Building Blocks of the Kingdom of God

[mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#1e73be”]M[/mks_dropcap]y family  built a house recently. It had been my husband’s dream to have a Log House. He did not build any Log House, he built a custom craftsman one. My husband traveled with the craftsman to handpick the timbers for the home. They looked for trees that grew up straight and tall with the amount of growth in depth of the right sized around the base and top. The three semi-truck loads of trees with the bark and little stubs where the branches were once attached had been delivered to the new location of our future home. One by one each log was hand scribe removing the rough bark off the log. Each place where a branch had once extended out from the trunk had to be cut even with the trunk so the Scribing knife could pass over the spot with a smooth motion; otherwise, when the master craftsman came to carve the log to fit together with the others it would be protruding out spoiling the beauty of the final product. Then there was skin that the knife had missed. A grinder and sander removed everything down to the virgin wood. Each log is carved with a chain saw in a craftsman’s hand into a V shape so all the logs fit tightly and perfectly together. As they are stacked, He had driven large metal stakes into a log piercing the one below it forcing a bond between them. Repeating it again with each layer. This forced bond created a stable structure that is only as good as the design of the craftsman design. The finishing sealer soaks into the logs highlighting the natural beauty of each log.

We could have been so much like those rough timbers delivered to our project site. The Lord allowed us to be cut down because He saw a destiny in us that we cannot see. He hand picked us out of a line of people those who grew straight and tall. Those who had whether the storms and grew evenly. Just like the trees, we felt the effect of our lives slipping away as the lumbar men disconnect us from our roots. We couldn’t imagine what we will do without those original roots. Then God had shipped us to the project site where the real work begins.

Life’s struggles had caused us to grow a rough bark (get the pun). The Lord had taken His scribing knife and started on one end and He peeled it completely away as we watched it fall to the ground. Our thoughts entertained, “I needed that, you don’t understand, it was my only defense”. The Lord just smiled as He continued with His design for our life. He came to the remaining stub where a branch of ministry birthed from inside of you. Surely, He could have used it. Does He not know how comfortable we felt with the way things were? No one wanted to start all over again. He had cut off the our stubs just because we didn’t match the others surrounding us. Next He took the protective skin that covers our inner self away. Again, we pondered questions of, “Surely I gave up enough before. Why Lord have you done this to me? It made me feel so vulnerable to others.”

Just as we adjusted to trusting him, He brought his spiritual chainsaw with the intent of carving out a V shape. This V stood for Victory He said, but we could not see it because it reached deep into our inner man. He removed a chunk of who we were. Then He stacked each of you next to people you didn’t know or even like. Those spikes He drove in brought all of us even closer to each other with a force that surpassed our resistance. Oh how we wanted to rebuke him. This couldn’t be right. Unable to resist his will, we surrendered to the ordered blueprints of His hands. There it was –another stake that pierced us through. That one came through the log above us. That is when we realized that we are not alone in this reshaping. “Lord, why are you forcing us together? I didn’t need them. I did just fine without them. Here I am missing my tools of protection. Don’t you care?”

Bound together the logs cried out to God. A brush from heaven’ stroked each log and penetrated into them. A new revelation of His design followed preserving the new creation in us. This creation was strengthened because of the unity of each log that came through the process. That unity was only possible because of the firm and perfect foundation on which it was built on. Each building block laid was plumbed with the Master Corner Stone. The Master Craftsman created a fortress of the Kingdom of God and all it took was ridding yourself of the old you!