The Same Rain Falls on Every House: Bishop Ron C. Hill on Building a Strong Spiritual Foundation

An old man once gave Bishop Ron C. Hill a piece of advice he still carries: wake up every morning and consider that this could be your last day on the planet. "That day you will tie your shoes in the morning, but the undertaker will untie them at night."

It's a sobering image, and Bishop Hill, pastor of the Love and Unity Church of God in Christ in Compton, California, means it to be. His message is simple and uncomfortable. Trouble is coming to everyone, and the time to build what will hold you up is before it arrives.

"If you knew today was your last day, how would you live today? What would be your focus?"

Discipline Before You Need It

Several months ago, during a season of prayer and fasting, Bishop Hill says the Holy Spirit instructed him to establish four prayer tribes. Each tribe is active once a month. For that week, its members fast Monday through Friday until 5 p.m., read Scripture, and pray three times a day: at least 20 minutes at breakfast time, 20 at lunch, and 20 more just before breaking the fast.

The point isn't the schedule for its own sake. It's consistency. Too many people in the American church, he says, are "helter-skelter" in seeking God. They're hit and miss. The tribes are meant to make seeking God consistent and persistent.

He sees the cost of skipping that work in people who grow old without it. Those who never built discipline in prayer, fasting, and the Word when they were young often meet the challenges of old age with nothing inside to draw on. Without that foundation, he warns, "when the enemy comes up on you, you'll have nothing in you to repel him."

Eyes Off the Waves

Bishop Hill doesn't soften the outlook. He points to fires in Southern California, war, sickness, and people who are broke and losing their minds, and he expects things to get progressively worse. But in his view, the worse things get, the more focused a believer ought to be.

He recalls Peter, who stepped out of the boat and actually walked on water until the roar of the waves pulled his attention off Christ and he began to sink. "A lot of people today are sinking in life because they aren't focused on God."

For Bishop Hill, focus is practical. Plenty of people say "greater is he that is in you," he notes, but don't know how to plug into it. If the enemy is attacking your marriage, your body, or your finances, search out what Scripture says about that exact thing, then practice it. "Stop looking for something easy. Stop looking for something soft. Toughen up."

Hearing Isn't Doing

This is where the message sharpens. What troubles Bishop Hill most isn't people who never hear the Word. It's people who hear it constantly and ignore it.

Much of today's church, he says, is preoccupied with breakthroughs, money, and marriage, and all of that is secondary. When he was a young man more than 50 years ago, you couldn't go to church three Sundays in a row without hearing that Jesus could come back tonight. Now you rarely hear it. Yet everyone will leave this body, and in Matthew 7, Jesus says that not everyone who calls him "Lord, Lord" will enter the kingdom, only those who do the Father's will. Bishop Hill is blunt that this includes bishops, pastors, deacons, and choir members.

Hearing the truth and rejecting it is dangerous, he says, because it hardens the heart. He compares it to planting seed on a tabletop: nothing grows without soft soil. Keep ignoring what you know is true, and eventually "Jesus himself can come preach to you" without any positive effect on your life.

In America, with its Bible colleges, seminaries, commentaries, and pulpits, the Word is everywhere. The problem is that people "know the Word, they study the Word, they preach it, they hear it, but they refuse to obey it."

Same Rain, Same Floods, Same Wind

Jesus ends that teaching with two builders. The wise man hears and does, building his house on the rock. The foolish man hears and doesn't, building on sand. Bishop Hill lingers on a detail that's easy to miss: the storm is identical. The same rain, the same floods, and the same wind beat on both houses. One stands. The other falls, and great is the fall of it.

Nobody gets to skip the storm. Rich or poor, whatever the color of your skin, trouble visits every house. What differs is the foundation: whether you meet that day full of the Word, faith, hope, and love, or walk away from church angry and frustrated because you compromised.

"You don't have to fold up," he says. "You ain't got to be knocked down."

If you want longevity, he says, be faithful, committed, and dedicated to the Word. It can be done. But, as he puts it, "it's going to cost you your very life."