Unless the Lord builds the house...

"Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain." Psalm 127:1

Remember the story of the three little pigs? Mac and Corrie have been reading that one on our android tablet lately while I feed Davey. I can't help but see myself in that story. Apart from the Lord building our house, we have no resources of our own but wood, hay and straw.

We've had some tough times. I keep seeing wall after wall come crashing down. Those flimsy walls looked so strong to me! What a scary thing it is to have our security in such fragile things...especially when they are blown away...leaving us exposed.

Is it possible to make a wall of straw and paint bricks on it? I've pretty much perfected that. I've felt pretty secure in my own little house...my little fantasyland house.

In many ways I have built my life with straw walls - the best that my own resources have had to offer - and I have painted Jesus on it. "Look at me! Look at my strong house! Look at our strong family!" 

God has kindly intervened by allowing storms to come and expose reality. I can't pretend anymore that my straw house is something that it isn't. It has been obliterated, and I am left scrambling like those little pigs. Right about then, a strong brick house starts looking really good. Jesus starts looking really good.

Right about then, I am willing to allow Him to build the walls, His way.

My savior! My firm foundation with strong walls. My reality. It is so good to be in His arms...whatever the cost.

"Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.  For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost?...So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple." 

-Luke 14:25-33