The body of Christ. One Corinthians 12 says it this way, there is one body, but it has many parts, but all its many parts make up one body. It is the same with Christ. Suppose the foot says, I am not a hand, which I want to stop right there. If your foot ever says anything to you, you need to phone a front, right? Some may write. I hope you read the Bible like this. You can't just read through that. If the foot says to the hand, if the foot says to them, I'm like, that's just weird. If the foot says I'm not a hand, so I don't belong to the body by saying this, it cannot stop being a part of the body. And suppose the ear says, I am not an eye, so I don't belong to the body by saying this, it cannot stop being a part of the body. If the whole body were in Ie, how could it hear if the whole body were in ear? How could it smell? Are you seeing this? You want to try to smell something with your ear? Does you like with it? It don't work. You can't do it. You look weird, but you can't do it. God has placed each part of the body just as he wants it to be. If all the parts were the same, how could there be a body as it is? There are many parts, but there is only one body. You are the body of Christ. Each one of you is a part of it. Turn to your neighbor say He's talking to you. He's talking to you. Each one of you are a part of it. The word that comes to mind for me is purpose. Let me think about how crazy this is. God has given you eyes to sea food. He's given you seat to walk over to the food. He's given you hands to scoop up the food, an arm, to slap it on the plate, to pick it up and move it to your mouth, jaw to chew it net muscles to swallow. It a stomach to digest it. I'm gonna stop right there because you know the rest of the process. All of it wildly purposed. By God, you've never once taken a bite of food and said, Okay, stomach. We're getting ready to digest. Get ready. Here it comes. 3-2-1 You don't have to do it because God created it to work. He's given it divine purpose for all the parts to work together, to provide and sustain life. And the same is to be true with the body of Christ. It's how he created one of the pictures that comes to mind for me. Here is of a construction site. We've got a couple of lots in our neighborhood where homes are being built and there comes a point. After the trees are clear, the Foundation is poured that construction supplies start showing up at the work site and lumber will be over here. Concrete windows, all kind of stuff. But usually there's all always some kind of stack of brick or block, and it's strapped together, tied together, usually in cubes. Every now and then, the straps break and bricks will kind of be gathered up into a pyramid. Now, for each of these bricks, they have their own strength, their own value. But it's not until the bricks are assembled that they really take the former shape of something, that they could be something that's strong and beautiful. There's a huge difference between gathering all of the bricks into one place and assembling all of them to be what they could become. So my question for you is, if you were to lay that analogy over your Church experience that for us as the body of Christ, are you gathering here on a weekend, or are you being assembled by God? Have you found your place of purpose? Has he placed you where he wants you to be? Some of you have an incredible gift of hospitality or communicating or administration. And man, for me, growing up in the Church, the last thing I was thinking about is how I could actually be assembled to become a part of it. It was just a place that I gathered among other people. And if that's the case for you, man, you were leaving a lot on the table. I think about Kaleb Harper from North Charleston. He started playing on their worship team, playing the drums when he was 12. Now he's 20 and he spent eight of his 20 years playing on the band. If you were here for first Wednesday, my man has got a gift, right? And he has been using it. I think about Jim right from our Summerville campus. He's not on staff here at Seacoast, but he leads the second largest Ministry of Seacoast. He cares for those that society has forgotten about him because of him. Now, over our 700 inmates, different Correctional facilities get to experience Sea Coast every single week, and we join me. Let those guys know that we're excited. They're with us and proud of them for going after God. Jim's excited because he's about to be in three more facilities, a man he's using a passion point in his life, a gift that he has to help other people encounter the power and presence of God. I think about Diana Warren here at the Mount Pleasant campus. She turned 89 in the beginning of this year, and every week you can find her on Thursday here in the breezeway, working with a team of people, pre COVID every single worship guide that she would receive walking in had passed through her and her team's hands, preparing the house for the weekend. You can find her here in Mount Pleasant every weekend, sitting out in the breezeway. She's a spiritual grandma, hugging all of my kids as they run into Church. So happy to see you here. Each and every weekend, the three of them. And so many of you have been assembled. You've been purposed by God. It's crazy. One of my favorite versus at 17 26, which says God is ordained set times and exact places for us to live. It blows my mind to think you could have been born anywhere in the world, literally, any time in history. But God chose this liver of time. This place, whatever campus you might be at, that, you would be a part of Seacoast Church is only 35 years old, right? I mean, it's such a gift for us to be able to call this place family for us to be an extension of the body of Christ here at Sea Coast. Not that we would just gather, but that we would be assembled by God using our gift. Not only being ministered to, but ministering others. So the first picture he gives us is that we are the body of Christ to be used by him. An extension of him.
