A foundation?

This is my first forray into the world of the blog. Encouraged by friends and fueled by my gifts as a teacher to lay a foundation, I am submitting my first blog.

So what is a foundation? It is the base from which the rest of a structure is built. Although the idea of a foundation is not a Christian concept, Jesus spoke of the difference between the house built on the sand and on the rock and how one was weak and could not withstand the storm and the other was solid and could weather the storm (Luke 6:47-49).  Any architect or builder can tell you of the importance of a good foundation but if the average person understands this importance it doesn’t mean that this importance translates into the life of the person. The foundation of the building of our lives is the most important structure and simultaneously the most neglected and poorly built part of our lives. Many people wonder way they struggle in this life, unable to change destructive behaviors, depressed, anxious and any other syndrome you can name. It seems there is a pill for every problem we can invent, but no real solution that at the least would explain the reason for the problem being there in the first place. The false solutions most often given are to take the pills and mask the problems.

Our problems today are the result of a poor foundation. Throughout the world, there is overwhelming importance on the structural foundation in any building project, while at the same time almost no focus on the foundation of the individual or that it is even a necessary part of our lives. As long as we fail to build a proper foundation for our lives we will fail in life. The foundation is the base from which the rest of the structure is built, if the foundation is poorly build or composed of sand, then what hope does the building have of surviving even the weakest of storms?

My focus in this blog is to lay a foundation through words that help the reader fix or even begin to lay a foundation from which they can begin to take control of there lives and find purpose and focus that we all desire. In the passage noted above, Jesus begins the explanation of the difference between a solid and poor foundation by stating that ‘whoever comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice is like the man building a house, who dug deep and layed the foundation on the rock’. There are four main elements necessary here: the solid place to build on – the rock, the digging deep to get to that rock and the tools and material necessary to build on that rock – which is the word and application thereof, not just hear but also doing. The rock is Christ Jesus Himself, the chief cornerstone from which the whole structure is built, but then the other part is the foundation upon that rock, which is your individual life. In building a physical building they have to dig down to a solid place usually called bedrock or they have to create a type of bedrock like structure before they can even begin to build the “foundation”. It is really a foundation before the foundation; it is that which exists before the thought of the builder even building the structure and the reason for the necessity to dig deep. Once both, that which already exists, and that which is built are in place they are collectively called the ‘foundation’, but it is important to understand this distinction within that collective generalization. In life it takes that which already exists, which is God embodied in the flesh man called Jesus Christ, and that which we build which is you and me. Without both distinct portions of this foundation, the individual soul is condemned to a self-destructive, purposeless existence.

Some people will have difficulty with the idea of Jesus being the rock and to listen and apply his words as an essential part of this foundation, but I will submit to you that this is the result of the lack of digging deep. As long as a person accepts the blonde haired, blue-eyed, modern-day, idolatrous, religious pop culture version of the person identified as Jesus Christ, then I can understand the difficulty. When I write of Jesus as the foundation, I am writing of the actual person that can only be truly understood through personal, individual relationship, through a process of digging deep. Without digging deep to discover who Jesus Christ really is, we limit our ability to start our building on the proper foundation.

In laying a foundation I am not desiring that people become “Christians”, because quite honestly, without knowing who Christ is, it is impossible to become “Christ-like”. The label of Christian has become self-applied, while the original usage was by non-believers who knew of Christ and labeled His followers “Christ-like” or “Christ-ian”. The term “Christian” could be applied if someone who at least knows who Christ really is, comes along and decides to label another person as a follower who resembles Christ. Again, my desire in this blog is to lay a foundation and thereby expose and pursue purpose and if that results in labels being applied, then so be it.

I am a believer in the Creator of the Universe, Who has, through our relationship, helped me step into my purpose as a teacher, prophet and apostle and I will explain the latter terms in more detail in later blogs.