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 faces.

But if our body were 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 we the believers are the body parts. Like the human body, to maximize our function, 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.

When Stepping Stones started on Feb. 19, 2009 we sent out 925 devotionals. 31 months later, we send 1,100,000 devotionals. This morning, 3400 people will get Stepping Stones from us directly and another 7000 (possibly more) get it from emails you forward, copies you print, or use in prison ministry, small groups, rehabs units, or with patients you counsel. We then have thousands more who get it from church websites and other organizational websites, plus Facebook postings your friends see. Thank you for spreading the Word.

You send us amazing comments, which greatly encourage and enrich us, and we are so blessed to play a part in your growing relationship with God. 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 post a comment (anonymously if you want), read each other’s comments, and we can all benefit from collective wisdom, experiences, and perspectives, 2. Periodically 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 … 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 to spread the gospel message by working together. 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 writes in your life! Your decision, choose well.

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 that 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 this part of the church body, the Stepping Stones Community, and pray You strengthen it as we encourage, teach, and care for each other, becoming 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 for your presence in our lives. We pray for open hearts for those who will receive Stepping Stones for the first time as our community shares. 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