The developer is currently clearing the “strippings” from our property. Before this project, I wasn’t aware that there were so many types of dirt. I just thought dirt was dirt. But I’ve learned that the dirt you plant vegetation in is different than what one would build a foundation upon. The strippings contain dirt we don’t want to build on. It consists of things like sand, roots, leaves, gravel, and stones. That type of dirt will break down after awhile and would cause a foundation to crack. We don’t want that.
I’ve learned the same principle in living too. Dirt isn’t always dirt when it comes to what you build your life upon. You can put a stake in the ground to mark your belief in God but still have a lot of divided emotion, focus, and compromise in the soil. The soil needs some stripping in order to bring in something purer and more stable.
During the life of Destiny Church, I feel like my life has been a series of strippings. One thing after another was stripped away. I mourned it all … every season, every loss. At the core of each stripping were good things that served me for a season. Rock is good in its own context. Leaves are the remnant of something that was once fruitful. Sand is great at the beach but not so much when it follows you home and you try to grow something in it. The stripping was painful. I tried to hold on to it all.
I’m not sure what’s going on in your life today. What isn’t as you want it to be. What is yet to be made right. What seems broken or lost. What feels like it’s tearing your heart out as you let go. But building your life upon those things is like building on sand. Making them what motivates you, your emotion, your desire, your hope, and your joy means you’re already sinking. Faith in those things needs stripped away. Past seasons need left behind. Old wine skins need replaced.
God is doing a new thing. Can you not perceive it? We have to let go of the old to make room for the new.
Centering your life on God; the hope and joy He brings; the victory that’s only found in Him is to build your life on a rock that will never fail you. True satisfaction, true security, true joy is only found in Him. He holds you up when you don’t have the strength to stand. He gives you fuel to continue when you’re empty. He clears your eyes to hope when life has clouded them. He makes you right when everything else seems wrong. He’s not only a firm foundation, but in a world that’s constantly shifting, He really is the only shore foundation.
Take it from one who’s experienced a lot of stripping: what God does in the new soil is incomparable. What He builds on a sure foundation is otherworldly. The joy is an “about to burst from your heart” type of joy. It’s an “I don’t know what tomorrow holds” type of joy, but “today I am right as I should be” type of joy. It’s an “I can’t contain the goodness of this moment” type of joy. Don’t miss that. Don’t give up in the stripping.