I used to go to a local hospital to minister. Every other Saturday night, we shared the gospel message and prayed with some of the elderly folk who had no hope of ever leaving that hospital. One elderly man, as it turned out, would die before our next Saturday night visit. After having heard our brief Bible message, with tears rolling down his face, he said: "I know I'm saved and going to Heaven. But¡Xyou see I'm seventy-one years old now and seventy years of my life have been wasted!"

In the Old Testament, the prophet Habakkuk warned that it is possible to expend a great deal of energy and then later sadly discover that what we have done has amounted to nothing. When he informed the people of his day, "the just shall live by his faith (Habukkuk 2:4), he also warned them that those who do not apply the faith principle of total dependence on God to activities of life merely "labor to feed the fire" (Habukkuk 2:13). Because those people established their city completely independent of God, nothing but ashes remained. Similarly, whatever we do that has not been totally dependent upon the Lord Jesus Christ will one day be brought to nothing in the fiery presence of God.

Later in the New Testament, Paul likewise warns: "Now if anyone builds on the foundation of the Lord Jesus Christ with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become manifest; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is. If anyone's work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire" (1 Corinthians 3:12-15).

This seventy-one year-old gentleman was glad he was saved, but he was also very sad that he was saved "as through fire." The fire that would burn the wood, hay and stubble of his life, is the same fire that will purify the gold, silver and precious stones of those through whom the Holy Spirit has been free to build with God's own imperishable building blocks.