Build Your Life on Rock, Not Sand
Hey there! I’m stoked to jump into this new module of the Rogue Collective with you – The Four Foundations.
This isn’t just stuff I read in a book. These are things I’ve lived in my own life and seen transform others. I recently heard from a guy who reconnected with his passion after 19 years because of these principles.
So what happens when we build without solid foundations?
Picture a game of Jenga. You keep building higher while removing pieces from the foundation. What happens? Eventually, it all comes down with a great crash. Your life works the same way.
When you focus only on building… your career, reputation, or even family… without maintaining your foundation, everything can collapse when storms hit. Jesus spoke directly to this: “Anyone who hears my words and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” The storms came, but the house stood firm.
But those who don’t? “Like a foolish man who built his house on sand.” When storms hit, it crashes down.
What’s the rock-solid foundation? Love.
But what does that really mean? I believe there are four foundations of love:
- To be seen – You need to see yourself and see others
- To be known – Know yourself so you can know others
- To be affirmed – Affirm yourself so you can affirm others
- To be blessed – Bless yourself so you can bless others
These aren’t soft skills. They’re core skills. As Gary Smalley said, “Life is relationships. Everything else is just details.“
You’re not a human doer. You’re a human being. Your core calling is to love.
What if people said about you, “That person loved me better than anyone else in my life”?
What would happen to our world if we all built on that foundation?
Your Next Steps:
- Grab your journal and write down: Who sees you, knows you, affirms you, and blesses you well?
- Which foundation do you need to grow in? Seeing others? Knowing them? Affirming them? Blessing them?
- Remember a time when you felt truly seen, known, affirmed, and blessed. Who made you feel that way?
God’s for you, not against you. He’s near you, not far away. And He created you on purpose and for a purpose.
Let’s build our lives on foundations that won’t crash down.
Key Takeaways:
⚡️ You were created to love—not just build.
⚡️ Your foundation determines your future; neglecting it leads to collapse.
⚡️ True love starts with knowing yourself as God knows you.
⚡️ Affirmation and blessing aren’t just feel-good concepts—they’re essential to thriving.
⚡️ Being a “rogue” means stepping back into joy, even after dreams die.
Notable Quotes:
⚡️ “If you don’t maintain your foundation, everything will come down with a great crash.”
⚡️ “To be fully known and truly loved is a lot like being loved by God.” – Tim Keller
⚡️ “We’re not human doers—we’re human beings.”
⚡️ “God blesses us so we can be a blessing to others.”
Episode Resources:
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Links to the Daron Earlewine Podcast
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TRANSCRIPT
And if we’re foolish, the reality is our life, our business, our marriage, fill in the blank of the things that are core to your life. They are eventually going to come down with a great crash because the foundation is not true. Created on purpose and for purpose. Everybody welcome back to the Daron Earlewine Podcast. Daron Earlewine, your host, and I am excited to launch into the next training or development module of the Rogue Collective, the new speaking, coaching, consulting company that we’ve started and we’ve spent this year just kind of going through and giving you an introduction into the content that we’re teaching with people. And today we’re going to launch into the next module and it’s called The Four Foundations. And I’m excited to get into this work. And I tell you what I’m even more excited about is some of the feedback and life change that I’m seeing from our current clients.
There’s a cool story I just heard last week where one of the guys has gone through the four found, he’s gone through the four core questions, he’s gone through the four noble quests. And in that whole process, he started to understand himself, understand who God had created him to be. And in that process, he began to realize that about 20 years ago, there were some real gifts and abilities, talents that God had given him that he used, that he was a big part of his life. And then some pain came into his life, like it does for all of us, right? In the experience, what we might call the death of a dream, right? Many of us have walked that path. And in the process of death of the dream, he shut down this passionate pursuit of his life, this pursuit that gave him joy, that gave him sense of fulfillment, a sense of accomplishment that made him feel his best. He shut it down, did the career, got married, did the family whole thing. And for 20 years, 19 years to be specific, 19 years, he had never stepped into this pursuit.
And as he went through the development and coaching situation, said, you know what? I’m going to choose to be a rogue bee, right? The majority of people, they experience the death of a dream and they kind of shrink back from the front lines of creating their life. He’s like, I’m going to be a rogue and I’m going to step back out. I’m going to conquer the fear and I’m going to go after chasing joy. And he stepped back in to using this gift, this ability, this talent for the first time in 19 years. For him it had something to do with performing around, we’ll get to all the details, but he’s stepping on the stage first time in 19 years, his wife, his kids are there, you know, recording the whole thing.
