The Solid Rock

I have a friend who owns a pool company and when I called him this week, he said to me he was in the bottom of a pool and couldn't talk. That got me to thinking about what we are standing in or on in our spiritual lives. We may be standing in a pool of thankfulness that gives us buoyancy to float on the circumstances of life, or we may be in a pool of despondency that is like quick sand and sucks us down till we can't breathe. Every attitude can be a pool we sink or swim in depending on what we fill our thought lives with. We can build one of superiority, or humility, repentance or regret, resentment or acceptance. Jesus said our lives are like a house that can either be built on a solid foundation that won't give way during the storms of life or a poor foundation that falls apart when the winds of adversity blow. The deal here is the foundation will either cause the house to be saved or destroyed. Of course our foundation is to be Christ, but if we are standing on The Solid Rock, our attitudes will reflect that by conforming to His. If our attitudes towards each other are not based out of love, then we need to examine what foundation we are standing upon. If we are standing on Christ as our foundation, then the truth is welcome---we will have no problem with people speaking into our lives, we are teachable, reachable and repentant. We will see things from His perspective and throw off the things that bind us to the old man and reach forward to grab the clothing of the new man-----compassion, kindness, humility, forgiveness, to name a few. These things moving freely in our lives show us we are building upon His foundation. When things like anger, bitterness, jealousy, depression, impatience and disobedience move freely in our lives it shows us we are building upon quite a different foundation. The occasional fight with sinful attitudes is to be expected, but a life that does not deal with them quickly will cause them to become a foundation of belief and reaction, and then before we know it, we're stuck in the mire at the bottom of a cesspool. These attitudes get a life of their own, living it out through our thoughts and emotions, pulling us this way and that, until we feel totally out of control. The only answer is the Light of the World who came to destroy the works of the devil. Those works begin with the heart of the believer, submitting to everything that God throws our way with the humility of the clay that allows the Potter to shape and reshape, to cut away or add to, and to finally throw in the kiln where the fire tests all that has been done. God came to destroy the devils works and that must begin through us. Every stronghold of hate we tear down with love, every foothold of fear we overcome with truth, and every area where our will is being done that we replace with His will---this destroys the works of the devil. We are only in control of one thing on this earth and that is ourselves. So as we control our lives and make it obey God, we overcome the world in us, and therefore destroy the works of the devil being made manifest through us. The Light of the World is here to show us the way clearly and clearly can only come when we can see everything---all the obstacles in our way so we can overcome them, all the paths available good and bad so we can choose wisely. Let's not hide from the truth about what in us needs to change---let's become part of an army that will have the courage to destroy the works of the devil in our own lives first, and so be able to say---the rains fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against the house, yet it did not fall because it had been founded on a Rock…….v