For the last couple of months, our backyard has been a construction site. We hired a contractor to install pavers creating several patios at different elevations throughout the yard. The project required the initial preparation of the ground, the application and compacting an underlying gravel base, and finally, installing a layer of sand upon which the workers positioned the pavers. The final touch was filling the paver joints with sand to solidify the project. Yesterday, a local pastor joined me on one of the patios to talk about life and ministry. We sat in front of a fire pit while we talked. As I looked about, I realized just how beautiful and strong the finished patio appeared. 

Our patio project reminds me of what some of you have been going through in the last season. Your life has been a spiritual construction site. The work the Lord has been doing in you is almost complete. You will be surprised just how prepared the Lord has made you to engage the future challenges you will surley face. What just a short while ago may have devastated you, will now become a place of rest and security.  In this process, your mind has been strengthened and renewed to such a new depth it will cause the lies that debilitated you in the past to experience a sudden and decisive death as they attempt to enter your thinking. You have been prepared, more prepared than you realize. You have been prepared to become a place of rest in the presence of the Lord.