Saturday, January 7, 2017

Foundation...How stable is yours?

January 5, 2017

Everything in your life has foundations…your home, your work, your school, your church, and even your life. Maybe they are very sturdy and built on concrete. In some places they can be built on sand, which can be dangerous as sand has a tendency to shift. As Christians we are called to have our foundation built on the rock of Jesus. You know how that old song goes…My rock of foundation it cannot be moved. My rock of foundation that you read about in Psalm 62:6 the one that says I will not be shaken or I  cannot be moved a dozen or more times.

But really what is your foundation set on. Have you really created a strong foundation? Is your foundation really set on biblical based views, morals, goals, and mindsets? Is God’s word so hidden in your heart that when hard times come (and they will) that you can cling tight to His word? That in the midst of your despair, in the eye of the storm, in the darkest corner of your life you can lean in, press in, move on and without a doubt maintain a sense of comfort and a peace in your situation? Without question you believe that no matter what goes on in your life that God reigns supreme that God has things under control, and that God is standing right next to you in your mess, in your problem or in your dire need.

It’s pretty easy to say yup I’m standing on the rock of Jesus, I have faith that can move mountains especially when it only has to be as small as a mustard seed. That’s a pretty small amount of faith if you think about it, but have you ever even looked at a mustard seed before? Have you ever seen one, or are you just assuming that it is a pretty small seed and that you don’t always need so much faith to get those mountains to move in your life?

Maybe you need to know what you are talking about before you start spewing thoughts or saying things that you think God has said in His scriptures. You need to know what those scriptures say. You need to read them daily. You need to study them. Maybe you even need to dissect them so you can really know what they mean. Don’t just pick one line of a verse and cling to it, say “that’s my verse, that’s my motto for the year,” or “that’s my favorite one from the Bible.” There are a whole lot of verses in that book. Picking one out of context is not beneficial. Others might say those are just stories about people long ago and they don’t apply to you. That’s not true either. God’s word is for every person, for each day, and it is true.

His word is life changing and the Bible can speak to you. The Bible can give you everything you need to know if you would actually just read it. However, you can’t pick and choose a few lines, a few verses, or a few partial stories and automatically say that’s a word for you, for your situation or for your life. You can’t pick a few things from the Bible, a few things that your best friend says, a few things that your pastor said, a few things that your neighbor says, and a few things that your heart says and say that you have a firm foundation that cannot be moved.

See there is a problem with that line of thought. Some people don’t teach from the Bible. Some people are telling you things that they have heard from a generation before. That sounds okay until you think about how stories change as they are told from one person to the next person. How words are changed, characters are embellished, story lines change, and over time the whole story you hear isn’t even the story that actually happened.

People aren’t bad for that. People don’t try to lead others a stray just because they want to. Most people aren’t out on a path to make everyone else fail, but there are a few of those evil spirited people in your world. Honestly though most people want the best for others. Most people want to see others succeed and to prosper. The problem is that not even the people who you think have it all together, the people you have set on earthly thrones, the people that you lean on and think they know everything don’t know it all. They may know a lot, but they don’t know everything, they can’t know everything. They can try as hard as they really want to, but the reality is they absolutely cannot know everything. Only God can know it all, see it all, control it all, and help you believe what you need to believe.

The problem with your picking key parts from key scriptures is that you are forming God’s word into what you want to hear. You are changing things and adapting them to your specific need or circumstance. You don’t see the whole picture and honestly you don’t want to see the whole picture. You just want to see what you want to see when you would like to see that. That might not be bad in most things, but when that storm rolls in off the ocean, when that snow comes pouring out of the mountains with unforeseen situations, when the rug you are standing on is ripped out from under your feet so fast that you fall flat on your face you need something to catch you. You need something that will help you to be able to get back up on your feet even if you feel like your legs are broken. You need a foundation so deeply rooted in ALL of God’s words not just little bitty pieces that you selected for yourself.

Sometimes you really do think you know it all and it’s in your most difficult situation that you learn, you grow and you adapt. Maybe God doesn’t want you to stumble so much and keep falling on your face in front of the crowd. He doesn’t want you to keep hurting yourself or others. He wants you to know Him, to know His heart, to read His word and to build yourself a true foundation that absolutely will not be moved…a foundation that doesn’t even rock when the earthquakes from life happen. He wants you to be so rooted in Him that when the hurricane comes it does not knock you over. When life gets so hard that you think you will surely fall, that you think there is no way out of this, that you think nothing will ever be this bad again, God wants you to stand firm as a statue. He wants you to stand and not be moved. He wants you to move those mountains that He allows you to move with your very little seed of faith even if you think you have the most faith you’ve ever seen.

He wants all of that for you and more, but He wants you to have your home, your heart and your family to be truly built on a foundation where He is in control. You need that kind of foundation, that kind of peace, that kind of trust and that kind of hope, but you have to work for it. You have to build some of it yourself. You have to know that He could make it unshakeable on His own, but that’s not what is going to happen. You have to change your ways, change your ideas and change your heart. You really need to dig into His word every single day with new eyes to see what is really in that book that people say is so so good.

You have to grow in ways you never thought were possible. You have to keep faith even in the storm. You need to move with God and not against God. You can’t fight Him or His plans and think that your thoughts align with God. You have to stop fooling yourself. You have to stop thinking one thing with your head, but knowing in your heart that you are wrong for your thinking. You know what you should be doing, but you just don’t necessarily want to do that. You’d rather sit, cry and moan that your life isn’t what you wanted. That your situation is unfair and that sometimes God’s plans just plain stink, but you are a fool.

You are an absolute fool if you can’t trust God. You have no problem trusting with the small stuff, trusting with the little things that you think you want. Why do you have such a problem letting go of your life? Why do you struggle letting go of your future? Why do you struggle with surrendering everything to a God that you know has everything in the palm of His hand? Is it possible that your foundation isn’t quite as strong as you thought it was? Is it possible that your faith that built your foundation might have a very small crack in it that needs repaired? Is it possible that you say one thing with your mouth, but your heart and head don’t necessarily agree with what you think you believe?

It really is possible that you struggle so much in your crazy life, that you cry over things you know aren’t right, that you want to give up some things and not others because you don’t really want to surrender everything. You say that you do, that God reigns in control of your life, but does He really truly reign over everything or are you just sharing a few parts with Him and trying to fool yourselves and others when you say that He has your whole life for the rest of your life.

You can try to continue on with your selfish, foolish ways, thinking you are safe, that you hit a home run in your life and God just sat on the sidelines watching. You can certainly think you did everything in your life and you didn’t need help from a single person. Try that out and see how it works for you. See how lying to yourself really works. It won’t take you that long to realize that you are a selfish, prideful person that really truly needs the grace and protection from God.

Maybe you think you aren’t that bad. Maybe you think I need God, I rely on God every day to get me through my life. That sounds great, but do you just rely on Him because your life is hard because your life is spinning out of control because of all the mistakes you keep making. Your life is a huge pile of mess because you keep saying one thing and doing another. Maybe you should submit everything to God and quit keeping a little corner of your heart for yourself and your selfish needs. Maybe you need to stop saying God you can reign in this situation, but I got this one over here myself. Maybe you need to focus on who has that attitude problem, who has the heart problem and go the one that can fix it all, make all things new, and create in you a whole heart.

He can mend any heart that is given to Him if His will is to do that. He can take any situation and turn it around if it works for His good and not yours. Of course God loves you, He wants the best for you, but He really wants the best for the whole world and not just you.

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