Bible Reading: Jude 1:20-24
But you, dear friends, must continue to build your lives on the foundation of your holy faith. And continue to pray as you are directed by the Holy Spirit. Jude 1:20
THE GOLDEN GATE Bridge stretches across San Francisco Bay in California. This bridge, perhaps the most famous bridge in the whole world, was completed in 1937. It’s one of the longest suspension bridges in the world, stretching for 8,891 feet (or one and three-quarter miles—that’s almost thirty football fields long!).
Now, the Golden Gate Bridge spans a channel where very strong winds blow. That area has been hit by many earthquakes, some of them strong enough to topple buildings and collapse expressways. Yet the Golden Gate Bridge has withstood those earthquakes and is as strong today as when it was built.
You want to know how the Golden Gate can stand while many other structures all around it have cracked or crumbled?
Part of the secret is in the foundation. You see, the builders of the Golden Gate Bridge knew that the area was subject to earthquakes. (A really bad earthquake destroyed much of San Francisco in 1906, only thirty-one years before the bridge was built.) So they sank the two great towers of the bridge deep into two massive concrete blocks, which had been reinforced with strong steel beams. One of these great blocks, larger than a city block, weighs over 90 million pounds! With that kind of foundation, the Golden Gate Bridge can withstand even severe attacks.
The same is true of you. You may not have to go through any earthquakes, but you may have friends trying to get you to smoke or try drugs. You may sometimes be tempted to lie to your parents or teachers. You will face a lot of temptations to do wrong and may find it hard sometimes to make right choices.
That’s why you need to do what the builders of the Golden Gate Bridge did. You need to build a strong foundation for making right choices in your heart and mind. You need to sink two great “towers” of strength into your heart that will help you to make right choices even when your friends try to talk you into wrong choices. What are those two strong towers? Prayer and Bible reading.
You’ve probably heard it before, but if you pray faithfully and read your Bible carefully every day, you’ll be drilling those two towers deeper and deeper into your heart and mind. So that the next time a really big temptation comes, you’ll be ready—to stand strong.
REFLECT: Do you have trouble making right choices? Do you think spending time with God every day (through prayer and Bible reading) could help you to make right choices? Why or why not? Are you building your faith through prayer and Bible reading? Do you need help to become faithful in prayer and Bible reading?
PRAY: “God, please help me to be faithful every day in prayer and Bible reading so that I can be strong enough to make right choices.”
