Living Stones: The Building Blocks of Legacy

Ps. Nathan Canto | November 9, 2025

We’re in the middle of Legacy Season, a time where we look beyond what we can build with our hands and focus on what God is building through our lives.

God is building something sacred here at Heirs Church. A home where people encounter hope. Where sons and daughters are formed into the likeness of Christ. But while man builds with brick and mortar, God builds with something entirely different.

He builds with people.
He builds with living stones.

The House God Builds

Peter writes in 1 Peter 2:4–5:

“As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

This is how God chooses to build: not with perfect bricks, but with surrendered lives.
He isn’t looking for polished, identical pieces that fit neatly together. He’s looking for hearts that have been shaped by His hand.

In other words, He doesn’t build with bricks manufactured by man’s effort — He builds with living stones formed by His grace.

Bricks and Stones

When God delivered Israel out of Egypt, He gave them this instruction in Exodus 20:25:

“If you make an altar of stones for Me, do not build it with dressed stones, for you will defile it if you use a tool on it.”

It’s a small detail, but it carries a massive truth.

In Egypt, God’s people had spent years making bricks. They were uniform, man-made, and manufactured by labor and used for the purposes of their masters. But when God freed them, He told them to build altars of earth & stone, untouched by tools, shaped only by His creation.

He was teaching them a new way to build.

God doesn’t dwell in man-made effort in pursuit of perfection.

He dwells in the surrender of His people.

Fast forward back to 2 Peter and it unpacks what this means for us today. Peter declares that we (yes, you and me) are the material God builds with — Each of us a living, uncut stone, uniquely shaped by His Spirit. And from that truth come three foundations of legacy.

1. Living Stones Are Purposed to Build

Our purpose isn’t discovered through activity; it’s received through identity. We don’t build to become sons and daughters; we build because we are sons and daughters.

Ephesians 2:21–22 says,

“In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.”

Our purpose starts not with doing, but with belonging.

When we understand that, the burden to earn turns into the desire to serve.
We stop striving to build for God by our own efforts and start allowing Him to build through us by his purpose.

2. Living Stones Become a Holy Priesthood

Peter says we are being built into a “holy priesthood.” In the Old Testament, priests were the ones who tended the altar and ministered before God. They carried the weight of His presence and represented the people before Him.

Now, through Jesus, that calling belongs to us.

This is not a spectator faith.

You are not just part of the house, you are called to minister within it. To be a holy priesthood means our lives are no longer about building monuments to our success but building altars to Him. Holy spaces where we host His presence and His people.

3. Living Stones Offer Spiritual Sacrifices

Romans 12:1 tells us,

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.”

Our worship isn’t limited to songs, offerings, or moments of serving.
It’s our whole life; every decision, every word, every act of obedience, being placed on the altar before Him.

David understood this in 2 Samuel 24. When offered a free altar and animals for sacrifice, he refused, saying, “I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”

Legacy always costs something.

The place David built that altar — Mount Moriah — was the same mountain where Abraham once offered Isaac, and later where David’s own son, Solomon, built the Temple.

Every act of costly obedience carries eternal impact. Legacy begins when we stop offering pieces of our lives and start offering our whole selves to God.

The Call: To Be Shaped in the River

When David faced Goliath, he chose five smooth stones from a stream (1 Samuel 17:40). He didn’t pull them from a quarry or a pile of rubble; he found them in the flow of the river.

That’s where stones are shaped, in the current, not in isolation.

In the same way, our lives are formed in the flow of God’s grace and community. It’s in relationships, in church life, in the refining moments of connection, that God smooths out our rough edges.

Here’s a hot take: A Godly, Christ-centered community is inherently uncomfortable. But it’s for a purpose. It’s where God prepares us. It’s where we are formed by the Holy Spirit, shaped into the likeness of Christ, and placed for his purpose.

So the question is: Are you sitting on the shore, wondering why you’re not being formed? Or are you in the river?

It’s time to get in the river.

Let’s allow Him to shape us, place us, and use us as living stones, building a legacy that carries His presence for generations to come.

That is the kind of legacy that lasts:
Not a polished monument of perfection, but a living altar of surrendered hearts.
Not something we build for Him, but something He builds within and through us.