Feet on the Rock

Well, Summit family and our friends, this is the first weekend that we are going to be hosting services, one service on Sunday at various locations. I think it's eight of our campuses in the Triangle. And so for those of you that feel comfortable joining us, we will be doing an indoor live Thursday service as we've been doing for the last month. And then at three of our locations and then Sunday service at eight of our locations. And if you feel comfortable, we'd love to have you join us.

It's a service where we ask people to wear masks. And so we want to try to keep you safe. But we also know that there's a desire for us to be back together. And we've spent a lot of time doing our home gatherings and want those to continue because that is a primary way that we will continue to meet during this this season. And so if you feel comfortable or if it works for you, one of the options is Thursday or Sunday. But I want to continue to emphasize that I think for the majority of people during the season, they will continue to worship in one of our home gatherings.

I'm not sure exactly when this lockdown will end entirely. I've heard it said that you will either come out as a monk, a hunk, a chunk or a drunk. So you ought to choose wisely. But at the Summit Church, we're doing our best to give you options to be able to continue to grow in your walk with Jesus and in your connection with with one another. And that's what we want you to feel comfortable and safe in. Listen, before we get into our new series today, I hope it comes as no surprise to any of you that there is a major election happening in the coming days.

And that does come as a surprise to you that have someone punch you in the face. We just finished a series where myself and Pastor Brian tried to show you how we as believers ought to engage in the political arena. We saw that there can be differences in the application of gospel truth. And that's fine, as long as we remain in the political arena. United in our gospel convictions. There is one thing, however, we saw that we are all called to do equally and unequivocally. And that is to pray for our nation.

God's invitation to his people is always call to me. And so on Monday, November 2, this Monday on the eve, or just a few days here before the election at 1pm, we're going to digitally gather as a church for an online prayer time, led hosted by Pastor Chris Gaynor. And so I want you to make plans to join that we're going to give you links that you can access from our homepage or a social media handle. That'll make it really easy for you just to hop on right at the just the right moment from a computer or from a phone. So please, please, please, all of you want you to go ahead and mark that on your calendar. We have tried to make this easy and accessible as possible. So that as many people as can can join us at 1pm on Monday, it's like one click parade.

Okay. I just want you to plan on doing that one o'clock on Monday. Right now, I would love to I think very appropriately leading into Thursday, I'd love for us to voice a pie. I'd love to voice a prayer on our behalf, on your behalf as we head into into the election. So at different campuses, and also at our home gatherings all around the triangle, could we bow our heads together? And let's just spend a moment committing these days to the Heavenly Father. God, what a crazy time. And God, I know it feels like our very foundations in many ways have been shaken. And some of us are not exactly sure what to do. But we just take a moment to remind ourselves how inconsequential the next few days are. The king's heart is like a river in the hand of the Lord, and he turns it whatever way he wants.

All the nations are like a drop in the bucket to you. God, you will rearrange the borders, you set some up and you tear some down. And it's all for the purposes of seeing the gospel go forward. God, we are asking that yes, you keep our nation free and safe and just. But God, we are reminded on this occasion to mainly pray that you would empower us the church to do what we're supposed to do.

And that is to make disciples and see the completion of the Great Commission. So God, I do pray that you would put your hand upon this nation. And God, put leaders into office that will promote prosperity and justice for all that will give protection for the vulnerable. But God, we pray that we the church will be renewed. God, starting with the Summit Church, starting with me, to work while it's still day because the night is coming when nobody can work.

God, let us see the greatest season of fruitfulness, whether it's a Democrat or Republican that's in the White House. God, regardless of who our mayor is or governor or senators are, God, I pray that we might serve you with gladness and freedom and with confidence. We pray in Jesus name, we commit this to you. We commit this to you. And all God's people said, Amen. Amen.

