Loving the Builder

Helping dad

My sons love to help me with any sort of building or handiwork around the house. If I am building a new bookcase from IKEA, they want to help me put it together. If I am organizing the garage, they want to help me. If I am putting together a hockey net, they want to join me in the process. I am planning on building a new worktable once the winter cold is gone for good, and my boys keep asking if it’s time to build it yet.

The reason they are so eager to help is not because they know they can offer experience and skills from years of work. It’s not because they believe they can do a better job than I can. They want to help because they love me, they look up to me, and if it’s something that “dad” is doing, they want to be a part of it.

Building is not enough

I just finished a blog post series titled “Build & Fight” where I endeavored to show that the Christian life is akin to building a beautiful house and engaging in a necessary war. There is little doubt in my mind that Christians MUST be about the work of building solid families, solid churches, parallel institutions, and godly cultures.

I recently attended a conference in Peterborough titled “A Call To Build.” I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and I was glad to spend time in conversation with brothers in Christ I love dearly. Here too there was much discussion about walking in obedience regarding personal holiness and sanctification, getting our families in order, and actually working toward Reformation in Canada.

One thing that I see is lacking in all of these modern discussions about Christians and “building” (and this includes Christian Nationalism, Christian political and cultural engagement, Christian parallel institutions, etc.) is the core of the answer to the question, “Why do we build?” Yes, we build because God has commanded us to build. Yes, we build to see people come to Christ in faith. Yes, we build to effectively be salt and light in the world. But these answers all revolve around building for a “what.” I want to suggest the primary reason we should be engaged in “building” is for a “Who.”

Child-like affection

If at the tippy top of our list of reasons why we build and also fight in the world is NOT our deep love and affection for the God who has made us, called us, saved us, filled us with His Spirit, promised us eternal life, and sent us out as His ambassadors, we have a disordered list. Love of Christ must, let me repeat, MUST drive our obedience in all things, including this building project.

We have to be like my boys are with me when it comes to joining our great Father in His Work. We know that we don’t offer any skills or experience which He lacks or needs from us. We know that we can’t do a better job than He could do either by Himself or with more qualified people. We join because we love Him, and we love to work with Him, and because we have the privilege of gazing upon our project and saying, with joy, “I got to help my Dad build that.”

Even though we are quick to forget this truth, especially if we have been following and working with Christ for many years, the Scriptures provide us with ample examples of this disposition. I’ll just offer two that I believe are pertinent and meaningful.

“In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith - more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire - may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” – 1 Peter 1:6-9

“I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy. Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live.” – Psalm 116:1-2

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways

Two questions that we need to answer are, 1. Why do we love Him, and 2. Why do we NEED to love Him?

Why do we love Him? I mean, where does one even begin. God gave me life and blessed me with countless blessings of His grace even before I was saved. He called me, made me born again, gave me His Spirit, has been with me these twenty-four years, has blessed me with infinitely more blessings since He saved me, fills me with joy and peace, and has given me the hope of eternal renewal and redemption. How’s that for an answer? It's no wonder that David exclaimed that if he were to count out the number of God’s good works, it would be essentially an endless task.

But, why do we NEED to love Him, or why am I suggesting that we need to love Him? Because, if we are not building for the glory of God because He has our heart’s affections, why on earth are we building, or for what? Is it for our own pride and arrogance, to make a name for ourselves, to impress people, or to secure our place in the annals of history? Is it for our own salvation, believing that we can add to the work of Christ and secure our eternal future by doing neat things for God? Is it out of fear that as the world gets more chaotic and depraved we need to protect ourselves from pagans and insulate ourselves within our own fortresses? There can be many secondary and subsequent reasons, but if the primary reason we are building is NOT because Christ has our deepest affections and we love Him, we are building for the wrong reasons, which means we are ultimately building the wrong things.

Listen to the Apostle Paul, and you tell me what drove him to do what he did for Christ, to suffer as he did, and ultimately die as a martyr? See if you can spot it:

“I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith - that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” – Philippians 3:8-11

I want to leave you with the same exhortation and challenge on this topic of building for Christ as was found in a sermon on 1 John 4:19, where Charles Spurgeon closed with these words:

“Now, what say we to this? We who live in these gentler times, are we about to give up our Master, when we are tried and tempted for him? Young man in the workshop! it is your lot to be jeered at because you are a follower of the Saviour; and will you turn back from Christ because of a jeer? Young woman! you are laughed at because you profess the religion of Christ, shall a laugh dissolve the link of love that knits your heart to him, when all the roar of hell could not divert his love from you. And you who are suffering because you maintain a religious principle, are you cast out from men; will you not bear that the house should be stripped, and that you shall eat the bread of poverty, rather than dishonour such a Lord? Will you not go forth from this place, by the help of God's Spirit, vowing and declaring that in life, come poverty, come wealth-in death, come pain, or come what may, you are and ever must be the Lord's; for this is written on your heart, ‘We love him, because he first loved us.’"