When you create a building, say a church building, you have to start with a foundation. The foundation requires you to dig down before you can build up, this ensures that the building will be strong and will endure the storms.
This month we had the chance to build the foundation of a church in a small village in South India. This didn’t just involve the physical building but the spiritual building to. Just as the corner stone of a foundation to a building is crucial so is it in our walk with Christ.
The bible says in
Psalm 118:21-23
21 I will give you thanks, for you answered me; you have become my salvation. 22 The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; 23 the LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.
and also in
Ephesians 2:19-21
19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.
Jesus is the corner stone of our salvation, the crucial part of the temple. We are the living temple of God.
1 Corinthians 3:16-17
16 Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.
A church is defined by the people not the building itself. So before we started to build the physical church building we went door to door in the community to tell people about this Jesus who is a crucial part of our lives – “the cornerstone” But it can’t just be a surface transformation, it has to be a transformation of the heart – the digging down before you can build up.
The majority of the community we were ministering to were Hindu, so they worship over 6 million different Gods. When we told them about Jesus the first thing we mention is how much he loves them with an unconditional love. That He is alive and active in our lives today and that Jesus paid the ultimate sacrifice for us when he died on the cross so we no longer need to make sacrifices.
When the community started to see the mircales that God was doing and they began to turn from their many false Gods and accept Jesus as the one and only true God; their foundation was started. Just as each brick in each layer of the building is important so is each person in the body of Christ. Therefore a church community is an important part of our growth as christians.
1 Corinthians 12:12
12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.
So we began to build the church building, a place where the believers can gather and worship in one accord. Just as with building an actual curch building our walk with Christ takes time, committment and sometimes it hurts. In the end, the finished product will be strong, with each brick, each minute, each pain and each person adding to our character, making us stronger in Christ.
