Visit a construction site.
Not the one down the street where the new house is going in. Visit the big one, the one downtown, where the new office tower is rising over the city. Get there and just listen. Close your eyes and take in all the sounds. Then sniff and let the aromas, good and bad, soak in.
It’s quite an experience: men and women toiling away, filthy in their hard-hat gear; enormous machines lumbering across the landscape; cement mixers prepping foundations that will carry the load of the entire structure, holding it up for years to come.
It’s a mess, a real mess. If we venture into the midst of the morass, we’ll get filthy, also. Yet, we can understand the process has to take place, and the result will be a masterpiece of magnificence everyone will admire.
1 Corinthians 6:19 tells us:
“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own.”
Now we face our real question: How does our temple get built? Does God snap his fingers and “Poof,” we are a mighty temple for him?
Hardly.
Our conversion from empty lot to towering spiritual giant requires us to put on our hard-hat gear, to get dirty, and to endure the constant construction all around us. There will be noise. There will be aromas. There will be good and bad, and it will affect people’s lives. Becoming a tower of strength in the Lord can be a mess, a real mess. We stand in the middle of the morass. It’s us, the guy and the gal getting worked on. It’s part of the process.
It’s also what makes us into a mighty warrior for Christ. The construction of our Christian character has to take place starting with the cement mixers that prepare our lasting foundation (prayer and Bible study); the men and women who labor over us (parents and grandparents who hold us up in prayer); and the cranes that keep our construction supplies ready for installation (the church fellowship providing us support).
The good news? Once the construction is over, we will be beautiful in Christ. No one expects a building to rise in a day. There’s no reason to expect a Christian warrior will be made in the moment of salvation. God is only breaking ground, readying the soil for a firm foundation. It’s the people of God surrounding the new Christian who lift him or her to the lofty heights of maturity in Christ. We become the hands of God, and we help the Father build his Mighty Men of Valor as we encourage those who are new in the Faith.
Our Christian walk is a construction site, and the finishes God is applying will be wondrous to behold.
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Code: FGO.F.14.16a.vp.esv