A Carpenter likes to Build Things

“Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them– every day begin the task anew.” ~ Francis de Sales

Do you sometimes feel stuck, or like you aren’t being very efficient? Ever get the sense that you are expending vast amounts of effort, but may in reality, just be spinning endlessly upon a going-nowhere-kind-of-wheel?

Sometimes in order to create a masterpiece, we have to practice and plan, plan and practice, and practice and plan some more. We can end up feeling that we are somewhat stuck as we chip away ~ working at the foundation of what we wish to actually accomplish for what can seem to be a very long, looonnnng time.

We become impatient because we can see the end result we wish to achieve – that thing of beauty – that hope, dream, expectation or vision, before we are even yet equipped to put those finishing and pretty little touches on it.

We are rushing creatures, we are.

Today the Lord is really reminding me of how very valuable and worthy it is for us to spend solid time on the foundation of any and every single thing we wish to build. It’s about His timing, not ours. I seem to need to be reminded of this far too often.

Whether it’s learning to be super efficient in a new job…
Create a piece of art that reflects our talents and heart and soul…
Decorating a home, a desk, a room…
Delving into a book in the scriptures that seems obtuse, difficult to comprehend for us…
Or building and nurturing relationships – both new and old.

It all takes time. We don’t just get to do the cool stuff.

Sometimes being stuck in the foundation feels lame, and I can attest to that in so many ways. I tend to want to be up and running, maximize efficiency and creativity, and just….GO. One of my main personality traits or strengths, I guess you could say, is to be a “maximizer.” I would rather refine something to greatness than create something from scratch. It’s just how I roll. But that doesn’t mean I always get to tap into that talent and it certainly doesn’t mean it doesn’t grow me to have to go outside of that thing I am strong in from time to time.

God is the solid rock of all that we are as we follow after Christ with everything we’ve got. And Jesus, the Master Carpenter doesn’t skimp on the foundation of anything.

Guess what? He is an expert at it all! He is the Creator of all. He is the Maximizer of all. He is the best at foundations and the best at the flair.

He IS.

We can learn from that…
We can definitely allow Him to work through that…
We can resist that, or we can turn to Him to help us see that He will get us through!

No…we won’t be stuck in the concrete of the foundation forever. Sometimes He will allow us to stretch and fly. Other times, we have to buckle down in what appears to be the muck and the mire.

It’s all a part of His awesome plan to help us to build something beautiful, yet solid. Both things are so very vital to His divine order of all.

No, friends, I don’t like the foundation part of building things. But I sure do know that it’s crucial to learning to let the whole of the Master Carpenter and His expertise be manifested through me.

If I had my way, I’d already have the foundation in place and just refine, refine, refine stuff. But that isn’t the way that it gets to work in most situations, now is it? And it has been proven to me time and time again that “my way” is not the “best way.”

Today, if you feel like a hamster whose heart is about to give out from all the spinning and the toiling, just remember that you ARE going somewhere, my friends. So am I. And the Lord will tell us exactly when we can move to the next level.

Jesus is building great things through us all if we seek after Him and remember to let Him do the guiding and the design of it all – especially in relation to the timing.

One thing’s for sure: anything we build with Him at the core of it all is going to be an utter masterpiece.

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” Matthew 7:24-27

Advertisement