How Can a Stone Become Valuable to God?

It has dawned upon me after some twenty years of trying to plant and establish the local church, that it is something only God can do.

I am no more a church-planter or builder than you are. The Lord is the only one who can really establish anything. It is true that each one of us is given a particular and distinctive calling, but in the final analysis the only worthwhile energy that can be expended with any spiritual effectiveness is that which the Holy Spirit works in us. Unless my work is wrought IN THE LORD, it has no spiritual value. It may have a great deal of social value, or even a great deal of personal value, but it can have no spiritual value.

Paul would have us know, first of all, that anything that is a spiritual work must be done IN THE LORD. He uses this phrase on other occasions, but Ephesians 2:22 gives us some important information concerning the house of God, and how He will accomplish His purpose. Paul writes “In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.” First we must catch the significance of the phrase, “in whom.” Paul is insisting that we are being built together “in the Lord.” He is not adding us TO THE LORD; He is building us IN THE LORD together. When we were saved, we were in a sense added to the Lord. However he is here dealing with those who have already come to know the Lord. What has been God’s objective; what has He been doing since they were saved? Just this: He has been building them together IN THE LORD.

This building together is a very important thing, in fact, the most important thing in God’s mind. All of us rejoice in the consciousness of God’s personal dealings in our lives, individually, but sometimes our rejoicing is not quite so enthusiastic when the Lord is working to build us together. Recently someone wrote in a quarterly magazine: “Some people think that hell is other people!” It is true that many imagine if we just didn’t have to have other people around we’d get along all right. If it were just me and the Lord, we wouldn’t have any trouble; but it is always me and the Lord and that other fellow. When shall we realize that the Lord’s purpose not only includes us, but others as well? He is always working on us through others, and on others through us, and in it all His purpose is building us together in Himself.

From Designed To Express His Life (1965) by Orville Swindoll.