Justin Tucker, LHBC Worship Pastor
1 Corinthians 3:11
For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
And I will build my life upon your love
It is a firm foundation.
And I will put my trust in you alone
And I will not be shaken.
Before I surrendered to the call to ministry, I was a supervisor at UPS’ Whites Creek Hub in Nashville for 11 years. It was a great job and I enjoyed it. I loved the time crunch, the intensity, the stress. I was good at it and I started to climb the corporate ladder there pretty quickly. The success that I was experiencing was both a blessing and a curse. My success started out because I was doing all the right things and doing them all the right way. It felt good to be noticed. It felt good to receive the “attaboys” and get the special assignments. The pursuit of success will make you do funny things though. It’ll make you do shady or selfish things. It can put you in a mindset where you begin to value power, profits, positions, products and productions above people…at least that’s what it did to me. I got to a point where staying at the top of the game was the most important thing to me. The foundation of getting there by doing the right things the right way eroded because the success became about me. Somewhere along the way, the people that I led became less important to me than the pursuit of the position.
During that season, I struggled more than I ever had at UPS. I was miserable. I wasn’t meeting goals, I was just showing up and going through the motions. I was angry all the time. After about 6 months of living like that…God broke my heart over how I had been treating some of my people. I had to go back and ask for forgiveness and make amends. I had to love my team. I had value who they were above what they could do. When that happened…they took care of me and we climbed back to the top of production lists. The success I had in my time at UPS lived or died based on my relationships and how they were built. When they were built on my pride and pursuit of position, they crumbled. When they were built on valuing who people are above what they could do, they thrived.
Whether it’s a relationship, an achievement, a dream, a failure, or our own plan, our foundations are built out of our own desires. We can only build our lives with our own hands for so long until we realize that our foundations aren’t strong enough on their own. They’re built on the wrong things or they’re cracked and broken. What God wants to build in our lives is an eternal, purpose-filled life, a life that we can’t earn or build on our own strength or merit. It takes a strong and solid foundation. When we put our faith in Jesus, we exchange our faulty, self-made, crumbling foundation, broken by the weight of sin, for solid footing on the foundation of God, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.
As we take up our cross daily, we begin to see him building what only He can build in our lives: He will give us eyes to see people the way that He sees them, He will give us hearts filled with the things He loves and hearts that break for the things that break His, and lives that seek to serve those around us. His is a love which cannot be moved or changed, and through Jesus we become part of a kingdom that cannot be shaken. Jesus holds it all together and the Holy Spirit fills us with wisdom and revelation, revealing who God is to us.That revelation will always move us to act. When we see God for who He is, our desires will begin to shift and eventually become the things that He desires. As He changes our lives, we will long for others to know who God is and what He has done for us and how He desires to do the same for all.
PRAYER FOR TODAY:
Father, show me who you are today. Fill me with your heart, all the things you love and want me to love, and empty me of the things which don’t build up your kingdom. Then lead me in your love to love those around me with the love of Christ. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
MEMORY VERSE OF THE WEEK:
Matthew 6:33
“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”