4/29/16 THE MASTER BUILDER

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.