Holger’s weblog

The wise and the foolish builder

Yes, I know I promised more sermon transcripts months ago… but it takes time to translate and type them. Anyway, here’s one I gave last year about one of my favorite teachings:

Someone said a while ago that it’s a bit weird how many christian authors and preachers apparently do nothing much but travelling by plane and having all sorts of interesting experiences and inspirations on those flights, which they manage to masterfully include in their messages. Today, it’s going to be a bit more down to earth. So when I was travelling on the high speed train to Hamburg the other week, I had to think of how often there are storm tides in Hamburg. I don’t know why that’s what came to my mind, I guess I’ve been influenced by the media and all the thunderstorms and hurricanes that I’ve read and heard about recently. And I thought that such a regular storm tide doesn’t really matter much to the people of Hamburg. They’ve been wise enough to not build any vitally important buildings in places that usually get flooded during these tides. We all know from the news that it doesn’t always work that way because we all remember what happened in New Orleans a few weeks ago, when it more or less completely sunk into the water during a hurricane, a lot of things were destroyed and even now they are still busy pumping the water out of the city again.

Maybe you already noticed: today I just keep going on about tides and floods and storms and of course there’s a reason for that. I want us to look together at a story that Jesus told of two men who each built a house. Matthew tells us this story in chapter 7, verses 24 – 27.

When we read or listen to that, we notice that apparently there are good and bad ways of building a house. Oversimplying the whole thing, you could probably say that the planners in Hamburg are more like the wise man and the planners in New Orleans are more like the foolish man.But Jesus isn’t really talking about building houses of stone or clay or whatever they used back in His time. The house symbolizes our life – the building of our life. The stony, hard ground, that’s Jesus – and the sand, that’s all the many other things that we like to build our life upon instead.

I think it’s quite easy to build on sand. You know, a rock is quite hard and heavy and means a lot of work; sand on the other hand is easy to shovel and move (yes, it’s easy for me to say so – please, don’t ask when I last held a shovel…). So building on sand seems to make sense at first. If only there were no storms and floods.

And that’s the point that always confuses me for a short moment because it doesn’t match the picture I would like to see. Jesus does not say that you can avoid the storm and the flood by building on a good foundation. On the contrary – both men get the exact same dose of storm and flood. Jesus isn’t promising us insurance against the occurance of storms, all He promises is that we will be able to withstand them and won’t be washed away if we build on Him. And that’s a great thing – I think many who have built on sand at some point in their life later wish they had chosen a more solid foundation. I mean, nobody in his right mind start to build saying “I’m going to find myself a nice insecure spot, with lots of sand that gets flooded all the time and then I’m going to build a nice house there”. Usually, it just happens without much thinking – probably because we don’t think much about it. And most of the time, we don’t even notice where we’ve built. All is quite and peacful. Maybe you just started a good job, your dream job. Success, fun at work, nice colleagues – and you built on it going on like that. But suddenly the storm: the company goes bankrupt… unemployment, no future – is the building of your life still strong enough or will it collapse? Or you started a relationship with the love of your life. You’d do anything for him or her… but after some time, it doesn’t go well, something’s not right, maybe the other person finds somebody else… separation. Is the building of your life still standing?

When you’ve built your life on the things of this world, then be prepared to swim when the flood comes. Personally, I find it reassuring that Jesus says no matter where we build, the storms will come. Why I find that reassuring? Because it shows me that it’s perfectly normal to experience storms in my life. It’s not a question of what foundation my life has. The storms are not the real problem, the problem develops when the foundation doesn’t hold in the storm. In my life there have been a number of storms. During the first ones, I wasn’t a Christian and even when I already was, I did swim quite a bit. But since I really started living with Jesus, the foundations have been strong – at times I couldn’t believe it, but they did withstand the storm.

Maybe you’re in the middle of a storm just now, the rain is blasting down on you and you can hardly see for all the rain that gets in your eyes. Maybe all is calm and you don’t even notice the small clouds on the horizon. What do you see when you look at the foundations of your life?

We have one major advantage over houses made of stone – we can change our foundations even when the storm is already there. So if you are a Christian, but you realize that you’ve built your life on things of this world, it’s not too late to go to Jesus and tell Him that and ask Him to help you build your life truly on Him instead. If what you’re standing on is insecure and won’t survive a storm, use the chance to move your life onto a solid foundation – better do it now than wait until you’re already swimming.

