I can add my own personal experience to this..After spending all my life in church, when I was about 23 years old I started studying with the Seventh Day Adventist church and thought after all my life of living "in error" I had finally arrived at the truth!! For 20 years I was happily calling myself among the "chosen"..the few who obeyed the commanments of God! Oh my gosh! God is so merciful! I kept thinking about building your house on the sand and I always said "my house is built on the solid rock" After about 12 years into my journey of the "chosen" I began to think that surely something was not right! during those years I was busy raising my children and didn't stop to think about my "spiritual house". One day I said, "There is more to life than sitting in church every week hearing how perfect my life is and how no one else will go to heaven unless we tell them the truth we have"..hmmm..when I started to question this the church really frowned on my ideas! I actually attended a board meeting in which I was going to be disfellowshipped..anyone who knows me knows that is just so silly!
I had been an outstanding member for years, and held offices in the church! I was the youth leader!! I was the "worship leader"! and I had been the primary Sabbath School teacher for nearly the whole time I was an Adventist! How the mighty are fallen!!
Houses built on the sand? yeah! I know what that's like...it's a pretty cold awakening when you think you've arrived and you're not even close!! In 2004 I found Bible Truths and I found where my spitual house would be built! and that hasn't been an easy house to build, but God is building it..sometimes he has to tear out some things that I try to build myself..but His ways are best...My house is still under construction!!
Kathy