The bible
tells us that God created the heavens and the earth and that by the end of the
sixth day He was ready to sit back and enjoy.
By the grace
of the Father, my prayer is that an understanding of how God created all that
is can be compared to the building of a house in relationship to our personal
lives and spiritual growth with the Father through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
So as not to
pile a ton of information on everyone at one time this is the first of several
installments. Right now I’m not sure
exactly how many but no more than six more.
If I can combine, I hope to do it in fewer so stick with me on
this. OK?
First, He had to decide where He was
going to build
God creates a place for His
creation (Gen 1:1-5)
In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth. The earth was
without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of
the waters. God said “Let there be
light.” And there was light. God saw
that the light was good and God divided the light from the darkness and God
called the light day and the darkness night and the evening and the morning
were the first day.
Understand that there was nothing (except God, Himself) when
He started creating. There were no molecules,
no atoms, no grains of sand, no seeds – nothing.
Science talks about the ‘singularity’ which, as theorized, is
the beginning of all creation. They
explain how this singularity just, all of the sudden, started expanding from a
very minute particle to the expanse of the universes as we know them. They tell us how the universe is continuing
to expand but will eventually reach ‘its limit’ then start imploding
(collapsing) presumably back to that very minute molecule that it originated
as. No matter what theories they come up
with, though, they can’t explain where that singularity came from.
We are ‘finite’ beings, that is we have a beginning and an
end so everything we understand and deal with has a beginning and an end. So this singularity should have a beginning –
somewhere, somehow.
One of the hardest things for man to comprehend is the
‘eternality’ of God. God has no
beginning and He shall never have an end.
He always was, still is and always shall be. Even though we may understand the words, it
is difficult for our finite minds to comprehend the infinite reality of
eternity. How long did God exist before
He created the heavens and earth?
Forever. How long will be live
with Him after He calls us home. Forever
(and we, believers, shall be with Him).
So Father created the heavens and the earth to have an
object(s) for His affection. His affection is love and He desired to impart that love to …. us. Someone to shower that love upon. As we read the bible over and over and again,
God’s love becomes more evident to us and our understanding of His love towards
us increases. We understand that He
loves us so much that He gave His only Begotten Son, Jesus to die for our sins
and bring us back into His kingdom in heaven but coming to an understanding
what the words say and what they really mean is our spiritual growth AND that,
my brothers, sisters and friends is what the “Master Builder” is all about.
So God started with nothing and created substance, light and
darkness because this is what He desired and this is what He envisioned in
order to begin building His house. He
saw what He wanted and started doing it.
He created a tract of land (light and darkness) in which to build His
house and He prepares for His next step.
When a man wants to build a home, he first has to find a
piece of land upon which he desires to build.
He scours the real estate ads in the paper, he visits real estate
agencies and he probably drives around looking for both an area to build as
well as the right plot of land upon which to build. Sometimes he may have to go look at different
places to see if one may be the right plot.
But He looks for it and once He finds it, he buys it! (we are assuming that he has the resources to
do so).
When we build a spiritual house, first we must have the
desire to want something that we realize that we do not have. God gives us a desire to want ‘something’
greater than ourselves to care for us.
If you will, it’s inborn. We can
reject God, but we still look for something – different religions, meditation,
whatever. We ‘normally’ seek for
something to give us hope beyond this life.
We look for a plot to build (or hope for).
As we look for that spiritual ‘haven’ God does help us
out. He reveals Himself to us in many
ways, the world around us, nature, situations where He is guiding the end
results, putting people around us to point us in the right direction. We may try different religions, or which
Christian denomination ‘fits’ us. It’s
always a good start where we find Jesus being preached in truth. Our faith is like a house, we build one that
meets our needs where we are now, then as those needs change or grow, so does
our house. Also in our spiritual growth,
our needs will change and our house needs to change accordingly. Now don’t mince words here. It really isn’t us who build our house. Father inspires us to build, the as we yield
to Him, he guides our every move so instead of building a house on sand, which
will collapse, we build on the rock, so it stands firm and strong.
I basically grew up in a Southern Baptist Church, but, as a
lot of young people, I drifted away after High School. I lived my life, working, lifting weights and
hanging with my friends and then I was drafted (they drafted young men into the
military back in the ‘60’s). Though I
didn’t realize it until later, even though I had drifted from being around God,
God had not drifted from me.
