The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded that house. Yet it didn’t collapse, because its foundation was on the rock.
Matthew 7:25
Not long after my lessons on pride and selfishness, sitting with my director in prayer, I once again found myself in the Workshop. As usual, I had not sought the workshop and so had no agenda. My Pops was, as usual, working near the door. No sooner had I entered than he turned to me and said, “Shouldn’t you be building your own workshop?” My Pop’s abrupt question was a surprise but wasn’t completely unexpected. I had been picking up clues that the workshop was a place of healing, growing, and learning but not a place to dwell. It is a workshop, not a home.
Of course, I was not to be banished from the presence of the Trinity. God makes his home in us, and he invites us to make our home him. But my particular experience of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in my Pops’ Workshop was ending. It was an intensive — a boot camp of sorts. A boot camp is not a place to dwell. We learn the basics, albeit intensely. The foundation is laid, and then it is time to move on to put into practice what we have learned while we continue to learn and grow.
Me? Really?
Even though I knew deep down inside that I would not always remain in the Workshop, the idea that I would build my own workshop took me aback. It seemed a very unlikely thing for me to do. I quickly came up with any number of reasons I could not “build my own workshop.” What would it even mean for me to build a workshop? After all, my Pops’s Workshop does not have a physical location. (At least I don’t think it does!) My Pops’ Workshop is his, created by him. I can’t create something on par with God. My workshop could be at best a faint shadow of his.
Even if I figured out what it would mean to build “my place,” what would be the point? In my Pops’ Workshop, I encountered the loving, healing, and transformative presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If I built a workshop, anyone who showed up hoping for something similar would be sorely disappointed. The only person they would meet in my workshop would be me! God was doing remarkable and wonderful things for me. What could I do for anyone in “my place?” Even though Jesus had directly invited me to participate in his work of restoring beauty to souls, I certainly didn’t feel up to the task.
I had (and still have) a long way to go in trusting Jesus. He would not send me out on an impossible mission. If he calls me to something, there must be a way to accomplish it. Critically, I was forgetting that Jesus had invited me to work with him. He was not subcontracting work to me. I would not be on my own; he would be there with me.
But don’t judge my lack of trust too harshly. I had not yet started my studies to become a spiritual director and so I had not learned that people cannot bring peace, healing, wholeness, or anything really worth something to anyone. The best we can do is hold space, listen well, and prayerfully support people as they come into the presence of the Lord. We can assist, but without Jesus, nothing happens.
Nonetheless, at that moment, I was doubtful of building a place of my own. How often do we hear an invitation from God, and then, believing that we must do everything in our own strength, we rush for the exit, knowing that, left to our own devices, we will fail? But we are not left to our own devices and we don’t have to do everything in our own strength.
We are invited to join God in the work he is doing, not to brush him aside and take over. He doesn’t need our help; really, he doesn’t. He is capable of doing whatever he wants without us. He does not need us, but he wants us. He wants us involved in the ongoing work of revealing his kingdom of the heavens here on Earth. By myself, I can do very little; working in alignment with God’s plans, I can let his love and power flow through me to accomplish his purposes. I don’t need to do it all, and I certainly don’t need to do it alone.
To underscore that I don’t need to do everything, during a time of further silence, Jesus showed me that I would not have to build my workshop myself. I saw people coming with tools and armloads of lumber to help me build my workshop. By this time I had decided to pursue training as a director, but that training was still months off. Nonetheless, I was certain that some of the help would be from the School of Direction.1 I also believed, with my director, that there would be other help that I didn’t know about now and couldn’t foresee or expect.2
A Foundation God Can Build On
A few days later, I saw a vision of my workshop “under construction.” At first, I didn’t know what I was seeing. My Pop’s Workshop is deep in a forest, surrounded by dense woods. I had assumed that mine would be similarly situated, but I saw the top of a wind-swept knoll or hill covered with long, dry grass like you find in the high desert of Northern Arizona. The forest around my Pops’ Workshop is lush and inviting. What I was being shown seemed dry, desolate, and lonely. It did not look inviting, like a place anyone would want to go.
At first, I thought the hill was topped with a patch of bare dirt. However, as I continued to look at it I could see that there was a foundation in the ground. My natural mind assumed it would be a cement slab, but I soon knew that wasn’t right. Instead of a poured concrete slab, the foundation was made of stacked stones. That difference was only mildly interesting until I noticed something surprising. “Pride” rock, that huge, imposing, fearsome rock that I could not shift from the stream below Pops’ Workshop, was there as part of the stone foundation. It was laying on its side, its triangular shape helping to level the foundation where it met the slope of the hill. The word “pride” was facing out, now written horizontally. I soon realized that, in addition to pride rock, all the other rocks I had pulled out of the well and given to Jesus were being used as the foundation of my workshop. The entire stacked-stone foundation seemed to be made up of stones I had given to Jesus in the stream below the Workshop.
I was puzzled. There were many more stones in the foundation than I had given to Jesus; at least more than I was aware of giving him. As I sat with that puzzle, I came to see that the foundation stones are the fruit of surrender. Any time I have surrendered to Jesus, allowing him to know me more fully, he has added to the foundation. For many years, not just the few months I had been experiencing the Workshop, Jesus been preparing the foundation of my workshop, waiting for me to discover it and be ready for me to build on it.
Jesus can build on the foundation of our surrender; I am confident that he can build on no other. But this feels counterintuitive to the modern, Western mind. We value strength and pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We look down on weakness and surrender or giving up. Giving up and giving Jesus the rocks of my sinfulness and brokenness is weakness. It is an admission that I can’t do it. To be whole, I have to give up all of myself, especially the parts that my pride would rather withhold. We must surrender our desire to be the gods of our own puny and ineffectual kingdoms if we are to enter Jesus’ kingdom of the heavens.
Being weak to be strong is no surprise to one who reads the Bible.
- To cling to our lives is to lose them; to find our lives we must lose them for Jesus’ sake.3
- The first will be last and the last will be first.4
- We must receive the kingdom like little children.5
- Our weakness reveals God’s strength.6
My surrender, self-exposure, and admission that I can’t do it became the place where Jesus can be strong in and through me. Surrender is the perfect building material for a foundation.
If you want to grow deeper in your faith, to have a personal, impactful relationship with Jesus, but can’t seem to find your way to that, it may be a good idea to spend some time with Jesus, asking about your foundation. What are you holding on to that he needs to complete the foundation he can build on? It may be a sin, shame, guilt, anger, pride, or something else. Whatever it is, pray for the strength to be weak, to let Jesus have all of it, especially the nasty and unpleasant parts. He already knows about them, you lose nothing by bringing them to him and you have everything gain.
- That assurance was well placed. ↩︎
- This proved to be true. I have found unexpected help and support from organizations like the ESDA, Mosaic Formation, the Arizona Spiritual Formation Society, and the Apprentice Institute and people associated with them. ↩︎
- Mt 10:39, 16:25; Mk 8:35; Luke 9:24; Jn 12:25 ↩︎
- Mt 19:30, 20:16; Mk 9:35, 10:31; Lk 13:30 ↩︎
- Mt 18:2-4; Mk 10:15; Lk 18:17 ↩︎
- 1Co 2:3-5; 2Co 12:9 ↩︎
From Pops' Workshop 
Leave a comment