Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Let the Lord Build Your House | The Writings | Psalm 127

Episode Date: November 29, 2024

Are you building your life without a blueprint? Does your life reflect the fact that you are a beloved child of God? Are you laboring in vain? In today's episode, Jeff shares how Psalm 127 encourages us to trust God's blueprint for our lives. Prepare your heart this Advent with the 2024 TMBT Advent Calendar! Each day, receive a new prompt for Scripture, prayer, and reflection—designed to help you slow down and reflect on the Hope, Love, Peace, and Joy that Jesus offers. Sign up now to receive your free Advent calendar! Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Psalm 127

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. Sometimes our efforts to construct something great can be the cause of our ultimate collapse. In the 1970s, an engineer named Francis Lee Smith decided to build a dream home for his family. Now, two things stand out in Smith's plans to construct this home. One is the thing that he'd build the house with, the other is the thing that he'd build the house without. So Francis Lee Smith, he set out to build this dream home with his bare hands only. No help from any outside source or person. That's a significant feat on its own.

Yet while he was going to build this home with his own hands, he was also going to build it without any blueprints. So the building process would be undertaken with his own. own power and his own perspective, his own plans, it would be a testament to his sole ability to build something great. Now, as time went by, Smith's dream project became a daunting obsession. He poured more and more of himself into the building process. Over a dozen years progressed, and the house received new levels, new rooms, additions, eventually reaching five stories tall. Yet, as the dream house was built up, other areas of Smith's life were torn down. New York Times article describes how this self-powered, self-planned building obsession

contributed to Smith divorcing his wife, driving him even further and further into the construction of the dream house. His daughter put it this way in the article, The house became his everything. Now, eventually, this obsession destroyed more than just his relationship. One day in 1992, Smith was building the house alone, as usual, and while working without any safety gear on the roof of the house, he tragically fell to his death. This house built with his hands alone and without any blueprints, this dream that he tried

to construct, eventually became the cause of his collapse. Now, if you look at images of the Smith Mansion, Wyoming, there's undoubtedly something whimsical and fascinating about it. But as much as this unique house stirs our curious interest, it also stands as a cautionary tale to those of us who would strive to build something great on our own power, with our own plans. That's the default, factory setting of the human heart. To do, become, construct something great, yet in a way that ultimately leads to our collapse. This tendency is so pervasive and so potent that it's addressed in many places throughout the story of the Bible, the way that sin impacts our lives, our desires. Yet, for me personally, one of the most clarifying biblical perspectives on this topic comes through Psalm 127, a Psalm that is short and simple in one sense, yet also incredibly piercing in another sense.

If we join the community of God's people over millennia and humble ourselves before this Psalm, it will confront not only what we're trying to build, but why and how we're trying to build it. In doing so, this brief Psalm infuses our longing to construct a great life with a renewed perspective and a reoriented posture. Now, as we get ready to approach God's word together, let's pause and ask for His grace to move. through our time. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life and breath, and thank you for the gift of your word. We bring before you our joys and our sorrows, our anxieties, our excitement, our calendars and our contingencies. God, would you meet us in this time? Jesus help us abide in you and connect with you as we engage with your truth. Holy Spirit, we ask you to move in and through this time

in Psalm 127. As we read these words, let these words read us and restore us. May you use them to construct something new in us. In Jesus' name, amen. Psalm 127 begins with the theme of building, but in a way that counters most of our assumptions, the first half of verse one says this, unless the Lord builds the house,

those who build it labor in vain. Now let those words sink into your mind in your heart for a moment. Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Now the default setting for most of us, the factory setting of the human heart, is to have the approach of Smith when he built his dream house when it comes to building a meaningful life. We want to do it on our own power, with our own plans, on our own terms. But according to Psalm 127, we are not independent contract.

over our lives. We are, in fact, dependent co-laborers who can build with meaningful labor because God is the one who's building. Now, this truth meets us at the intersection of every area of life where our meaningful effort is trying to construct or cultivate something meaningful. Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord builds my relationships, my labor, is in vain. Unless the Lord builds the foundation for my job and my vocational desires, my labor is in vain. Unless the Lord builds my family, my labor's in vain. Unless the Lord builds my life, my labor is in vain. We are far more dependent than we tend to realize. Do you believe that? How might you currently be laboring as if you're the one building your own life with your own power and your own plans on your

