Friday, March 26

Prayer:
Take a few deep breaths to relax and focus yourself on your time with God. As you pray, ask him to bring several people to mind who might need your prayer today.

Read 1 Peter 2:4-10
As you come to him, the living Stone – rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him – you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says:

“See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.”

Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe,

“The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone,”

and,

“A stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.”

They stumble because they disobey the message – which is also what they were destined for.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God…


Here Peter continues to develop the image of Jesus as the cornerstone. Not only is Christ the truth that either anchors our lives OR causes us to stumble – he is also using each one of us to build the “spiritual house” that is his church in the world!

He is teaching us that the church is not a place where we go to worship once a week – rather, the church is something that we ARE as followers of Christ. Because Christ lives in our hearts by faith, we are “living stones” that he is using to build his church – in order to accomplish his purpose in the world.

Imagine that! You and I are actually being used by God to build his church. He uses each one of us – stones of all shapes and sizes – to construct a church that can withstand the storms, pressures and persecutions of the centuries, and that will endure until Jesus comes again! What an amazing privilege, what an amazing Lord!

Take some time to reflect on what part Christ is asking you to play in his church. Ask him to show you how your life and gifts can be used by him to further his work on earth.

Brian Coffey