I'm Still Standing: Why Your Foundation Matters More Than Your Storm
Updated: 11 hours ago
Sermon from Sunday, March 15, 2026 · Matthew 7:24-27 · Lent 2026
Every one of us is building something.
In junior high they told me to work hard so I could get into college. In college, work hard to build a career. Then build a family. Then build the resources to buy a house. Then build the kids up. Then build the retirement. We spend our whole lives building.
Here is the part nobody says out loud. A lot of us are building in the wrong place. We are building our lives on jobs that will get rid of us in two years. Do not let the market drop too far, or a new administration cut positions, or AI learn to do what you do. For some of us it is not the job. It is status, or travel, or being needed. And as the world gets more turbulent, we are watching a lot of houses built on sand fall over.
Matthew 7:24-27 is the last thing Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount. After 107 verses of kingdom ethics, he closes his longest teaching with one story. Two men. Two houses. Same storm.
Everybody gets a storm
I know some people want a faith that promises no trouble. I am not here to give you a delusion.
Look at verse 25 and verse 27. Jesus uses identical language for both houses. The rain fell, the floods came, the winds blew and beat against that house. Same storm, same intensity, for the wise builder and the foolish one.
And it is a compound storm. The rain is personal suffering, the things that fall on you just because you are alive: sickness in the family, trouble with a child, a hard season at work. The flood is systemic pressure, the water rising around you as the economy and the government and the culture shift. The wind is spiritual attack, the lateral force you cannot see but you feel, when one comment ruins your whole day.
Most of us are getting all three at once. Trouble at home, trouble at work, trouble in the world, and you wiped your tears in the car before you walked into church looking fine.
The storm does not create the problem. The storm reveals the foundation.
On September 1, 1923, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake hit Japan. Investigators found that buildings on exposed bedrock came through with minimal damage, while structures on soft, reclaimed landfill near the harbor collapsed completely. The engineers who had warned against building on that soil for decades were not satisfied. They were heartbroken. God is not standing over your collapse saying “I told you so.” He is heartbroken when we build in the wrong place.
Three things about the storm:
The storm is not a sign God has forgotten you. I have been in the car, in the meeting, at the doctor, up at midnight wondering whether God would meet me. Do not let the devil convince you that what is happening around you cancels the fact that God loves you.
The storm exposes the foundation. It does not create it. You cannot build a bike while you are riding it. People come to me with a broken leg and ask if we have Bible study. We have small groups, and you can come now, but it would have been better to have those people before the storm. Relationships, spiritual disciplines, time with God: that is money in the bank. If you are not in a storm right now, just wait. We will pray with you and hold you when it comes. But build the foundation before it comes.
Name your storm. Do not mumble “I’m going through something.” Say it. The devil is attacking my family. I am dealing with financial hardship. I am dealing with a hellacious situation at work. There is power in naming it, not to embarrass you, but so you can put it on the altar and someone can pray for the real thing.
Same sermon, different ground
I always assumed the man who built on sand was not very bright. But the sand looked fine. And the sad part is he had the same information as the man on the rock. He heard the same sermon. He stood in the same crowd. This is not a story about someone who never knew the truth. The issue was not information. It was integration.
In the deserts of the Middle East there is a landform called a wadi. When a river dries up it leaves a smooth, flat bed of sand with high walls and shade. It looks like the best place to build. Then the rain comes down from the mountains and washes everything away.
We are building in wadis. Identity built on productivity. Worth measured by output, title, and position. When someone here asks where I work and I say “at the church,” they walk away, because I cannot fund anything for them. Money that cannot buy the thing we are actually missing. I know depressed billionaires.
And there are church wadis too. Attendance without transformation: forty years in church and still mean, and do not sit in my seat. Knowledge without obedience: some of the biggest sinners I know can quote every verse. Performance without surrender: I would rather you surrender than shout.
James 1:22 says do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves; do what it says. The foolish builder was not building on sand because he rejected Jesus. He was building on sand while listening to Jesus. The most dangerous spiritual position is not atheism. It is informed disobedience. Sand works fine from March through September. Then October comes.
The rock still holds
Verse 25: it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. The word is petra, bedrock, the ancient and immovable kind. There is a city in Jordan named Petra where the buildings are carved out of the stone itself, two thousand years old. I have walked through it. It looks new. That is what happens when you build in the rock.
The rock is ancient and tested. Jesus is not new construction, not the kind of house that goes up in a month with paper walls and a pool table downstairs. He has been bearing weight for millennia. When the news gets heavy, I wonder what the pastor was preaching when Rome fell. During the plague. During slavery. During Jim Crow. During two world wars. They were all preaching the same thing. What is on the news will never outlast Jesus.
Building on the rock is a daily act, not a one-time decision. Every morning the habit of prayer is hard. Every season the truth of Scripture is inconvenient. Every decision the convenient path runs along the wadi floor. You build on the rock in the email you choose to send and the response you choose to give.
Howard Thurman, the theologian who mentored Dr. King, said the most formative spiritual presence of his childhood was his grandmother, Nancy Ambrose. She was born enslaved, denied education, literacy, and freedom. Every system was designed to dehumanize her. And she built her life on something slavery could not confiscate. They took the land, the labor, the name, the family, the vote. They could not take the rock. That faith became the spiritual infrastructure of the civil rights movement, and of this church.
We do not just believe Jesus is the rock. We know it from experience. The rock held when the doctor gave the report. The rock held when the relationship fell apart. The rock held when the job was gone and the account was empty. The rock held when the grief was heavy and the prayers felt wrong. This is not theory. This is testimony.
Your grandmother sang it: on Christ the solid rock I stand. Your kids sing it as Maverick City: Christ is my firm foundation, the rock on which I stand. Different sound, same words, same God.
I am 49 and a half, and I have never seen news like I see today. I called a friend a few months ago and we asked each other how to meet this moment. I do not have a great revelation. I have one answer. Put it on the rock. The rock that kept my parents and my grandparents is the only thing I have.
This week
The salary is sand. The title is sand. The portfolio is sand. The followers are sand. Every metric and milestone this world told you to build on is sand.
Maybe you have been in the room for years. You know the words. You have been standing on the wadi floor, not out of stupidity but because it was convenient and the storm had not hit yet. Today the sand stops and the rock begins. Jesus is not asking you to clean yourself up first. He is asking one thing. Build on him.
Sit with these:
Name the storm. What exactly is raining, flooding, and blowing on me right now?
What have I been standing on that looked fine in March?
What is one daily act this week that puts weight on the rock: a prayer, a small group, a hard conversation?
See you Sunday.
Pastor Kaloma Smith
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