Do You Feel God Living In You?
Good Morning Friends,
The account of human history in the Bible begins in a garden and ends in a city and in the middle of it are stories of the building of towers, and temples and walls and laws, and cycles of their destruction and rebuilding in a physical and spiritual sense. In our reading we tend to write ourselves into the storyline and it seems to result in both intended and unintended consequences. The challenge is that we rarely measure up to the task. But the beauty is that God uses the brokenness of our story combined with grace as a way of rebuilding spiritually strong .And it brings a little heaven to earth in the process. Friends, in Christ, even now, we are being built together, piece by piece, stone by stone in a manner that will hopefully last the test of time. You see our bodies may be ours but they are also God’s Temple. Jesus is preparing a place for us even as the Holy Spirit is preparing us for that place. It is all a bit of a mystery of the dwelling and indwelling… of the brokenness and healing. Holding it all together is Christ who calls us home with a love that is the new law and the better way of peace. Do You Feel God Living In You?
Scripture: So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called “the uncircumcision” by those who are called “the circumcision” —a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands— remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.
Ephesians 2:11-22 (NRSV)
For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.
1 Peter 2:25 (NRSV)
Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you are making it a den of robbers.” The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they became angry and said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, ‘Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself’?”
Matthew 21:12-16 (NRSV)
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”
Revelation 21:1-4 (NRSV)
For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
1 Corinthians 11:23-24 (NRSV)
Message: Loving God and loving others cannot be separated. The walls have to come down and other supports built. It is both a process of purification and expansion and that brings tension. God has torn down the wall between Jews and Gentile, the wall between the inner and outer court of the Temple and opened the door for the Holy Spirit so we can get a fresh start in Him and His love. So many things are at play. For we belong here in this sacred place God calls home but we need to become sanctified and purified to enter. Jesus the Good Shepherd brings us together here so we may dwell in this pasture without walls…dwell in the relationships that teach us how to behave, how to truly live in the unity found only in Christ. Likewise the wall is torn down so that God can build His home in us with its stones….living stones. The foundation is our faith and God’s grace and God is fitting us each into a place of love, stone by stone with Christ as the Cornerstone that holds it all together. God can call this place home the place of the heart. We too can call it home for it is a place of comfort and growth. It keeps us from straying. Here we are as a flock of sheep on a hill side not restrained by the divisive force of a wall but united in Jesus by the attraction of His home in us. And we will rest in this place and, if we stray for a time, we will return to this place the Shepherd has appointed for us. Because we have been taught from one generation to another this way to live…because the teaching is united in Jesus dwelling in a body of believers. Here is a submission to the power of the Shepherd over the flock and the connection of God’s special love manifested in our experience of Christ. This is a very special love… a peace that passes understanding… a mystery of how God takes down the walls that separate us from Him and the walls that separate us from each other and uses the brokenness of our lives to build a temple and a home in us. The paradox is that Christ is both giver and gift. Christ is both the bread and the body. Christ is both Shepherd and Builder. And God is our Redeemer, Creator and Sustainer.
Pray that we never scorn His love by building walls of separation from God. Pray the tender heart of the relationships that build our experience of home also mold our behaviors as we become more unified in Christ. Pray that we welcome strangers as we would welcome Christ Himself into our midst while at the same time setting ever higher standards for community. Pray that we remember Christ and that He destroyed the walls of separation…that we have been given a new law. Pray that we, the called out body of believers, receive His love and respond with obedience to His call and perseverance in the hope of rebuilding… in the reality of love. Pray we are built into a house of prayer, power and praise. Pray we are built into a Temple of God’s presence that loves and obeys. Pray we realize that we have been redeemed for a purpose. Pray we realize we have been broken so we might serve in the rebuilding. Pray that in the taking, breaking, blessings and giving we are built into a body that glorifies God.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 