By Alex Burris
I was talking to a friend about the crazy rain that flooded tons of places in the DFW area. She started telling me a story that she heard about this developmental property that was being used to build houses on near the area she lived. Some of the houses were being built on higher ground and some were being built on lower ground and all of the homes had been bought, even though they were still all under construction. You can picture what this looked like. There were unfinished windows, siding, some roofs, etc. When we got the huge amount of rain, half of the homes completely flooded and started to wash away because of the area they were built in and the ground that they were built on. The other half of the homes stood tall and proud. Maybe a leak here or there, but they were sturdy and strong. They were out of the way of flood waters and had a strong foundation that they had been built on. The crazy part is, the developers had been warned about building on the ground that was not prepared to handle severe weather situations. They did it anyway. They chose to do things their own way instead of listening to the advisement of others.
This story immediately made me think of the story that Jesus told about having a strong foundation for Christ. Jesus asks in Luke 6:46, “Why do you call me and ask for Me, and not do what I tell you to do?” This is the beginning of a story we know well, but very relevant throughout our lives. Often, we pray and pray and pray for the Lord to give us advisement and answer our prayers. We beg on our knees because we need Him and want His advisement. When He speaks to us, we ignore him, we decide we know better, other people might know better, or we don’t like the answer he has given us, so we chose to do something different. In this chapter, Jesus continues to say that “the man that asks, but does not listen is like the man that built the house without a strong foundation”. These paths that we chose to take, instead of the ones that the Lord has paved for us, will never lead us closer to God and they put massive cracks in our foundation. When I am going through my life in a way that I know is honoring the Lord and I am actively listening for Him all around me, not only is my foundation strong, but I am ready to receive the answers to my prayers, regardless of what those prayers look like. Whether it is something I asked for, if I expected it, or if it was greater than I could have imagine, my foundation is firm and I know He is with me. As we go into a new season and life gets busy, I challenge you to actively listen and seek the Lord in your life. There are God sightings all around us. He is constantly communicating with us, we just have to be ready to receive it.
Luke 6: 47-48 “Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built.”