All right. Well, if you have come to one of our all church outdoor gatherings, you probably heard me tell a story that I thought explained what God might be doing with some of us during this season. Let me repeat it just for those of you who either were not at one of our outdoor gatherings or you weren't paying attention, because I really feel like it sets up the passage we're going to look at this weekend, as well as the whole series that we're about to get into. It was a very simple story that I told about a lumberjack who had gone out into the woods to cut down some trees. He had his chainsaw and he was about to take down the first tree when he noticed that there was a bird that was building a nest in the top of one of the trees that he was about to cut down. Well, not wanting to destroy that bird's habitat, he pulled out a sledgehammer and he began to begin to smack with the sledgehammer, the base of the tree. Of course, the bird got very annoyed and the bird flew off and he noticed that the bird began to build the nest in the next tree that was right next to that one. And so he repeated the process with the sledgehammer and the bird moved again to another tree. This whole dance went on 10 or 12 different times as the bird began to build a nest in one place and the lumberjack would attack the tree and annoy the bird to get him to move until eventually the bird fled the forest altogether and began to construct the nest in the side of a rock face. I told you, I said, imagine how annoyed the bird was at the lumberjack wondering what in the world the lumberjack had against the bird. Why is he continuing to attack wherever I'm building my nest? But from our vantage point, we can see that it was compassion, not cruelty that was making him do this because he knew that if he built his nest, the bird built its nest in the tree, then it was going to be cut down and so it's compassion that caused him to attack those trees before they were cut down.

And I explained to you that I feel like what's happened over the last several months is that for many of us. When it comes to lockdown, when it comes to COVID, when it even comes to financial pressure some of us are under, when it comes to health scare, when it even comes to this election, there are moments where God seems to be attacking our foundation, but we see that it is not cruelty on his behalf, it is mercy. It is mercy because God is trying to show us that all these places that we built our foundation are not really going to endure the chainsaws of judgment. And it is his mercy that shakes us and wakes us up and asks us, what are you trusting in? My question is, has he been doing that with you?

Has he been asking you over the last several months is what you are building your life on going to last? Listen, I want to say this, it is God's mercy. It feels like his anger, but it is always his mercy that shakes our foundations now. Because you understand that at death, we're all going to find out that there's only one foundation that lasts forever. Only one foundation we're building a life on and that is Christ and Christ alone. Whereas I often love to repeat here, only one life to live will soon be past, only what's done for Christ will last. You realize this vaccine or not, we are all going to die eventually. Rich or poor, we're all going to die, Republican or Democrat, this whole generation of Americans is going to die.

By the way, if this election season drags on any longer, we're probably going to wish that was sooner rather than later. Amen? But eventually we're all going to die and we all need Jesus. Luke chapter 6, if you've got your Bible with you this weekend and you're home, run and grab it. You can press pause on me if you're at home and run and grab your Bible.

If you're in a place where you're live, then obviously you can't do that, but pull out your Bible, your phone, turn to Luke chapter 6. We're going to look at one of Jesus' most recognized parables. This parable is about two men, two men who built nearly identical houses, geographically close to each other, but on two different kinds of foundations. One man whom Jesus calls foolish builds his house right up on the sandy shore.

He had a great view of the water and he was excited about it, but right up there in the sand. The other, whom Jesus calls a wise man, pulls back his house a few dozen yards, we guess, and did that so he could build his house on a rock. I want us to look at this story in context because in context, Jesus is telling it both as a warning and a promise, a warning and a promise. Luke 6.43, a good tree.

This is the context of that story. A good tree doesn't produce bad fruit. On the other hand, a bad tree doesn't produce good fruit. Each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs aren't gathered from thorn bushes or grapes picked from a bramble bush.

Of course not. The kind of fruit that you pick off the tree is consistent with the root of that tree. If you want to know what kind of tree it is, pick one of the fruits. If it's an apple, then it's an apple tree. To use Jesus' analogy, if it's a grape, you're going to know that it is a grape vine.

A good person. In the same way, verse 45, a good person, a righteous person, a godly person with a godly heart, produces good out of the good that is stored up in his heart. An evil person, on the other hand, produces evil out of the evil stored up in his heart. For his mouth speaks from the overflow of his heart. Just like the tree produces a kind of fruit, so a person produces a verbal fruit and an action fruit. Verse 46, Jesus continues, why is it that you call me Lord, Lord, and don't do the things that I say?

That doesn't make any sense. Verse 47, I'll show you what somebody is like who comes to me and hears my words and acts on them. This is in contrast to the person who says, Lord, Lord, but doesn't actually do what Jesus says. Verse 48, he's like a man building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when the flood came, the river crashed against that house and couldn't shake it because it was well built. But the one who hears and does not act, well, he's like a man who built his house on the sand without a foundation.

