Try this…Close your eyes (after you are done reading this), then put your arms straight out in front of you(like a zombie pose). What saves you from falling on your face? Your ugly, smelly BIG TOE! We all need a big toe or we would fall on our face. But if our body was only big toes, we wouldn’t see the couch and would stub our big toe constantly. Without a stomach or heart, foot gets no nutrition to use the big toe. We need all our body parts working together in the amazing way God created. Well, God also described another body, the church, and the body parts are us believers. Like the human body, for maximal functioning, to glorify God, the parts need to work together, communicating with and supporting each other.
Stepping Stones started Feb. 19, in 6 months, we’ve sent 204,000 devotionals…the initial day was 650. This morning, 1390 people will get Stepping Stones from us directly and another 100 -250(possibly more) get it from you emailing it or printing it out and using it in prison ministry or small groups you lead. You send us amazing comments, which greatly encourage and enrich us, but we want the rest of this Stepping Stones community to also benefit, helping each other spiritually mature.
To achieve this goal, we started a Stepping Stones blog site…any of you can post a comment (anonymously if you want), read each other’s comments, and we can all benefit from collective wisdom, experiences, and perspectives. Today, click the “Past Devotionals” link below (www.SteppingStones-LN.blogspot.com ) and share your comments with all of us. Don’t be shy as we are here to build each other up as Jesus modeled and God desires. We are built for relationship and need each other to help us grow, and by working together, spread the gospel message.
Prayer
Dear God, You are amazing and an awesome creator…the way You made my body with all the intricacies of my eyeball and brain…and the simplicity of my big toe. Thank you also for the body of believers You have created, with Christ as our head. I am sorry for how all the Christian churches don’t work together as one united body…it must grieve You so to see this body fractured. I thank You for and pray You strengthen this part of the church body, the Stepping Stones Community, as we encourage, teach, and care for each other to be Lighthouses shining Your glory, love, and grace to all who need it, and helping each other stand firm in the waves and storms of this world. In Jesus’ name as the head of our body – AMEN!
The Truth
For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.
Romans 12:4,5
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,
to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
Ephesians 4:11-16
