Stephen spoke tonight on the subject of boxes and stones. Boxes can come in all kinds of different shapes and be made from different materials. Some are cardboard, useful for packing things in when moving house or storing items:
Some are wooden:
Some have specific purposes, such as a jewellery box:
All too often, however, we use different boxes for different things, and if we are not careful, we can compartmentalise our lives in the same way, separating our ‘work lives’ from our ‘home lives’ from our ‘church lives’ and so on.
Stones often look similar, but on closer inspection are very different. 1 Pet 2:5 reminds us that we are all ‘living stones‘; we may look alike in some respects, but are all individuals. God wants us to allow Him to shape us and mould us. The word ‘Christian’ can be both a noun or an adjective and so often we accept the noun as a title and don’t allow the adjective to influence every sphere of our lives. Eph 4:14-16 talks of how we are supposed to be growing and maturing. Are we growing and changing as God wants us to, so that we are becoming more like His Son, or are we simply content to put God in one ‘box’ of our lives and not allow Him to influence and shape every aspect of our lives?
We need to allow the adjective Christian to permeate every area of our lives so that there is a day-to-day development in our growth and we become living stones God is shaping.