Stepping Stones: Is Your Body Coordinated

Transformational Thought

Try this little exercise…Close your eyes (after you are done reading this), then put your arms straight out in front of you (just 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 and we had no eyes, we wouldn’t see the couch and would stub our big toe constantly. Without a stomach or heart, our foot muscles get 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, to maximize our functioning which is to glorify God, the body parts need to work together, communicating with and supporting each other. Just like physical coordination leads to athletic success, we need to have some spiritual body coordination to have spiritual impact and success.

Stepping Stones started Feb. 19, 2009, and we sent out 650 devotionals. In 20 months since, we’ve sent 1,100,000 devotionals This morning, 2700 people will get Stepping Stones from us directly and another 1500(possibly more) get it from you emailing it, printing it out, or using it in prison ministry, small groups, or with patients you counsel. We then have thousands more who get it from various church or other organizational websites or you sharing it on Facebook for your friends to see. Thank you for spreading the Word.

You send us amazing comments, which greatly encourage and enrich us, but we want the rest of this Stepping Stones community to also benefit from your encouragement and words of wisdom to help us in our storms. This is how the body of believers can work more synergistically together as we help each other spiritually mature.

Today, to facilitate this community growth both in depth and numbers, we ask you to consider a couple options: 1. click the “Stepping Stones Blog Community” link in the left margin(www.SteppingStones-LN.blogspot.com) and 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, 2. Forward Stepping Stones to 10 people in your life with a note about how you care for them and how Stepping Stones has impacted you, 3. Hit the Facebook icon on the top of Stepping Stones and share it on Facebook so you can bless others. 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. These are free and easy steps to be a Lighthouse to those God has strategically put in your life. Then share the cool stories that God delivers in your life!

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. Give us courage to reach out and be open about our love for You and thankfulness of having You in our life. We pray for open hearts for those that will be getting Stepping Stones for the first time through the sharing of our community. In Jesus’ name as the head of our body; and all God’s children say – 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