Do Not Build Your Faith On The Sand

The foundations of a house are unseen, hidden behind layers of earth, hidden beneath a heavy structure that looks the part and maybe even has all the right features to say it’s beautiful. But if there is a crack or a fault in the foundations, that beautiful house won’t stand for long. It won’t crumble in a day. But over the months, cracks will appear in the walls and ceilings. Give it a few more months and the floors will become uneven and the door frames will begin to squeal. Little by little, slowly but surely the house will begin to fall. It may take a year or 3, it may even take 20 or 30, but if the foundation is spoilt the house will crumble. The problem was always there, but the problem was hidden.

I worry that for some Christians their faith, their understanding of God and their understanding of the gospel is not built on a solid foundation. Like a house, on the surface things seem fine. To the outsider everything appears in order, but inside cracks are beginning to appear because the foundations are not intact.

Trees of deeply rooted sin were not dealt with and the roots are pushing their way through the foundations. Experience was the deciding factor in their decision to follow Christ and those stopped a long time ago. The leader who brought you to faith has fallen from grace. The church you attended your whole life, splits. You’re mistreated by a church leader who you thought loved you. If the foundations of our faith are not rooted and established, each of these things might be the death blow to a foundation that is build on sand and falling apart.

Why am I bringing this up?

In the course of my few years here on earth I have known people who have built their faith on people, on movements, on spiritual experiences, on political leaders, on churches and church leaders and anything else you can think of under the sun. People can build their faith on so many things that are not the gospel, not Jesus and not the Bible. The problem with this is that anything other than Jesus is not a firm foundation.

If your foundation is not in Christ, it is no foundation at all, it is merely sand that will be swept away by a storm of life.

This is why we need, NEED, to teach and learn sound doctrine. This is why we need pastors, missionaries, church workers and church members who are equipped and trained to handle God’s Word. We need people who are trained to spot false teaching when they hear it. People who are equipped to see misrepresentations of Scripture when they see it. People who are able to defend sound doctrine in light of opposition and Christians who are determined to be good theologians. We are all theologians, we just need to be good theologians who take our understanding from God’s revealed Word rather than external people, places or things that can cause us to stumble down the line.

Be wise with the voices that you listen to.
Be wise with the people you let influence you.
Be wise with the teaching that you take in.
Be wise with the leaders that you follow.
Be wise with the source of your doctrine.

Build your faith on nothing other than Jesus Christ. His will is revealed in the Bible for us. The Lord’s teaching is revealed in the Bible to us. The Lord’s desire to see people brought to salvation has been made plain to us in the Bible. Why build our faith on anything other than the Word of the Lord?

Friends, building our faith on the sand will lead to pain, discouragement and disaster. It can mean that we put our faith in political leaders, in church leaders, in experiences and in everything else under the sun. Each of those things has an end date. The gospel does not. The Son of God has no end date. The Word of the Lord will not pass away. Build your faith on the solid rock that is Christ, only in Him and through Him will you be secure through the storms of life that will come your way.