The river crashed against it and immediately it collapsed. And the destruction of that house was great. When interpreting the Bible, context is always king. The story of the wise man and the foolish man is in a section of scripture where Jesus is warning us about something.

The question you should ask is, what is he warning us about? Well, if you read backwards in the chapter, you'll see that he is talking to a bunch of religious people and he is warning them that a lot of people, a lot of religious people think they're right with God, but they're actually wrong. I think it's important for you to note that this passage, in this passage, Jesus is not talking about those people who are flagrantly hypocritical, who live a double life, who fake church on the weekend while sleeping around, they're doing drugs or cheating on their taxes. No, Jesus' main audience here is, look earlier in the chapter, Pharisees and a bunch of religious Jews, he's talking about sincere religious people, active people, people who, in our context, go to church and are real involved, but are self-deceived. So you should ask, what are the qualities that Jesus identifies of the self-deceived religious person?

I will give you three of them. The first one is in verse 43. Verse 43, they do not bear spiritual fruit. Well, they say all the right things and they hang out in all the right places, and their house sure looks like it's a good house, it has religious decor all over it and it looks great, the tree is in the right garden, it's right there among all the other trees, and it looks great, but when you look closely at their lives, Jesus says you will see that the evidence of an encounter with God is not there. Now what am I talking about when I say the evidence of an encounter with God? Well, I've been talking about the evidence of the new birth, a growing love for Jesus, a desire to be with Jesus, a love for Jesus' people, a growing dislike of sin and an attraction to Christ's likeness. These things don't all appear in you at once, but somebody who is really right with God and filled with God will see evidences of the growth of those things within them, even if that growth is gradual.

Just like if you were wondering whether somebody that was unconscious was alive, you would check their pulse and their breath to see if they were actually alive, these things show you, these kinds of spiritual breath and spiritual pulse show you if there's spiritual life at work within you. One of my favorite analogies that I've used for this over the years with you is, well, the wind was really boisterous earlier, am I right? And a lot of things, my house was without power for several hours. Say that I was able to locate the place where the power line had been cut, and I noticed that a tree had cut it, you know, got it down, split the wire, and I just, you know, turn to you and I say, I wonder if there's still electricity coming out of that wire. And it's a big one. It's like one of the ones that comes right out of the transformer. So I grab that thing, I'm like, what do you think?

And I plop it right in my mouth. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I feel it. I feel the current, you know, and I say, I can definitely tell there's electricity still coming through that. Right? You would look back at me and say, you are a liar. Because if that wire was actually live, if that amount of electricity had just entered your body, you'd be different.

Right? As of right now, you would look different, you would walk different, you would talk different, you would smell different. Everything about you would be different.

And that would be obvious truth. Well, in the same way, if the power of God has come into your life, Jesus says, then you're definitely going to look different, walk different, talk different, and everything about you is going to be different. So the question Jesus is asking you is, does your life show the evidence of God's work inside of you? Are you growing in your love for Jesus? Are you zealous to see other people come to know him? It is impossible to actually believe the gospel and not yearn to see others that you love come to know him. Either your belief in the gospel is not there or your compassion for others is not there if you are not actively telling them about Jesus.

How about this? Are you finding the commands of Christ burdensome? Or are you drawn toward those even when they're difficult? Are you one of those people who are like, oh, you know, there is all this stuff I want to do out there in the world. And I always want to be doing what my other friends are doing, and I really want to be out there, but I'm a Christian. So I got to stay in here and I don't want to break the rules.

And I know that that's breaking the rules, but I really my heart desires to be out there. You're here at church, but are you here for the right reason? That's a way to think about it. Are you here because you love the people of God and because you love the word of God? Or are you here because you think it'll make your mom happy? Or are you here because, I heard that, I'm here because mom, maybe be here.

Okay, so yeah, that's pretty good that you're about 12 years old, then it's going to change after that. But are you here because you think it will make God love you more? Is that the motivation that you have for coming?

