More than a Solid Foundation

She was ninety-six years old when she walked into the chapel.

I’ll call her Sara, although that wasn’t her real name.

Slowly making her way to the front pew, she looked me straight in the eye and said,

“I don’t know anything about the Bible, but I want to learn. You’re going to have to speak loudly because I can’t hear very well.”

I smiled.

What an unforgettable introduction.

At that moment, I had no idea that over the next three years God would give me the privilege of helping Sara build a biblical foundation—one truth at a time.

We met twice each month with a small group of other seniors. .

We didn’t rush.

We started with the basics and carefully built, layer upon layer.

She didn’t need complicated theology.

She needed a solid foundation.

That’s exactly what I hope to do with you.

As I taught Sara and her friends about God’s mercy and grace, I often found myself sharing how God had patiently taught those same truths to me.

The lessons I was passing on had been learned through some of the hardest years of my life.

For years, I believed I was the kind of person God was pleased with.

I attended church whenever the doors were open.

I tithed faithfully.

I read my Bible.

I prayed.

I even taught Sunday school.

Those were all good things.

But beneath the surface was a problem I couldn’t see.

My greatest problem wasn’t my circumstances.

It was my heart.

In his book Respectable Sins Dr. Jerry Bridges states,

“We can readily identify sin in the immoral or unethical conduct of people in society at large. But we often fail to see . . . the ‘acceptable sins of the saints.’ In effect, we, like society at large, live in denial of our sin.”

One of the respectable sins Dr Bridges calls out is pride.

Pride.

Even today, those words are difficult to write.

Though I would never have admitted it out loud, I quietly believed I was a better Christian than people who only attended church on Sunday mornings or rarely opened their Bible during the week.

Outwardly, I looked devoted.

Inwardly, my understanding of God, His Word, and my relationship with Him was dangerously distorted.

Then my youngest daughter,Joy, was born.

The moment I held her, I fell completely in love.

She was beautiful.

But as the months passed, it became increasingly clear that Joy was developmentally delayed.

What I didn’t know then was that God was about to reveal a problem far greater than my daughter’s disability.

He was about to expose my heart.

If I could have chosen my path, I would have chosen a healthy baby and an easier road.

Instead, God chose a better road.

Through Joy’s life and the years that followed, He patiently peeled away layer after layer of misunderstanding.

Looking back, I can now see that much of my spiritual confusion rested on one false belief.

I believed something that wasn’t true.

I believed bad things shouldn’t happen to good people.

And if I had been honest…

I considered myself one of the “good people.”

After all, I had faithfully prayed for nine months that God would give us a healthy baby.

Yet Joy was born with a disability while many people who never prayed seemed to have healthy children.

To me…

It didn’t seem fair.

One day I shared those thoughts with a coworker, Judith Bauer.

She looked at me and quietly said,

“Cindy, if you got what you deserved, you’d go to hell.”

I stared at her in disbelief.

“What are you talking about?”

She gently repeated herself.

“Cindy, if you got what you deserved, you’d go to hell.”

I was shocked.

Confused.

And honestly…

A little offended.

The truth was, despite years of church attendance, Bible reading, teaching Sunday school, and singing hymns about grace and mercy…

I didn’t really understand either one.

I knew the words.

I sang the words.

I thanked God for the words.

But I didn’t understand them.

That conversation became one of the greatest turning points in my spiritual life.

It changed the way I viewed God.

It changed the way I viewed myself.

And it all began with one life-changing question.

What do I actually deserve before a holy God?

That’s the question we’ll begin answering in our next devotional.

Romans 3:23–24 (NIV)

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”