People today use a lot of slang words for everything. I use a few, and I bet you do too. Here are just a few: "Chow" means food, "Dough" means money, and "Flat Tire" means pothole! (I made up that last one.)
A pothole is "a structural failure on the surface of the road due to water getting into the underlying foundation and pressure being pressed upon it from the outside." That’s Wikipedia's description for it.
Here is mine: "Something caused the pavement to crack, water seeped in and softened the foundation, and when the weight of a car drove on it, it broke into a thousand pieces and created a hole that will bust your tire!"
I bet you can think back to a time when you’ve ran over a pothole that felt like you hit a small part of the Grand Canyon, can’t you? I once saw five cars within a two mile stretch of road, pulled over and changing flat tires after each of them had hit a super deep pothole.
I was fortunate enough to see the hole up ahead and miss it by just a few feet. The others weren’t as lucky. Maybe they should have been paying more attention.
Is that really what it takes? Paying attention? I can think of a few times that I hit potholes even though I WAS paying attention. It just came up on me too fast.
Maybe the solution lies in the laying of the foundation rather than the avoidance of the hole? Sounds logical to me.
Make the foundation strong so that there is never a crack for something to seep in and destroy it to begin with.
Maybe you are dealing with a strained relationship, trouble with your job, issues with a friend or trouble with your family? Somewhere along the road of life a crack in the foundation has formed and unwanted things have seeped in and created a hole where happiness once lived. It’s at those times that people will do the natural thing, much like a road crew, and pull out the patch.
Get your bucket of asphalt and pile mounds of it into the hole until it looks fixed. Looks fine. Feels fine. It must BE fine, right?
Not hardly. The foundation is still broken. If the foundation has been broken, nothing resting upon it will ever stay together. You HAVE to fix the foundation.
As Christians, the foundation of our life IS Christ. How we live, love, and serve is based on the relationship that we have with Him. If that foundation is not strong, then everything built upon it will fall.
It should not be a shock to the Christian when we look at our life and wonder why we are in total chaos and stress when we are not in a right relationship with Christ. There is only one way to fix it…Go back to the foundation.
Seek restoration with Christ by calling out to Him “Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a right spirit within me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you.” (Psalm 51:10,12)
Those last six words are the key. "Make me willing to obey you.” That means following God’s will and ways in your relationships, and seeking God, not yourself. Looking to God for answers and not others.
God is in the business of restoration. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is passed away; behold, the new has come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17 … To truly “get rid of the holes, you first have to be made WHOLE.”
