House of Cards

Ever built a house out of a deck of cards? I'm sure at one point or another as kids we all tried. I saw an amazing thing on TV, didn't see the whole segment, just the preview part, but this guy was building the skyline of New York City out of cards. It was awesome and quite impressive. Even showed him blowing on it to show it wouldn't fall down.

I'm not gifted in that area so my efforts wouldn't be worthy of anything, much less TV coverage; but in the tiny bit I saw, it occurred to me that there was a striking analogy in what this guy was doing and what a lot of us do in our faith walk.

This guy, didn't catch his name but let's call him Bob, spent an extraordinary amount of time developing his skill, he had to. You don't just wake up one day and viola', you can build cities from cards. Bob had to develop that skill and it's a safe bet that many a card fell before he mastered the process.

Building our faith and trust in God isn't an overnight event either. Bob believed he could do this and worked at it, getting better and better. It took seeing successes and not just the failures to keep him inspired and motivated.

As Christians, we can often believe in God without believing God. Our actions and wavering faith are the telltale signs of that. If we get blown over like a house of cards every time something comes against us, you can bet our 'believer' isn't working. Our faith cards may be too crumbly or cracked. Only in studying the Word of God, spending time with Him, can we build a stronger house. It isn't Jesus, the Rock on which we build, that has the problem; it's that we are using shortcuts and shoddy faith practices to build a showy house of faith.

I mentioned that in the preview Bob was blowing on his creations to show they wouldn't fall down, think they would hold up against an attack from the enemy, Lucifer? Nope! Twin Towers didn't. We can not and do not have faith in or trust someone we do not know. That's not even wise. It's the One in our lives that has proven faithful over the course of time, the One we know we can count on and turn to in times of need. We are to build our faith house with God.