"Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my redeemer." (Psalm 19:14)

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BUILDING THE HOUSE

Rt. Rev. Peter M. Buss

Unless the Lord builds the house,
They labor in vain who build it.
(Psalm 127:1)

Children, quite a few of you have watched houses being built, haven’t you? It’s a big job to build a house, and a lot of things go into it.

If the builder brought all the things needed to make the house at once, and left them on the land, ready for building, most of you wouldn’t have any idea how to put all those things together to make that particular house. You might walk by and see lots of bricks, packets of cement, stones, and different kinds of sand to mix with the cement. You would see pieces of wood—small pieces, thin ones, very wide ones, and big beams. You would see windows, but you wouldn’t know in which room they were to go. You would see pieces of metal and electrical light fittings, and tiles, and all sorts of things.

You wouldn’t know how these things were all to go together. But the person building the house would, and so would the architect. They have a plan, and, in their minds, they know exactly how the house is going to be built.

Now, the Lord is building the house of your mind right now. He is not using bricks and cement, of course, He is using all the things you learn. Each time you learn something, it gets built into your mind, and makes up part of the house of your mind. The more you learn, the better kind of a house you will have in your mind, the better kind of house for all your loves and your thoughts to live in. If you’re lazy and don’t learn much, then the house of your mind will be small and not very nice; maybe it will even have some holes in it. But if you work hard at learning, the house in your mind will be big, spacious, and well built.

All sorts of things are used to build your house, because there are all sorts of different kinds of learning. You learn the subjects at school. You learn skills and sports. You learn how to do things with your hands, such as fixing engines, sewing clothes, building models, and so on. You learn the things of the Word, which are a very special part of the house. You learn things about home life, and about your country, and about heaven.

Now I want to tell you something, which is important to remember. While you are learning all these things, you don’t know what part of the house of your mind they will be. These things are like the builder’s bricks and cement, and wood and sand. You can see them, but you don’t know how they are going to go together to make up the house of your mind.

But someone knows. The Lord is the builder of the mind. He knows what is most important in the things you learn, and what is not so important. He knows what to put in the living rooms of your minds, and what to put in the other rooms. For the Lord knows what He wants you to be like, both here and in heaven. When the Lord made you, He had an idea that the house of your mind was going to be a special house, which could be used on earth and in heaven. He had the plan of your house in His thoughts.

The Lord knows just how important the things you learn are and whether they are going to be special parts of your mind or not. He is able to take all the things you learn and from them build a house—as beautiful a house as He can, depending on how much we learn and how we try to use what we learn.

Each person’s house is different. Twenty people can learn the same thing, and the Lord will use that thing in a different part of each person’s mind. This is because He knows that one person needs that knowledge very much and another person doesn’t need it so much. Only the Lord knows that; we don’t.

All the time you are growing up, a house is being built in your mind. It is the house that will make you the happiest possible, for the builder and planner is the Lord Himself, and He wants the best possible happiness for you. When you come to be grown up, that house will stand, ready for your life.


Then what must you do? You will have a house in your mind, and you must have people to live in that house. The people who live in it should be the good loves and the true thoughts of heaven. These will be like the mother and father in that house. The children will be all sorts of nice feelings and thoughts.

When the Lord has built the house in your mind, then you have to learn good loves and thought, and these will be the people that live in your house. It is very important to learn these things. When He was on earth the Lord told a story about an unclean spirit who was thrown out of the house of a man’s mind (see Luke 11:24-26). He wandered about, looking for rest and could find none. So then he went back to the man’s mind, and found it empty—no good loves and thoughts in it. He went away and found seven other devils, worse than himself, and they all entered in and lived in that man’s mind.

You see, we can spoil the house that the Lord wants to build in us. We can make it small and nasty, by not learning or by deliberately learning bad things. We can make it a house for evil people, if we think that we are the builders and don’t learn to love good and true things. So let us remember who the Builder must be, and let Him build our house the way that He wants, for that is that way that brings us happiness. For “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.”

Amen.

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