Unless the Lords builds the house

#FMF – Build

I’m joining the Five Minute Friday community today where we write for 5 minutes based on word prompt. My posts always take more time.

“Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain.” Ps. 127:1

I never imagined in my wildest dreams that someday my husband and I would build our house — to buy a house perhaps but to build one from scratch. Never. 

But we did and we did it in a foreign country in a language we did not speak. It’s been 10 years since we began building and while it’s still not fully done, we are living in it.

Looking back on our journey, I’m amazed at God’s goodness and faithfulness to us. The process of building our house in a foreign country has taught us much.

Even before we began, God gave us this verse in Psalms,

“Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain.” 

We did not want to labor in vain, and we were certain that in of ourselves this was something we could never make happen.

So what are the lessons we learned? I think I could probably write a book on this, but for the sake of this post being a five minute writing exercise, I’ll stick to the top three. 

Always keep building your home above building your house. A house can be replaced, a home can not. We learned this the hard way. In the arduous, long process of building a house in a foreign country, our priorities would often get mixed up and as a family, we suffered for it.

Never let anything become an idol. Sometimes when you want something so badly it can become your idol. We poured everything we had into making our dream come true and sometimes the desire to control the outcome got the better of us. We’ve had to relinquish the house over and over again. At anytime God could ask us to give it up and we’d had to be willing to do so. We also had to remind ourselves that the house belonged to Him. And the year when He asked us to leave the house and the country not knowing whether we’d come back was a hard one. 

God can use your house to be a house of prayer for all nations. Our house was built by many hands from all over the world. They were friends who believed with us to a build house where people could come to get refreshed, set free, healed — a place where hope dwelled in abundance and people felt loved and accepted. In the six plus years we’ve been living in our house, we’ve had the joy of gathering with friends and praying for the nations.

If anyone had told us how hard this process would be or how long it would take, I don’t know that we’d have started. It’s been a humbling process building one room at a time and still not be done 10 years later. But just like the Israelites who had to wander in the desert for 40 years to learn — we’ve had to learn ours. 

One thing is for certain God is faithful even if we are not. He’s a good Father who blesses His children and makes all things beautiful in His time. 

How about you, friend? What lessons has your house taught you?

This post is part of a 28-day writing challenge.