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.