How Do You Build Your House

​Love you all, praying for you, 
 
I just love God’s Word.  It gives you complete truth about the natural and spiritual realm.  When you were born, you were born into a family.  Hopefully your parents knew the God who loves them and you, and that they desired to love Him, and walk in the wonderful plans He had for them.  If they did, they trained you, loved you, and nurtured you, encouraging you to walk in the way that you should go, the way best for you, as God revealed.  Then as you grew, the responsibility shifted onto you.  First you build you, then you build your house.  How do you build your house?  How do you determine how you live?  What is your house?  Not two by fours, drywall, insulation, and plumbing.  Building your house is the determination of how you will live.  Joshua built his house –  As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.  We will live our life in the way God commands, in the way that His Word instructs and demands.  So how do you build your house?  First you decide who is in authority. God or you, the Spirit of Christ or another spirit.  Whose plans will you follow – His or yours?  Here’s what God says, “By wisdom a house is built, by understanding its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures.”  If you are lacking wisdom, you won’t build well.  Your house won’t reflect Him, and what He gives, it will reflect something else.  God’s word exposes this truth, “My people are destroyed (ruined) by lack of knowledge.”  You can want to be associated with God and His people, but lack His knowledge, so your house doesn’t reflect it.  Knowledge and obedience go together, you need one to have the other.  How will you live – in the Spiritual realm, and in the natural realm.  The natural reflects the spiritual.  If the natural is a mess, the spiritual is a mess, if the natural is in God’s Order and His favor, the Spiritual can grow in the order and excellence of Christ.  I went past the field of the sluggard, past the vineyard of the man who lacked sense, weeds had grown up everywhere, and the stone wall was in ruins.  This is the opposite of wisdom.  You can tell a person’s character by the things they possess, the things God has entrusted to them.  Are they kept with excellence, reflecting their owner (and their caretaker) or are they a mess – last week’s wrappers still in the back seat…  To build your house - first is natural, then spiritual.  Start with the physical.  Do you sleep when it’s time to sleep, Do you work when it’s time to work?  Do you steward well? His money and His possessions (it takes discipline to do it daily).  Have you trained your kids to be excellent? What is excellent in stewardship? Everything in it’s place.  Possessions that reflect their owner.  It doesn’t have to be a brand new car, but is it washed and clean?  It reflects you as the manager, and it should reflect the owner – which is God not you.  Do you work hard? are you diligent? – the precious possession of a man (a human).  Do you get God’s plan? Or follow yours?  Do you soak in God’s Word – or are you more influenced by other words, opinions, and philosophies of money relationships and life.  Do you give?  Do you serve?  Do you save for the future? Or do you spend whatever you get?  Do you choose debt to get what you haven’t saved for yet?  God said don’t strike hands in pledge, your only debt should be love.  Are you humble?  Do you respond to others with kindness, do you overlook faults, believe the best, seek peace and pursue it?  Are your words gentle or harsh, proud or gracious?  Do you complain, and slander or do you speak life, and faith, and hope?  What kind of house are you building?  As for you and your house.  How will you build it? How will your family operate – in time, in thoughts, in money, and testimony.  What testimony are you giving, what testimony do you have?  What was God able to do… because you are committed to choosing His best?  What does your life reflect?  This is building your house.  Praying that you will build on the only true and solid foundation, that God’s Word will be what reflects you, that way you think… that reflects your house.  Praying that His Presence, His Plan, and His Word is your priority.  Praying that you will be early, faithful, humble, gracious, diligent, giving, patient, and loving, that your house will reflect the love and wisdom and favor of Jesus – full of rare and beautiful treasures.  Praying that you will walk in the way of your Father in Heaven who has good things for you - if you will walk in His way, and leave your old ways behind. Praying that God’s grace will be what you choose, and that you’ll walk with someone daily – that thing that God designed that helps you overcome – and build your house well.   
 
Love you all,
dad