“He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep.” Luke 6:48
The parable of the two builders and two houses cannot be understood by merely looking at the purpose and intent. The floor plans were no doubt very similar, as were the building materials, the timing, skill and general location. Yet, there were two very different outcomes. The storms didn’t move the first house; they left the second house in ruins. The difference was in the foundations. The house on the rock stood; the one built on the sand collapsed. The first man took the time to dig deep; the second man supposed that all that digging was a waste of time. The second man probably built his house in record time. He may have been finishing up the latch on the front door, or painting the last piece of trim when he looked out and saw that his neighbor was just nailing the rafters into place. He smirked, “Ha! Levi hasn’t even got his roof done!”
Let’s cut to the chase. We’re talking about the real, authentic you. You are a complex creature. “Fearfully and wonderfully made.” You are more than muscle and blood, skin and bones. You are more than a homo sapiens who walks upright, breathes, eats, sleeps, wears clothes and works for a living. Inside of you lives a dynamic personality with motivations, desires, loves, affections, drives, beliefs and intentions. God has a vested interest in your inner person. “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” Hebrews 4:13. Question: How deep are you willing to dig? The integrity of your house is a function of the depth of your digging. You can live cheap or you can dig deep! You can race and lose, or you can painstakingly do the job right and win.
God has x-ray vision. He sees hidden things. That’s why there is a divine invention called repentance. It represents the invasive process of digging. Shallow, incomplete repentance seems godly, but it is only an exercise in self-deception. Shallow repentance stops short of real pain. Deep repentance drives through the pain because a real relationship with God is worth any amount of discomfort. And so, the quest, the goal, the mission that each of us has is to get to that place of the inward parts, to keep digging until we reach the solid rock of truth.
Old Testament animal sacrifices were grisly. It was such a complete, bloody carving up of the animal that there was no chance it would come back to life. That gruesome example defines repentance. When a sensitive subject comes up, some say, “I’m not going there.” I’m sorry, but you have to “go there!” Dig deep. Get to the foundation rock. Dig into your relationships, loves, habits, weaknesses. Dig dirty. There’s no such thing as a nice repentance; it’s gonna hurt. Dig up offenses, attitudes, hurts, questions about God. Dig through roots of bitterness, shame, inadequacies, loss. Dig through the clay of habits, addictions, failures, disappointments. Don’t build your fancy house on a shaky foundation. When do you stop digging? You are not through digging when you get tired, or just because you hit boulder too big for you to handle, or when you run out of time. You are only through digging when you have reached the foundation rock!
Storms do come. Loss, sickness, break-ups, accidents, rejection and death. My parents’ first child died of diphtheria at ten months old. They not only survived the tragedy, they flourished. They went on to plant a church, and then pastor another church. They enjoyed forty-seven years of marital bliss. The key was that they dug down to the foundation rock! Dig, my friend, dig deep! The rock is there if you dig deep enough!