Re-Construction

Philippians 1:6; Revelation 3:14-21

⁶ For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

Every once in a while when you visit a favorite site or blog you are met with a “under construction” page.  You are instructed to come back at a later time.  Don’t go anywhere… because I have a construction project I need to announce.  The project is me.  I sense a need for change in my heart and life.  I am praying for personal revival.

Gypsy Smith (an evangelist from another era) used to tell his audiences: “Do you really want to see a revival begin? Then go back to your home and draw a circle three feet around in your bedroom. Then get down on your knees in the middle of it and ask God to convert everybody inside that circle. When you do that, you are experiencing the start of revival.”  I have begun to draw the circle in my own life.

I am frustrated in the construction project which is me.  I thought I was building a pretty good house there for awhile.  It seems the winds of time and circumstance have blown the the thing flat.  I’m getting tired of imaging walls were there are no walls… and the winds are starting to blow cold.

I’m reminded of the lyrics of an old Greg X. Volz song:  “How can you rebuild what once had stood so tall… when rubble covers everything in sight?”

I know I need to shore up some faith in the Philippians 1:6 promise.  What God started in me on December 6th, 1980…. he will be faithful to bring to an end, accomplish, perfect, execute, complete… the work he began in me.
What will cause me to pick up the pieces and build a great cathedral for God?  The desire to live a vibrant life in Christ for starters.  Author Greg Ogden wrote:

“All too often I have watched myself and others slowly turn down the temperature to where we become lukewarm and insipid.  We need purifying and refining contexts where the best is continuously called out of us.  Humans follow the law of entropy; we wind down, and our energy dissipates unless the poker stokes the coals of our lives and stirs them up again.  (Greg Ogden,Transforming Discipleship, p. 114.)

I don’t want to be lukewarm or tepid.  What I built yesterday was great in its day.  It is time to build a more glorious tabernacle.

There is some spiritual reconstruction ahead for me… for my body, my mind, my calendar, my habits… etc.  I am embarking on a project that will carry me forward for the next 20 years or so.  Pray for me as I go over the blueprints with my Lord.  And then maybe ask him to go over yours with Him.