[Exerpt from Justeina’s book Fitness By Faith]

Are you familiar with the “do it yourself” stores such as the IKEA store? These stores sell home furnishings at very reasonable prices. The reason they are able to sell their merchandise at a cheaper rate is because all of their items require assembly once you get them home. They give you a box with the instructions and all the materials and you have to take the furniture home and assemble it yourself. I’m sure most of you have gone to a store looking for furnishings and you look at the display and it looks so great and you can already picture right where you want it to go in your home, so you grab the slip of paper with the merchandise number on it, you take the slip to the sales associate, pay for the item and in return they give you a flat box full of small parts and pieces and just expect you to figure it out on your own. As much as you try begging them to just sell you the display, they aren’t going to give in. If you want the piece of furniture you are going to have to do the work of assembling it all on your own.

My husband and I experienced this recently because we had a new baby on the way. We needed furniture for the new nursery; so we made a trip to the store and picked out different pieces of furniture for our baby’s room. The displays looked great and I knew right where I wanted to put each piece. Of course what we made it home with was not the beautiful put together displays. It was four different flat boxes full of little (and I do mean little) parts and pieces that we would have to assemble. By “we” I of course mean my husband, and it ended up taking Kyle over five hours to put just one dresser together. I am sure he would want you to know that it wasn’t because he didn’t know what he was doing. It was simply because assembling the pieces of furniture took lots of time and lots of work!

You know, God does the same thing to you and me. He prepares for us different packages requiring assembly throughout life and then asks us to put them together. There is a good example of this in the lives of David and Solomon. In 2 Samuel 7 David decides he is going to build a temple for the Lord to dwell in. God tells David that he doesn’t want him to build it, but that he has plans for David’s son Solomon to build the temple. In fact, God was telling David I’ve never asked you to build the temple for me. I didn’t give you a temple package. I am giving it to your son Solomon.

In 1 Chronicles 28 at the end of David’s reign he charges his son Solomon with what God has called him to do. Solomon finds himself as King in place of his father David. As he steps into his new position, David hands him a package that should have read, “assembly required”. David handed over all of the parts and pieces that were needed to build the new temple for God to dwell. He gave him all the instructions for every detail of the plan. As David hands him the package he tells Solomon to “Be strong and courageous, and do the work. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord God, my God is with you…” I am sure that Solomon would have much rather just received the display. He would have rather stepped into his position of King with the temple already built. But that wasn‘t God‘s plan for his life. God wanted him to go through the process of building it.

The same is true for you and me today. It was and is very necessary that God takes us through the process of building a healthy lifestyle. He will drop off a full package for you. It will soon have every part, piece, instruction, and tool needed to build it. Now hear God‘s voice declaring over your life today, “Be strong and do the work.” In 1 Chronicles 28:20 it says that God would not fail or forsake Solomon until all of the work for the temple was finished. It didn’t mean that God was going to leave as soon as the work was done; it just meant that God would see the work through until completion.

More information or to purchase Fitness By Faith book www.trueidentityministries.com