Does your heart show evidence of spiritual life? You see the question, listen to this, the question is not whether or not you want to go to heaven or hell. Everybody wants to go to heaven. The question is whether or not God has worked in your heart so that you want God. Everybody I know wants to go to heaven. The question is whether or not you desire to meet God once you get there. It's a desire for God, not a desire for heaven that is the evidence of God's work in you.

The question to focus on is not whether you've prayed a prayer. The question to focus on is whether God has changed your heart. I've heard it said like this, if you were to set a field on fire, every venomous snake in that field would slither out of that fire.

But the snakes are still venomous even after they fled the field. Right, so if you get scared enough that you don't want to go to hell or you don't want the scorn of other people, then you'll go through the ritual to make sure that you're going to go to heaven, but that doesn't mean your heart's changed. And if your heart's really changed, it means that people can see it. If I ask you whether or not you are a Christian, don't tell me about a prayer that you prayed to escape hell. Tell me about the evidence of God at work in your life. And that's going to show itself in spiritual fruit. Fruit the people closest to you can see, not fruit you put on when you come to church. I often say it this way, if your friends who know you away from church cannot see plainly that you're born again, if they would not say, oh yeah, she's different, well then you're probably not born again.

If your mom cannot give us clear evidence that you're born again, it's probably because you haven't been. So the first characteristic is these people don't show spiritual fruit. The second characteristic, verse 46, they don't do what Jesus says. This one's a little bit more straightforward, but these religious people have turned to Jesus as a fire escape or a helper, a miracle worker, a religious model, a cultural icon, but they're not fully surrendered to do what he says. You say, why would you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I said? You know what Lord means. Here's the areas I see this happen most often in our church, happens in regards to somebody's finances.

And they'll worship Jesus all day long, but they will not obey him there. Or as it pertains to the surrender of their career or their dreams. You want to be a good moral person, you want to be a religious person, but you want to have ultimate control of the trajectory of your life. Have you ever come to a point where you said, Jesus, all that I am, all that I have, all that I ever hope to be, I right now and forever surrender to you and just put down your life like a blank check before Jesus.

If not, I don't care how much Bible you know, how many songs you know, he's not your Lord. Or maybe it's in regards to some relationship that you won't surrender. You want Jesus? You don't want to be apart from Jesus, but you don't want to give up that relationship. Or maybe it's regarding some other command that you just don't want to obey, offering forgiveness to somebody or owning up to the truth. Jesus says, Luke 6, 46, why would you call me Lord, Lord, and not do the things that I'm saying? Think of it like this. These two words on this little card, these two words never go together. No, Lord.

They just, they don't make any sense together. If you were going to, right, say no, it means he's not really your Lord. So if there's any area of your life right now that you're saying no in, he's not actually your Lord.

And if there's any area of your life or when you do say no to him, or if he is Lord, excuse me, then that means you've taken no off the table. The way my dad used to say it when I was a kid is, if he's not Lord of all, he's not Lord at all. In every heart, there's a throne and a cross. In your heart, there's a throne and a cross. If you are on the throne, well, you've got to put Jesus on the cross. But if Jesus is on the throne, well, that means that you've got to be on the cross. So right now, he's either Lord or he's not.

And if there's a no in your life, it means you're not really Lord. First characteristic, they don't bear spiritual fruit. Second characteristic, they don't do what Jesus says.

Third characteristic, verse 49, their faith falls apart in the storm. This is where the story really ties into the other two points and people miss it. Jesus's point, again, is that the two houses look alike. From a distance, you would assume they're exactly the same. It was what was below the surface that was different. One was built on the rock, and the other was built on the sand, and the storm revealed that. The point is that there are people whose lives look alike.

You understand that, right? They go to the same church. They're in the same small group. They might be in the same family. They believe all the same things.

They live by the same morals, but one's faith is real and one is not. And what reveals that, their little test Jesus gives you, is the storm. There are people whose walk with Jesus is fine until it gets hard, right? Until God doesn't answer some prayer the way they want it answered, or until it gets really unpopular with their friends to do what Jesus wants, or until obedience to Jesus means walking away from something that you really want.

I mean, you understand that we love to talk about Jesus, coming to Jesus as fulfillment, and peace, and healing, and salvation, and it's great for your marriage, and it is all of those things. But you understand that at some point, obedience to Jesus is going to take you 180 degrees opposite of the direction that you think you want to go. And in that moment, it will be revealed in that moment whether Jesus is actually your Lord or not. Not in here in this moment.

