Life Foundations

“On Christ the solid Rock I stand when all around is sinking sand”

Jesus is our foundation. When we build on the foundation of Jesus we will be able to stand firm, no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in.

1 Cor 3:10-11
10 Because of God’s grace to me, I have laid the foundation like an expert builder. Now others are building on it. But whoever is building on this foundation must be very careful. 11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one we already have—Jesus Christ.

Jesus is our foundation. We build on The Rock that is strong and stable. Jesus said, build your life on Solid ground.

Matt 7:24-29
24 “Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. 25 Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. 26 But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. 27 When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.

Foundations provide stability and they provide a firm platform for us to build on. So quite clearly, Jesus is our foundation. Following his teaching places us on solid ground and a firm foundation. Jesus says that a firm foundation is vital to our walk of faith.

We live according to our values and our convictions. Values are the things that we hold to be important. Convictions are the things we believe and hold to be true. (Whether they are or not.) Here is a conviction about faith:

Heb 11:1
Faith is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen.

Notice the conviction, that faith is confident assurance of the promise of God. We live by our values and our convictions. What I believe and what I value will be affected by what I think. And what I think is affected by what I believe and value. We will be living from a conviction of some sort that is based on what we hold to be important and what we hold to be true. Our values and convictions form the basis of our decision making.

So we live from our convictions of life. But what if what we hold to be true is not actually true but based on a false reality? As we look at foundations, I want to address some of the convictions about life and God that we might to hold to ensure we are on solid ground.

A conviction that God exists is a good start. But a solid foundation requires us to answer more than just a belief in the existence of God, or a higher being. I believe it’s important to have a foundation based on a conviction, not just that God exists, but on who God is. I’m not talking here about the arguments for the existence of God, but convictions around the nature of God. What are our convictions about the nature of God?

1. Who is God?
A conviction that God exists is a good start. But a solid foundation requires us to answer more than just a belief in the existence of God, or a higher being. It’s important to have a foundation based on a conviction, not just that God exists, but on who God is. I’m not talking here about the arguments for the existence of God, but convictions around the nature of God.

What is my conviction about the nature of God? What we believe about God will affect our view of him. What we believe about God will affect our attitudes and behaviour towards God and towards others. What we believe about God will affect the way we live and the decisions we make.

We can easily get a wrong idea about who God is and develop a conviction about life that is not actually based on truth but is distorted and filtered. This can happen over the years through the information we take in, what others tell us and from negative experiences or assumptions. We can begin to view God through a distorted lens. This causes us to have a shaky foundation.

Are we basing who God is on assumption? For example, Ben Harper in the TV comedy My Family says after a bad experience, “Now I know there’s a God and he hates me”. This is a false belief, a conviction based on a distorted view of God, that is assuming God is out to get him. It affects his petception of life and his experiences. He believes in the existence of God, but his conviction about the nature of  God is wrong.

Unfortunately, this is often the conviction held by Christians who strive to win God’s favour when they already have it, and believe that in every negative experience God is out to get them. Is this how we see God? Or do we see God as he is described in the Bible? God is loving and Kind, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love; He is forgiving and  He is trustworthy. Note how David, the psalmist, sees God. He has a conviction about God based on truth.

