What is home?
Maybe it's sitting around the family table, reliving memories, and having a good laugh while enjoying a home-cooked meal.
Or maybe it is the sound of the front door opening, your mother calling you for dinner, or the dogs barking at the cat in the backyard.
It might even be around a fire, with coffee and a sky full of stars.
For some more than others, home is rather a feeling than a place - a feeling that you belong.
Don’t you realize that together you have become God’s inner sanctuary and that the Spirit of God makes his permanent home in you?
1 Corinthians 3:16 (TPT)
Out of all the places that I could think of to make a home, it blows my mind that God still chose us as His dwelling place. I mean, really? What's there to see inside of a soul that is just longing and searching for a place to belong?
There are a few questions that I have to ask myself when I realize that my body is God's temple:
I wonder if I'm worshipping the temple more than I am using it to worship God?
Is what I'm showing outside, portraying who is living on the inside, or am I only nurturing my body in a way that it might please those around me rather than using it to serve the One who is living inside of me?
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NIV)
God is eternal and He has placed Himself in our hearts. When Holy Spirit is not a permanent resident inside a man's heart, man is filled with an eternal void. God is Holy and because He is Holy, He sees our bodies as sacred. Do you see your body as sacred? Are you looking after your body in a way that honors Him or are we, just like the people in Capernaum (John 2:16) using the temple as a market to sell ourselves and others short of temporary belongings?
Friends, we have to change our perspective on how we view our wellness. God doesn't expect us to get everything right and work hard to build a dwelling place for Him and after a few years when we feel content with our progress, allow Him to make His home inside our hearts. We have it all wrong, He is the builder, He wants to build His sanctuary in us. All we have to do is surrender and allow Him to work in us.
Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.
Psalm 127:1 (NIV)
While He is building on the inside, we are portraying His work on the outside. The way we look after ourselves, not for others' approval, but His glory, is a direct replica of the value that we have for the work that He is doing inside of us. We are walking ambassadors of Christ in us.
Have you forgotten that your body is now the sacred temple of the Spirit of Holiness, who lives in you? You don’t belong to yourself any longer, for the gift of God, the Holy Spirit, lives inside your sanctuary.
1 Corinthians 6:19 (TPT)
It really is senseless to work so hard from early morning till late at night, toiling to make a living for fear of not having enough. God can provide for his devoted lovers even while they sleep!
Psalm 127:2 (TPT)
If He is the provider of the bricks and the cement for the sanctuary, then He will also be the provider for our everyday needs. He is working behind the scenes for His children, there where nobody is looking or where they might least expect it. While we are sleeping, God is building. God values sleep as important, as it not only contributes to our physical health but also our emotional health. Are we even honoring Him with our sleep?
May this following verse be our prayer, may it be the goal for which we strive towards. When the world looks at us, may they not see an advert for attention, but rather a sacred house of worship and prayer. A surrendered body that is holy and pleasing to our Father.
‘I will welcome you into my holy mountain and make you joyful in my house of prayer. I will accept every sacrifice and offering that you place on my altar, for my house of worship will be known as a house of prayer for all people.’”
Isaiah 56:7 (TPT)
I have never in my lifetime on this earth heard of a better example of intimacy than this:
That the One who is perfect, blameless, and without sin, chose to lay down everything to make His home inside of us so that in us we could find our home in Him. The moment when this soul inhabitation takes place, the unity between the two is no longer defined by the qualities of the imperfect, but by the heart and character of the One who is perfect.
Weathered - Dante Bowe, Hannah McClure (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEVmDWnGClI)
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