Anyone who has built a house from the ground up knows that the "devil is in the details." Depending on how involved the homeowner is with the floor plan, you may spend a good portion of your time deciding what kind of tile to put on your kitchen floor or what type of doorknob to use on your front door. The attention to detail can be overwhelming at times. For others, they are content to allow the builder and contractors to sift through the minutia and make selections based on more of a cookie-cutter approach (each house looks the same). No less details to attend to, just a different person doing the sifting. Someone will eventually have to go room by room and plan things out.
I recently got to know someone in a local small group, and he talked a lot about what it means to have a healthy "spiritual house." By this he didn't mean a literal, physical house - but rather the importance of living your life in a deliberate fashion as it pertains to staying mentally intact. It's a great metaphor, and it lines up perfectly in many respects to what God wants from our lives.
I believe it is possible to build our metaphorical house by engaging God while we lay out the ideal floor plan. We should strive to build a healthy house at all costs. 1 Corinthians says this, "By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care." In fact, a carefully built house is of paramount importance I think, because it sets us up to be strong and healthy in the faith.
How is your own house? Is it strong with a firm foundation? Or is it subject to decay and wear over time, as the rain and snow show up each season? For example, I believe it will behoove us to create the following rooms in our house: love, peace, forgiveness, and faith. In fact, it is difficult for any house to remain standing for very long unless they exercise these traits regularly.
Likewise, I believe that none of these virtues can exist apart from each other either. Can you imagine for example, someone at peace without first being able to both seek and grant forgiveness? Or what about someone trying to walk in their faith, but without love as an ultimate end goal? After all, God is the very definition of love. As you can see, these virtues go hand in hand, and every healthy house needs rooms like these.
By contrast, we must now discuss the type of rooms that no one intends when working out their floor plan. They come about maybe through early trauma, experiencing disappointment, or simply because we are born with a sin nature. These are the rooms you should fight to remove from your blueprints: guilt, shame, pride, and jealousy. They have no place in one of God's houses.
As you may have guessed, these anti-virtues will often exist in tandem with each other as well. How many of us have experienced guilt for something we did, followed immediately by shame? Or what about puffing ourselves up with pride, only to be jealous of someone else who is better at something than we are? The list goes on and on, and it's no fun at all to live in a house like this. Unfortunately, many people have come from this type of upbringing - whether they lived in an unhealthy childhood situation, or are currently in an abusive home. And for many, this style of living is simply part of their day to day reality. They are guided by a natural predilection toward feeling these types of difficult emotions.
Look around at your current floor plan; do any of these negative rooms exist? If so, then we must set to the work of remodeling at once. Time to pull up the flooring and strip off the wallpaper. Life is to short to nurture unhealthy rooms. Jeremiah 17:14 says, "Heal me, Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise."
If we look to the Father, He will heal us indeed. It may not come quickly or in the particular way that we expect, but if we seek Him out, Scripture says He will never turn away from us. That is the type of awesome God that we serve. Turning to Him of course also means trusting Jesus, and listening to what his Spirit says to ours. This is accomplished through prayer, and sometimes even fasting. And then we wait. Wait on God to redeem us; wait on Him to heal us. In this fashion, we root out and remodel the unwanted rooms in our home, even if they have been there for a very long time.
I want to finish with just one more thought. While most who visit our home will be guests, occasionally we may get a visit from an unwanted interloper. They don't always enter in through the front door. The Bible says that the devil seeks to steal and destroy, often trying to enter the Good Shepherd's sheep pen by the side door or window. When this happens, the sheep are in real danger. Even if you live in a healthy house, you must stay alert and keep your guard up. It is so very easy for pride and jealousy to sneak in, for example. To begin eroding your foundation slowly but surely over time.
It is important to stay vigilant because a healthy home breeds other healthy homes. A child who is raised with a blueprint of love and peace will grow up and show the same to others. In this way, God's Kingdom can be secured over time through generations and "healthy neighborhoods."
Doesn't this type of lifestyle sound more inviting than rooting out black mold and wood rot? Build and nurture the type of home that God desires for you. A home made of love and trust, peace and faith. The type of place that creates a safe space to become the type of people we were meant to be.
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