Here, but his house looks the same. Whether or not your hope is in him, or whether it is in what you think he will do for you as long as he keeps up his end of the contract. For many people, religious people, I've learned that their hope is not really in God. Their hope is in what he will do for them. And the difference in those two gets revealed by the storm. When God doesn't do, or it's not easy, or it's difficult, you fall away from God because your hope was never in God, it was always in God's ability to keep you in sunny weather all the time. Again, the difference in these two lives is not what they believe.

The houses look the same. The difference in these two is how much their lives are actually built on what they believe. It is the one with the solid foundation who is the one, verse 47, the one with the solid foundation is the one who hears my words and acts on them. According to Jesus, your destiny is not determined by what you say you believe.

Your destiny is determined by what your life demonstrates that you believe. Friend, I hope you will pay attention to this because this is a major theme in Jesus' teaching. Not everybody who calls him Lord is going to go to heaven. The gospel writer Matthew, in his parallel account of the same teaching, where he records Jesus telling the story of the wise man, the foolish man, and the two different kinds of trees, Jesus adds one other little story.

Let me read it for you. You stay there, Luke. I'll take you to Matthew real quick. Matthew 7, 21. Not everybody who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. It's the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

On that day, the final day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, cast out demons in your name, do many mighty works in your name? By the way, if you underline stuff in your Bible, underline the words says and does. What do they say? Lord, Lord.

You know what that means? They got the right theology. They know when to say amen. They know when to put their hands up in worship. They know when to make that spiritual grunt sound that Christians make when they're talking to each other and one of them says something spiritual. They even say, Lord, Lord, twice, which is a Hebrew way of saying I really mean it. Lord, Lord, I mean it.

Watch this. Not only do they have zeal in their worship and orthodoxy in their theology, they've got zeal in ministry. They prophesied, which means preached in Jesus' name.

They cast out demons in Jesus' name and did miracles in Jesus' name. Translation, these are not sideline people. I don't know what kind of church you grew up in, but in my church, if you got picked to be on the demon exorcism squad, you were varsity.

You didn't choose the sideline people that showed up 10 minutes late and left 10 minutes early. He's talking about pastors, elders, deacons, ministers, small group leaders, missionaries. That's who he's talking about here. People very involved in ministry. Verse 23, and I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you worker of lawlessness. This sends a tremor of terror down my spine. These people confess Jesus, but Jesus does not confess them.

Why? Literally from the Greek, they always work lawlessness. They never actually surrendered to Jesus. These weren't people who struggled with sin.

We all do that. These were people who never brought their lives to a point of surrender. And though they were around Jesus all the time, and though they built their houses to look like Jesus' houses, and though they decorated their houses with Christian art, and though they put their tree in Jesus' garden, they never fully yielded to Jesus. Jesus says, I never even knew you. You knew of me, but I never actually knew you. The kind of knowledge that comes from just surrendering your life to me and hoping in me as your Savior.

Friend, please pay attention to this. Not everybody who calls Jesus Lord actually belongs to him. The difference between the saved and the unsaved is not what their mouth says they believe. The difference between the saved and the unsaved is what your life demonstrates as you believe. You say, well, I thought we were saved by faith alone, by believing Christ as our Savior and trusting in his work to save us.

Yes, that is correct. But the kind of faith that saves is the faith that reorients your whole life. The kind of faith that puts the roots of your life into gospel soil and the kind of faith that builds the foundation of your life on gospel truth. You see, there are two ways to tell what you actually believe. There's what your mouth says you believe, and then there's what your life demonstrates that you believe.

Which one do you think is more reliable? The way God sees it, what your life says about what you believe is way more reliable than what your mouth says. And if what your life says is different than what your mouth says, God's going to take the testimony of your life every single time. So I ask you again, does your life say that Jesus is Lord? And if I were to ask your best friends who hang out with you apart from church, can they give clear demonstration of the lordship of Jesus and spiritual fruit and they've seen you go through storms and they see where your foundation is? Why would you call him Lord and then not do the things that he says?

