Check your foundation

By The NewsDay | Jan. 9, 2016 | 4 Min read

HERE’S trusting you had a peaceful holiday. You should by now have settled and be looking ahead into the new year with hope and excitement.

We’re just over a week into a potentially great year or bad year depending on what you will allow to define your destiny. I will share thoughts that will help examine the foundation of your hope and solidify your faith. As you follow your personal dreams and resolutions, family vision, church theme or declaration and national agenda, you need to be standing firm on sound doctrine. Starting anything requires right footing. It could be a new home, business, year, day or new life as a believer. On these premises we want to ascertain that we’re standing safe.

The born-again believer should be sure of her/his salvation lest she/he be tossed by false doctrines. For those outside the Christian faith, here’s an open invitation to be one with God in Christ by simply confessing Jesus. Apostle Paul writing to the Corinthian church instructed them in 2 Corinthians 13:5: “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?” If you’re a Christian, I ask you to answer the following questions. If Jesus Christ is in you, do you believe you’re better off than living in Old Testament days? Is your life indicative of the truth that He whom the great prophets desired to see is now living in you? In the following instalments we shall inquire deeper into the reality of the new creation and what the new birth in Christ entails.

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There are issues that are so foundational in the Christian faith that believers have not grasped or relegated to the periphery. Satan has taken advantage and caught us in ignorance and we end up praying and fasting for things that are freely given to us by the completed work of the sufferings, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This year and indeed till eternity, we shall dig into salvation by grace revealing the truth which frees us from bondage. Jesus says in John 8:32: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Please understand that you were set free by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The knowing of this truth makes you free. This truth is the Word of God. John 17:17 clarifies: “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” Truth, therefore, is Jesus Christ for we know that the Word of God is Jesus who ultimately is in the Father.

This year has been accepted as a drought year. It’s common cause that the economy is performing badly. Government is struggling paying its staff. Industry closed shop many years ago. Millions left the country fleeing the biting malaise. There’s enough testimony on the ground pointing to unprecedented unemployment levels. Against this backdrop is your resolution, decree, declaration and confession for a brighter future made. How do you survive and achieve your goals? Let’s look at the admonition of the Bible. The counsel of God should prevail against whatever we face on earth bearing in mind though we’re in this world we’re not of this world.

Jesus gave the illustration in Luke 6:47-49 for surviving the adversity of outside forces. It reads: “[47] Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will shew you to whom he is like: [48] He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock. [49] But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great.” Here’s a comparison of two people facing similar harsh conditions. The foundation carried the day. One took time to lay a solid foundation and the other just built.

To make it in life, your foundation has to be the rock Jesus Christ. The earth is not your foundation. 1 Corinthians 3:11 emphasises: “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” If you’re in Christ, you’re standing on firm hope. If not yet, choose Him now. What we face tests our foundation. We can go safely without foundation, but sooner rather than later storms will come. The good thing is that everyone will be tested without favouritism. The storm washes away foundation-less houses and leaves proper houses standing.