It's here: Part 9 of the 9 part series - how to get prayers answered
The Rhythm of The Gospels - D26
DAILY DEVOTIONAL
7/26/20262 min read
Build Where It Lasts.
The foundation beneath everything you are building — Matthew 7:24
"Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock." — Matthew 7:24 (NKJV)
There is a version of faith that looks exactly like the real thing until the storm comes.
It sits in the same seats, sings the same songs, nods at the same sermons. It can tell you what was taught and repeat the key points on the way home. From the outside, in fair weather, it is indistinguishable from the faith that actually holds. The difference is entirely beneath the surface. And the only thing that reveals it is the storm.
Jesus had been teaching for a long time — the Beatitudes, the salt and the light, the Lord's Prayer, warnings about anxiety and judgment and the narrow gate. Three chapters of the most concentrated teaching in all of Scripture, poured out on that hillside. And when He was finished, He told a story about two builders.
Same neighborhood. Same materials. Same houses, to every eye that passed them on the street. One man had dug down to bedrock before he laid the first stone. The process was a slow, unglamorous work that no one comes to watch. It adds nothing to the visible beauty of the finished structure. The other man had skipped that part. The ground was cooperative. The house went up faster. It looked just as good.
Then the rain descended. The floods came. The wind beat against both houses with the same force, the same fury, the same intention. The house on rock stood. The house on sand fell — and great, Matthew says, was its fall.
Jesus wasn't drawing a line between people who believe and people who don't. He was drawing a line between people who hear and people who do — between the ones who receive the teaching and the ones who actually build their lives on it. And the gap between those two things is wider than it looks on a sunny morning when the weather is fair.
The storm doesn't ask what you believe before it arrives. It doesn't check your attendance record or your theological accuracy. It simply comes. And what is underneath — what you have actually built on, in the quiet and the unsexy and the slow work of obedience — is what holds or gives way.
The question worth pondering today is not whether you have heard. You have heard. The question is what you have built on what you've heard.
Identify one specific area where you've been hearing without doing — where you know what God has asked and haven't yet built on it. One act of obedience today. Drive it into the bedrock. The storm may already be forming on the horizon. My friend, build where it lasts.
Scripture Promise:
"The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever." — Isaiah 40:8 (NKJV)
Prayer:
Father, show me how to build on the solid rock which is none other than Jesus our Lord. In His name I pray, Amen.
Stay in Rhythm. Stay in Grace.
Join us for daily encouragement and growth.
Email US
© 2025. All rights reserved.