Keith Battle - Rock Solid - Part 5

Psalm 127 and 128. If you don’t have your own copy of the Bible, don’t worry about it; it’s going to be displayed on the screen. I see you all are ready to follow that instruction. If you’re able to physically stand for this reading of the Word, I would appreciate it as we stand together to honor the Lord’s voice in our lives. It says in the New Living Translation—it’s going to be hard to see now—everybody stand up. In the New Living Translation, I’ll be thinking about that the whole time I’m preaching, right? Looks amazing what the Lord can do. Verse 1 of Psalm 127 says, «Unless the Lord builds the house, the work of the builders is wasted. Unless the Lord protects the city, guarding it with sentries will do no good.» It is useless for you to work so hard from early morning until late at night, anxiously working for food to eat, for God gives rest to His loved ones. Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from Him. Children born to a young man are like arrows in a warrior’s hands. Verse 5: How joyful is the man whose quiver is full of them! He will not be put to shame when he confronts his accusers at the city gates.

Psalm 128, verse 1: How joyful are those who fear the Lord, all who follow His ways! Listen to what He says will happen: You will enjoy the fruit of your labor. How joyful and prosperous you will be! Your wife will be like a fruitful grapevine flourishing within your home. Your children will be like vigorous young olive trees as they sit around your table. Everybody say «table.» That is the Lord’s blessing for those who fear Him. May the Lord continually bless you from Zion. May you see Jerusalem prosper as long as you live, and may you live to enjoy your grandchildren. I’m going to say that again: May you live to enjoy your grandchildren. I’m going to say that one more time: May you live to enjoy your grandchildren. And may Israel have peace.

Before you are seated, I want to read verse 1 again of Psalm 127: «Unless the Lord builds the house, the work of the builders is wasted.» You may be seated. Unless the Lord builds a house, the work of the builders is wasted.

Recently, I came across a term in the world of construction called a gut renovation. A gut renovation, by definition, is a time when a house is totally renovated; everything is torn out, taken out, and replaced. The only things that stay intact are the structure of the house and the frames—the bare walls. In a gut renovation, you can bank on this: A mess, a lot of hard work, it is very costly, and it is time-consuming. My wife, Vicki, and I have been in the same house for 20 years. I don’t know how God is so cool; He orchestrated things so that we would essentially be doing a gut renovation on the house we’ve been in for 20 years while I’m in a series on rebuilding and building a house. I didn’t plan it this way. I’m not that smart; it’s deep because our house is a mess. It’s like everything is coming out. We are taking appliances out, taking the kitchen apart, putting in new floors, and all the furniture is coming out. I keep saying this in every service because I think it’s important: What is so interesting about it is I don’t want anybody over to my house right now. I don’t want anyone to see this mess! In fact, the only people I want to come over to my house right now are the ones who are helping to renovate it. That makes sense, right? I don’t want you to see this mess if you’re not here to fix it and make it better.

When you’re going through a gut renovation in your marriage, your house, and your family, it is too messy, too costly, too time-consuming, and too much hard work to have just anybody in and out of there. You’ve got to have people with the expertise to help you renovate it. Part of the problem is that we’re trying to renovate a new house with old people who helped the house get where it is. So, someone may ask, «Why would you go through all of this? Why would you invest all this time and money?» I’ll tell you what happened: It started with dissatisfaction. We were both dissatisfied with how the house looked, the clutter, and all that stuff. Dissatisfaction is a good thing because it moves you to a decision. See, if you’re dissatisfied with your marriage, or you’re dissatisfied with the lack of closeness in your family, or your home, or anything about it, that’s a good place to be because you’re not going to make a change until you’re dissatisfied. The dissatisfaction led to a decision. My wife had a different decision than I did; she was like, «Let’s move, let’s get another house.» My decision was that I wanted us to stay. Remember, I said this is a nice house; it just needs to be redone. Once we got on the same page and were both able to say, «Let’s do the work, let’s redo this house, ” it was the beginning of transformation.