Building the house
“Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labour in vain.”
Read Psalm 127:1
The house that the psalmist is referring to can be seen in two ways:
- Our physical place of dwelling, our home.
- Our life, the things that make up who we are; marriage, children, all relationships, church-life, work-life, sport and hobbies, social life, how we serve others, how we love ... are endless and as individual as you are.
It is the second of the two that we will be looking at and what it means to actively seek to submit to the will of God in our whole life (or house).
Jesus speaks in Matthew 7:24, of the wise man who builds his house on the rock.
To submit means to yield to another’s authority or control, surrender, be subject to a process, compliance or obedience.
Why can God command us to submit to his will? Because he made us, the world and all that is in it. We are his.
Read Psalm 24:1-2and Genesis 1:26
Try and visualize your life as a house with many rooms. Each room belongs to some aspect or relationship in your life. God wants to build and inhabit every room in your house, because
- He has every right to, because we are his.
- Our house will be healthier and happier if we do.
1. Make a list of as many rooms as you can think of that make up your ‘house’.
There are three aspects of home ownership:
- The building of it.
- The regular maintenance of it.
- The spring cleaning of it.
God wants to be involved in all aspects of the process. If we were fortunate enough to be raised in a Christian home, we may have had the benefit of God being intimately involved from the beginning of our lives. This however doesn’t mean that God is in control of every part of us … and whether that’s the case or not, we all need to be actively maintaining and cleaning it on, I believe, a daily basis (sometimes minute by minute!).
The flesh is under regular attack from the forces of evil, who desire to rob you of relationship with others and especially with God.
This is where submission comes in.
Read James 4:7, James 3:17, Colossians 3:18-24 , Romans 12:1-2, Ephesians 5:21, Ephesians 4:29-32, Hebrews 12:9-12, and Matthew 7:23 (wise man builds his house on the rock).
What is the will of God?
- Understand and accept your sinfulness.
- Repent and ask for forgiveness from God.
- Accept that forgiveness that comes through the blood of Jesus.
- Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Read Romans 12:1-2.
- Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
- Live under that grace for your own life.
- Offer every aspect of your being to God.
- Offer the grace to others. Love.
If you are not living in this grace and offering it to others you cannot submit to the will of God.
The key to this submission is to learn how to love mirroring the way God loves us. Read 1 Corinthians 13and Luke 10:27
He answered: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind”; and, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
2. When you read 1 Corinthians 13, what challenges you?
Often the challenge here is that we stumble on forgiveness (or the inability to “not keep a record of wrongs”).
3. Who do you find it hard or impossible to forgive? Do you forgive and continue to harbour bitterness towards this person or this issue (this room)?
When we choose to forgive, we make a decision to spring clean this ‘room’ of our house.
It may also mean that we need to forgive ourselves, to ‘take off’ something that we don’t like about ourselves …
We can’t do it on our own. The Holy Spirit is the power who will align the choice we have made with our feelings.
This is the liberty, the being set free that we can experience. Read Luke 4:18.
John 10:10 tells us that the purpose of our being called Christians, is so that we might have life and have it more abundantly.
4. Have you seen the fruit of forgiveness in your own life? Has God enabled you to be free of something from your past?
5. Is there a ‘room’ or ‘rooms’ that are still locked away in your life that needs to be submitted to God? Have you been hurt by someone in the past?
Read John 12:24 (a kernel of wheat falls to the ground).
Do you desire to live fully in God’s grace, to experience his presence in all aspects of your life?
It is necessary to open up all those parts of your life that are locked away. God sees them all anyway!
Read Psalm 19:12-13and Psalm 51:10-12 .
When we begin to live this way, submitting each ‘room’ of our life to the Lord, we will begin to experience this freedom for ourselves and be free to offer it to others around us.