terms. Two quick things to help you identify those areas of self-construction. Where do you notice yourself responding with the strongest degree of emotional instability, with really high highs and really low lows just on the emotional roller coaster? What causes that for you? Secondly, and related to that, what do you find yourself ruminating on? the most. What's been consuming your thought patterns? What's been stealing your ability to be present with people you love? It might even be a good thing that's causing that, but it's still a thing that's causing you to be less dependent on the sovereign work of God, the God who's building the house. Now, if it's true that the living God is building the house, then we are free to loosen our grip

on the things that cause us to labor with restless anxiety. That's the thrust of verse 2 in Psalm 127 says this. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil. These words are so countercultural in our era of unhindered, hurried toil. Let's focus on that phrase, anxious toil. The original Hebrew word here, Esteve, carries a sense of pain. painful effort. We cause pain in our lives when we restlessly strive to build something with our own power and with our own plans. It's the kind of pain that exhausts us internally and also estrange

us externally in our relationship with God and our relationship with others. What does that anxious toil look like for you right now? In your rhythm of life right now, in this season, Are there habits or rhythms leading you to exhaustion or estrangement? Could that painful toil be an indicator that you're trying to build something on your own power, with your own plans, on your own terms? Amidst this sobering diagnosis of our anxious toil, Psalm 127 turns a massive corner at the end of verse two, says this, for he gives to his beloved sleep. These seven words are so profoundly comforting and challenging to me personally.

They begin with the good news of God's loving provision to his people. He gives to his beloved. Cutting into the self-sufficiency of our anxious toil is the sacrificial love of God to his beloved. This is a beautiful truth statement. But it's one that's admittedly hard for many people to believe. to fully embody and embrace. Because it's one thing to believe that God exists and loves in a general sense, yet a very, very different thing to live like we are His beloved,

like we really are the recipients of his steadfast love and delight. I just wonder in my own life if that's one of the reasons why, for me, and so many of us, we fill our lives with anxious toil, why we shoulder the imaginary burden of having to build our lives on our own power and with our own plans because we haven't settled into our identity as beloved children of the Creator. We're stuck in cycles of painful, anxious toil because we're not fully convinced that we are the beloved who can receive rest from God. In a lot of ways, it's us pretending like we can be God over our own lives.

Does the rhythm of your life reflect your status as a beloved child of God? Or are you still somewhat unconvinced of God's affection? And are you instead turning to anxious toil to fill that need for love? These are big questions that probably can't be answered in any one given moment while you're on a walk, driving the car, gardening, cooking, whatever you're doing right now. And that's okay. These are really big questions. The appropriate response to Psalm 127 isn't for us to find a quick, simplistic answer to these questions.

They're big questions. The appropriate response is to cultivate an ongoing curiosity about who we really think God is and who we really think we are in relation to him. And what difference his love makes in both of those dynamics. I really like the way that Steve Cuss, a pastor, author describes this kind of curiosity in his book The Expectation Gap. Fantastic book, by the way. I highly recommend it.

He writes this. He starts by quoting a friend of his, Trisha Taylor. She said, The opposite of anxiety is not calm. It is curiosity. I really like that when I'm saying it word time. Tricia Taylor said, The opposite of anxiety is not calm.

It is curiosity. Now in his book, The Expectation Gap, Cuss goes on to write this. He says, I'm fascinated by that. curiosity helps us locate assumptions and keep judgment and check it helps us explore what is beyond what we think we know for sure curiosity may be the superpower for spiritual growth without it we assume we know something with it we're unlocked from our rigid assumptions and can move into a life of faith and the one true God. Man, I love how he describes the faith required to have that kind of curiosity about who God is

and who we are. Let's call it a redemptive or restorative curiosity, a curiosity that draws us into a process that clarifies both our perspectives of God and ourselves and our posture toward God and ourselves, our relationships. See, Francis Lee Smith spent over a dozen years constructing something that became as everything and ultimately led to his collapse. Psalm 127 invites you and I to be curious about the ways that we might be building something on our own power, with our own plans, clinging to a kind of anxious toil that runs our lives. That curiosity played out over time and in community can lead us to the heart of our creator, to the one who calls us beloved,

to the one who is building goodness, truth, and beauty into our lives. It's a curiosity that can draw us back to the one who gives us the rest our hearts, minds, and bodies desperately need. God, as we enter into the rest of this day, would you help us believe and experience the truth that you are building the house, that our labor is not in vain? God, would you give us a redemptive,

curiosity that increases our awareness of your work in us and your love for us. We need you more than we know. Lord, build the house. In Jesus' name, amen.