Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock:  and the rain descended , the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.

But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand:  and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell.  And great was its fall.  Matthew 7:24-27  HCSB

If you know anything about building houses, then you know that the foundation is very important.  If you have ever moved into a house to have cracks appear in your walls then you know that when you have trouble with your foundation, you have big trouble.

I don’t hear much about the three little pigs anymore, I guess it is one of those fairy tales that is too violent for children now.  They can play video games where zombies kill people, but you can’t let them listen to a story where a wolf eats pigs, go figure.  Anyway, as a child, one of my favorite stories was the Three Little Pigs.  Now in this story, three little pigs set out to live on their own.  Their mother told them that whatever they did in life to do it to the best of their ability.  Scripture for that is where we are told to do all things as though we are working for the Lord (Colossians 3:23).  In this story, two of the three little pigs decided to take the easy way out and build their houses out of substandard materials.  One built his house out of straw.  The other decided to go a little sturdier and built his house out of twigs.  Those two scoffed at the brother who took the time and effort to build his house out of bricks.  Well, we all know that wolves like to eat fat little pigs and once they got comfortably settled into their new home away from their mom, the wolf came howling at their door.  He told them to let him in, he said, “Let me in or I’ll blow your house down”.  Now these little pigs replied, “no, not by the hair of my chinny chin chin”, whatever that was supposed to mean.  Anyway, needless to say the wolf had no problem gaining entry into the houses made of straw and twigs.  He was not successful blowing down the brick house.  As a matter of fact the greedy wolf refused to give up and went up on the roof of the brick house to gain entry.  This gave this little piggy time to put a boiling pot of water on the fireplace and you guessed it.  The wolf jumped right down the chimney and was boiled in the pot.  This was the end of the big bad wolf.

Now I realize that we don’t live in a fairy tale, but the big bad wolf is going to come howling at your door.  Perhaps he is howling there now.  My question to you today is this, is your house well built on a good solid foundation.

Our lives as Christians are much like these houses.  You see if we stay close to God and keep in close relationship with Him then we have a good solid foundation and our house is built of good, solid materials and we are safe.  But, if we don’t stay in close relationship with God we may as well build our house out of straw and use sand for our foundation, we are doomed.

We are going to face some really tough battles in our lives.  We are going to go through hard times.  How we weather these storms will depend on how close we are to our Lord and Savior.  In all honestly, I don’t have any idea how people survive the storms of life or the big bad wolf howling at their door without God by their side.  I know that I have been through hard times trying to do it my way and I have been through hard times being in God’s will.  I promise you that hard times are much easier when you are in God’s will.  When we do things His way, he protects us and provides all that we need to survive the battle.

If your house of straw is sitting on a foundation of sand, move.  Move into the loving arms of a savior that will provide a good strong foundation and a well built shelter in which you can reside.  (Psalm 91:1-2).  We have a choice.  We can be in the straw house when the wolf comes or we can be in the nice, solid brick house.  The choice is yours.  My prayer for you today is that you are standing on a firm foundation and that you are wrapped in God’s protection and living snuggly in His shelter.  I am and I can tell you that this is the only place I want to be.

Have a great day!