This is what I wanted to share with you on Thursday…enjoy! Sorry, it’s kinda long.

I have had the blessing and honor of having builders in my life. My Dad was a craftsman who could build anything from a suitcase stand to a house! I loved working side-by-side with my Dad growing up. Most of the time, I was the “gopher.” You know, “go fer this” or “go fer that.” What the lessons I learned in these moments were precious. They were inspiring. They were invaluable to what I would be able to do as I matured.

My Mom was quite the “handy person” as well. After my parents divorced, Mom purchased a little house that she turned into a home. And as the years passed, she would put up walls, then remove them, change an entry way to a room and then remove it, then rearrange the layout of the house multiple times. It was always changing and in her creative mind and with her physical ability, she was able to make some remarkable changes to this house.

I guess I got their genes. I have never felt the inability to make something and I enjoy creating and building and trying new things. With some help I’ve built a canopy bed, stage sets for church productions and Vacation Bible School, as well as a doll house for our first grandchild.

And how blessed I am to have married a man who loves wood working as much as my Dad. Mason is able to create beautiful things out of pieces of lumber and a handful of nails. Just recently he built chests for our grandkids. Each one had a unique design that matched the personality of each grandchild. And I never expected the reaction we received from our grandkids. They were so happy to get boxes!

“Building things” is part of my DNA. And as you learned in your memory work this week, God is the Master Builder. He is able to take the unfinished, rough parts of our life and turn them into something pretty remarkable. Peter tells us that God is building us into His spiritual temple. And what do we bring to the work table? Mismatched attitudes. Beat up hearts. Rough words. Screwed up actions. Scraps of good intentions. God takes all of the “scruffy” pieces of our lives to create something He can use…a spiritual temple. And what’s more, we become the holy priests of these spiritual temples!

So let’s chat a bit about how God does what He does in our lives and what our role is in this process. How is it that God can put it all together to make something beautiful?

Well, He is the Creator

He knows what He is doing. God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into him. If God can make something out of nothing, He can surely take you and me and make something beautiful and useful for His Kingdom.

Recall with me the words from Psalm 139 about you as God’s creation.

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” (Psalm 139:13-16 – NIV)

Your Creator knew what He was doing when He formed you in your mother’s womb. This passage talks about knitting and weaving…yet another way to create something beautiful. But we weren’t just created to be beautiful women. God created us for a purpose.

Ephesians 2:10 (NIV) reminds us that “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Not only are we to be doing good works, but we also need to allow God to do His work on each of us. Our hearts should be in line with His. God’s transforming power should be making and molding us into the holy priests that we are in God’s spiritual temple. As God is at work in our lives, it’s up to us to trust Him as He does His work. He really does know what He’s doing.

Once we accept that God is at work in our lives…

We Need to Understand the Plan

In any building project, there must be a plan from start to finish. Without a plan, who would really know where to begin?

God’s plan for our lives was set before you or I were born. His plan for us is better than we could ever imagine. Perhaps you have this verse memorized. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11 – NIV)

The next few verses help us to understand our role in the plan. “Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:12-13 – NIV)

Did you catch the plan?

• Call on the Lord
• Come to the Lord
• Pray to the Lord
• Seek the Lord with all your heart
• Find the Lord

Have you followed the plan? Have you missed a step or two? The plan is just another way God can create something beautiful out of our “not-so-put-together” lives. But as we’ve seen here, we must do something ourselves.

Another thing we must do is…

Follow the Directions

Perhaps you aren’t a builder but enjoy another craft of some sort. Think of what might happen if you threw out the directions or pattern for a project you are working on. Would the result be what you expect? Maybe. But in reality, when we follow the directions of whatever it is we are doing, it is easier to get the desired results and what is created will be what we had hoped for. The consistency of the end project over and over again is an additional benefit to following the directions.

The same can be said for us as we follow the directions given in God’s Word. As we move from one place to another in our spiritual lives, the results will be what we hoped for.

God’s Word is filled with guidelines for us to follow in our day-to-day lives. These laws, guidelines, commands or precepts were given by God for our benefit. They help us to live well.

What are we to do with these commands? Jesus reminded us that “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” (Luke 11:28 – NIV) James said it this way in James 1:22 (NIV). “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” And again in James 4:17 (NIV), he says, “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.”

The thing about commands is that yes, we are to obey them, but they are also set in place to change us. Paul’s words in Ephesians show us that our old self is to put off and a new self is to be put on. Our attitudes are to be made new. We are to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Now that is transformation!

And why do we follow these guidelines for our lives? 1 John 2:3-6 (NIV) sheds light on this question. “We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. Whoever says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.”

We follow these guidelines because it is how we are made complete and it’s how we know we are in Him. Our desire must be to hear the word of the Lord and obey it.

And how will we know what we are to obey? By…

Building a Solid Foundation

As part of this study, we will be digging deep into what we believe, why we believe it and how we are to use our belief system in our day-to-day lives. This is your solid foundation for becoming God’s spiritual temple.

This will be an important exercise for each one of us. This solid foundation will be what we build everything else upon. All of our thoughts. All of our words. All of our actions. All of our motives. All of our beliefs.

With this foundation firmly set, we’ll be able to stand firm against anything and anyone. Let’s be sure this foundation is a solid as possible.

And when we’ve done everything that we think we can possibly do in this process, we must realize that…

We Will Make Mistakes Along the Way

You and I both know that somewhere along the line, we’re going to get something wrong in our projects. We’re going to cut a board too short or we will put too much cumin in our taco meat or we’ll have a seam to rip out or we’ve chosen the wrong color to paint a wall. We are going to make mistakes along the way.

Friends, we also know that it’s no different in our spiritual lives. We will make mistakes. But we also know that God’s grace is sufficient for those times when we miss the mark. Now I’m not saying that we should be lazy in our “living holy lives” bit (and we’ll learn more about this later in the study), but instead, we should “make every effort” to live up to being God’s spiritual house.

And when we make these mistakes, God has provided a way for us to approach Him…by “offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

The good news for each of us today is that the work is still in progress. You and I are not the finished product that God is working on. The apostle Paul was confident of these words. “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6 – NIV)

You can be confident of these words as well. Believe them. Live by them. And know that God is building you into His spiritual temple.

I want to close by reading these words from Ephesians 2:19-22 (NIV). “Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.”

Do these words remind you of what you’ve memorized this week?

“You are coming to Christ, the living cornerstone of God’s temple. He was rejected by people, but chosen by God for great honor. And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple. What’s more you are his holy priests. Through the mediation of Jesus Christ, you offer spiritual sacrifices that are pleasing to God.” (1 Peter 2:4-5 – NIV)

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Donna