I have spent my life writing and part of it painting. I rarely end up with a painting, an article, or a book that is of my own design. I have started painting with the intent to paint a forest. I end up with a desert scene. When writing my last book on biblical change, I struggled. I had a title and a concept, but for perhaps the first time in my life, I couldn't get the words to flow. Then God woke me up with a title and a concept and the book was finished in a month. God is the ultimate Creator.
Today is another day where what I intended to write (a business presentation) had to be put aside until I answered God's prompting. You see I read an article that talked about preserving some farm as a monument to a man. So here is today's Prompting.
The Bible tells us of a time when mankind decided to build a tower to heaven, the Tower of Babel. They wanted to show they didn’t need God. I don’t think too much has changed as I read about monument after monument built by mankind for mankind. I read about a farm that is being preserved because the man who lived there started a major corporation. I see skyscraper after skyscraper being built taller and taller.
Mankind continually strives to build bigger and higher. Seeming to proclaim and challenge “See what I can create!” “See what we can do!” In the face of tragedy and towers falling (also caused by man), we hear deviance in the cry of:
“The bricks have fallen, but we will build with dressed stones; the sycamores have been cut down, but we will put cedars in their place.”” (Isaiah 9:10, ESV)
Daily we go about our lives, building our own monuments and towers. Most days we don’t even think about it. We certainly don’t realize that when we build, we are to build according to God’s plan. God is the ultimate Creator. We can emulate Him, but we will never be Him.
We can build up. We can tear down. What man builds crumbles with time.
What God builds is eternal. What we build with and for God endures. It cannot be torn down by human hands. It cannot be destroyed, because what we build for God is not of this world.
We do not struggle against man.
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12, ESV)
The towers and monuments rise and fall. Civilizations have come and gone. A nation follows God and experiences prosperity. It turns from God and builds monuments to itself and to man, and it falls.
“What then shall we say to these things?
If God is for us, who can be against us?
He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?
As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:31–39, ESV)
What are we called to build?
1. Our personal relationships with God.
2. Our relationships with others so that they may know God.
Are we called to build a church building or the congregation of God?
Are we called to save a nation or to lead a soul to Christ?
Are we called to worship the creation or the Creator?
Are we called to be wise in the eyes of man or to walk in God’s Wisdom?
Are we struggling against God or man?
Who will we follow?
I will walk with Him!
My towers have fallen. I will not rebuild.
I shall worship God all of my days and dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
