Daily Bread - Nov 16 2006

1 Peter 2:5 -"We also as living stones are built up a spiritual house into a holy priesthood lifting up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."

Even as it takes many members to be a body, it takes many stones to be a house. God has so ordained that the individual believers go beyond their individualism to find a unity which will result in a place from which spiritual sacrifices may be offered that are acceptable to God. In the first covenant, God established a place of worship, a Priesthood, and the proper protocol for worship. Today that has all been changed. Father is now looking for those who will worship in Spirit and in truth and who are willing to walk in the unity of the Spirit that produces the house from which God is praised (John 4:24; Ephesians 2:20-22).

A spiritual house is produced when God's people gather together in unity and the Holy Spirit is allowed to take charge. The stones serve only that the house may exist and, as such, their individualism, while noted, is lost in the splendor of the building itself. The church is entirely a supernatural working of the grace of God governed by the Holy Spirit with one purpose: to reveal Jesus Christ. Those gatherings, which are merely the activities of men and of individual worth, cannot claim to be the church; for the church is the activity of Christ, the fullness of God (Ephesians 1:23).

Blessings,

Pastor Mark Spitsbergen
www.abidingnplace.org