Are You Building the Wrong House?

“Unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labor in vain.” 

Psalm 127:1-2 (NIV)

The toiling in our lives can amount to much. 

Or it can amount to nothing mountable at all. 

Imagine waking up one morning and realizing that you missed it. The life you’d dreamed of filled with the fullness of joy and all things that make a soul sing, just passed by. 

We all ache to make something of our lives. To build purpose from our existence and leave behind a noteworthy legacy. 

But what if we’re laboring night and day only to turn up empty on our results?

Back in high school I excitedly announced that I planned to attend beauty school. As a child I played with old-fashioned-cone-hair-dryers and fake hair spray for more hours than I can count. I loved the work of making women feel beautiful. 

But some of my friends crushed me with their opinion that beauty-work is not “Christian enough” work. 

I didn't attend beauty school for other reasons, but those words festered in me for years. They bothered me. They temporarily tainted my view of what is considered holy work. 

Over the years God gifted me new lenses to see that when Jesus is involved, all work is holy.

Just as the sunrise awakens the world each morning, so our gifts awaken the world to see Jesus. 

Jesus uses your gifts, your passions, your dreams, to make you into an artist that sings of His glory just by being who He made you to be. Just as He is intentional with painting the beautiful sky each morning, so He is intentional about the work you were made to do. 

What the Lord creates of our lives is artful-beauty. He brushes his supernatural against our natural and makes it something miraculous.

No work is too small if Jesus is at the helm. 

But when we leave Jesus out of the equation and choose selfish gain over surrendered living, we lose out on the gift of our natural work miraculously becoming His supernatural work. 

The greatest heartache of this life will not be about missed promotions or a messy home or a lack of time to commit to more. The greatest heartache of our life would be to devote our lives to building our own kingdom and miss the gift of Jesus’ very presence in our lives.

Dear sisters, let’s not toil for a home we were never meant to build. Let’s, together, lay down our vain-tools and pick up the ordained-tools we are meant to work with. Toiling daily to build a home that is hand-stamped by Jesus. 

For that is the most beautiful legacy of all.

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Going Deeper

1. What house are you building now? Yours? Or God's?

2. What natural work were you made to do? 

(Hint: The things that make you feel alive and fulfilled)

3. How can use those natural gifts to allow God to do supernatural work ?

Moving Onward and Upward When You Can't See Where You're Going

Deeper are the waters we long to go. 

We even pray for it - asking God to make us more like Him. To lead us to new places and grant us new purpose in life. 

But the process of moving upward and onward doesn't always play-out the way we envisioned it. 

I’ve watched my darling five-year old, Charlotte, blossom into a lover of crafts. Pulling out her containers of craft supplies, she begins with a picture in her mind of the completed masterpiece. However, more times than not, as she begins her art form of piecing together something from nothing, she huffs and puffs with frustration as step-by-step she struggles to form her art into what her heart envisioned it to be. Sometimes she goes so far as to throw it away and start all over.  

The space between the starting point and the finish line can feel a lot more like laying under the mercy of an art process we don’t fully understand.

It’s a beautiful tension of hard and harmony. 

Much like the picture of an open wildflower field that stretches far and wide. Imagine the confusing beauty of scanning the vast acres of soft moving tall grass and undisciplined weeds. Painted with colors of tea green and golden wheat it feels peaceful - and uncertain. 

There is no building to move toward or clearly marked path to travel on.

Just you. And the quiet, serene field where Jesus’ ever-present spirit hovers whispering, “Sweet one, trust me.”

This is often the process of moving forward. In the midst of serene quiet, we wrestle with the tension of where we are going. God may grant us vision or instill passion and dreams but for a time, only equip us with a wide lens and very little directive in the small in-between steps.

The hope we must cling to is that Jesus is an artist with a grand vision. He has never left us alone in that field. He stands sovereign; guarding his pearly gates and gazing upon us in delight as he gently leads us upward and onward.

It’s tempting to run to the left or right in the field, searching for purpose. We may even want to throw away the uncertain art we hold in our hands because it doesn't look how we imagined. 

So what can we do in these seasons of wandering and wondering? 

Sisters, I've learned that we must pick up the perfect art brush of love painted in the most famous love-book. We must lean into the greatest commandments: Love God. Love people. 

Right where you are, in your place. It is there that we find the peace in the pieces unfolding. 

No sprinting. No tossing away what God has begun in you. Just the quiet steps of a faithful heart. 

I’ve seen time and time again in my own life, eventually we find that these seasons of growth starting in a field of unknowns lead us to an oasis we never dreamed. 

My favorite pieces of art by Charlotte are the ones where she begins to work slowly. Then she sets it down and comes back to add to it. Repeating that process until her masterpiece is complete. 

Today, hold tight to this: The beauty of life is not found by sprinting to a breathless finish. The beauty of life is found in embracing God’s work of piecing together the story in his divine, effortless way.

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Going Deeper:

1. If you are in a season of not knowing the next step, how can you embrace God’s process and perfect plan for you, today? 

2. What might you need to lay down in order to pick up what God has next for you? 

3. How can you encourage others to press onward in their faith story with Jesus?

 {Consider listening to this beautiful version of a timeless hymn. Reflect on how you can embrace a life of Jesus as your first love and true vision.}