The New Building

I spent several minutes in our new building this morning. No electricity so it was cold and dark. But I propped a door open and walked around in the shadows. Our volunteers have spent many hours over the last few weekends putting up sheetrock. From the set of doors in the end of the building, you can no longer see everything in the building because the sheetrocked walls block some of the view.

I remember one of the ladies in New Orleans who was so excited when a team from CRBC finished hanging the sheetrock in her post-Katrina home. She couldn’t help herself but blurted it, “Now it looks like a home.” Our building is beginning to look like a fellowship hall with a kitchen, bathrooms, and classrooms. I can’t wait until we quit calling it “the new building” and start calling it the fellowship hall.

In the Bible, God says that each believer is the house of God (see 1 Corinthians 6:19). I wonder how many of us are just the shell of the building we are supposed to be. I wonder if we allowed the Spirit of God to begin the remodeling of our lives but have closed him out so that he cannot complete the work. I wonder if God gets excited when he sees the work in progress. I wonder if he gets discouraged when he sees things in your life that are undone.

Our prayer should be one of confessing the sin of wrestling control of our lives from God. Then we should submit to the Spirit’s work in our lives so that we can be the wonderful temple of God he intends us to be.