Technorati : Jesus, Matthew, christian, foundation, life, rock, security, sermon

Add comment September 30th, 2006

Loving your neighbor – loving yourself

I don’t want you to think I’ve had a sudden flash of inspiration when a lot of articles in the “Christian Living” category turn up now – I’ve been digging through my little archive of “Service on Sunday” sermons and other texts I’ve written in the past and am now slowly translating the most important ones to English, so that I can make them available to you. It would be great to get some feedback – sometimes it’s encouraging to hear that the work I put into it was actually helpful to someone . Anyway, today I dug out a text on loving your neighbor (please forgive me if the British spelling with “ou” slips in every now and then…) and how that’s difficult if you don’t love yourself.

Continue Reading 2 comments June 5th, 2006

Friendship

The following text is the translation of the outline for a message that I preached in the “Service on Sunday” at my church last night (yeah, it was a Saturday, I know… we had to change the date). I just felt that maybe a few people out there might want to read this, feel free to comment!

I was going to continue my series on the attributes of God today, but I won’t. Sometimes God puts more important things on our hearts, it’s almost like in real life . A few months ago I wouldn’t have thought that I would be speaking about tonight’s topic so soon, it was an area of my life that I felt was in some kind of disorder and caused me a few headaches and general unhappines. But in the last few months a lot has changed, I have gained a new perspective and changed priorities and although I cannot say I’m quite there yet, at least it seems that the direction is right. God has really been at work in this and I think that for some people here tonight it will be helpful to hear what I have learned in this process.

Continue Reading 2 comments May 28th, 2006

God is a painter [Updated]

Last night, while I was travelling to India via Dubai, I thought of what I was going to write here today and what the headline would be. And then, on the flight about halfway between Dubai and Hyderabad, 39000 feet above the Arabian Sea, I saw one of the most magnificent sunrises I’ve ever seen. I’m not usually the kind of person who adores the beauty of God’s creation a lot, but at that moment, I knew that God is a painter.

Anyway, I was also going write that I arrived alive and well. The flight was actually great – Emirates is an excellent airline. Although I must say, Dubai International Airport is a bit of a mess at the moment – it feels like a giant building site. I don’t think I’ve ever been driven for 20 minutes from the plane’s parking position to the terminal building anywhere in the world. It looks like they are crash-building at least two new terminal buildings. Inside it was quite funny – the departures terminal is not very complex, but insanely long, the kind of flattened tube structure that seems to be en vogue with airport architects all around the world (London Stansted is like that, Addis Abeba as well). It was kind of hard not to be run over by one of the not so little electric carts that Emirates uses to collect passengers who got lost in the building and need to be brought to their departure gate at breakneck speed.

Here in Hyderabad, it’s around 30 degrees Celsius… quite a change from near freezing temperatures at home. And what is it with the half-hour timezone, who had that weird idea? Anyway, I’ve found the training room to my satisfaction and am being treated almost like royalty. The training starts tomorrow, hopefully it will go well and my participants will really go away after a bit over a week with the feeling that it was worth their while. I’ll see if I can provide updates here while it’s going on or if it’s going to consume me so much that there’s no time for anything else…

Update Mar. 16, 2006: Deepu has taken some pictures that I’ve uploaded, just follow the Gallery link at the top of the page.

Technorati : Emirates, God, Hyderabad, India, nature

Add comment March 14th, 2006

Little things that matter

I discovered this wonderful story the other day, when I was browsing through a couple of christian blogs. In short, it’s about a guy who came to help another boy at school, someone he would have never, under normal circumstances, even talked to, much less been friends with. But this one day, he saw the pain in the boy’s eyes when he was being bullied by a few others. Over the course of the next years, they became best friends and in his graduation speech at the end of their highschool time together, the boy talked about the day they first met. To the amazement of everyone, including his friend, he revealed that he had planned to commit suicide that weekend – a little friendly gesture from someone he barely knew, but who noticed that he was hurting, saved him.

The conclusion of the article really struck me: “Never underestimate the power of your actions. With one small gesture you can change a person’s life. For better or for worse.” At first I thought “wow, I could have been that guy”. Of course, I do see the pain in peoples’ eyes. Sometimes I choose to do seomthing about it. More often than that, I probably don’t. And I have to ask myself, how often have my small gestures changed someones life… but for worse?

It’s really true… often it’s not the big things that really make a difference, not the great and noble gestures, but the little things, the ones you hardly think of. The things you hardly notice when you do them – but to someone else, they can mean the world. For better or for worse. A friendly nod, a smile when you pass someone on the street – maybe insignificant to you, but signalling “you have been noticed, you are somebody” to a person unsure of himself. And in much the same way, you can easily send a quick “you are worthless to me” signal to someone. I wish we’d all think a little bit more about our actions, even in the little things. Jesus was all about the small gestures… if we want to become more like Him, maybe we should, too.

Technorati : Jesus, actions, gestures, suicide

4 comments February 6th, 2006