House on the Rock

Today I wisely worked on building my house on the rock.  You know the house I’m talking about.  The one which stands up against the pounding wind and rain.  The one with the rock solid foundation of

OBEDIENCE.

That one.

Weeks ago you all began praying for me as I was learning in Lingala Matthew 13:44, the parable of the hidden treasure, to share with my friends on the street in front of our apartment.  I’ve had it fairly well down pat for at least a couple of weeks.  But have I shared it?

 

No. Not until today.  Oh, I’ve had all kinds of good excuses for building on sand.

I couldn’t do it perfectly (ever my problem with language learning).  I couldn’t figure out how to introduce it well in Lingala; oh, and then what in the world would I say when I finished telling it?  I had shared it with a pastor friend and he told me to make a few changes to make it more understandable.  Changes??!!  Does he have any idea how much time it takes me to learn this stuff?! The people on our street are always so busy.  I don’t want to take too much of their precious time.  Sometimes I’m just downright scared to go out there; not everyone is super welcoming here.  And, of course, there are those crochet videos that I dearly love to watch.  My list goes on and on…

And then on Sunday I went to church here in Kin and listened to this really handsome guy who just happens to live in the same house with me.  He told the story from Matthew 7 of two men building houses:  a wise one building on the rock of obedience and a foolish one building on the sands of inactive listening.

Both of them heard the words of God.  Maybe they themselves read them in the Bible; maybe they heard them at church.

Both of them faced the same fierce storm. Don’t you wish that the faithful guy didn’t have any storms?

But isn’t it interesting that simply reading or hearing the words of God didn’t cause these guys to build on a rock foundation?  The man who built wisely, whose house withstood the raging storm, was the one who put into practice what he had read or heard.

 

Up until today, sharing the parable of the hidden treasure was one area of my life where I was, quite honestly, just plain disobedient.  The Spirit has been prompting for weeks.  You’ve been praying for weeks.  I’ve been working hard at learning for weeks.  But foolish anxiety and foolish fear and foolish laziness just kept me building right on top of that sand.

But today I got out there and shared it.  With 4 different groups of people.  I introduced it, well, just ok, I guess.  “May I share a parable of Jesus with you?”  EVERYONE said yes!  I finished by saying, “Did you understand?”  They all said yes.  At this point, I can’t do much more than that.  But the day is coming when I’ll be able to share so much more from my heart.

So dear friends, thank you for praying.  Because today, my house is so much more stable than yesterday.

And today, several people here in Kin had spoken into their lives some of that

Active, Sharp, Piercing Word,

that incredible Light for our Path and Lamp for our Feet

that Life-Giving Bread.

If, like me, you need to put some of His Word into practice so you can wisely add to your house on the rock, know that I’ll be praying for you.