I was drafted in 1965
and I spent 1967 in Saigon (now Ho Chi Min City), Vietnam, I was with the US
Army signal Corp/STRATCOM working with teletype/microwave equipment. That is beaming out and receiving messages piggy-backed
onto radio waves and to be sent from or back to a teletype machine to be
printed out. Our main base was located
at Ton Son Nhut airbase, about five miles outside of Saigon but we had a
substation in the Cholon district of Saigon which is where two other GI’s and
myself were stationed working 12 hour swing shifts. It was October or November 1967 and I was on
shift with about three hours before my relief came in. The phone rang and it was my CO. “Buck!
We’re on ‘red alert’ (combat ready designation). They’ve been dumping mortars on the base and they
have progressed towards a civilian police station between you and us. We’ll keep you informed.” I said “Yes sir.” Now our sight was located in the basement of
the building which had 12” concrete walls, so I felt reasonably secure but I still
looked over at the weapons rack which contained one M14 rifle and one clip
holding 20 rounds (bullets) of ammunition.
I thought “OK”
My relief got bored so he came in early that day, about a
half hour or so after the call. I told
him we were on red alert and He replied “Oookaaay”. He looked at me then he looked at the weapons
rack. I couldn’t help myself but I
quickly said “Don’t worry, unless there’s twenty-one of them.” We both laughed. By the time my shift was up we were notified
that the red alert was lifted and we were told later that the Viet Cong kicked
the stuffing out of that police compound about two miles outside of the city,
nearly leveling it, then pulled out.
I came home in Dec. 1967 and in February 1968, two to three
months later, the enemy did come into Saigon which is known as the ‘Tet
offensive” when they did a lot of damage, but the city held. I was gone by then and I have never found out
how our station fared that February, but God spared me in Oct./Nov. and I
didn’t have to deal with Feb. I had a
double ‘spare’.
I relate this story
because even though I didn’t really know Jesus then, Father was watching over
me. Father speaks to us through life’s
experiences. All we have to do is look
and listen.
Now I didn’t try a lot
of different religions or anything back then.
I just took things as they came and grumbled when it didn’t work out
like I liked.
I found my plot when I met my wife (to be). I met her in 1971 and we decided to marry a
year later. Who to perform the
ceremony? We went back to my old S.
Baptist Church, which had a new pastor by that time, and whom my bride to be
and I both decided was OK. However! Isn’t there always an ‘however’ or a
‘but’? this pastor had the funny idea of
not performing weddings unless the bride and groom knew Jesus –
personally. It was through that marriage
counselling that Father convicted me in my heart that I never really ever knew
Him. Twice the pastor asked me if I knew
Jesus and twice I responded ‘I grew up in this church’ or whatever came to mind
at the time. He asked me a third time
and that’s when the Holy Ghost set it on my heart my only true and honest response
was ‘no’ and received Jesus into my heart at that time. And I know that from that day forward I had
gained access to the kingdom of God, my spiritual plot. My wife lied that day and said ‘yes’ to the
question and the pastor told me after she had given her heart to Jesus a few
years later, that he knew that she lied but God would bring her into the
kingdom eventually through me.
So did I become an instant super Christian? Not by a long shot. Christian, yes but I’m still growing, getting
closer to my Lord and Savior each day (PTL). But my plot, tract of land, was
laid. I had salvation.
I look back on my own spiritual growth over the years and
every time I reflect on where I’ve come from to where I’m at currently, and
even though I can see that Father has brought me a long way, I also realize I still have soooo far to go.
Every journey begins with the first step and if the journey
takes 1000 steps, every time I feel I’ve gone ten or twenty steps, Father shows
me that I’ve only been taking baby steps and I’m still just barely just out of
the starting blocks. But we have to
take that first step and that’s finding the place to build our house so we can
take the next step by allowing Him to build us.
God didn’t have a plot of land to look at so He created His
own. Before a man can build his ‘dream’
house, he first has to look for his plot.
And likewise, when we realize we need to start building our spiritual
house, we have to look for and let Jesus in, so we have something to build
upon.