Him. As Jesus hung on the cross and said “It is finished” (John 19:30) he took all of my unrighteousness and sin and forgave me so that I can live a new life of joy and happiness with Him. When Jesus said it is finished we as Christians are suppose to rejoice that we have eternal life. It is a total gift that I am underserved of. The challenge with the world and religion is that it’s not always seen in this light. Religion teaches you, do these things then God will forgive you and accept you. That’s not what Christianity is about. Christianity is about accepting the gift that Jesus died for my sins and I am forgiven. From that a new heart will poor “rivers of living water” through me (John 7:38). From that I have new desires and want to live more Christ like. The true expression of Christian character is not in good-doing (works), but in God-likeness.

If I keep my relationship with Him right, then regardless of my circumstance, past pains, unresolved issues I can live joyful knowing that I am restored through His forgiveness. I no longer have to worry about what happened or what I could have done or should have done different. Once I have been a restored, have a new heart and a relationship with Jesus I no longer have to worry about finality. Because whatever circumstance I was in I was placed in it by God and He uses that to fulfill His purpose for me. But I must continue to “walk in the light as He is in the light” (1 John 1:7). I no longer have to worry about finality with anything in life any longer. I am restored through Him and can trust that all of these things have been done for a reason and all I need to do is hold on to the knot at the end of my rope and swing.

Trusting the law

We know the law, what’s right and what’s wrong. The law comes in two different forms, God’s law and man’s law. I have a good friend who often justifies things to me by saying “don’t beat your self up over man’s law”. We know God’s law in the 10 commandments from the Old Testament, which are ultimately wrapped up in 2 laws in the New Testament – Love God and love your neighbor like Jesus loves them. What happens though is that in our mind we know what the law is but our flesh desires something else. As Paul wrote “I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin” (Romans 7:25). Even Paul an apostle to Jesus Christ struggled with this. It’s hard to deny the desires of our flesh. Earlier in Romans Paul writes “For I know nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out” (Romans 7:18).

The pressure of the worldly desires of our flesh is hard for even Paul to deny. The good thing about the law is it helps keep up the guard rails in our life and keeps us from dying from sin. When sin comes, death comes “…sin came alive and I died” (Romans 7:9). For us as humans to stay alive and avoid this death we must trust that the Lord knows what’s better for us more than we do. We must trust that in every circumstance the Lord has it under control. In order for that to occur we must trust Him and allow our self to be governed by the law. If we do not allow God to rule over us we are kept in a perpetual cycle of disappointment because we think the world is all about us and not about Him. But if we realize God has got things under control and He’s working things out for His glory and our good we will end the cycle of frustration and disappointment.

God is working on making a perfect world through our redemption for a new creation. We are redeemed through Jesus and His death to take away our sin so we can live a new life; a life of joy, happiness, content, love, fellowship, worship. By believing this it causes us to act different in our relationships and how we live out our life. We can forgive those that wronged and sinned against us and we can ask forgiveness from those we sinned against. When we believe the gospel it changes the way we see things. We no longer see them in a horizontal perspective of worldly desires and selfishness but in a way of how can I glorify God in my life in selflessness.

Overwhelmed

I often find myself overwhelmed. This feeling comes in many different forms; stress, anxiety, joy, compassion, awe, pressure, discontent, nervousness, angst, sadness, happiness, relief, pain, anguish, love. The problem with these feelings is that many of them are worldly flesh desires and reactions to sin and a fallen world. Not often enough are there feelings of being overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit. Too often we as sinful humans allow our worldly desires of our flesh to block the desires and will of God for our happiness. When we block His desires for us and follow our own desires we sin against God and are disobedient. What happens though is that eventually we get humiliated and suffer because of our sinful nature to desire what we want and not what God wants for us. Then we get totally overwhelmed by the pressures that we feel upon us. In reality this is God putting His hand on us and taking control over our life so that we are more obedient to His will for us and less compelled to our own desires.

When there is something in life where God has put pressure on me it’s for a reason and I must learn to obey Him in that matter. If I bring all my “arguments and … every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5) regarding the matter, everything will become as clear as daylight to me. Sometimes I need to act like a 5 year old child and be told what to do. When I act like an adult I try to reason it out; but I don’t really have the reasoning capacity for that like God. When we try to be wise and reason we block out what the Holy Spirit is showing us and trying to guide us toward. When we do this we see nothing; we need to see like a child. Only then do we walk in His will. Jesus said “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children” (Mathew 11:25). Children are so amazing, I wish that I could see through the eyes of a child sometimes and realize how much bigger God our father is and let Him just take control over me and protect me like a loving father. We get so arrogant and strong willed though as we grow up and become callas toward God and we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the worldly pressures that we face every day.

In the beginning this wasn’t so, everything was perfect until Adam and Eve were tempted by their worldly desires. So since creation we are in the midst of being redeemed by God for His new creation. Redemption doesn’t come easy though. We must be obedient to God and know that Jesus sacrificed Himself for our redemption and ALL of our sins have been paid for on the cross. It’s so hard sometimes to block out the influences that surround us everyday and put our focus on Jesus our savior to allow the Holy Spirit to overwhelm us and not the sins of the world. I have been so overwhelmed in my life and it has lead to a life of sin and sorrow. I am now working toward reconciliation and to God and redemption through His son Jesus to allow the Holy Spirit to take control of my life and live obedient to His will for me. Once I do this and not worry about the past and just worry about what is and what’s to come will I be able to totally rejoice and say thank you God, bring it on, I can’t wait to see you and be at your party in heaven. So what’s the lesson in all that? I must learn from my experiences, make changes, and try again. I can’t change the past but I look toward the future and say I am going to live my life in obedience to you God and just wait for the joys that will rain on me through living my life for your will and not mine.