How Good Are Your Foundations?

What’s your house built on? Recently I was thinking about the foundations of a house and how straight and solid they need to be if the house is to be properly constructed. Of course you can’t usually see the foundations, but in reality they’re the most important part of the building, so it will be a safe structure, and useful for the purpose for which it was intended. Sadly it’s a truth the builders of the Leaning Tower of Pisa only realised after they had completed the beautiful campanili, in which it’s impossible to hang bells.

In the same way the house that represents our life is built on spiritual foundations, which the verse today tells us should be wisdom. Isaiah prophesied that wisdom is the characteristic of the Messiah, Jesus; ‘and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest on Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might’ (Isaiah 11:2). So to have wisdom as your foundation means to live your life on a foundation of the character of Jesus. He is all truth, so it means to be underpinned with God’s truth.

If your life has some untruths in its foundation, that is in your deep inner being there are beliefs that don’t agree with God’s truth, then the house of your life which you’ve built on top won’t be straight and true. These untruths that seem so entrenched inside, like “I’m rubbish” or “ I’m a mistake”, will definitely show in the ‘leaning’ of your visible life, rather like the tower at Pisa. What’s built on those foundations will be faulty understanding, which will make it very difficult for you to line up your thoughts and behaviours with the plumb-line of God’s way. This will in turn affect your life style choices and your relationships; a recipe for a life of difficulty and distress.

God’s word tells us that having the house of our life built on wisdom, that is His truth, means that the rooms of your life will be filled with ‘precious and pleasant riches’. What’s more pleasant or precious than living life knowing that God loves you and values you, and having good relationships with family and friends?

So let’s ask God to reveal where our foundations are faulty and where they don’t match up with His wisdom and truth. It could seem a bit risky, rather like asking for a digger to excavate under our house, but God is gracious and He’s able to safely shift us on to new, and far superior, straight and solid foundations. It will be a life changing, and relationship changing, process.

Prayer: Dear Lord Jesus,Please show me where my foundational beliefs are not in line with Your truth and where this has affected the house that’s my life. I desire foundations of wisdom and truth, and ask today that You start to replace the lies that I have believed, and which have been a faulty foundation with Your truth. I realise this may be a process, but today I ask You to start the underpinning work to straighten and strengthen my foundations in truth. I pray this in Jesus’ mighty name. Amen.