BUILDING GOD'S
HOUSE
By
Pastor Dick
About thirty-nine years ago a friend
and I formed a masonry construction business. The building industry was highly
competitive so we worked hard to build a company that could do quality work at a
fast pace. Sometimes we would finish our work on a school, a shopping center or
an apartment building well ahead of schedule, which would benefit the builder
that had awarded us the contract to do the job. We trained our workers to
produce. I knew how to keep the job moving; I made a good traffic director in
the fast lane of the rat race: I made sure my crew did not take long coffee
breaks, and sometimes I drove them so hard that I would chew them out for taking
time to go to the bathroom! Yet I would never push anyone as hard as I pushed
myself.
My partner and I split the workers
between us so that we could have two jobs going at the same time. Production
increased greatly when we could get the two crews in a race. Things were going
along fairly well; there was harmony among the workers who did not mind this
competition between the crews. But that all ended when I took on a job that I
thought was the cream of the crop among building contracts.
It was the masonry work on a huge,
expensive house that a man was building in a nearby town. When I was bidding for
the job, I asked for a "cost plus ten," which meant that the owner would supply
the material and pay us an hourly rate plus ten percent. He agreed to that but
with one condition: he insisted that the job be done his way. He would not rush
us in any way, but the work would have to be done right, regardless of how long
it took to complete the job. That sounded reasonable to me seeing that he was
paying the bill. I talked it over with my partner and crew workers and they
said, "Sounds good, go for it!" So I agreed to take what I thought would be "The
Dream Job." I kept a small crew of my best workers to begin the job, instructing
them to work slowly, be fussy and do an excellent job.
Much of the house was being built with
cement blocks. The owner of the house had an agreement with the company that
supplied the blocks that he would pay them to replace any that did not meet his
requirements. Sometimes, out of a pallet of fifty blocks, there might be only
about five that would pass this stiff inspection. If the owner of the house
found a block that had the least little chip out of it, the wall would have to
be torn down to that point, the chipped block removed and the wall built up
again. I instructed my workers to carefully inspect every block before using
it.
At the end of the first day, the
builder looked over our work, then had me tell my workers to tear down most of
it for it was not done well enough, and that we could start over in the morning.
That was a first for me; no other builder had ever made us do that. I thought
our work was always high quality and that day we had taken extra care to do a
good job. In the following days I felt we were going way overboard, being so
picky, but even this did not satisfy the homebuilder. He still found fault with
the building material and the workmanship and made us tear down much of our
work.
The man never complained or even raised
his voice; he just said the house had to be built his way. After a few days of
tearing down almost as much as we were building, I realized I had just met my
first perfectionist!
This went on for two or three weeks;
then even my best workers were becoming frustrated beyond measure. I tried to
calm them down by reasoning with them; I said, "You’re getting paid well, no one
is yelling at you, and you’re not being rushed, so what is the problem?" They
told me that the man building the house was out of his mind (and I didn’t argue
that point), and also that if they could not go back to their old way of
working, they were going to quit and get another job. I talked them into staying
on awhile longer while I tried to find a way to bow out of the contract I had
made with the homebuilder.
When we got off that job and onto
another one, we were greatly relieved and glad to get back to our old way of
working. I pushed the crew and myself harder than ever, and they, as well as I,
seemed to enjoy it. As for the "dream job" . . . I just regarded it as one of
life’s bad experiences that should be put out of my mind.
That I did, completely forgetting about
it for thirty-five years. Then just a few days ago, right out of nowhere, the
whole experience came back to my memory in sharp detail. Along with it came the
revelation that God had set that whole thing up way back then to help me now in
my understanding about working with Him in the building of His
House.
That homebuilder back then, whom I
thought was too meticulous to be in his right mind, the one whom I considered to
be an unreasonable perfectionist . . . all I can say now is that he could not
even begin to resemble a perfectionist compared to My Heavenly Father. He is the
Ultimate Perfectionist, especially when it comes to the building of His Holy
House.
When we see years of our hard work of
trying to build our own spiritual life come crashing down, that is all right;
let it crumble. It will only make room for the Lord to build His temple within
us. Even when our most cherished works fall apart, we should not feel sorry for
ourselves, but rather greatly rejoice that God places such a value on us that He
will allow nothing to be built within our new creation but His very best! He is
so good to us to take it upon Himself to do all the building and to let us work
with Him as He leads.
We who belong to Jesus are His House
and He is building us up in His perfect righteousness. Try as we may, not one
ounce of the material in His House will be constructed with our own
righteousness. The love that His House is being built up into is His perfect
love. It does not grow in us. It does not grow at all for it has always been
full grown; it is complete, just as all the fruit of the Spirit is. We grow in
His perfect faith, His perfect joy, His perfect patience and His perfect
wisdom.
My heart longs to see my life and yours
built up in Christ. The greatest sight in the world is to watch the Father build
His Temple. And to think that He has invited us to work with Him! He will not
push us, He is the God of Patience (Rom.15:5). He will wait until we are ready
to work with Him, until we are ready to believe that His ways are higher than
our ways, that His thoughts are higher than our thoughts (Isa.55:8).
Just as I used to push myself and my
workers back on the construction jobs, we can drive ourselves to witness, to
preach, to organize meetings, to read the Bible, and a whole lot more without
seeing any building of the Temple within our inner being through our efforts.
But if we enter into the New Covenant (which is God doing the work in us); if we
believe in the finished work on the cross and by faith claim the inheritance
that Christ purchased for us; if we enter into that rest that remains for the
people of God (Heb.4:9) . . . oh, what a glorious work we will see being done in
us by the Hand of God!
Once we get a good look at His work in
our lives, that urge to build will come into its rightful position, and our
desire will not be to do our own building but to watch the Magnificent Builder
do His Perfect work in the building of His Holy House.