And I wish you could have been there to see the look, the joy, even the peace, I would say, just in his face and his disposition of him telling me the story of like, man, I went through this and it gave me the courage to step into this. And what I can’t wait for him, because I’ve seen this with many people, I can’t wait to see where he’s at in six months, where he’s at in 12 months. Because here’s what’s gonna happen for him, okay? Is the pursuit of joy is going to begin to bring healing and unlock things that he thought were gone, things that have been buried, things that have maybe even been dead. There’s going to be a resurrection of purpose that starts to pervade every area of his life. And that’s why I’m so stoked about this content, because not something I read in a book or I went to a conference and I was like, this should be good stuff for the podcast. These are things that I’ve lived in my own life. These are things that I’ve seen people walk through in their own life and they’re what I want to see you experience.
I could just spend a whole episode telling you stories of what I’m seeing with the people’s lives being changed. It’s so stinking cool. Here’s what it is. It’s people realizing step by step what we say every single episode on the podcast, right? The God’s for you. He’s not against you. The God is near you. He’s not far away and He’s created you on purpose and for purpose. And when you begin to step into the noble quest of becoming who God created you to be. When you begin to have answers to the four core questions in life, things begin to change. You begin to live life and live it to the full. Is it perfect? No, it’s still life. It’s still full of tons of challenges, ups and downs, setbacks, wins, losses, but you begin to step more fully day by day into becoming you were born to be, to living life to the full, right?
When you start and you dedicate yourself to those quests and you have answers to the four core questions, now you’re ready for the next step, which is called the four foundations. The four foundations of life. And foundations are huge. Foundations are huge. A couple of cool quotes about this, Ralph Waldo Emerson says like this, he the house is built with walls and beams. A home is built with love and dreams.
I just realized that rhymed.
I love the quote, but then I said it the way I said it, was like, oh, freaking rhymes. Awesome. A house is built with walls and beams. A home is built with love and dreams. The reality of our life is we may live in a house, but we’re searching for a home. And a home is something where love and dreams are being birthed, they’re being nurtured, they’re flourishing. And as we’re building a foundation of our life, we have to ask ourself, am I building a home for people? Am I building a home for myself? Am I building on the true foundations that will last that are like a rock? Right. And when I think about this, there may be no greater illustration than the wonderful family game Jenga. You played Jenga before? You probably have. I just happened to have a Jenga set up just behind me here in the studio. Hopefully the camera focuses in and you can see the Jenga. If you’re watching on YouTube, this will be a great play along illustration. you’re listening to the podcast, just imagine a regular Jenga set set up in my office.
The cool thing about Jenga is this. If you’ve played the game before, right? You look through the tower of Jenga blocks and you work to find ones that are a little bit loose that can be moved, right? And you kind of tap them out and remove them. Let see if I can play a little Jenga here. So hopefully the mic still works. So I’m going to find one that, okay, this one’s easy. Okay. Oops. I just about screwed the whole game up. And as you take the pieces out, right, you’re finding places. There’s one that’ll work. You’re taking out pieces and you’re adding them to the top. And so what you’re doing is you’re building the tower piece by piece. And the goal is to see how high you can build the tower. Now here’s the difficult part or the tricky part about Jenga is every piece you remove from the original column destabilizes the foundation of the tower. So as you’re building, you’re deconstructing the foundation. Okay? And if you’ve seen Jenga played, you know how it works, right? Eventually you keep going and you eventually remove and that’s gonna be an easy one.
I’m still building here and so fun to build. We love to build. OK. And my favorite version of Jenga is the is the the giant Jenga that you play outside, right? It’s like three feet tall. You’re building with these big blocks. The great part about that game is that as you’re building it, right, it’s even higher because it’s a bigger thing. But the cool part is when you eventually remove the wrong piece and you destabilize the foundation enough, OK, is is it comes down with a great crash. It comes down with a great crash because you destabilized the foundation in the process of building. And when you’re outside and you got the giant jing, it makes a huge noise, it crashes down and everybody like goes, ah, right. And then they pointed the person that knocked it over, lose. Great backyard game, great game around the table with a family. Here’s where it’s not that great of a game is when it’s not a game. When is our life?
Our life is so similar to this game is we so often forget one of our transcendent threads that we’ve already talked about in the podcast series, right? Which is that we were created to bless, not to build. And when we begin to deceive and begin to forget some of the transcendent threads that put us together, we begin to think our life is about building. I’m building my career, I’m building my reputation, I’m building my following. And it could be even positive, is that building a family, like these things aren’t bad, building a family, building a career, building a business, no problem with that, maybe even building a ministry. What happens is when the focus comes off of maintaining the foundation and we become enamored, we become solely focused on building. And what happens in that process is eventually everything comes down with a great crash.
You may have experienced that in your own life. It doesn’t take you long to think about people in your sphere of influence that have seen their family or marriage come down with a great crash. They’ve seen a business come down with a great crash. They’ve seen some kind of dream they pursued come down with a great crash. It’s not uncommon. And once again, greatest mentor of my life, Jesus speaks directly to this. When he says it like this, therefore anyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock, right? It’s foundation. The foundation is the rock. The rains came down, the streams rose and the winds blew and beat against that house. Yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock. The foundation, right, was built on strength was built on a rock.
