Cardboard in the Wall

¹⁰According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. ¹¹For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. ¹²Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— ¹³each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.

What foundation are you building upon? God is clear that the only acceptable foundation for life is life in Jesus. As Paul said in I Corinthians 3, "Let each one take care how he builds upon it.". Has God started something in your life that was so full of His grace and power that you were firmly convicted that He would see it through till the end?

Beware of building on the foundation God laid with materials He has not ordered you to use. So often, we try to quickly build on the foundation of God using material that will only cause it to collapse once the trials and storms of life come. Sometimes, as the passage in I Corinthians suggests, our building is tested by God, and if we have hastily built upon God's foundation with selfish intent, impatience, or rebellion, God will lovingly correct us. He is active in destroying our building materials, but God is always seeking to replace them with His own materials of grace, love, and self-control. God wants us to succeed, however we usually define success on our terms instead of God's.

This sets us up for the inevitable and painful tearing down of our works, and a rebuilding according to the "master builder's" blueprint. The tearing down of our works is humbling, painful, and embarrassing, however when the Lord builds the house, as the Psalmist said, those who live in it can exist in full assurance that they are in the hand of the Lord.

Like an Ox

We had a great convocation speaker today, I'll have to look up what his name was haha, but he went through a really cool leadership principle. He mentioned the 4-faced creatures of Ezekiel 1 which have the face of an ox, man, lion, and eagle [weird, yes, and to be honest I never thought too much about the significance of each face.] He talked about how each one of the specific faces can be applied to how we should respond and serve as Christians.

The 4-faced creatures are, according to Matthew Henry's Commentary, angels. Which obviously are about the business of serving God. These four faces actually represent how the angels served God, which of course we can practice ourselves.

The first face was an ox, which is often likened to being a servant. This was obviously displayed in the life of Jesus when he was here on earth. Especially in washing the disciples feet in the garment of a 1st century slave, a fact that the disciples would certainly have picked up on. If Christ was a slave to all, how much more should we be active in seeking selfless, ox-inspired, service?

The Discipline of Discipline

I've recently finished up an assignment on spiritual disciplines. Long story short I had to pick 2 spiritual disciplines and practice them for 15 days. Wish I could say that I stuck it out for 15 days straight but, for what I did, I still learned alot.

I picked the discipline of silence, and the discipline of journaling. I seemed to get more out of the whole practice of silence than I did the journaling. Maybe it was just something that I was doing wrong, or the fact that now since we have computers, the idea of taking the time to record, by hand, the events of the day is just, at best, a little time consuming.

Regardless, I learned a lot practicing of these two disciplines. Adding routine silence to start the day seems to not only calm my worries before the day, but its also allowing God to speak. I discovered I like to talk way, way too much, even if its about "good things". Sometimes God just wants us to listen, and starting out in silence, focusing on who God is rather than what God needs to do for the day, well, all I can say is I've experienced a noticeable difference in my spiritual condition and relationship with God because of it.