The Shanty Remodel - great thought from an email

Source: A.B. Simpson, founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, in his book Wholly Sanctified. Contributor: Jim Luthy

In the upper portion of New York City, many citizens may often have noticed, especially in the past years, a great number of miserable shanties standing on the choicest sites. Though perhaps on the corner of a splendid new avenue or looking out on a magnificent prospect, the houses were utterly unworthy of their sites.

Suppose that a millionaire should want to purchase a site, and the owner should begin, before giving possession, to repair the old shanty for the new owner, putting fresh thatch on the miserable roof and a new coat of whitewash on the dirty walls. How the purchaser would laugh at him and say, "My friend, I do not want your miserable old wreck of a tenement fixed up like this. At the best, it will only be a shanty when you have done all you can to it, and I will never live in it. All I want is the ground, the site, and when I get it I will raze the old heap of rubbish to the foundations and dig deep down to the solid rock before I build my splendid mansion. I will then build from the base my own new house according to my own magnificent plan. I do not want a vestige of your house; all that I require is the location."

This is exactly what God wants of us and waits to do in us. Each of us has a splendid site for a heavenly temple. It looks out upon eternity and commands a view of all that is glorious in the possibilities of existence. The house that is built upon it now, however, is a worthless wreck; it is past improving. Our patching and repairing is worse than waste. What God wants of us is simply that we give him the possibilities of our lives and let him build upon them a temple of holiness which he will make his own abode and which he will let us dwell in with him as his happy guests in the house of the Lord forever.
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