What Holds You Up - Day 223 Month 8-10 Week 32-6
Today's Reading (Bible in 1 year)
2 Samuel 21, Proverbs 17:15-28, Ezekiel 23:25-49, 1 Corinthians 3
What Holds You Up
I love designing things. I particularly enjoy designing and redesigning homes and making 3D CAD drawings of what it will look like. When I went to university, I studied electrical engineering but as I look back now, I should have either pursued architecture or civil engineering. I likely would have finished those programs.
In 1 Corinthians 3, Paul talks about how a life of faith is built. He describes Jesus as the foundation and talks about how other people build on that foundation, helping our understanding of faith grow from spiritual infancy toward maturity. As a side note, you always continue to grow …. you never become “fully grown!”
The Corinthians were debating who was better, those who came to faith through Paul or those who came to faith through Apollos. Even in this day and age, there are superstar Bible teachers and often those Bible teachers will have moral failures of one type or the other and some of those who follow those teachers will have their faith shaken because their faith was based on the person rather than Jesus.
Paul is saying don’t do that. Yes both Apollos and I (Paul) are teaching good things but the foundation of your faith building needs to be Jesus. Maybe Paul builds their faith kitchen but Apollos builds their faith living room but it still sits on the foundation of Jesus. Now some of those people building your house of faith may mislead or have a moral failure and that person will have to answer to that but your faith remains because it’s Jesus.
Paul takes the foundation illustration one step further.
If Jesus is the foundation, Paul says that we, together as the church, are the temple of God and that the Holy Spirit lives in us.
Squirrel, I had a pastor who would aggressively avoid calling a Christian place of worship a temple or sanctuary. He said it causes confusion because if we are the temple a building should not be referred to as a temple. One church I worked in simply called it an auditorium and one church referred to the meeting space as a worship centre. Even treating a church building as a sacred space can be dangerous because it risks putting the building above the actual church, which is the people who worship within it.
Here’s my question for you today. What is the foundation of your life? Is it a philosophy of life? Is it a lifestyle? Is it a person? Is it money? Those questions can go on and on but the real question is this. Is it Jesus? If it isn’t, maybe today is a good day to ask yourself why.
Have a great day!
Steve
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