Christians, I am reminded of a time when I was hauling and stacking firewood. We had a couple of piles that I was putting into stacks. I also had sorted the most odd pieces out, some had big knots, big twists and turns, curves, splits. In firewood terms, they would be the “oddball” pieces.
Now there were a couple nice stacks of all straight split, beautiful grain, size and shape that looked “perfect.” They stacked up really nice, they fit all together. When I was stacking the “oddballs” I thought it was going to be a huge mess, some of these pieces were really “out there”. But as I started stacking, they just started fitting together.
One piece had a huge point sticking out, but I stacked it next to the piece that went inward, they fit together. A couple smaller pieces went together and cradled a larger end of another piece. The stack was growing, and it was looking like any other stack of wood. If you know anything about wood, the strength is in the stack. As I looked at how all these oddballs were coming together, I thought about the Church.
That’s right Christians, I thought about how society might look at all us Christians, the “oddball” pieces with our knots and turns and twists. I realized how taken out of the Church context, just looking at one of our lives, we might look like an oddball, but just like the wood, our strength comes from the “stack” and our stack is our individual Church congregations.
God leads us to churches, He “stacks” us amongst other believers and just like I was seeing, He sees how WE FIT together, how if we have a strength or weakness, it complements or is complemented by someone else’s strength or weakness. If we truly all find our place in our local Church , we would have such STRENGTH in our Church Body.
If you think about our “oddball” stack part of our strength comes from all of our “odd shapes” our testimonies, our backgrounds, our upbringings being interconnected. We complete each other, we fit together. The world does not understand us, we do not fit well in their “perfect” piles, but we know who we are in Christ Jesus and every knot, every twist and turn was an experience that ultimately led us into a relationship with Him. He allowed those experiences so that we would fit into our spot in our stack as a functioning member of the Body of Christ, so we could come together in unity and be a safe, secure, and strong refuge of love to all in this world, in Jesus name, Amen.
Now you [collectively] are Christ’s body and [individually] you are members of it, each part severally and distinct [each with his own place and function]. I Corinthians 12:27 (AMP)
For by grace give me I say to every one of you : Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us had one body with many members and their members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. Romans 12:3-5 (NIV)
But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every going supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. Ephesians 4:15-16 (NASB)
Dear friends, don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you. Instead, be very glad—for these trials make you partners with Christ in his suffering, so that you will have the wonderful joy of seeing his glory when it is revealed to all the world. If you are insulted because you bear the name of Christ, you will be blessed, for the glorious Spirit of God rests upon you. I Peter 4:12-14 (NLT)
written and posted by Daniel Poggensee | 2018
roadcrew 40|3 