The Greatest of These

The final part of a 5-part series on faith, grit, and the strength of character that only comes through hardship.

What would be left of us if everything got taken away tomorrow?

The career. The money. The platform. The reputation. If nobody knew our name and nobody cared about our achievements. If the phone stopped ringing and all the things we’ve spent years building vanished.

What would actually remain?

It’s the biggest question we can ask. And most of us never do. We’re too busy building, hustling, chasing our goals and keeping our life together at the same time to face the question of '“who am I really”. It’s also just a scary thing to start thinking about. But it’s important to pressure test our lives, to make sure we will be able to stand strong when the storms of life hit. To make sure we are building our house on good foundations.

The Stuff That Burns

We spend our lives accumulating. Careers. Money. Status. Networks. Influence. The things the world tells us matter. And some of them do matter. Work matters. Providing matters. Building something meaningful with our time on this earth matters.

But there’s a difference between building something meaningful and then building our identity around it.

And most of us, if we’re being really honest, have blurred those lines. There are times where our worth gets completely tangled up in these material things.

The wild burns all that off. It strips away the fluff and the impressive-looking scaffolding, and it shows us what the actual structure is. And sometimes what we find underneath is strong. And sometimes what we find is pretty weak by itself.

The Answer We Reach For First

When we think about what remains, most of us go straight to the same place: family. Relationships. The people we love.

And that’s good. Those things matter more than any career or bank balance ever will. A hand being held in a hospital. Kids laughing in the mud, completely unbothered by anything we’ve achieved. The friend who listens to our struggles. Those are precious. Those are real.

But here’s where we need to go deeper. Because even relationships can be taken from us.

People aren’t with us forever on earth. Parents die. Children grow up and move away. We can build our entire identity around being a mother, a father, a husband, a wife, and then one day that role shifts or disappears and we’re left asking the same question all over again: who am I now?

So if family and relationships can be shaken, what can’t?

This is where the wilderness of life forces us somewhere most of us would rather not go. Past the comfortable answers. Past “my family is my everything.” Past “love is all that matters.” Those are beautiful sentiments. But they’re not foundations. They’re gifts. And gifts can be given and taken.

The only foundation that cannot be pulled out from under us is God.

The Foundation Under the Foundation

When we build our lives on our career, the career can end. When we build on our health, the body can fail. When we build on our relationships, even the best ones can change or be lost. Every single thing we place our identity on can be moved.

Except one.

“I the Lord do not change.” Malachi 3:6. Everything around us changes. Markets crash. Bodies break. People let us down. Our own strength runs out. The ground beneath us shifts constantly. But God doesn’t. He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The same God who was there before we built anything is the same God who will be there after it all comes down.

And Jesus put it even more starkly: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” Matthew 24:35. Heaven and earth. The biggest, most permanent things we can imagine. Even those will go. But God’s truth won’t. His promises won’t. His presence won’t. When we’re looking for the one thing to build on that will hold no matter what, that’s it.

That’s the foundation under the foundation. The thing beneath the things we can see.

When we build on God as the foundation, we stop needing everything else to hold us up. We love our families better when our identity isn’t hanging on them. We show up for our friendships more honestly when we’re not desperate for them to complete us. We do better work when our worth isn’t riding on the outcome. The people around us go from being the thing we cling to for survival to the thing we get to love freely. Because we’re already held.

God first doesn’t mean family second. It means love for your family unburdened. Free from carrying the weight of being our reason for existing. Free to just be loved and to love us back without the pressure of being our whole identity.

And that’s where love changes meaning. Human love is extraordinary. It’s one of the best things we’ll ever experience. But it’s fragile. It depends on two imperfect people showing up for each other. God’s love is different. It was there before we earned anything and it will be there after we’ve lost everything. It doesn’t depend on our performance. It doesn’t waver when we fail. It is the source that every other love flows from.

Faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13. Its easy to see this just as a nice line for a wedding. But really it’s the most ruthlessly practical truth Because the love it’s talking about is God’s love. The love that remains when everything else is gone. The love that makes every other kind of love possible.

What We’re Actually Building

Over the course of this series, we’ve walked through some hard ground together. Reframing tough times, the wilderness, as just being life, not punishment. Obedience when we can’t see the outcome. Losing everything and finding out who we are. Surrendering the need to control it all.

And it all comes down to this: what are we building on?

The things the world celebrates are usually the first things to go. The things that last are the things we invest in when nobody’s watching. The prayer when we don’t feel like praying. The apology we owe after a rubbish Tuesday. The decision to keep going when giving up makes more sense. The faith that says God is good even when life doesn’t feel good.

That’s what faith looks like when we take it off the page and put it into a life. It isn’t a neat theology or a Sunday routine. It’s the decision, over and over, day after day, to build on the one thing that cannot be moved. And to watch everything above it become more solid because of it.

“Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” Matthew 7:24. We can read that and think about good planning. Smart decisions. Solid ground.

But it means something bigger: build on the only thing that can’t be taken from us. And then build everything else on top of that. Our families. Our work. Our friendships. Our purpose. All of it, resting on something that will hold.

That’s not a life of less. That’s a life of more. More freedom. More love. More resilience. More joy. Because none of it depends on things we can’t control.

What the Wilderness Produces

I started this series by saying that God does His deepest work in the wilderness. That modern life is engineered to help us avoid it. That storms aren’t mistakes or tests. They are life.

And now, five weeks on, I believe that more than ever.

Because the wilderness isn’t trying to destroy us. It’s showing us what’s real. It burns away the stuff that was never going to last, and it leaves us standing with the only things that can.

That’s what the wilderness produces. It won’t hand it to us. We have to walk through it. But it’s what we are made for.

And what remains, when the fire dies down and we’re standing with nothing left to hide behind, is the image of God that we were made in.

If you’ve walked through this series with me, thank you. Writing it has forced me to look at my own foundations and be honest about what I found.

My work there is not finished. It never is.

But that’s the whole point. We don’t have to have it all figured out. We just have to keep walking. Keep building on what lasts. Keep choosing faith when fear is the easier more obvious option. Keep loving the people in front of us. Keep showing up, even when we’re tired and scared and completely out of clever ideas.

That’s life.

Never Give Up.

Bear