While preparing for our new season of full-time RVing, I’ve asked God to cause me to be more sensitive, or perhaps more attentive to the small things. I don’t want to miss anything. On this pilgrimage (which is what we are calling it for our family), I don’t want to waste a second. My prayer is simple, “God, show me everything.”
A few days ago, I walked into my boys room to find them building with blocks, a very common occurrence. But I have to say, I was impressed with this structure they had built. It seemed to me a new level of complexity and maturity, perhaps not a structure that I would have expected from 3 and 4 year old little minds. To me, it seemed as though God was showing me that He was going to answer my prayers. Let me explain.
I’m a builder. I’ve come to find, at least in my own personal interpretation of life, that there are primarily three types of people – builders, scoffers and dreamers. They are all fairly self-explanatory. I don’t have to explain scoffers. You know who they are. They are all around you. As for dreamers, I will only say that my hope would be that someday, they transition to building. Dreaming is fine and it’s absolutely necessary, but at some point is a wasted effort if it never leads to at least an attempt to build the dream, to make it a reality. Am I inferring that everyone should be a builder? Why, yes. Yes I am.
Not everyone will build skyscrapers or highly acclaimed works of art. But, we are all called to build something. If we never build, then we never exercise faith. We never fail. And so, we never achieve. And more importantly, we never see the fruits of our faith, God in action. Perhaps for you, this is nothing more than building your family…and that’s the highest calling of all. But, building your family is a far cry from simply letting your family happen. For many of us, our families are broken. We’ve bought into the lies of what society has setup around us. We’ve trusted culture and external systems to build our families for us. And that never works. Many of us simply don’t have the relationships that we really want with our children. And well over half of us decide to split our families in two because we’ve determined that they just don’t work anymore. We broke it and we can’t fix it. It’s tragic.
As for me and my house? Not today devil. Not today. We will build. We will build with intentionality. We will never stop building. And where we fall short, we will learn to build better.
See, I’m a builder. I always have been. It’s who God designed me to be at a very young age. But that design was never really cultivated in my life, in fact, it was discouraged over and over again. I shouldn’t build. I should just settle. Just settle for what everyone has. Isn’t that good enough for you? Can’t you just be satisfied? The world around me tried to beat the builder out of me. But God rescued me. He gave me a new name. And I will never visit that place of fear again.
It’s why I’m so passionate about taking this journey with my family and with my boys at such a young age. I want them to dream. But moreso, I want to instill in them not only the passion to build, but the faith to build. These boys are builders. So, cast off the scoffers. And be inspiration to the dreamers. Build. Your life depends on it.
