I was born in the Father’s House, so to speak. That means I was raised in the church. My first memories of childhood are of church. I grew up in a family that was in church every time the doors were open, Sunday morning and night, Wednesday prayer meetings. I attended Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, Summer Church Camps, and on top of that my elementary education was in a Christian grade school. I memorized volumes of Scripture verses, I knew the Bible stories, backwards and forwards. I only lacked one thing, I knew about Jesus but I didn’t know Jesus. Therefore, by the time I made it to high school, my heart and soul were a long way from my Father’s House.
By the beginning of 1972, my life had hit rock bottom. So far down was I that there was no other direction to look but up. And when I did, I discovered two nail-scarred hands were reaching down to me. At that moment, I had a life-changing encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ. Not long after that encounter, I had the following dream.
In my dream, I was walking down a country lane with Jesus. We were walking and talking about my new-found life in Him. On both sides of the lane were fields of waist high grass. After a time of walking, we stopped and He handed me an old-fashioned hand scythe, asking me to begin cutting a section of grass to which He pointed. I asked Him, “Why?” He responded by telling me that this was where we were going to build my spiritual house.
With no further questions, I began to cut the grass with long, even strokes of the scythe. After a short time of cutting, the tip of the scythe hit something solid, so solid that it jarred my whole body. I thought I must have hit a rock, but upon closer inspection, I discovered that I had hit the wall of an abandoned foundation. The foundation was hidden in the tall grass and not visible from the lane upon which we had been walking. I turned to Jesus and asked, “What is this?”
He told me that this was the foundation that was laid by my parents during my childhood. The foundation was made up of the truths of God’s Word that I had learned in hundreds of hours of Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, Youth Group, Summer Church Camps, Christian Grade School, as well as innumerable church services that I had attended while growing up. He also showed me when I began to stray from that firm foundation and how, drifting along until it was hidden from view by the weeds and the grass that had grown up around it. And though, I had only recently been Born Again, the truths learned in childhood would now serve as the foundation upon the super-structure of my spiritual life would rest. In other words, I was not starting at square one, I had a head full of spiritual knowledge, knowledge that had never made the twelve inch journey from my head to my heart.
Over my forty-eight years of pastoral ministry, I have sat with countless couples, telling me of their wayward sons or daughters, sons and daughters who had also been raised in the Father’s House but were now straying a long way from home. I have told them my story, I have prayed with them and encouraged them to keep praying for their children, who have abandoned the spiritual foundation that was laid in their youth. For no one knows what kind of crisis that God will orchestrate in their lives, crisis that will cause them to look up and see two nail-scarred hands reaching out to them. At which time, God will lead them back to the foundation that they abandoned, a foundation that is still there just waiting to be built upon once again.
“How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in His excellent word! What more can He say than to you He hath said, to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?” (How Firm a Foundation, by John Rippon 1787)
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