Our new home is in a new subdivision in Nolensville and new homes are going up all around us, literally on every side. I cannot count the number of construction vehicles and workers in our neighborhood right now. Framers, electricians, plumbers, masons; you name it, they are all here in mass.

The builders are about to start a series of new townhouses across the street for us and a parade of concrete trucks have been streaming into the neighborhood all week as they pour the foundations. The low, incessant growl of the mixer trucks has been mind-numbing as I have tried to work from my home office. Distracted yet again this morning by their presence, I began to think about the process of making concrete, since I can’t think about anything else…

To make concrete you need cement, which is the main ingredient. And, for most DIYers like me, you can buy it in a bag at Home Depot. But for the big contractors, it arrives from the mill by the truck loads. But where does cement actually come from in the first place? How is it made; my distracted mind wondered.  Well candidly, it’s really quite involved, as some of you may already know. 

Cement is made from limestone rock, which is excavated from innumerable quarries around the country and the globe. The limestone boulders are crushed into smaller rocks then pulverized in to finely ground stone. The powder is then mixed with clay and sand and ground again for good measure. Then the powder is preheated in several stages before entering a rotating kiln fired to 1500° before going through one last grinding process on the way out of the plant.

Wow: crushing, grinding, mixing, and tumbling while being subjected to blast furnace heat.  No wonder limestone is so hard to remove, who wants to go through a transformation process like that… That’s almost as bad as living through a pandemic.

Would you believe that God has to treat us like limestone sometimes?  We’re stuck in our ways, rigid and stiff as stone, immoveable and unchangeable.  Then divine intervention happens, and we go through a transformation process, sometimes kicking and screaming all the way. But when the refinement is done, glorious things await.  Then, and only then, will we be ready for our intended purpose.  And that’s when the beauty emerges.

We will see just such a transformation process unfold in our study this week.  In fact, it may be the most famous personal transformation of all time.  Talk about a 180; this is it.  I hope you can join us this week for our study of Acts 9, but be sure to wear your hard hats, you never know when the excavator might show up.

If you cannot be with us in person, feel free to download the Bible study materials for your personal use by following one of these links: PowerPoint Slides, PDF File. You can also find the video of this session on our YouTube channel soon after the meeting concludes. And lastly, you could follow this link to download other studies in this series: INpowered Discipleship if you happened to miss one of our prior studies.

Yours in Christ,

Eric Glover   
The Gospels Class     
Brentwood Baptist Church