Psalm 103
A psalm of David.
1 Let all that I am praise the Lord;
    with my whole heart, I will praise his holy name.
2 Let all that I am praise the Lord;
    may I never forget the good things he does for me.
3 He forgives all my sins
    and heals all my diseases.
4 He redeems me from death
    and crowns me with love and tender mercies.
5 He fills my life with good things.
    My youth is renewed like the eagle’s!
6 The Lord gives righteousness
    and justice to all who are treated unfairly.
7 He revealed his character to Moses
    and his deeds to the people of Israel.
8 The Lord is compassionate and merciful,
    slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.
9 He will not constantly accuse us,
    nor remain angry forever.
10 He does not punish us for all our sins;
    he does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve.
11 For his unfailing love toward those who fear him
    is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.
12 He has removed our sins as far from us
    as the east is from the west.
13 The Lord is like a father to his children,
    tender and compassionate to those who fear him.
14 For he knows how weak we are;
    he remembers we are only dust.
15 Our days on earth are like grass;
    like wildflowers, we bloom and die.
16 The wind blows, and we are gone—
    as though we had never been here.
17 But the love of the Lord remains forever
    with those who fear him.
His salvation extends to the children’s children
18     of those who are faithful to his covenant,
    of those who obey his commandments!
19 The Lord has made the heavens his throne;
    from there he rules over everything.
20 Praise the Lord, you angels,
    you mighty ones who carry out his plans,
    listening for each of his commands.
21 Yes, praise the Lord, you armies of angels
    who serve him and do his will!
22 Praise the Lord, everything he has created,
    everything in all his kingdom.
Let all that I am praise the Lord.

David is convinced of the goodness and the love of God. The Apostle Paul also understood the truth about God. He too is convinced about the nature of God as loving, kind and faithful.

Romans 8:38
New Living Translation (NLT)
38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[a] neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.

Psalm 36:5
New Living Translation (NLT)
5 Your unfailing love, O Lord, is as vast as the heavens;
    your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds.

Jesus too spoke of God as a good God.
Mark 10:17-18
17 As Jesus was starting out on his way to Jerusalem, a man came running up to him, knelt down, and asked, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus asked. “Only God is truly good.

What convictions can we see in these verses? Conviction by Paul on God’s love, by the psalmist on God’s faithfulness and Jesus, on God’s goodness. Are these actually our convictions about God? Our belief about God can be affected by the past and by what others have said and done. When we have false beliefs they colour everything that happens and we see everything through a lens of untruth.

If we believe God is not good, we will see everything through that lens and we will believe God is out to get us. When we have been told that God is nasty and horrible and wants to punish us, then that can become a conviction we have, because that is what we have been told. But it’s not true.

We can ask ourselves: What convictions do I hold about the nature of God? Are they based in reality?

When we hold convictions based on truth we make decisions for our life based on who God is and not on how we feel about a situation. When we make decisions based on who God is, we are making decisions based on a firm foundation.  These convictions will enable us to see our circumstances through a different light because we are standing on unshakeable ground.

2. Who I am.
This is also an important conviction that affects the way we live and the way we relate to people. If we have a conviction that we are stupid and hopeless, that is how we will live. If we have a conviction that we are amazing human beings, that is how we will live.

We all have seen the difference between those who have a positive attitude towards life and those with a negative attitude. These attitudes come from our convictions about who we are and they affect the way we live, the way we relate to people and how we do our work. Our convictions about ourselves will affect everything we do! Our convictions about ourselves are often related to what we perceive others beliefs about us to be. Usually these are not remotely near what others think but we allow our perceptions to colour and to cloud what is truth.

What convictions do you hold about yourself? What are they based on? Remember that convictions are the things that we hold to be true (They may not actually be true). Where have these convictions come from?

Developing a firm foundation means challenging our convictions and testing them against the Word of God. What does God’s word say about who I am? Here are some examples that we may know well yet still struggle to believe because we have wrong convictions about who we are.
We think we are not worth anything. The Word of God says we are fearfully and wonderfully made (Ps 119). We are God's masterpiece and his chosen people.

Eph 2:10
For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

Eph 2:19
A Temple for the Lord
19 So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God’s holy people. You are members of God’s family. 20 Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself. 21 We are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord. 22 Through him you Gentiles are also being made part of this dwelling where God lives by his Spirit.

We are God’s children; We are his masterpiece; we are the beloved. We are priests in his Kingdom, we are a chosen people. God places value on us, God loves us. In him we are chosen. Its not like school where we waited to see who got chosen first or last for activities. With God, we are always first choice.

1 Thessalonians 1:4
New Living Translation (NLT)
4 We know, dear brothers and sisters,[a] that God loves you and has chosen you to be his own people.

