Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,'
will enter the Kingdom of heaven,
but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
Paul tells us that if we confess with our lips and believe with our hearts we will be saved (see Romans 10:9). Clearly this must be more than mere lip service. Belief from the heart is not dead faith, not faith alone apart from works. Belief from the heart brings with it the hope and the love that affects and transforms what we actually do. The heart is not mainly the locus of strong feelings in biblical language but rather the place from which our deepest decisions originate. There must be a connection between our lips when we cry out, 'Lord, Lord' and our hearts.
Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them
will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.
God's word is reliable. We need to do more than just mentally agree with it. We need to start relying on it. What often happens instead is that we consent to the truth of God's word but still build lives that don't really reference it. Our primary concerns and ways of finding fulfillment are not only not in God himself, but we haven't even related them to him, or asked him what he thinks about them. This often results in a very selfish and indulgent lifestyle. Rather, we should learn to live as if God's word is true. Because we can trust him to take care of us and our needs (even more than the lilies of the field or the birds of the air) we become free to live lives based on love of God and love of neighbor.
But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock.
The beauty of trust in God is that because his promises are true it actually works. Our lives have a fundamental solidity in him that cannot be shaken by the circumstances of life. We are connected to the one thing that will last forever.
Trust in the LORD forever!
For the LORD is an eternal Rock.
The LORD wants to be our refuge. He wants to be the strong city in which we dwell in peace. This can only be the case when we abandon the shanty towns we have built for ourselves.
Open to me the gates of justice;
I will enter them and give thanks to the LORD.
This gate is the LORD's;
the just shall enter it.
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