Are You Saved? (Part III)

Firm Foundations Don't Fall

To live loved but unknown is exhausting. Trying to keep up with what others want leads to flailing like a hamster on a broken wheel, pushing yourself to emptiness in hopes that will win praise, adoration and acceptance into whichever useless club seems the most meaningful today. To live this way, built on false worship and trying to guess what others want by meeting a mark that suggests a relationship but only offers escaping rewards is like building a house on sand. Soft and transient foundation is unsafe and unyielding, because it is simply always changing.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is quoted as saying, “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… 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.” (Matthew 7:24-26, NIV)

When these words were shared, the first Jesus followers were experiencing a great shift in the sand beneath their feet. The Jewish temple in Jerusalem, a pillar in the Jewish faith as a mark of identity, had been destroyed. Taken over by Rome politically and physically, the people of God were left without the temple to pilgrimage to, pray in, give offerings at, and see their fellow Jewish friends. Without this physical place to mark their belief, how will anyone know they are God’s people, trusting and following God’s will instead of their own.

How will anyone know with no place for their faith to be seen?

In 2020, we too lost our place to visit, pray, serve and see our fellow believers.

When the fear of the pandemic shut down gathering spaces, I lost mine too. I was serving a thriving church plant with a busy schedule busting with activity. Ordering Sunday worship was how my week was organized. All the planning, communication, preparation and invitations were centered around Sunday morning worship. My teams, contacts and ways to serve revolved around what happened in the worship space on the holy day. Losing Sunday service put a hole in me, my week and what I was supposed to do with my time.

Sunday morning had become my focus of worship, instead of God.

Losing the way I idolized Sunday worship was good for me. It forced me to see the error in my thinking and planning. It forced me to notice the ways real relationships were attainable outside of Sunday morning. It led me to see that discipleship is harder amidst multiple service times, booming kids ministry and loud promotions of the next activity. In smaller groups, one on one’s, Zoom calls and honest conversations over a cup of coffee the gospel is really shared.

When two broken yet made whole people choose to take a walk and openly wrestle with the ills of the world while clinging to the hope of Jesus in the middle of it all, faith is restored greater than any awesome sermon, meaningful music or bad coffee in the lobby.

Sunday worship should spark relationships; they can’t replace them.

This is what the church should offer, a foundation built on a rock, sturdy when the storms come and still standing after the worst global pandemics hit. When we idolize and worship our temple and the things that happen inside, we too are building our foundations on temporary sand. A foundation built on the rock, the absolute truth of God’s loving desire for relationship, will stand forever.

How are you focusing on relationships?

In the gospel of John, after watching their rock seemingly crumble under Rome’s rule and the righteous religious fear, Jesus’ disciples go and hide in the upper room where they shared their last meal with him. Too afraid to continue to trust Jesus’ promise of life new and too shocked to return to the life they used to know, the disciples gather together in fear and trembling, waiting for confidence before they move.

In the midst of their agony, worry and defeat, Jesus shows up, breaking through the door as if to say, there’s no where you can hide from me. Instead, his words are more kind and true, “Peace be with you!….. Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20:19-22, NIV)

With these words, Jesus reminds his shocked followers of the gift he has already given them: one another. Along the journey, he collected different people from different perspectives and put them together to learn, live and love one another-just as Jesus loved them too.

Beyond the synagogue, temple and misplaced trust in obedience over relationship, Jesus pours himself into our messy lives and dares to come close enough to smell our stinky breath and see the coffee stains on our teeth. He doesn’t shy away when things get dangerous. Instead, he puts his face toward Jerusalem, willing to endure the cross in order to prove what God’s love can do and invite us into a deeper relationship too.

This is the truth that saves, redeems and pulls us out of our graves not to bear righteous badges, but to dare to live like this is true. To see the hurt, hungry and lonely and move toward them with the same compassion, kindness and revelation so that they too may be set free.

If the man that approached me in the laundromat dared to learn my name, hear my story and hold space for my broken reality, I might have been more interested in the Jesus he came to share. Instead, his armored front and preconceived judgement on my eternal resting space built a wall between us instead of a bridge.

What are you building?

Are you saved from a weak faith, cheap grace and a crumbling foundation of memorized rules that give way as soon as things are no longer going your way?

Or do you have a radical relationship with God and others that holds space for transforming grace, covering all the gray, seeping into the cracks and showing up even in the trembling and doubt?

Are you saved, or playing it safe?