1 Peter 2:9
New Living Translation (NLT)
9 But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests,[a] a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.

Peter and Paul both understood that we are chosen by God, we are his very own people.

So we are chosen by God, a royal masterpiece, fearfully and wonderfully made and  adopted into his own family. These are the deeply held truths we need to base our life on.

3. Building Convictions based on the word of God.
Once we understand that our convictions play an important role in our lives, we can begin to challenge these convictions. Are the things I hold to be true – my convictions – actually the truth? What are my convictions actually based on? If they are based on a lie, or a false perception of truth, how do I change them?

So glad you asked!! The Bible tells us that transformation comes from transformed thinking. It comes from being deliberate in changing how we think about situations. We are to be transformed by the renewing of our mind.

Romans 12 :1-3
A Living Sacrifice to God
12 And so, dear brothers and sisters,[a] I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.[b] 2 Don’t copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
3 Because of the privilege and authority[c] God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us.

Notice we are to be transformed and to renew our minds, to change the way we think. We are also to do an honest and accurate evaluation – not based on experience, but based on faith. We are to have a sober understanding of ourselves, based on the truth. We also change the way we think by making sure we think about the right things.

Philippians 4:8-10
New Living Translation (NLT)
8 And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. 9 Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.

What are the good, right and lovely things we should be focussing on and basing our life on? Remember not just to memorise this verse but to search out the things that are good and right and lovely and start building them into our life one piece at a time. These are the things that we are to put into practice.

Our thoughts and our experiences are built and stored in our brains, those amazing and mighty organs in our skull. The way we perceive a situation, and the decisions we make around those situations, based on beliefs and values, will either build stronger connections in the brain or weaker connections.

What we think about, become our convictions. What we do with what we think about is where we can begin to change our wrong beliefs about God, about ourselves and about life. When we are thinking about something we are able to work on that thought – it becomes malleable and we can change the “shape” of the thought.

Our thoughts are a bit like building with Lego Blocks. If we have built something badly with Lego we can deconstruct it and rebuild it. Changing our thoughts involves deconstructing and then reconstructing the thought to change it and transform it.

Reading the word, thinking about what we think about, and taking time to consider what God has to say on the subject – (not what we think our experience tells us)  - helps us to shape our thoughts and give them a different shape – a different direction. In fact this process helps us to understand and gain truth and to build our convictions on truth.

Simply being told what is true does not mean we will automatically change our conviction on it. As we develop this process; as we are deliberate in following through on this process; as we spend time deliberately working on the wrong thoughts and convictions, and reshaping them, our convictions can be transformed by the truth.

Ask God to show you what convictions you have about life that you need to change. Look up and find the truth in God’s word. Take time to ponder and think about what the truth actually is. Many of the psalms say "Selah". This means to pause, to ponder and to think deeply about. In other words, think deeply about the Word, build this into your thought life and understanding. Joshua was told to meditate on the word of God. He was to think deeply about the truth of God's word and live accordingly.

Determine to focus on the truth. A few minutes each day is all that is needed. Focus on the truth, think deeply and ponder the truth and then determine to live accordingly. This may mean catching yourself thinking an unhealthy or negative thought and replacing it, being deliberate in changing it to a healthy one.

As we deliberately think about what we think about, and rebuild the patterns of neurons in our brains, then we begin to develop new convictions based on truth. We are building on the solid rock, giving ourselves a firm fiundation.

Conclusion
Finally, we must take action. What are our convictions? What do we hold to be true, about God and about ourselves? Challenge yourself. Are these convictions, these deeply held beliefs actually true? Do our held beliefs stack up against the word of God? What will we do today to challenge and if necessary, change our thinking.

If our beliefs, our convictions affect what we do and say, then let’s make sure that they are based on truth, not on our own perceptions or experiences but the word of God. Lets determine to challenge our convictions against the word and to be deliberate in changing our thinking, so that our deeply held beliefs, our convictions, match the truth of who we are and who God is.