ROOTED RENEGADE

There are many prophetic voices saying the same thing: “It’s time to build for the kingdom of heaven”. But if you have never built before, then you need some foundational knowledge on what that looks like. I have been blessed to have worked in the interior construction industry, the forklift industry, and flipping houses before the nonprofit space. They all have similar structures when you break down how they operate at their core.

All businesses start with a vision. Those visions come from somewhere, hopefully God. The visions need teams to build but they first need plans. A vision without a plan isn’t going to go anywhere. Buildings and houses require schematics and plans for each stage of the building process. Nonprofits require visions and business plans for each stage of creation.

This an order to the process just as there is with kingdom building. God is not going to let you go out of order to build for Him. That would make no sense.

In order to build for the kingdom, you must first get the foundation right. That requires leveling out the ground. Grading it so that no old roots or stones or sticks are still there. Because if you leave old roots, they break the foundation that you’re laying overtime. If you don’t grade the ground level enough, then when your foundation settles, it will crack.

After you grate the ground, then you lay the solid foundation. In building, you can’t just pour concrete on level ground.  You have to put the posts in place to give the concrete parameters.  If there’s no post in place, then the concrete will pour past where you want it to, and you will not have a thick slab on which to build the frame.  The concrete must be level as well, with no bubbles in it, because air bubbles can cause concrete to crack over time even before the frame is done.

When the concrete is done and dry, and it’s been tested, then you could start erecting the frame of your building.  The frame requires exact measurements and precision.  If you’ve ever lived in a house or an apartment and have noticed the door frame doesn’t sit right, or the walls look a little funny and they’re not level, that’s because someone didn’t build the frame right and the foundation had too many cracks or air bubbles in it.  So when the building or the house settled, everything became uneven.  Builders know they have to account for settling when they are constructing. If they don’t account enough or do the right math, then when the foundation settles, many things can happen over time that will need repair (expensive repair). When you build for the kingdom, God uses exact precise measurements.  Nothing is unbalanced or uneven.

Building a frame requires time.  It requires experience.  In the kingdom, it requires knowledge that can only come from God.  You wouldn’t ask a concrete mixer with no experience on building the frame of a house to go put the frame up.  Just like God doesn’t ask us to build things that we don’t have experience building until he either gives us the experience or the knowledge to do so.  If you’ve ever tried to start a company, and it failed, chances are you just needed more experience and knowledge in order to keep it running.  Not that you failed.  But there were things that God was wanting to teach you before you launched. Those lessons are important and we can’t skip them.

After you build the frame of a house and you get it completely set upon the foundation, then you start adding the plumbing, electrical, and HVAC.  If you put up walls before you add them, then you’re gonna have to take the walls down in order to run the pipes and the wires that are necessary for you to have electricity, water, and heating and air.  Doing any of the steps out of order can create hardships on the builders, cost more money, and can create tension and chaos that is absolutely not necessary. Builders follow a set of written plans,  that includes these things, so everyone is on the same page during the build.

After the plumbing, electrical, and HVAC is done, then the walls can go up.  In every room, walls are constructed to the exact measurements of the framing.  If your framing is off by an eighth of an inch, then when the sheet rock goes up, it’s not gonna hang right.  When the frames of your doors are built, if they are off by a quarter of an inch, then when you hang the door, it will hang crooked and won’t shut properly.  This phase of the building, shows you where you may have gotten your measurements wrong in the steps prior.  It causes you to go back and reevaluate what you have built so that you can fix it before you get to the point of no return.  Because once all the walls are up, the only way to fix measurements that aren’t correct, is to take down all the walls again and start over.

As the walls are going up in each room and they are being painted other things are happening as well.  If you’re building a home, it’s the windows, cabinetry, appliances, showers, floors, etc.  If you install the cabinets and then try to put an appliance beside it like the stove and the stove won’t fit, it’s because you didn’t measure correctly when you installed the cabinets.  If you go to put the quartz countertop on top of the cabinets and it doesn’t fit quite right, it’s because the measurements are off. 

The next step in the process are the little details.  Things like light fixtures, handles on the cabinets, pictures on the walls, furniture starts coming in, beds get put together.  Rugs get laid on the floor.  The color palette for the house has already been established.  So the things that go in now are in sync with not just the color palette, but the design and the vision of the builder.

The builder’s vision is not complete until the building is completely done.  We can apply every part of this process to our building for the kingdom.  God’s vision for what he wants for us to build is not done until the building’s done.  So every step along the way, he is teaching us, leading us, guiding us in the right direction, and helping us to see the things that need to be fixed before we get too far along.

Many of us wanna rush this process.  We want the building to hurry up and be done so we can do what we’re supposed to do for the Lord.  That we can walk in our purpose and calling and feel fulfilled.  But God doesn’t operate like we do.  He operates from a heavenly perspective and sees things that we cannot see.  So he allows the trials and tribulations to birth perseverance in us.  To increase our faith in him and our dependency in him.  To purge the things in us that need to be purged before we get too far, lest we take credit for what he’s doing in us.  He wants to deal with pride, ego, arrogance and the like.  He is making us to look more like Jesus, so that when we do complete the building, it is not about us, but it is about him.

If you were in this process now, I encourage you to hold on.  On to Jesus.  Onto your faith in him.  Allow your ears to be fine-tuned to his voice. Allow your heart to be healed where it’s been wounded.  Allow your soul and your spirit to be healed.  So that when he launches you, to start building the vision that he has placed in you, you won’t have cracks in your foundation.  You’re framing will be measured correctly.  Your walls will go up perfectly and your doors will hang and close the way that they’re supposed to.  That the vision of the heavenly builder, Jesus, comes to full fruition, and he gets all the glory.

Unless the Lord builds the house, the laborers build in vain!

Psalm 127:1 ESV

Be encouraged today. God’s timing is perfect. He won’t launch you until you are ready because His plans never fail. Take some time to seek his face over the plans he has given you. Our Master Builder has everything you need.

Faythe