But he says, but everyone who hears these words of mine, it does not put them into practice is like a foolish builder. Right? It’s like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell with a great crash. Matthew chapter seven. It fell with a great crash. And so our look at this next module is, are we wise or are we foolish builders? And if we’re foolish, the reality is our life, our business, our marriage, fill in the blank of the things that are core to your life. They are eventually going to come down with a great crash because the foundation is not true. It is not solid. And in this story that Jesus tells, I think it’s important to note that he doesn’t say like, if the winds come, if it gets stormy, if some things happen that you’re not planning on, he say if, he says when they do.
And you’ve lived long enough to know that’s true. When the struggles of life, the struggles of business, the struggles of marriage, the struggles of your own development, when they come against you in life, if your foundations are not solid, they’re not built on rock, your life will come down with a crash. What I want us to do here is to dig into as human beings, okay, what are the four foundations that we have to build on? And it comes back to something we’ve already talked about in this rogue way of living. What I believe is the core vocational calling of all humanity given to us by God, okay? It’s very simple. It’s not hard to guess, but it’s hard to live. I believe that the foundation that we have to build on is love.
Love is the foundation of a life that does not come down in a great crash. But then the next question would be, okay, well, what does that look like? What are the foundations of love? And we can, you you can go to a wedding, you’re always gonna hear 1 Corinthians 13, right? It’s patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness. Those things are true. That is absolutely what love is. But I think there are four foundations to love that actually empower us, that actually equip us to build on a foundation that can stand the storms of life. And here’s what I think of the four foundations of love. To be seen, to be known, to be affirmed and to be blessed. And that’s what we’re gonna walk through in this series is what does it mean, right? And there are two lenses to every one of these foundations, I’ll put it that way. And I think it’s this, is if we’re gonna love, we have to see ourselves and see others. If we’re going to love, we need to know ourselves so we can know others. We have to affirm ourselves so we can affirm others. And we have to bless ourselves so we can bless others. There’s two lenses we have to see through or we will not be able to step into this. And like I said, this is so key in our development as human beings.
And people might say, these are like the more the soft skills of life. I think they are the core skills of life. Because as we say over and over again, thank you, Gary Smalley, life is relationships. Everything else is just the details. And if you look at our life, we’re not called human doers or human beings. And so if the core of your life is you’re just focusing on what you’re building, on what you’re doing, on just your job, you’re betraying your design, because you weren’t created to be a human doer. You’re not a robot, right? You’re a human being. And the core vocational divine calling of human beings is to love. Okay? So we’re going to walk through these. The idea of to be seen, to see ourselves and to see others. What does that look like? We’re going to unpack what it means to actually see others and take a look at what are the things that, maybe culturally are happening around us that make it easy to make other people invisible.
Are there kinds of people that we have what I might call selective blindness? We make sure that we don’t see them. And I think, and we’ll dig into this, I think too often we choose to be selectively blind and not see people because we think it excuses us from our responsibility and opportunity to love them. If you’re invisible, don’t have to love you. But if we’re going to build the foundation of our life, it won’t come down with a crash. We have to see ourselves, there’s self-awareness there. We have to see ourselves. And I think in my opinion, you have to see yourself how God sees you. Then you got to see others and how God sees them.
The next thought is this, the next truth is this, I think the other foundation is we have to know ourselves and know others. The next core foundation of love is to be known. You got to be seen and you have to be known. And by this, I don’t mean that you know people’s names, maybe you know their birthdays. Those are great starts. It’s really tough to build a great foundation of love if you don’t know people’s names and maybe at least their birthday. But I’m talking about even something deeper than that. Right? Do you really know people? Do you actually want to know people? Do you know their who? Do you know their why? Do know their what? Do you know their how? Do you know what makes them them? And I’ve used this quote before on the podcast. I’ll probably use it again, but I think it’s an amazing quote that talks about how important this is. It’s a quote by Tim Keller, great pastor and author.
It says to be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. Right? This is how these core foundational things can be. It’s like, well, this person knows, they see me, right? But they don’t know me. And one of our greatest fears is what if I’m seen and known and not loved? It goes on and says, but to be fully known and truly loved is well a lot like being loved by God. It’s what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense. It humbles us out of our self-righteousness and it fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us. It’s foundational, right? To be seen, to be known, and to be loved. It’s what God does for us. It’s what we need to do for ourselves so we can do it for others to building the foundation. We’re going to unpack that in this as well.