Why would you call him Lord and not do the things that he says? I remember a poem I heard when I was a kid and I've never really forgotten. You may have heard this. I don't even know who wrote it.

It's as old as the hills, I think. Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and don't do the things I say? You call me the way, but you walk me not.

You call me the life, and you live me not. You call me the master, but you obey me not. You call me bread, but you eat me not. You call me truth, you believe me not. You call me Lord, and serve me not. If I condemn you, blame me not. Depart from me, you who work iniquity.

I never knew you. Three characteristics of spiritual imposters. Three characteristics of people in the church who look like they're right with God. Active in the church, but aren't actually right with God. They don't bear spiritual fruit. They don't do what Jesus says and their faith falls apart.

They fall apart in the storm. Friend, are these true of you? If so, maybe, like, I think, maybe, what do I do?

Well, see, that's the good news. You embrace Christ. You embrace Christ. You embrace that there's nothing that you can do to save yourself or change your own heart.

That might have been the problem the whole time is you keep trying to change yourself. You embrace that he's the only one who can save you. He paid your full sin debt on the cross, and he offers to give you. The sacrifice, the payment for your sins, and then come into your life and make you a new creation right now, where you sit, in your house, in one of our facilities.

Embrace that with your heart right now and yield complete control over your life to him. And if you do, he will come into your heart and he will save you. Listen, I got one other thing I want to do with this passage, but before I get to that last little thing, I want to stop right here for just a minute, if I could. I'm going to give you a chance to respond right here, right now, to what I just said, if you never have.

So whether you're at home or one of our campuses, would you bow your heads right now with me? Again, I got one more thing to do right after this, but I just want to, I don't want to wait. I don't want to give you a chance to respond. If you're not sure, if you've ever fully surrendered to Jesus and ever received him as Savior, you can do it right here, right now.

It's very simple. Jesus, I can't save myself. I can't be good enough to earn your favor. I can't be strong enough to live the Christian life. I receive right now your offer to save me. I receive your offer to save me. I believe there's a number of you at home or in front of me that just prayed that, maybe watching by yourself online. I want to pray for you. Father, I pray for those that just prayed that prayer right now. God, I pray that you would open their heart. Give them courage to follow through with this and then to do what I'm going to ask them to do next. I pray to ask that God in Jesus' name.

Amen. And then look up here with me if you would. If you prayed that, I want you to do something very simple.

Would you take out your phone right now? Maybe you already be out. I want you to text the word ready, R-E-A-D-Y, to 33933. An actual live person will get back with you at some point and we will just show you how you can take those steps, what the next steps look like.

If you're really serious about this, I just want you to text the word ready to 33933. Now before I close, I want to flip this around because there's a promise that is inherent in this passage. And that promise is that for those of us who build our lives on Jesus, the foundation will endure any storm.

Why? Because we've got a foundation that will never crumble. Your foundation is whatever you build your life on. Your foundation is whatever has to be present in your life for your life to feel secure. For you to have joy. Whatever that is, that's what you serve, it's what you strive after, it's what you turn to in trouble, it's what you can't live without. The bad news is that every other foundation besides Jesus is going to crumble.

If you'll indulge me, I want to read a little small section of a new book I just had come out called, What Are You Going To Do With Your Life? There's a young woman in our church who last year went in for a routine eye exam when she received devastating news. The doctor informed her that she had a degenerative and incurable condition that would take her sight in less than five years. Up until this moment with the doctor, she had no idea that anything was even wrong. She thought at worst she was going to need to get a pair of reading glasses. She was in her mid 30s, she had four children.

If things go as the doctors predict, she will never see a single one of them graduate. Just a couple weeks, she told me before the doctor visit, she had asked God to guide her to a theme verse for the year. Again, not knowing anything was going on, she said, God led me to 2 Corinthians 4 16. Even though the outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. This light and momentary affliction is producing for us an absolute, incomparable, eternal weight of glory. So we do not focus on what is seen.

We focus on what is unseen, for what is seen is temporary and what is unseen is eternal. She told me, she said, I wrote in my journal that day, God helped me to trust in things not seen. Helped me to fix my eyes, my thoughts and affections, not on the temporary but on the eternal. And she goes into that doctor's appointment.

