760 Having a True Foundation - 1 Corinthians 3:11

If you were building a building, how would you start? 

Hi, I'm Mike Henry Sr. with Follower of One. Thanks for joining me again today on the Follower of One Podcast. 

Today, I want to talk about 1 Corinthians 3:11, and I'm reading from the English Standard Version. "

For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." 

Now, this verse is part of a lengthy explanation that's going on by the apostle Paul, as he speaks to the church in Corinth. But he's pointing out that our faith in our life and everything that we do with our lives is something that is built on a foundation.

Your life will be built by you. You get to build it. But no one can lay the foundation.  Jesus is the foundation. If we don't have, Jesus is our foundation, our life is built on nothing. It's built on sand and it won't stand the test of time. But if our life is built on Jesus Christ, it will stand the test of time.

He's our foundation. And when we build on him, our work in the lives of our coworkers, customers, vendors, and friends is designed to be part of God's activity. It's part of his grand strategy. It's not part of what we're building. It all becomes part of what Christ is building. It's a very interesting challenge.

Paul reminds us this all starts with Jesus. But when we punch in and listen to him, he will put us to work. And so we've been talking on our Marketplace Mission Trip about the first prayer is, "Here. I am," punching us in. And then we go to work for him and he puts us to work. 

Sometime in the next few weeks, someone is going to ask you why you did something. Maybe you stayed late to help them. Maybe you bought a lunch or you did something over and above what was expected of you. When you do that because you're our Jesus follower, especially people will ask. They won't understand your motives. If they think you're just doing these things to get ahead in your job, they will never ask. But if you can clearly do things that won't get you ahead in your job, then people will be curious. 

And hopefully Jesus will give you the idea. He's our foundation. He's our motivation. When we follow him, we become part of his plan, not ours. And our actions become the will of God. In My Most for His Highest, the author says we are the will of God when we're obeying him and doing what he says.

And so we will be the will of God when we do what God wants. My question for us today is do we trust Jesus enough to tell others that he's the reason why we did something? Our third daily activity is to know what we believe. We practice a one or two sentence answer that tells other people that we did what we did because we're a Jesus follower.

And if we're good at appreciating and serving others, they will ask us. They'll say, "why did you do that?" So as we practice answering this question, we get ready to be able to explain in one or two sentences using "I" and "me" statements, that Jesus was part of our motivation for us being a blessing to them, for us appreciating them, or for us doing something for them. 

In one or two sentences, if you buy someone's lunch today, give them that answer when they ask. Just say something like,  "I follow Jesus. And I thought this was something that Jesus would want me to do." Practice it some so that it becomes very natural. 

If Jesus is your foundation, he's the basis for your actions. Your actions will point other people to Jesus, as you do what he says. So what we do, because we believe in him is part of what he's doing in our world. I hope that makes sense. I want to challenge us to go ahead and do the crazy ideas that pop into our mind, especially those that we get while we're praying. Let's let Jesus guide us into doing things so that he becomes visible and he will put us to work.

That's our challenge for today. Practice a little bit and get ready to answer the question, "Why are you doing this?" And if you're interested in continuing this activity, or if you're hearing this podcast and you're not taking our Marketplace Mission Trip, check it out. You can find out more about it inside of our online community at https://community.followerofone.org.

Thanks very much.