Restoration in This Old House
“This house I’ve built, it’s crumbling and falling apart
This house I’ve built, I thought I was safe
I reside here, with the bricks falling around me
This house I’ve built, I thought it was all I could have
There was a knock on the door and Jesus walked in
He took down the pictures on the walls and packed away the lies
He pulled up the floorboards and removed the shame buried beneath
I found myself grasping at what I could keep
“Jesus, it hurts” I hear myself say
Taking my hands, he took what I was holding onto and spoke
“I love you; I want to live with you, but this house is not fit for a king”
He peeled off the wallpaper I tried to hide behind,
And tore down the walls around my heart,
The house I built, I thought it was all I could have.
That knock on the door changed everything.”
I wrote this poem a few years back, when the Lord was taking me through a season of intense reconstruction. I was learning about how the house I had been building around myself was nothing like the house the Lord wanted to bring me into.
When I began to invite Him into my space, He started to show me what His love was really like.
I built what I thought was a safe space around me, slowly constructed walls of things I loved and people that loved me. I hadn’t known anything different, which led me to an understanding that what I had built was good.
When the foundation below me began to crumble, I realized I hadn’t built my foundation on the Lord. It was built on earthly things that resulted in a home that was unstable with a faulty foundation.
The Lord did not rip through and tear my home down around me overnight; it was a slow process as he replaced the ground I stood on with one that was built on Him. My eyes were opened to each cracked floorboard as He replaced them with ones He had built with His own two hands.
That season also spoke to the character of the Lord as well — graceful and loving. He loved me enough to not leave me in the home that was cracked and falling apart. He knew that knocking on my door would lead to something I didn’t see coming but that needed to happen…even if it hurt at times.
Friends, know this: If the Lord is knocking at your door with His love in hand in the form of reconstruction, it’s because He loves you and wants to move into your life. He can’t live in the homes we attempt to build with our earthly hands. He wants to move into the home that was crafted on a foundation of love, one that isn’t cracking or falling apart. One that is solid, built on Him.
So, if you hear knocking at the door of your heart, let Him in.
