I saw 3 - 4 high ranking pastors of local churches sitting and playing in the sand at a beach, and each pastor was wearing baby pampers. They were discussing plans about coming together in unity making a bigger church, erecting and boosting their self-made abilities, and were drawing these ideas in the sand. Each pastor was thinking in his own mind, (without sharing the idea with the others) that his desire was to build the biggest and better church. They were talking to each other as though they would be working happily together (pretense), doing the work of the Lord.
Each pastor was constructing what he thought would be the building that would be chosen in the sand, and being unified with the one idea of coming together under (1) one roof. They had agreed among themselves that whatever building chosen, they would commit to coming together as one to carry out the protocol of being the largest mega church anywhere for any type of service.
Not one of the pastors realized that the spot they were standing to build the prototype, was in a low tide area. They were so involved with building the best, and operating with a spirit of deceit within themselves, that they didn't notice the tide coming back in. As each being engrossed in making their houses of sand look better than the other pastors, with each thinking they were outsmarting the others, the water was suddenly upon them. In a matter of seconds, the incoming water had dissolved all of their man-made sand buildings.
The pastors got up, and without considering the seriousness of what had just happened - they walked away with wet and sandy pampers looking for another area of pretty sand. Their thoughts were only of moving to another part of the beach to begin the process all over again, and not going to a much higher ground and this was pure competition in a deceitful manner. The pastors mindset was the sooner they got started again, a decision would be made as to which sand building would be the winner of what had been discussed. Inwardly, each was thinking how they could add something the others hadn't thought about, and how they would outsmart the other with better building plans.
In truth, it was never about coming together in unity to work together with each congregation as a whole for the Lord, it was about being in control, and having the biggest and better building than the others for an outside show to other churches. This was a selfish ploy to find out the thoughts and plans of the others, and carry them out before anyone else could. The pastors didn't think about they would be making a huge investment based on Sand Buildings.
