Last Wednesday night I was invited to speak at the weekly gathering of InterVarsity on the campus of Drake University. Whenever I do that, I am usually assigned a teaching topic, and my assignment for that evening was to talk about how to build your spiritual life. As I thought and prayed about this, I was led to Jesus closing words in the Sermon on the Mount. “Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat agains the house, it will collapse with a mighty crash” (Matthew 7:24-27, NLT). Here are the three observations I made about Jesus’ words.
First, the depth of your foundation will determine the size of your structure. The Petronis Towers in Malaysia stand some 1,483 feet high in the air. At the same time, the foundation of the Petronis Towers plummet 394 feet beneath the surface. Foundations are largely unseen to the eye. Jesus point here is that sand is shallow, but bedrock is deep. You have to go deeper in order to go higher. If you’ll take care of the depth of your life, God will take care of the height and breadth of your life.
Second, building your life on Jesus involves building your life with Jesus. Jesus’ invitation includes listening and following. Those are the words of relationship, not the words of indifferent, rote obedience. Following Jesus means being with him in order to become like him.
Finally, building your life with Jesus does not make you exempt from adversity. The similarity between Jesus’ two examples is striking. Whether the person chooses to listen and follow or chooses to hear and reject is immaterial to the fact that storms will come. If you build your life with Jesus, you’re not exempt from storms. You’re empowered to remain standing regardless of what life throws at you.
