Or, to put it another way, you are God’s house. Using the gift God gave me as a good architect, I designed blueprints; Apollos is putting up the walls. Let each carpenter who comes on the job take care to build on the foundation! Remember, there is only one foundation, the one already laid: Jesus Christ. Take particular care in picking out your building materials. Eventually there is going to be an inspection. If you use cheap or inferior materials, you’ll be found out. The inspection will be thorough and rigorous. You won’t get by with a thing. If your work passes inspection, fine; if it doesn’t, your part of the building will be torn out and started over. But you won’t be torn out; you’ll survive—but just barely. (I Corinthians 3:9-15 MSG) A long passage today, but one with very specific instruction: There is but one foundation for the church - Jesus Christ. We can have no other foundation for our life, nor can the 'physical gathering together of believers' that we call the ...
We each carried out our servant assignment. I planted the seed, Apollos watered the plants, but God made you grow. It’s not the one who plants or the one who waters who is at the center of this process but God, who makes things grow. Planting and watering are menial servant jobs at minimum wages. What makes them worth doing is the God we are serving. You happen to be God’s field in which we are working. (I Corinthians 3:6-9 MSG) Each of us has an assignment, given to us by God himself, meant for US to uniquely fulfill. While we may not be church planters like Paul was, or even the ones to 'water the crop' that has been planted like Apollos may have been doing, we have a task we are called to fulfill. Each day brings a new chance to fulfill that task - will we be available to serve as God directs us to serve? Remember, we 'do' what God asks us to do, but it is his Spirit who 'backs' that action on our part. We are his servants - being useful as he sees fit to us...