By EDDIE BURCHFIELD / Guest Columnist

The other day I stumbled on a small pebble but caught myself before I fell. One of my good church brothers said, “Brother Eddie, we are supposed to be lively stones, and not rolling stones.”

We laughed, but this is a truth.

1 Peter 2:5 “Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.” This scripture tells us as living stones things can grow. We can be a living part of a spiritual house, we can be an integral part of the holy priesthood, and we can offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

This is only if we are living stones. A living stone is a building block. A building block is valuable in that it will help, and not hurt, it will add to and not take away from. It is exactly as the name implies — alive.

I love to hang around some of these living stones, don’t you? I mean, their relationship with God is so real; I can’t help but get more real myself. I want to be a good example of a good example. I can be when my relationship with God is fresh.

Then there are those who are naming the name of Christ, but you cannot see the excitement of life in them. It is as if this Christian life has lost its flavor on the bedpost overnight. These are not building blocks, but stumbling blocks.

1 Peter 2: 7,8 “Unto you therefore which believe He is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builder’s disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient: where unto also they were appointed.”

The difference, then, in us being a building block, and a stumbling block, is in our obedience, or our disobedience to God’s word.

Let us crack the Book and take a look. Let us be lively stones, and not rolling stones, OK?

 

The Rev. Eddie Burchfield is a Pentecostal evangelist with Fresh Fire Ministries. You can reach him at rev.ed@att.net.