BUILDING ON THE ROCK

By David Wilkerson  (the late New York City Times Square Church Pastor and author of "The Cross and the Switchblade")

Published: 06/13/2012 - 12:00am

If you say you're a Christian — that you love Jesus and walk in obedience to Him — yet you neglect Him day after day by not praying, then you really don't know Him. Your house is not on the rock, it’s on sand and it's going to collapse completely in hard times.

You cannot get to know Jesus only by going to church. You must have a day-by-day, hour-by-hour conversation with the Lord. You must get to know Him, grow to love Him, and desire to know what pleases Him.

We consider the Lord's commandments to be something burdensome, restricting to our personal freedom. And rather than embracing His words to us, we look for ways to escape them.

We distort God's grace by making it out to be some kind of tunnel out of the prison of His law. But grace is actually a teacher of holiness: "For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world" (Titus 2:11-12).

The man on the rock embraces and joyfully fulfills the Lord's commands. He doesn't see God as someone with a belt in His hand, always ready to chastise him. No, he sees the Lord as One with arms outstretched to him, saying, "Come to Me and receive life, receive strength. I'll carry you through!"

God’s Word shows us what it takes to build upon the Rock.

Enoch obeyed God with the sole objective of pleasing Him. "By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God" (Hebrews 11:5). Enoch was translated because he pleased the Lord.