Rock Music

Rock Music

You always know when God is speaking to you about something. This week, the Lord has been speaking to me about rocks of all things. This morning, the Lord sent me to a church called Quest Community Church here in Lexington and guess what they were talking about? Rocks.

When the Babylonians built the Tower of Babel, they used bricks made by man. When God built his temple, he built it out of stone.

It’s a real problem building stuff out of stone. Bricks are neat and easy to work with because they’re all the same size and shape. It’s easy to figure out how to put them all together because they fit like building blocks.

Stones are Messy

Stones, on the other hand, are messy. If you were to take 1,000 rocks out of a creek, each would be a different size and shape. Their chemical makeup will even be a little different from rock to rock, each one completely unique.

No wonder the Babylonians used bricks. What a mess building a house out of these messy shapes that are difficult to fit together. It’s more like putting together a jigsaw puzzle than it is constructing a neat building.

And yet, we are the living stones that God has chosen to build his house with. Not only that, but we don’t even start out as stones.

Peter was first called Simon, which means “Wishy-washy.” Then the Lord called him Petros, which means, despite our thinking, a stone easily detached and disposed of—a pebble. But Peter was called Simon Peter throughout the scriptures, meaning, literally, “wishy-washy rock.” It’s not until Acts that the Simon is dropped and he becomes Peter. Then later in Paul’s writings he is referred to as Cephas, meaning, “the head.”

So, a rock is something we become, and we can’t do that until we are placed by the Lord. We don’t always like the place God puts us, and it probably won’t be comfortable, but through faith, we understand that that place is according to God’s plan and he alone knows what the house is going to look like.

Rock Music

As if all this weren’t bad enough, when Solomon constructed the temple, he built it out of stone. He then covered the stone entirely in wood. Wood is the nature of man. The stone is our perfected state in the body, but it’s always covered with our imperfections.

God, for whatever reason, insists on using us. He could use angels to send his message, but he, instead, sends us, with all our imperfections, to be his representation in the earth.

I’m sitting here looking at the rock that was given to me this morning. It is worn smooth from years of being in rough water. I understand what that feels like. It is also jagged on one side where it has been broken. All of us, in our imperfect state have been broken. As I hold this rock, I rub across the jagged edge knowing that if I keep this up long enough, the jaggedness will disappear and it will be smooth like the rest.

There’s something else about this rock. It is small. In our culture, we build foundations for a house using concrete. To us, a boulder is not very useful. What we need to pour a concrete foundation is a bunch of these tiny pebbles all ready to be mixed together to be a part of the house God wants to build on the earth.

Rock Music

I do not desire to have a huge church with hundreds or even thousands of people. All I want to be is this “very small” pebble that is useful to be in the foundation of the Lord.

This rock, from now on, will sit on my desk. Whenever I start to think too highly of myself, I will pick it up and rub my fingers across the rough side. All of us need a little smoothing. All of us need to remember that we’re only created to be a small part of the huge house God is building in the earth.

If they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.

Luke 19:40