I am a house
>> Tuesday, March 29, 2011
I always ask myself these questions: Is God doing anything in my life? Where is He?
This is my perpetual disposition: When I am doing "good," I don't think about how incredibly close He is to me. But when I need help, when I am weak and broken, I ask God where He is and forget that Jesus says He is with me always, to the very end of the age.
Our lives are houses meant to be constructed and built for Jesus to live in. My house is God's dwelling place. In October of 2007, I laid the foundation of my house. I dug as deep as I could comprehend and began to build the walls of the house. We all did this at some point. For some of you it's been 20 years, and for others it's only been a week. Regardless of when we laid the foundation, we have had a similar journey. You put a roof on. You outlined the rooms and chose furniture and wallpaper. You chose a color scheme for the living room and bought dishes for the kitchen. You plugged in the fridge and went grocery shopping for the first time. You've continued to add things to the house and make it comfortable. But over the years, you've forgotten that it is not your house. You've forgotten that someone else also resides there...God. Because you've forgotten, you've gotten lazy with doing dishes. You've thrown parties and gotten drunk (maybe figuratively or literally) in the house. You have broken dishes. You've left them on the kitchen counter and you can't bring yourself to throw them away because of how much money you spent on them. The wallpaper is deteriorating. There are wet towels on the bathroom floor.
You know all of this, but are too scared of the sacrifices you might have to make in order to rebuild. You have to give up time with friends and family. You have to spend money. You have to actually put work into it (surprise!). You know this, but chose not to or maybe refuse to tear down. So you start to tidy up the outside because it'll seem like you're cleaning up. You mow the lawn and paint the fence. You keep a nice garden in the back yard. You trim the bushes and invite people over for a grill out in the back yard.
I've come to understand that perhaps sometimes, God lets the wallpaper fall apart and lets us break dishes to help us realize that He holds it together. Sometimes he slowly tears it down, wall by wall and room by room. But more often than not, God Himself sits in a bulldozer and takes a wrecking ball to the very core of the house without warning. It's painful and it hurts. When He's done, all you can do is stand in the road and look at it in tears because God just tore down what you built. You ask, WHY? Without even picking up a hammer or nail to begin rebuilding, you are tired at the thought of trying to rebuild what you JUST built. Perhaps God "breaks" us and chisels away at us so that we understand that when our life feels like it is in a million pieces, He is near us. He is always near us. In fact, he holds us. We have to understand that He holds every single one of those pieces. "He is before all things and in Him all things hold together." --Colossians 1:17.
Remember this: God doesn't want you to make this house neat and tidy just so He alone can dwell in it...but He wants you to do so because you were made to dwell with Him. He is only asking you to do your part as a roommate. He has given you a command to take up your cross and follow Him. He has command you go among the nations and make disciples. And in return, He is asking you to see the bittersweet joy of rebuilding and most of all...to see that if you truly wanted to dwell with Him, you'd tear down over and over with joy. It's exhausting and looks hard, but in the end, you have a brand new house. He is the master contractor and will help you see how deep you have to dig. He will provide all the furniture and food that you lack. The reality and perhaps the hardest part of rebuilding and tearing down is that it will happen time and time again. Until God takes us to be with Him, we will continue to tear down and rebuild. But we were not made to dwell on this earth. We are only temporarily renting the houses. When we are with Him, we will be in a place that God made for us to dwell in. We will be home. Until then, we must persevere and choose to follow Him everyday. We must get rid of our pride and selfishness. Know that one day, you will dwell in the house of the Lord and will be able to rest. Romans 8:18-27 (Paul) couldn't have said it better.
"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God"
So now ask yourself these questions: Is God doing anything in my life? Where is He?
Don't believe the lie that God went somewhere. Don't believe the lie that God doesn't understand the pain you're suffering. He had to watch His son die on the cross. When Jesus asked His Father if there was any other way, He had to listen to Him say "No Son...there isn't." The Father had to tell the Son that there wasn't any other way. If you truly have no answer to the question to what God is doing in your life...then look to Jesus. Look to the Gospel and see that God has freed you. How is that NOT an answer to whether or not God is doing something in your life?
"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" --Galatians 2:20.
And if Christ lives in us, the power that raised Him from the dead also lives in us. Try to wrap your mind, heart, soul and your everything around what that means...how much power is that? It is certainly enough power to stand firm as God takes a wrecking ball to your house. And it is certainly enough power to see and know that God is doing something in your life. So let go of whatever you're holding onto in your house and let Him chisel.
