A Hodgepodge Collection

Another beautiful soul laid to rest today. Thank You, Father, for the opportunity to pass along words of encouragement and the certainty of the hope we have in You!

Acts 1:4-5 (<<click here to read the passage)

In our area, it seems that new homes are being built just about everywhere! And usually, it doesn’t take them too awful long to go up. As I travel, I can watch the progress from the lot being excavated, to the foundation being laid, to deliveries of building trusses and lumber, until the house is completed, and the new owners move in.

I’ve yet to see a new home be built with a hodgepodge collection of this and that from wherever it could be scrounged up. (The back room of our almost 50-year-old home, was finished off that way! It used to be a carport and a previous owner put up walls using cast-off two by fours – on the outside wall not a single one is complete. When we redid the room a few years back I had to shim them all to put drywall up!)

New homes are not built that way, but what about God’s house? I’m not talking about our church buildings. I’m talking about us. Jesus told the disciples to wait for the Father’s promised Holy Spirit. And though John baptized with water, they (and we!) were to be baptized and empowered and united with Him.

The notes in my Life Application Study Bible spoke of how the Spirit unites the Christian community in Christ and pointed to Ephesians 2:19-22.

Paul, in this passage, wrote to the Church in Ephesus. It had a fairly good-sized Jewish population but was predominantly inhabited by non-Jewish peoples (Gentiles – that includes most of us too!) In God’s Kingdom, those divisions become non-existent! We are no longer strangers and foreigners. We are citizens along with all of God’s holy people. We are members of God’s family. v19

But here’s what I want to focus on today. Verses 20-22 read,

Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself. We are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord. Through him you Gentiles are also being made part of this dwelling where God lives by his Spirit. NLT [emphasis mine]

Talk about a hodgepodge collection! That’d be it! I know we struggle. We have issues. The history of the Church is replete with division. I have no idea how many denominations there are in the world, and then we have all the little independent churches scattered everywhere across the globe. We are all-out determined to separate! But not the Holy Spirit!

In Him we are u-n-i-t-e-d…UNITED! Not divided, not separated! United! From God’s perspective, we are one.

Here is Jesus’ expectation. So, let’s get at it!

“I am praying…for all who will ever believe in me through their message. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.

“I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one. I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me. John 17:20-23 NLT

Dec 8^th, 2021, Wed, 5:20 pm