We’re also going to talk about this. We’re going to talk about people need the next foundation is they need to be affirmed. Seen, known, and affirmed. And we look at that idea of being affirmed. There is a reality of that kind of sounding like encouragement. Encouragement is so huge, but it’s for me even deeper than just words that I say to people like, good job, or hey, you’re nice. Those things are key and they are key to affirmation. But I think it goes deeper than just words to actually, all of the core tenets of life, right? That I affirm people, not just for what they do, but I affirm them for who they are, right? Their essence. I affirm who they are. I affirm their value, their worth. And I affirm them with my time. I affirm them with my attention. I affirm them with my affection. My life is not about judging or trying to cancel people out, but I live my life that I’m an encouragement, that I’m an affirmation to people and who God created them to be. It’s so important. And we’ll talk about even some of the neuroscience behind this and why affirming and encouraging others is so key to loving them and allowing them to actually love themselves and step into God’s call for their life.
The last thing is this, last foundation that we’re gonna unpack in this series is to bless others. If you’ve been listening to this Rogue Way series, go back to the transcendent threads, right? We know that one of them is blessing, right? Blessing over building. And one of the first commands that was given to Abram in this covenant that God made with them, right? He said, here’s how this is going to work. I’m going to bless you to be a blessing. This is how our relationship works. And we’ve talked about this, but one of the cool things about this is, is this was such a revolutionary understanding for people in the ancient times when it was first given to humanity. Because at that point, the ancients, right, they believe that the gods, right, were many and that they were against them. They were far from them, they were against them, and they did not create them on purpose and for a purpose.
And so, so much of the energy gay people gave in that realm was we have to do things, we have to sacrifice things just to appease the anger and the wrath of the God so that they might actually be gracious to us. And then all of a sudden, this God of the Bible, right? This God of the Pentateuch of the first five books of the Bible, right? Known as Yahweh, he steps into this relationship with this man, Abraham, and he says, here’s how this is gonna work. I am near you. I know your name, I’m for you, and I’m going to begin blessing you so that you can become a conduit of blessing to the world. But basically, the way this works is as a human, you will be someone who receives my love so that you can give my love. And when we can begin to embrace that as a philosophy, as a foundation for our life. It begins to change everything because now I live in a world of abundance, right? I live in a world of blessing and I don’t live my life in a stingy type of way. I don’t live my life to just protect what is mine. I’m open-handed. I’m open-hearted and my life is here to bless the people around me.
And if you’ve ever been around a person that you said, man, that person sees me, they know me, they affirm me, and they bless me. You walk away from that interaction, you say, that person loved me better than anyone else in my life. And just to cast a little vision for us is, what if we lived our life and that is what people said about us when we were gone? They were the most loving person I ever interacted with. What could happen to our world if we all just started to build on that foundation? It doesn’t mean we’re not gonna build great companies and great schools and great ministries and great families. It’s not that the building or the growth goes away, it’s that it’s built on a foundation that can sustain the great troubles of life. That’s where we’re going. That’s what we’re gonna unpack.
And I got a little call to action for you before you maybe come back to the episode. First, what I want you to do is if you have a journal, I want you to spend a little time journaling. I want you to journal with the current relationships that you have. Where do you feel these in abundance in the relationships you have? Who sees you, knows you, affirms you, and blesses you well. And look at your relationships, your sphere of influence around you. Where do you feel like it’s lacking? The next thing I want you to take a look at is, as you try to see, know, affirm and bless yourself, which one of these do you think might be one of the greatest growth areas for you? Seeing people, being compassionately curious to want to know them? Is it an affirmation issue? Do you say, man, I just don’t really think I find the positive, the gratitude and the encouragement with people? Or could it be blessing?
Which one of those four core foundation pieces there do you say, man, that’s probably a growth area, right? Let’s get compassionately curious there. And then here’s the last one I want you to journal a few lines down on, is reflect in a time, right, when you really felt seen, known, affirmed and blessed. Was it a specific person? Was it a community of people? When’s the last time you’d say, man, that was when I really experienced this. So that’s a little call to action, some effort I want you to put through, put into the process until we come back together for the next podcast episode. But so excited that you’re on this journey. Those of you that have been with us here in the past part of the podcast community for a long time, I want to thank you so much for being on the journey with us. Thank you for those of you that have subscribed to the YouTube channel or the Spotify or Apple Music, wherever you download it, that have shared episodes with people.
It means a lot to me. And if you have questions on this episode, don’t hesitate. You can email me, daron@daronearlewine.com. I love to get feedback from listeners and would love to hear from you. That’s the intro. We come back, we’re dive deep into what does it mean to actually see ourselves and to see others as we build this foundation of love. We’ll see you next time here on the Daron Earlewine Podcast. And until I talk to you again, I remember this guy’s for you, not against you. He’s near you, not far away. And he created you on purpose and for a purpose. Talk to you next time on the Daron Earlewine Podcast.