BUILDING: IT’S NOT WHAT WE DO, IT’S WHO WE ARE
A devotional on the anticipation to build, and the direction we're being given.
PERSONAL TESTIMONY
I woke up early one morning recently and felt a fear of building something and realizing it was all in vain — it felt like a worst case of buyer’s remorse that brought emptiness and futility. Shortly after, the word ‘hevel’ began coming to mind. I was immediately reminded of when my husband had been sharing about this word and the futility of vain striving a few weeks prior.
The reality of “vapor of vapors and futility of futilities! All is vanity (emptiness, falsity and vainglory” was a gripping reality. The conviction to seek Him in this emotion felt different — I felt humility. I knew there was an invitation to hear God’s heart about building — for His glory versus for vain glory. I went out to the kitchen and began talking to God out loud so that I could be intentional in talking with Him about what was on my heart. Repenting really, surrendering, in response to the conviction I began noticing through that feeling.
A few weeks prior, I was beginning to realize ask him about what it looked like to glorify Him in building. I started seeing that I was at a fork in the road where there was an opportunity to follow Him down the road less traveled, but I still didn’t have full clarity. This morning He brought clarity.
As I finished writing the first draft of “Hevel: Building for His Glory vs. Building for Vain Glory", I realized that it still wasn’t fully what He was saying because at the end of writing, He showed me,
When I am trying to build, I am missing the what He is building… me.
“And in him you too are being built together to be become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” Ephesians 2:22 (NIV).
When building is treated as something external (separate from us), rather than an extension of what He has done internal, we’re missing the building He is after. If we are still trying to do or make something, we are not letting Him make us.
I have been wrestling with this idea of leaving legacy and this frustration of having these burning desires on my heart but being unsure of how to execute them — I realize there hasn’t been grace because this is His job. I am his building piece. He is the builder. I don’t need to build—I need to let myself be build, and build one another because that’s what He is building.
The media is screaming at us right now to build something.
We have to let Him know us in order to let Him build us. This is what our hearts desire. We have to get honest and let Him search us, shape us, form us and mold us - intimacy.
This whole last season God was tearing down what I built because I hadn’t let Him first build me. There was a lot of lament and a lot of grieving. And I almost did it again… the only reason I didn’t isn’t because of me.
I realized I haven’t had full clarity because I was looking past what He was doing in me, still thinking me not being ‘enough’ was getting in the way when it was actually making a way. If there is greed or poverty still there, for example, then He can’t finish His building.
I realize we've been talking about this for a while in the Church, but I believe I am still being convicted of this idea of "building" — that when I am trying to build, it pulls me away from what He actually wants to build. Maybe I still haven't really seen that loving Him and others is all He wants from me.
This is where we are free to be "me." This is the building — not fixated on what we're doing, but overcome by what He is doing.
WHAT WE BELIEVE HE IS SAYING
Many of us are coming out of a season of grieving that led to a stripping, pruning, detoxing and deconstructing. Now, we’re moving to an unveiling. In the unveiling, we are beginning to see the glorious riches of our inheritance - visions and dreams and His plans for building.
And I wonder if that building is us — and if we are being faced with the choice to pick back up what He separated us from in his past season - hiding places, things we didn’t realize we idolized or wanted to build for self because we didn’t feel enough. Or to let Him reveal us for His glory.
Someone told me recently that Jesus didn’t bring out the new wine until the old wine was completely empty. We are being completely emptied before He can fill us with this new thing. In this waiting it begins to feel weighty, but I believe He is continuing to increase clarity. I believe we are saying a final no that makes way for Revelation 2:28 and 2:7. A no to the world, to the knowledge of good and evil, to striving, to what we can get, to poverty. We have to know heaven before we can establish it on earth.
The ministry will be to just be, where He is seen. The ministry is Him through us, so we get to let Him work in us. When we are the ministry, we can breathe and there is permission to be exactly where we are at.
There is such a heavy anticipation to get there, and there is a counterfeit trying to get us to do something before He leads us through. But to the one who overcomes — "I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God" (Revelation 2:7). I believe there will be abundance that comes from feasting on His leading, from a rest that gives Him glory. We are what He is building.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOUR MENTAL HEALTH
First, you are not crazy and there is nothing ‘wrong’ with you.
Being stripped of what we know and where we felt comfortable can be a grueling process that surfaces a multitude of emotions that are often hard to organize and understand. In the process of separating what we produce from who we are, the nervous system can read it as a threat. This is where we start carrying it physically not just emotionally.
Some of the emotional and physical symptoms you might be experiencing include:
Weighty expectation
Not being able to sleep at night (Ecclesiastes 2:23)
Doing but not getting anywhere
Unhealthy thoughts of condemnation, comparison such as “not doing enough”, “you should be further along”, “what are you doing with your life”
Frustration with yourself (Romans 8:20)
Overwhelm
Hopelessness
Not being able to concentrate because you are holding space for many different things at once
Feeling frozen because you don’t know how to move forward
MOVING THROUGH SANCTIFICATION WITH HIM
Rest. Before you read further, take a slow breath. Set down whatever you were just carrying — the to-do list, the pressure, the noise. Give yourself grace and sixty seconds of quiet. Sometimes the process is moving through the process without judging what you are feeling or trying to figure out the why.
Acknowledge Him. Before naming anything else, turn your attention to who He is — His presence, His nearness, His authority over this season. Then name what's actually true for you right now — the season you're in, what you're grieving, what you're hoping for, what's weighing on you.
Ask. Bring Him one question at a time. Choose whichever of these is most alive for you today:
Have you been trying to produce that you already are?
Where are you stuck? How are you treating this as a roadblock instead of a roadmap?
What are you afraid of losing in that time with Him versus doing something?
What would it feel like — in your body, not just your thinking — to rest without guilt?
What are you actually afraid will happen if you stop building for a time - a day, a few week?
Listen. Sit in silence for a minute or two after asking. Let whatever surfaces come without editing or questioning it — a word, an image, a memory, a feeling, a verse, or nothing at all. Nothing surfacing is not a failure; sometimes the stillness itself is the answer. Don’t look past what you notice, even if it is nothing. It all speaks of Him.
Meditate / Reflect. Write down what came. Sit with Him in it. Let it settle rather than rushing to act on it, and reflect on where it shows up in Scripture.
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE REFERENCE
1 Corinthians 3:9 (AMPC) For we are fellow workmen (joint promoters, laborers together) with and for God; you are God’s garden and vineyard and field under cultivation, [you are] God’s building.
10 According to the grace (the special endowment for my task) of God bestowed on me, like a skillful architect and master builder I laid [the] foundation, and now another [man] is building upon it. But let each [man] be careful how he builds upon it,
11 For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is [already] laid, which is Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One).
12 But if anyone builds upon the Foundation, whether it be with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw,
13 The work of each [one] will become [plainly, openly] known (shown for what it is); for the day [of Christ] will disclose and declare it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test and critically appraise the character and worth of the work each person has done.
14 If the work which any person has built on this Foundation [any product of his efforts whatever] survives [this test], he will get his reward.
15 But if any person’s work is burned up [under the test], he will suffer the loss [of it all, losing his reward], though he himself will be saved, but only as [one who has passed] through fire.
16 Do you not discern and understand that you [the whole church at Corinth] are God’s temple (His sanctuary), and that God’s Spirit has His permanent dwelling in you [to be at home in you, collectively as a church and also individually]?
17 If anyone does hurt to God’s temple or corrupts it [with false doctrines] or destroys it, God will do hurt to him and bring him to the corruption of death and destroy him. For the temple of God is holy (sacred to Him) and that [temple] you [the believing church and its individual believers] are.
