Building Foundations

Pete Steveson

faith-for-the-familySir Isaac Newton, the renowned scientist of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, stated: “If I have seen further (than other men), it is by standing on the shoulder’s of Giants,” This is what each person does as he builds his life. He takes the foundation of what has gone before and builds upon it.

The Bible has much to say about building, “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ (I Corinthians 3:11). Faith in Christ is the only foundation that can stand the buffetings of the storms of life. The man who keeps the words of the Lord is likened to a man who built his house upon a rock-the storms came, the winds beat upon the house, and the flood-waters rose around it; but the house did not fall, because “it was founded upon a rock” (Matthew 7:25). The foolish man erected his house upon sand, and when the wind and rain swirled about his house, it could not stand.

In I Corinthians 3:10 Paul wrote, “let every man take heed how he buildeth,” The building of our lives is to be done under the guidance of the Spirit of God. Love, consistency, prayer, faith, and patience should constitute key parts of a godly building,

Just as Isaac Newton “stood on the shoulders” of others, so those who follow us will mold their lives after ours, What we are in the home, our children are likely to become, This is why we should be concerned about leading them to a saving know ledge of Jesus Christ early in their lives. He, and He alone, should be at the heart of the foundation that is laid for their precious and eternal future.


This article appeared first in Faith for the Family, January / February 1974. It is republished here by permission.