Here's what she shared with me. As I listened to the news of my diagnosis, I heard in my heart God speak over me the truth. We do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. This is not an affliction God has done to me, it is something he has entrusted to me. I was reminded of Jesus' words to his disciples when they came across a blind man.

This has come to pass so that the work of God might be displayed. God has shown me more of himself in the midst of this suffering. Looking back on that prayer from January, I realize now that God was preparing me to hear this news. Already God has used this diagnosis to help me fix my eyes on him, to help me depend on him, to grow my spiritual sight. Jesus is far sweeter and more valuable in suffering than when I think I can do life on my own. As painful as it has been, I'm learning what it means that my spiritual sight is far more valuable than my physical sight. I don't bank my hope for any healing for my coming blindness as there is none. I bank my hope on the suffering Savior Jesus Christ who is far more precious to me than sight, more precious to me than my ability to drive, more precious than my ability to walk independently or even to see my children's faces.

These things are inconsequential in light of eternity. Shortly after my diagnosis, I was praying when I saw a vision in my mind. Jesus was leading me blindfolded in the midst of the most beautiful landscape I've ever seen. Once I got to an overlook, Jesus took my blindfold off. In that moment, I realized God was showing me that I can trust my good Father even with a blindfold in his hands. I can give up my sight for a short time here on earth because I trust my Father knows what's best for me, always working for my good and for his glory. See, what is seen as temporary and what is unseen is eternal. Here's a question.

Could you be like that in a moment of similar tragedy? What's your foundation? Here's another way of asking that. What is there that if taken out of your life would make life not worth living for you? What has to be present for you to feel fulfilled and engaged?

Good marriage, close-knit family, kids that adore you, reliable job, solid bank account. Can you trust your Heavenly Father even when he's got a blindfold in his hands? Whatever you give as an answer to those questions constitutes your foundation. And bad news, all of them are going to crumble. The good news is that when your foundation is in Jesus like hers is, in any storm you're going to be secure because he's got the power over the storm and he will preserve and provide for you in the storm. I saw this picture from a couple years ago of this house on one of the Gulf Coast, I can't remember which one it is, Hurricane Harvey, one of the worst hurricanes ever hit US history. Look closely at this picture if you will.

You see it? One house. This guy's neighbors on either side got wiped clean. So this article interviewed the builder.

Listen to this. He said, yep, I built this house with this storm in mind. This guy went way beyond code. He used 40 foot pilings, which is just absurd. He made the house with breakaway walls so that when the winds tore them, there wouldn't be any structural damage.

Think about that statement, would you? I built this house with that storm in mind. God provided your salvation. He gave you that foundation with all of life's storms in mind. So see, when you struggle and you fall, his death is sufficient to cover and forgive you. When you feel like you've got no strength, his resurrection is sufficient to empower you. When you feel lost, his indwelling spirit is sufficient to guide you. When you've got nothing left and you're running on empty, the riches of his mercy is sufficient to satisfy you. God provided a foundation in Jesus with all of life's storms in mind. How firm a foundation you say to the Lord is laid for your faith in his excellent word. What more can he say than to you he has said, to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled? My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.

I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus' name. On Christ, the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand.

All other ground is sinking sand. So I return to the question I asked you at the very beginning. Has God been shaking you? Is that what he's been up to? There have been areas of disobedience that have been revealed.

I'll tell you how it works for me. God consistently reveals to me the areas I'm not surrendered to him. I'm making them fall apart. And when some area that's not surrendered to God falls apart with me, I go into despair. But when an area of my life that is surrendered to Jesus, when it goes through a storm, I'm like, nah, no matter.

Jesus, you got this. I'm doing what you want me to do. This area belongs to you and I'm going to trust you to provide and protect. You got areas that you need to put under his control. What areas might those be for you? Why don't you bow your heads again at homes and campuses or where you buy yourself at your computer?

Could you just identify what those areas might be? Surrender them to him. Say, Jesus, I'm done with doing it my way. It's not sufficient for the storm. I'm going to do it your way. Oh, Christ on you, the solid rock I stand. Train my heart to obey, not just because it's the right thing to do, but God, because everything in my life will crumble. God, use these storms to awaken people. I pray in Jesus' name.