January 9, 2017
Proverbs 9:1
Wisdom has built her house;
she has set up its seven pillars.
CONSIDER THIS
While we are always working to make a home, our family actually built a house once. Anyone who has ever done this knows it takes great wisdom to build a house. Why? It requires one to make a thousand small, highly consequential decisions that will have permanent impact. Making these decisions means projecting oneself out into the future and imagining the day to day practical ways a family aspires to live together and the kind of home they want to create. From family life areas to bedrooms to dining facilities to the kitchen and guest rooms to front porches and back decks and on it goes. Then there’s lighting and paint and plumbing fixtures and, and, and.
As the saying goes, you build the house and then the house builds you. The thing that matters most, however, is the part that no-one ever sees: the footings. I remember visiting the construction site (as one endlessly does) with my kids in the early days when there was nothing but the footings. It seemed to take forever to get this part done. These pilings would become the unseen pillars on which the whole house sat. We would walk around them together saying simple prayers for a firm foundation for our home, in every sense of the word.
Wisdom has built her house; she has set up its seven pillars.
It’s got me thinking about the pillars or pilings or footings of my life. What are they? I could name off some high sounding ideals that capture what I want them to be, like the Word of God, the Spirit of God, humility and love. While listing them would be a good exercise, they would be worth about the price of the paper they were written on.
In order to know the pilings and pillars of my life I would need to look at today, yesterday and the day before yesterday. Did I steep myself in the Word of God? Did I consciously welcome the Holy Spirit into my inner-most self? Was humility anything more than a high ideal? Was I intentional about reaching out to other people and serving them beyond my own self interest in doing so? Or were those days, like so many others, just another jammed up amalgamation of hectic busy-ness, undisciplined eating, and frenetic swimming around trying to keep my head above the water and pay the bills? My lawyer has advised me not to answer that last question, but I think you see my point. ;0)
The house of my life will not be built on the pillars and pilings of wisdom unless my days are built on them. This is very easy to want to do, but it’s even easier to not do at all.
My unsolicited advice? Start small. Forget seven pillars. Start with one. For instance, how will I stand on the Word of God today? It will not just happen. I have to dig a new footing every single day.
Got your shovel ready?
THE PRAYER
Abba Father, thank you for making the ways of wisdom so plain and clear to us. Would you help me to put it into play in simple, consistent ways in my every day life. I want your Word to be the first and foremost piling and pillar in my life. I know wanting it won’t get it done. That’s why I’m praying. In Jesus name, Amen.
THE QUESTIONS
1. What keeps me from digging a footing for the Word of God every day in my life?
2. Provided I dug the footing, how might I actively return to it throughout the day and stand firm on it?
3. What is one simple, practical way I can do this, and so build the house of my life?
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J.D. Walt, is a Bond Slave of the Lord Jesus Christ. jd.walt@seedbed.com.
THE PRAYER
Abba Father,
THE QUESTIONS
1. Why do people not
2. What if I began
3. How might we
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Join the Daily Text Fasting Challenge here. Whenever you sign up, it will begin the following Tuesday.
J.D. Walt, is a Bond Slave of the Lord Jesus Christ. jd.walt@seedbed.com.