Building A Home

Through wisdom is an house builded; and by understanding it is established: And by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches. (Proverbs 24:3-4)

Based on the above floor plan, there’s a lot more to this house than shows. Stairs must go to bedrooms, but even a full floor plan can’t tell us whether this will become a home or not. Neither does that verse. Having a house filled with precious and pleasant riches doesn’t make it a comfortable home where love abounds.

Before Tyvek ^®, homes were often covered with a black felted tar paper. I knew a mother who raised six sons in what was basically a tar-papered shack – without wood or brick façade – and raised them with love.  Our pastor spoke of being raised in what sounds like a similar home, with interior walls having a single wallboard – studs and wiring open to the rooms. Neither of these would be considered as holding precious and pleasant riches – but they did.

Homes are firmed through wisdom and understanding, firmly establishing strong foundations. Using those tools, their chambers are filled with a most precious love. Now where to get this? The psalmist tells us:

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever. (Psalms 111:10)

The theme carried forward another generation:

Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser: teach a just man, and he will increase in learning. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding. (Proverbs 9:9-10)

Along with that information comes another piece of value:

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction. (Proverbs 1:7)

I’m certain we’ve all experienced that feeling that what we’re teaching is completely ignored as irrelevant if not completely incompetent. How did you respond to that feeling? When we ascribe human emotions to God, why is it always loving kindness and never the exasperation we feel when others do not pay attention to what we say?

God has given us blueprints for building what amounts to a firm foundation on solid rock, and we continue to build with sticks on shifting sand.

And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it. (Matthew 7:26-27)

How difficult is it to accept God’s love, live with it in building all relationships, even the ones where we must look at the cross for our example for saying:

Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. (Luke 23:34a)

This is our God – loving, forgiving and in the mansion-building business.

In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. (John 14:2)