Building Up The Body

Scripture: Ephesians 4: 1‰As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you

to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely

humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make

every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

There is one body and one Spirit˜just as you were called to one hope when

you were called˜one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of

all, who is over all and through all and in all.‰

We‚ve come a long way in the building of the new church. Many days of

hard work, many thousands of dollars spent and many prayers have gone up

to get us where we are today.

This is a great task to be accomplished and very important, but we must

not forget what is more important: „the building up of the body of

Christ.‰

Story

I remember years ago when we use to go deer hunting for a week. We

planed for weeks before the hunt to get everything ready and we traveled

to the northern part of the state to the most remote place we could find.

I remember one year in particular. It was Monday morning, the first day

of hunting season, it was 5 am and we were busy getting all our stuff

together to go out to hunt. There was one guy that went with us every year

and we loved having him along. His name was Dennis, but everybody at camp

called him Buck. Well, that morning we all took notice to what Buck was

doing. He was packing everything he thought he might need so he could

stay out and hunt all day without having to come back to camp. He filled

up his thermos with coffee, he got an extra pair of socks in case he got

his feet wet, he got toilet paper, flashlight, gloves, toboggin, scarf, a

pocket hand warmer, a hot seat, knife, rope for pulling a deer if he got

one, deer scent, matches, two sandwiches and some candy bars. Well ol‚

Buck was not very big and with all this stuff he looked like a little

Eskimo. We started walking away from camp and probably was 3 or 4 hundred

yards away from camp when Buck stopped dead in his tracks and said „ By

Jack!!‰ Buck would always say by Jack when he got excited. We all

stopped and turned to look at Buck. He said „By Jack I forgot my gun.‰

We seem to be pretty sure of ourselves, that we will not forget the

most important thing, when we can actually look back and find that we do

quite often.

We as the body of the church, must always remember to work together in

unity so as to edify each other for the glory of God.

Paul compared the body of Christ to the human body in the book of

Corinthians. In our human body, the eye cannot become the hand, the foot

cannot become the arm. Each part of the body has a specific function and

all the parts work together in harmony as God meant them to do. That is

the way it should be in the Church. Each person has a responsibility to

the whole body of Christ. We are to edify our brothers and sisters in

Christ. Too often we do more tearing down of the body than we do the

building up of it.

The same goes for our human body. We can start an exercise program,

work out everyday. We find out fast how good we start to feel. Not only

do we feel better on the inside, but we start to look better on the

outside too. This goes on for a few days or weeks and then one day we see

that big arch in the sky. So we say to our self, „ what can one big mac

hurt. We stop and go in and order 2 big macs, a super size fry and a

large coke. This makes us feel good at first, but soon after comes the

guilt . We tell our selves that we will not do that again, only to find

that we do it again and again and soon find that we‚re not working out as

much.

That‚s what happens to many in the Church. We start out in great

shape when we are new Christians. We feel good and people even notice

that we look better on the outside. We smile more often. We have nice

things to say. We offer our help whenever we can. Then we stop at the

big arch. We want to have a big mac , fries and a coke. We start to

talk about someone in the Church. Oh, it feels good at first, but soon