God Builds The Spiritual House Through Jesus Christ

Have you ever shopped at Home Depot? Lowes? Or some other home repair-improvement type store?

If you have you've inevitably seen the piles of lumber tossed aside that are broken, cracked, warped, crooked, or just plain look bad. These piles of lumber go ignored as faithful builders go for the 'perfect' building materials. After all, who in their right mind would ever use "bad" materials to build a house? You just don't do that - you don't start with a bad foundation because you know it won't last.

So it's funny that Jesus builds a very different way. He uses the crooked sticks, the broken sticks, the lame lumber, the stuff that everyone else is looking past and in many cases tosses aside. It's almost like he DELIGHTS in using materials that everyone else thinks are 'useless'. It's almost like he's loading up his proverbial cart with all the crooked, broken, and warped wood that he can and he's parading it around - inviting others to question his decision making.

"How are you going to build a house with THAT!?!"

"Are you blind? That wood is warped, you'll never pass inspection!"

"There is a huge pile of perfectly good material over there, use that."

You can almost hear Jesus' voice, "No, I'm going to build my house. And nothing is going to stop me."... "These crooked, warped, broken pieces of wood are perfect and they're are all mine." And off he goes, building the spiritual house, one broken stick at a time. One warped 2x4 at a time. One rotten floor joist at a time. And believe me, IN CHRIST we will all pass the inspection as we stand redeemed and justified in HIM alone. What a beautiful picture of the grace of God through the redemption of His son.

"As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." - 1 Peter 2:4-5