My wife loves HGTV. (It drives me nuts, but she doesn’t watch football with me either.) But once in a while I will sit down with her and watch it. The other night there was a show about the HGTV “good guy” construction expert going into a home that was left supposedly 95% complete when a disagreement between the owners and the old construction company gave way to a legal dispute, so the “good guy” construction expert came on the scene to complete the work. What he found was atrocious – the electrical system was not up to code, the plumbing had errors in it that required the sheetrock to be pulled off so it could be accessed, the bathtub had to be removed, it was a serious mess. And all the owners could do was stand there white faced, checkbook in hand, fuming over the loss of their entire life savings which they had put into the addition to their house. But it couldn’t be helped; it all had to be re-done.
Jesus told a story about a man who built his house upon the sand, and when the winds came the house was blown away. I remember singing that song in VBS as a child. But when I grew up a little and realized that he was talking about building a life, it only made sense to me to be like the guy who built his house on the Rock, even though there was so very much in my life that I had mis-laid and that had to be torn down in order to be rebuilt on Jesus. It’s a painful and expensive process, which is why we are encouraged to count the cost, but it is the only way out of the struggles of life into God’s salvation. Once a building has been constructed, it is seriously difficult to repair an error in the way the foundation is laid, but the Christian is committed to doing just that if that is what the Spirit asks him to do. To do less than that is to reject God’s authority over our own lives, and that is a really dangerous place to be.