Foundations

If you know me at all, you know that I like to read. If you don't know me: Hey! I like to read. I do not like to limit my reading to any genre in particular...except I do find that I mostly agree with a dear friend who once said, "Nothing worth reading was written after 1964." I am not sure how my faith in that statement will effect my desire to write...considering that everything that I write is after 1964. Except for that one thing, but I cannot get into that. The point is that I read old books of all kinds. You may have noticed that my idea for the title of this blog came from a strange source: Niccolo Machiavelli. I have read many of his writings and I learn much from them.

One thing that I learned is to imitate excellence. Now, the Bible exerts me to be like Christ, and that is the goal of the Christian life. But even if that were not my mandate...the world recognizes the mimic-ability of excellent men. Outside of the Christian realm, Jesus Christ was still a most excellent man. Anyway, all of that is beside the point and not really at all what I wanted to talk about in this post.

I want to talk about foundations. According to dictionary.com, the definition of foundation is: the basis or groundwork of anything. What I am discovering in my life, is that I am having to build from the top down. My life is full of responsibilities and as a result things are pretty much 'built' the way they have to be. There really is not a whole lot of wiggle-room in my situation. For example, my job does not in any way, shape, or form, allow me to develop the things that I am passionate about in life. But my main goal is to provide for my family, and in that regard, my job comes through. So, even though I am looking for other occupational options, I am rather limited in what I can accept.

Another definition of foundation is: the lowest division of a building, wall, or the like, usually of masonry and partly or wholly below the surface of the ground. The main thing that catches my eye in this definition is the end. Just like the foundation of a house is below the ground, so the foundation of my life is below the surface. The foundations of my life are set in my heart and in my mind. The Christian's life depends largely upon the foundation that is built. When the foundation is shaky, or incomplete, the outer life will crumble eventually.

Machiavelli said, "anyone who does not lay his foundations beforehand could do so later only with great skill, although this would be done with inconvenience to the architect and danger to the building." That is where I find myself lately. Perhaps you have been in a similar situation. I am finding, to my dismay, that there are huge gaps in areas of my life that should have been foundational. Now, with God's help and through His strength, these areas are being addressed, but things are not as easy to fix now.

God has a plan and a purpose for my life. He always has. I think that my continual failure to solidify foundational things in my heart has pushed that plan back a few years. I do not want to get into a theological debate about how God knows the future so this was all in his plan. That doesn't hold water anyway because God exists outside of time and the Bible states that Christ was crucified before the foundation of the world. From my very human perspective, it seems as though failures in simple areas such as faith, steadfastness, temperance, and meekness, have slowed my pace.

Praise God that He is patient, and that His working in my life does not cease. The past few months have been almost like an awakening for me. It seems as if I have been asleep, and things that I have dreamed about are becoming real. Simple, foundational things that I have heard preached from the time I was born, are making sense to me. And I never had them set in my life. So many things that never seemed to work out for me make perfect sense now.

If I am the building in this equation, then yes, damage has been done to the building in this process. I suffered through many things that would have been easily avoided had the foundations been set in stone. If God is the architect, then yeah, maybe from my perspective it is an inconvenience for Him to have to teach me things that I should have learned before I was ten years old. But since God is both the architect and the builder, than there is no lack in the great skill that is needed to fix the foundations in my life.

That is true in the life of every believer. God has a plan, and it is never to late to learn the basics...even if you've been building without them for years.