What is your Castle?

Is it popularity, the number of likes, hearts, shares, views, etc. on social media? Is it good academic standing, relationships, family, your income? Is it your materialism, achievements, trophies or ribbons? Is it the mask in which you wear each and every day? Is it in your sugar coated lies? What is your castle? Rather... what is it that you hide behind, take refuge in, to protect yourself with when life gets tough?

Being a college student, I feel as if we are expected to hide behind a castle, yet it's not the castle we initially intended for ourselves. We expect to be in this glamorous castle, where worries are carefree, life is easy, and heartache isn't in our vocabulary. But reality tells a different story. Most of us are living in castles with the walls lined in past hurts. Our towers fortified in fear, and our armories filled with weapons that hurt ourselves rather than protect us.

When we live and reside within these painful and harmful castle walls, our walls begin to crack and crumble, grain by grain. We may not see it or feel it right away, but the process still takes place. Eventually when we think that we are doing okay, the walls crumble, leaving us open and exposed to the world around us. Suddenly the things that were helping keep us "whole" such as sex, alcohol, money, or popularity; no longer fill the void that lies within us. Our foundation was built on the things this world promises, and the world's promises don't come with a satisfaction guarantee.

While we're searching for that sort of guarantee we search for it in all the wrong places. The only place that we will find any sort of satisfaction AND a guarantee is through Jesus Christ. In the book of Luke, Chapter 6 it reads; 46 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? 47 Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like:48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. 49 But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.”

God promises that "satisfaction guarantee." The missing piece of the hole that resides within our heart. The firm foundation in which we can build our castles, lined with walls of love and hope. Towers reaching towards the Kingdom of God. And an armory of protection and redemption.

It's never too late to change your focus from worldly to eternal. You either live in a castle in the sand that serves as your own personal prison, or a castle on a firm foundation in the Lord. It's your choice.

"A grateful heart is a beginning of greatness. It is an expression of humility. It is a foundation for the development of such virtues as prayer, faith, courage, contentment, happiness, love, and well-being." -James E. Faust