The Two Foundations, Part 5 — A ‘Time With God’ Devotion

All this week, John North takes us through the story of the wise and foolish builders, as shared by Jesus.

Matthew 7:24-29 show us Jesus telling a parable about the difference between a wise and foolish builder was in where they placed their foundation.

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.

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Transcript

Good morning,

We want to stop at this time as we do every day and just take some time with God.

Do you know that God is there with you?

As you’re listening to this spot, God is there, right there, the living, active God of the universe. Sometimes we think, Oh, God has got so much going on in the universe, and think of all that’s happening in the world and all the people in massive crisis. He doesn’t have time to worry about me and my day to day and my personal life. Yes, He does. God is not strained.

By paying attention to every person in the world, He is infinite. He’s there with you. He, remember that, not it. He, the person, is wanting a personal relationship with you and that is built on time together.

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So let’s read this little passage that we’ve been reading each day this week. The word picture that Jesus paints for us as we look at our theme for the week of the two foundations. Jesus says:

One then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand, and the rain fell, and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell and great was the fall of it.

When Jesus finished these sayings, the crowd was astonished at His teaching, for He was teaching them as one who had authority.

And not as their scribes. Well, we’ve been pointing out all week that your life looks great, no matter what your foundation is, when the times are good.

When the weather is fine, right, when everything’s cool, nothing’s going wrong, life seems great, but it doesn’t take long in life, does it, for things to get tough. Life is not one long happy day, right? It doesn’t matter if you’re walking with God. It doesn’t matter if you’re walking far from God. Everybody’s life contains the storms.

And Jesus’ story makes that so clear. In my life I’ve experienced so many storms in my life. I remember as a young Christian at college, my first time I fell head over heels for a girl. And I mean, she was all I could think about. And then she decided, OK, I’m moving on.

And the devastation in my life and of course looking back now I think oh that was infatuation what a ridiculous thing, but at that time my life was over in my mind, right?

I think later than when I was more mature and built a deep relationship with a girl and we were very close, I’d even bought the ring to give her. And then, her parents found out I was planning to move to another country and began working against that relationship, and it ended up in a breakup, for months and months, the pain in my heart over that breakup, it was so hard.

And God gave me a wonderful family. We began developing our ministry here in Australia. I shared with you yesterday about how I got the news that I had melanoma. I went home with the report that had come from the biopsy.

And on the report, it said that it was category 4, and of course I began looking up Category 4, but my web search brought up stage 4, and so I thought, I’m about to die. And for about half a day, I was just trying to come to grips with the fact that I had a few months to live.

And then of course I looked more closely and saw that it was category 4 but still a very serious melanoma, and I had that removed. Later on I found out that I had years later prostate cancer and a very aggressive form of prostate cancer, and I had that removed, and that was a big scare. A few months later my daughter, 17 years old, came down with a very rare life-threatening tumour growing in her body, and many people were praying for her and just the struggle of going through that and watching her in that situation.

I’ve had experienced criticism and attacks from teammates in ministry, financial struggles, tension in my marriage. It doesn’t matter if you are a Christian or not. You’re going to face tension in your marriage, and this is devastating, right? In all of the storms of life, what has carried me through.

A life built on the experience of God through acting on His Word, and it will be the same for you.

I’m John North.