God desires to furnish us with all that is good so that we might carry out all that is pleasing to Him through Jesus Christ our Lord. However, just as a house that is full of clutter cannot be furnished until the clutter has been removed, so too, our souls cannot be furnished with the good things of God until we have cooperated with the grace of God to remove the clutter that fills our hearts, minds, and souls. This requires patience and understanding on our part, for we so often pray for God to bless us with spiritual gifts so that we might go out and do great works, and then we wonder why we aren’t receiving that which we have prayed for. It is not that God does not desire to fill us with those gifts that we seek. On the contrary, he desires it even more than we do! No, the reason we do not receive the gifts we pray for is that often times we are jumping too far ahead. We want to move a couch and a love seat into a living room that is filled from wall to wall and floor to ceiling with junk. There is no place to put anything else!
God is giving us what we seek in an infinitely more perfect way. So perfect we often don’t perceive it because of our own blindness and imperfections. God wants to give us the couch we desire, but even more than that, he wants to make sure that when we have that couch, we’ll actually be able to use it for its intended purpose, otherwise the couch would become just another piece of the clutter.
A couch is meant to be sat upon, and God’s grace is meant to be used to carry out His will by doing all that is pleasing to Him. What good is a couch if it can’t be sat on, and what good is God’s grace if we haven’t the room in our hearts to let it move us to accomplish His will?
Similarly, a person who desires to build a home for himself may imagine what it will be like to live in the home. He may picture with great anticipation what it will be like to sit beside the grand fireplace in the living room, or to prepare a meal in the kitchen. However, when he hires a general contractor to build his dream home, the contractor will not start by building the kitchen or the fireplace first. First, he will clear the land and dig the footings. Would the man who plans to live there stop the contractor at that point and complain that the contractor isn’t giving him what he wants because he’s playing in the dirt instead of building a kitchen? I think we can all agree that would be foolish, so maybe we should all consider how foolish it would be for us to try and tell God he’s going about his work on us in all the wrong way. Maybe we all have a lot more underbrush to clear away than we realize, and God will get to building that fireplace when the time for building fireplaces is right. Until then, we should probably trust that He knows what He’s doing. After all, He has a lot more experience than we do. He’s literally been doing this since the beginning of time.
One final thought on the house that God is building in us. We often make the mistake of thinking that our lives belong to us. We are, in general, selfish, possessive, self-centered, and ignorant. It’s a bad combination, to be sure. I made the analogy of a person desiring to build a home for themselves, and I think we look at our own lives as if we are building them into something for ourselves. We make decisions based on what we think our careers, our families, our hobbies, our friend groups, and our legacy should look like. But do we ever stop to consider what it means to say that we are a “Temple of the Holy Spirit”? Our lives are a construction project, yes, but we are not the architects. We are not the owner, the general contractor, the tenant, or the 3rdparty inspector. We are the dirt. What God is building is a temple for himself, and we should consider ourselves fortunate to be the dirt that he’s using.
He’ll start by digging the footings, because God desires a strong foundation. He’ll clear away the sand, the rocks, and the roots. He’ll remove the things from our lives that are not well-suited to a strong foundation. Yes, that removal process will be painful. It will be messy. It might even appear useless, like a waste of time. But the more we cooperate with Him, the faster the process will be. This is the step of recognizing that God’s will is not our will, and that it is not God who surrenders to our will, but man who surrenders to the will of God.
Once the foundation is prepared, God will then take from the dirt the clay, and form the clay into bricks. Now we’re getting somewhere, right? We recognize bricks to be part of a strong house, and since bricks go vertically, we can feel like we’re starting to see something that resembles a house take shape. Don’t forget, though, that for a brick to be useful it first must be hardened by fire. This is the step of recognizing in ourselves the habits, desires, motives, and relationships in our lives that keep us from being holy, as our heavenly Father is holy. You may have felt the heat of the kiln already in your life. It is the feeling you get when you know that the thing you want is not the thing you should have. The fire burns, but it also hardens. Don’t run from the fire. Instead, recognize that the fire will only burn away those things that cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven, and all that is good will remain. Not only will it remain, but it will be refined, so that what comes out of the oven will be far better than what went in.
Once He has formed the bricks, He will need the mortar to hold them all together. Mortar is an aggregate; a whole formed by combining several different elements. We’ve been hardened, purified, refined, now we are ready to receive from God the good things we lack. God will give us what we need, and if we have successfully conformed our will to God’s will, by giving us what we need, he will at the same time be giving us what we want. Therein lies the key to happiness.
The key to happiness is a two-step equation. Step one: train yourself to desire only that which God desires for you, trusting that God desires only what is best for you. Step two: recognize that all things happen according to God’s will, and therefore, everything that happens to you in life, no matter how bad it might seem, happens according to God’s wisdom, and for your good. By following this equation, you will soon find the strength to be joyful despite your circumstances. You will discover the transcendent joy that resides with you through all the ups and downs of life, because you will know that the downs are just as important, just as good, and just as necessary as the ups. You’ll see your life as a journey without shortcuts. A journey in which every step takes you closer to your final destination. More than that, you’ll recognize that your final destination is not to be found in this world; a recognition that makes the complete surrender to the will of God all the more liberating.
Written by: Matthew Giardina