By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established
Proverbs 24:3 [NIV]
This week our Devotionals will be on a theme of "building".
“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’”
Luke 14: 28-30 [NIV]
One of the recurring themes of the multitude of house build/restoration programs on TV seems to be that the original budget or timeframe proves insufficient – ‘The windows cost more than we thought’. Jesus advises us to count the cost – but he is not talking houses, he’s talking discipleship, be it personal or corporate; your own self as a Spiritual Temple, or the Body of Christ, the Church.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in “The Cost of Discipleship” challenges us to think whether we expect God’s grace too cheaply:
“Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all that he has.… it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.”
Grace calls us to follow Jesus, both as individuals and as a Church. It is the most costly gift, given freely in love, free to receive, but which calls for a response with all of our life, a call to the life we were created for. Perhaps we need to regularly ask ourselves “Who is the Architect for our plans?”
“The astonishing paradox of Christ's teaching and of Christian experience is this: if we lose ourselves in following Christ, we actually find ourselves. True self-denial is self-discovery. To live for ourselves is insanity and suicide; to live for God and for man is wisdom and life indeed. We do not begin to find ourselves until we have become willing to lose ourselves in the service of Christ and of our fellows.”
[John R.W. Stott, Basic Christianity]
Father – teach us to discover ourselves in you and you in us.
Guy Mowbray
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