 Demolition of the pervious building Over our back fence, a building of four floors high was being erected to house a car barn, offices, consulting rooms, a swimming pool and gymnasium on the top floor. This massive building will dwarf our backyard and reduce our outlook to the width of about 8 feet wide. EXCAVATION IS PREPARATION Firstly, the existing single story building needed demolishing; so a massive machine was brought in with an arm that reached to eternity to tear down the building and load up the debris. An army of semi-trailers working non-stop for several days carted the rubbish away. Changing the head of the machine’s great arm to a jack-hammer to break-up the cement flooring and foundations. When a cement stairway needed breaking up, the granddaddy of all such machines trundled in. Excavation of thousands of tons of earth had to be removed to allow the foundations to be built. Semi-trailers again worked non-stop carting the dirt away. Then the task of rebuilding could begin. When one earth moving machine isn’t able to do the job, another bigger and better one is brought in.  Destroying the old to rebuild Maybe that was what God felt when he could not get me to look at certain things in my life. If she won't listen or watch what I’m telling her, then I’ll bring in the big machines. I imagined I was ‘hard done by.'Life was hard, nobody loved me, I felt unjustly treated, and everything was against me. I looked at other people's lives and compared theirs to mine and wished I could be like them because they were better than I, more successful, had a better house, was more beautiful than me. Oh dear! What a pity party. NEW PATTERNS OF THOUGHT God at first used a hammer ‘The fears you harbor, the patterns of thought you allow to run through your mind of self pity are the imaginations of your making. You must take notice of what I say in my Word, ‘Tear down your imaginations just like the building next door was demolished. The relentless pushing and squashing until not a brick was left standing is what you must do with your self-pitying thoughts. Get rid of such a mindset.’ God said.  Clearing away the debris A NEW WAY OF LIFE Not happy with my mind set, God brought in a back-hoe. He was more blunt,’ Think about good things, pure things, replace the thoughts of being hard done by with gratefulness for what I have given you,’ I remembered the scripture in 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-18, ‘Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.’  Breaking up the existing building FORGIVENESS By my behavior I was saying to God that he hadn’t loved me, he hadn’t provided for me, that he was not interested in me, that he didn’t know what he was doing. I was insulting the creator of the universe. When I accepted God’s rebuke and began to thank him, to remind myself that Jesus had suffered on the cross to give me an abundant life and life everlasting, the heaviness on my mind began to life. I took heart, the joy and peace welled up from within. My human way of thinking was quite natural, but it blotted out the truth that God loved me, has forgiven me, and justified me. He has made me a new creature in Christ. It was a matter of accepting what God had done, how he had changed my life. How he forgave me my sins and lives within in my inner person by faith. I need to say, can say and do say, ‘I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.’ Galatians 2: 20  Beginning the rebuild REBUILDING
God loved me so much that he brought in the biggest bulldozer to tear down the barriers that I had raised against change. God reminded me that in comparing myself with others I was entertaining a fear. I had no right entertaining fear and imagining all kinds of things that weren’t true, I was worshipping another spirit, the spirit of fear. The fear I entertained was in my imagination and needed to be demolished and made subject to Jesus Christ. I needed the big machine of conviction to denounce the spirit of fear and break the fear I worshipped and receive God’s spirit of love. Yes, God brought in the big excavators and fired off some devastating truths. It is all very well to say, ‘but I’m only human,’ sooner or later we have to grow up and live the way God has made for us through Jesus. The challenge is- cast aside the worship of self and when the fear threatens or feelings of being ‘hard done by’ arise, the antidote is to say, ‘I WILL not worship any other god but the true God. I WILL not worship another spirit. God has given me his Spirit, and I WILL worship him in Spirit and Truth.
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