Lesson 151. Faithfulness to God in Love and Friendship

Have you ever seen a house being built without a foundation? It may be a trailer, a container, a tent, or some other kind of temporary dwelling. For a certain period of time or in an emergency, such structures can be very useful, but they are entirely unsuitable for times of trial or permanent residence.

If I begin building a house with the roof and only afterward proceed to lay the foundation, I think I will have serious problems during construction, and I find it difficult even to imagine what the final result might be.

Once I was asked, “What do you believe in?” I knew the answer and immediately said that I believed in Jesus. Then I was asked another question: “What is your faith in Jesus based on? How do you understand His teaching? How do you live while believing in God?” I began to think. Where, in fact, is the foundation of my faith? If it does not exist, then any teaching or false doctrine that appeals to me may become my foundation, and I will become established in it if I do not know God’s will. In that case, my life will be built upon a false foundation.

Take love and friendship, for example. These two sisters exert a very strong influence upon the minds of other people. They know how to open the hearts of those around them and bring them joy. When I begin to live in this atmosphere of Heaven, I notice how many wonderful people appear in my life. If I were to compare some women with my wife, I would honestly say that my wife loses by every comparison. Yet I love her as well, and she is the person closest to me, holding the status of my wife. However, if, while loving my other half, I find a female friend whom I decide to love from a pure heart just as I love my wife, and secretly decide to be a faithful husband to her without society knowing, how does this appear in the eyes of Heaven? It is obvious adultery. But I do not consider it so, because I love this person, and she is a friend after my own heart. Moreover, this sister believes in God, loves Him, and loves me as well. She is a very active missionary and sincerely does a great many good deeds. Besides, she is not even married!!! You understand nothing about love. You do not know my true motives! Everything between us is pure and for life, and only death will separate us!!! What does such love look like? I think one does not even need to be a believer to understand that love without faithfulness is not love, but the lust of the flesh.

Many of you receive everything I write to you as a message from God. You see how God works, using my abilities and talents to communicate this light, but your trust is based on the fact that I also live in harmony with the truths I present. You assume that I am pure before God and His law, that I share what fills my life, and that I possess what I teach you. And this is normal. Therefore, the message has a special influence, because God uses those who serve Him faithfully and ask Him for greater love.

But the enemy of my soul knows that one unfaithful step on my part could destroy all my labor in a single moment, and so he seeks an opportunity to ruin me. Yet by God’s mercy I am alive; through your prayers and my own I am protected from evil; and through love from above I am developing and growing.

If I were suddenly to begin teaching you that all religions testify about the same God, only in different ways, I think all my writings would immediately become dangerous to you, because there would be a possibility that such a philosophy permeates them in every respect. In the Christian world there is a rule by which all the writings of an author, even those that are entirely correct, are declared dangerous, withdrawn from circulation, and destroyed if their author falls into heresy or returns to the world.

Martin Luther was once asked to renounce his writings and messages and acknowledge as true and correct the teaching of the church against which he had spoken. Martin replied that if anyone could refute his arguments on the basis of Holy Scripture, he would immediately renounce his convictions. But if no one could do so, this would testify that his messages were true and that there was no darkness in them. “Here I stand, and I can do no other; may the Lord help me!” These famous words of Luther entered Christianity as a symbol of the firm foundation of biblical teaching.

What, then, am I building my faith upon? What are my love and friendship founded upon?

A tent is useful for spending the night in warm weather or sheltering from the rain. But living in it permanently brings much discomfort. A house with every convenience looks far more attractive than a tent. However, if a house has no foundation, one may live in it wonderfully without any problems until the first natural disaster. A small hurricane, flood, or earthquake can very quickly deprive a person of his home, leaving him standing before a heap of rubble. He will look at it and wonder what went wrong. Then he will remember all the advice he had heard about laying a foundation and all the appeals to be a wise builder. At the time, they filled him with disgust. And what will he think about then? What if members of my family—or I myself—are buried beneath that heap of rubble? What should be done then?

Something can still be done about a house, and a family can be formed again. But what will become of me when I look toward Heaven and see Christ coming from there with all His Angels, raising and taking away all the saved, while they rise one after another into the clouds, and He does not even look at me? And when I cry, “But what about me, Lord?!” He calmly answers, “I do not know you.” What am I to do then? At that moment it will truly be far too late. I will stand there remembering all my teachers and pastors—those who persuaded me to accept the truth and those who, on the contrary, confirmed me in their errors, teaching me that it was right to act that way because everyone did the same. And I will understand that throughout my entire Christian life I had been building on sand. My little house collapsed directly upon me, and great was its fall. Then I will no longer be able to correct anything. All my achievements and talents will become nothing, my whole life will prove empty, and all my money will become rubbish. I will no longer be able to continue living in my sins, but I will be destroyed as one of the wicked.

Perhaps it would be better to begin preparing for the coming event right now and lay a firm foundation for my faith. After all, there is still an opportunity; there is still time; God’s grace still offers a chance. The fact that I am in the true church with true teaching does not make me right. What is “right” must be in my heart and in my mind, and I myself must allow it to enter there—with God’s help, of course.

The Lord Himself has promised that with His own hand He will write His laws in my heart and teach me His statutes. What does this mean? For example, I once believed that a “civil marriage” (cohabitation outside of marriage) was a good thing and that there was no reason to spoil a page in one’s passport. But after coming to believe in God, I allowed Him to teach me the truth that the marriage bond is holy and must be legally recognized by the state, because only then will it receive God’s blessing and approval. I believed this, and God wrote this law concerning the family in my mind and in my heart. I now live according to this statute, while I regard everything else as sin and transgression of the law. I have no intention of living as I did before, and I do not approve of it in the lives of those around me, because sin is lawlessness. In this way, God brings order into every area of my life.

And my love and friendship dwell very joyfully in a strong house upon a firm foundation. This is what I stand upon and what I build upon.

1. What did you understand from this lesson?

2. What is the foundation of faith?

3. What do you build your convictions upon, and what are they based on?

4. Why is it important to have a foundation for your religious beliefs?

5. Did Christ’s teaching have a foundation of faith?

6. What process does becoming established in the truth involve?

7. Please read Psalm 89:14; Psalm 119:160; Isaiah 26:18; Luke 1:3–4; Luke 6:48; and 1 Corinthians 3:10–15 in the light of this lesson.