Unless the Lord Builds the House

Psalm 127:1

Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.

Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.

I’ve heard it said once, “Your greatest fear shouldn’t be that you won’t succeed; your greatest fear should be that you succeed at something that didn’t matter.” I’d like to think that if I knew life was in vain I would spend it to the fullest in vanity than complacently not do anything. Whoever wrote that quote must have understood that there was something to live for, and you don’t want to miss out on it. If all I had was this life, I wouldn’t want to miss out on its temporary pleasures, but there is meaning and purpose in life and many miss out on it.

Life does matter to God. He doesn’t want us to live in vain. He will let us live our lives’ how we want if we reject Him, but He has a plan for our lives if we would say yes to Him. Jeremiah 29:11 says, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” In God’s word there are promises of this better life. It’s as if God is waiting for us to find Him so He can give it to us. Without God we are bound to live in vanity. Our flesh does not naturally seek out God’s way; we seek out our own ways that lead to death. By God’s grace, we can live that life that the Lord desires us to live. We don’t have to labor in vain if we find His purpose for our lives. By failing to find that purpose, we will get to the end of our lives and wish that we would have searched for it. Matthew 7:24-25 says, “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.” When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, He sets us on the Rock. Then He begins to reveal His way and invites us to walk in it as Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” God already has a plan and a purpose that He prepared before we even knew that it existed. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts,” as Isaiah 55:9 says. God knows something about us that we often reject. He knows that our ways and our thoughts are chaff compared to His. If only we believed that He won’t fail us and that He has a life in store for us that was designed by Him, the Creator Himself, we would begin to live a life of true meaning and purpose. It’s not like our ways that are flawed and end up getting us into trouble; He will be there to teach us and guide us in every trial along the way, delivering us from evil and guiding us in the ways of everlasting, until that work that is our lives, is completed.

Since I began this journey of seeking for the Lord’s plan and purpose for my life, God has taught me many lessons. The flaws that I have as a son of the world, my heavenly Father has been making straight. Just in this year, God has really straightened my paths as I’ve been acknowledging and trusting more in Him. The flaws in my personality, which I never expected God to change, have been bending into the personality that the Lord wants for me. There was so much greed, jealously, anger, bitterness, and other sin that the Lord has been at work on in my life, and is yet continuing to work on. As far as the plan for my future stands, God knows it and will lead me to fulfill it. I will trust Him with my future and give Him my worries, as I have spent too much anxious time in thought of it already.