This last week, the nation watched in horror the video of a residential building collapse in Miami. The reason for why it fell is debatable, but one thing is for sure. Its foundation crumbled. Having grown up in Florida where we had sinkholes, and now living in Southern California with earthquakes, I know that having a firm foundation is vital for our homes.
Our bodies also need a firm foundation. In our physical bodies, our core is the foundation. If our core is strong, our whole body is strong. I need to work on my core in my physical body, and I also need to work on my core in my spiritual body because when the core of my spiritual body is strong, the whole spiritual life is strong. Jesus taught about having a firm foundation for our spiritual lives. He warned us that when it is built on a rock, it is firm, but when it is built on sand, it comes crashing down. The problem is that most of us believe that we have a firm foundation built on rock, and yet, when trials hit, our faith crashes, which reveals it was built on sand.
We can have a spiritual firm foundation, but like our physical bodies, it takes time to become solid and firm. When life’s troubles crash down on us, many of us do not want to take the time to repair the breakage, as we waste time complaining, but we must because we do not want our entire spiritual life to fall.
To have a firm foundation, we must throw away the ideology of other people’s beliefs. This was and still is difficult for me. Throughout my life, I have been taught to trust the “experts.” When the experts began to become human and they failed in their own faith and expertise, I struggled to believe what was factual of their teachings and what was not. These experts had been trained in the Bible, and yet, they only spoke words and did not put their words into practice. Once I began to search for answers for faith throughout the Bible and studied the context, I realized that it was one thing to know the facts and very different to put those facts into practice.
Putting our faith into action requires having faith when we feel as if we are stumbling around in the dark. We must trust God when we cannot see what will happen in our lives. We must trust God when the answers are not apparent. We must trust that the answers we want may not be the answers we need, and God will only give us what we need.
Many times, when our faith collapses, we blame God. Jesus taught us where to build our foundation. If we choose to build our foundation on people or on good works that are disguised as service, then our faith foundation is built on sand, and it will crumble. We have no one to blame but ourselves. For far too long, I played the blame game. For far too long my faith, although I had extensive Biblical knowledge, was built on sand. Once I repaired my foundation and built on rock, my faith grew. I stopped blaming God for my own flaws and my acts of service that were done with disdain. We must serve with a love for God and people. if we do not love people when we serve, then how we can love God as we serve?
Once our faith is built on a firm foundation, we do not automatically receive an easy life without troubles. James warns us in James 1:3 that we will have trials and troubles. It is how we respond to those trials and troubles. He does not write that we need to be happy about them, but to have joy, which is to be content where we are in life. We all have strife. Many of us do not share worldwide our strife, which is why we need to be kind on social media of how we treat people, as we do not know the strife of which others endure. How we treat others reveals if our faith is built on sand or on rock.
If we have a faith built on a firm foundation with Christ being at the core, then we treat other people with the love of Jesus and as we love ourselves. We eliminate criticizing and belittling because our faith is so strong, that we do not need to tear down other buildings but bring support that the others can rebuild on rock instead of sand. Empowering others creates a strong foundation that is built on Christ because we know that we have a faith in Christ that empowers us, so we want others to have that same power.
We need to have a firm foundation in our spiritual lives. We need to discover where our foundation is. If we have built our foundation on ideologies, we need to return to God’s Word and align our faith with God. If we built our foundation on people, we need to realign our faith with Christ. If we have built our faith on overpowering and controlling other people’s faith, we need to shift our power to empowering others to have a love for Jesus and to encourage them that Jesus loves them.
Our world is struggling as it reopens. We all have struggles and troubles in our life. We need to have our spiritual lives built on a firm foundation. It will result with the rest of our body, with our physical, mental, and emotional health also having firm foundations. Our strong faith will affect people around us. As we pray for those who are affected with the loss of loved ones in Miami, may we also pray for our own spiritual foundations to be solid so we can create a stronger world around us.
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