At Home with God

When God finished His work of creation, he rested. Its not as if he was tired and wearied but he looked at the awesome work that he had done and said that indeed it was good.. It was good in the hands the perfect craftsman until he rested.

 

Gen 2:2-3And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

So God accomplished his purpose of creation and rested. We can say God entered into rest in his creation .Isnt that just marvelous! That God of creation would sovereignty find rest in his creation. Its not the kind of rest that you find from a tiring and a daunting task but it’s a sovereign rest of accomplishment.

God made us in his own image and declared that behold man is very good. Man in this act then is immediately the prime recipient of God’s rest in which we rest in him having found a home in him.

This is the kind of rest that God has prepared for his people, His treasured possession.

This is the kind of destiny that David had envisioned in his psalm.

Psalm 23 1 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. 3 He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. 4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me 5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

David who was a shepherd knows innately of His God as the chief shepherd. Shepherd who does not merely look after the sheep but is the chief overseer of all that he is. He knows his shepherd as the one who makes him rest and the restorer of his soul. He knows his shepherd as the one who guides him even on the advent of danger and as the one who prepares a meal for him in the midst of his enemies.

Enmity in my view is anything that will prevent us from being at home and at rest in God. We were first enemies in our own minds and alienated from God.(Col 1: 22) Man is the one who ran away from God and not God who ran away from man . Yet God is the chief restorer of our souls who has brought us near to himself in his body of flesh by death . (Col 1:22). Something very fundamental happened in this operation that really portrays how dear and close we are to God. He reconciled us in his body and not in any subsidiary or intermediate form. The body of God is his home, is his temple, and is his dwelling place.

Jesus defined the home of God as his mansion which has many rooms. He reconciled us back to God again. He proved that we really belonged to God.

He came to his own yet his own rejected Him (John 1:12).

Do you know that God finds his Home in you?

We usually sing how lovely is your dwelling places ooh God. We know God to dwell in heaven; a celestial space up above and beyond this limited universe yet through Prophet Isaiah God proclaims that not even the heavens can hold him.

Isa 66:1 Thus says the LORD: "Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest?

We usually allocate God a spatial location of dwelling but God doesn’t reside in things made by hands .

Vs 2 All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.

God looks for someone. Gods heart has always been for man, that God and man would dwell together and so in the fullness of time Jesus was manifested as the word of God ; as the one in whom the fullness of God dwells .(John 1, Col 1.) And paul refers to us as the temple of God, the dwelling place of God whom God will not join with a harlot.

1^st Cor6: 17 But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. 18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

You have been joined with God hence becoming one spirit with him. God has infused himself in us and we have been infused in him and yet this is not a secondary operation but the design of God from the beginning.

This is why we are told to honor God with our bodies because we are a house containing God in the person of his spirit.

What a joy to find our dwelling place with God. We are in a mystical union. Don’t see yourself as an outsider, You belong to God and God belongs to You. The spirit of the sovereign God dwells in you. This is the good news that the gospel announces. Man has been reconciled to God. Man now has God as his everlasting enjoyment. Follow the second post on this topic as we explore what being at Home with God means to us today, cheers .

His banner over us ,,,,,,

Song of Songs 2:1-4 I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys.

Like a lily among thorns is my darling among the maidens.

Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my lover among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste. 4 He has taken me to the banquet hall, and his banner over me is love.

I can’t get enough this soap opera that ensues in this book of Songs. The beloved story continues all the time. In our last post we examined the exchanges between the lover and the beloved in a bit. We saw the beloved captivated by her lover but she recoils back and she is intimidated by the texture of her skin. Meanwhile the lover pursues and showers her with love despite her murmurings. We also saw that this love story is a picture of our relationship with God which climaxes in Christ who entices us with love and we are captivated by him. I cant get enough of the way God is always in the mission of love.

The conversation carries on as the beloved says that she is a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys. Rose of Sharon is a depiction of different species of flowering plants that are highly valued. The beloved discovers her value, she is extremely valued, a lily of the valleys.

This is how the Wycliffe Bible commentary describes the Rose of Sharon

I am the rose of Sharon. The bride is still speaking. It is difficult to determine which flower the bride refers to. The only other occurrence of the word in the OT is in Isa 35:1. Crocus appears to be the best translation. Sharon is the Mediterranean coastal plain between Joppa and Caesarea. In the time of Solomon it was a place of great fertility.( (Charles F. Pfeiffer, The Wycliffe Bible Commentary, Old Testament, (Chicago: Moody Press) 1962.)

His banner over us,,,,,,,,,,

So we can see How esteemed we can be when we realize how beautiful and loving we are. It’s like glowing and reflecting the same light which shines on us as in a mirror.This is actuually a mystical union

The lover replies and describes her beauty in a more phenomenal way like a lily among the thorns is my darling. We must use a lot of typology here to suck all the juice from this love story, after all Christ is the perfection of any love story. We will discover that Christ is really the rose of Sharon, he is the valuable fragrant lily of the valley, most valuable and to be desired of men.

The Lover echoes her beloved’s new found status by describing her as a darling, a lily among the thorns, what a picture of our God resonating with us in love. She s not only a lily but a lily uniquely found amongst thorns, she is conspicuously beautiful and captivates her lover.

This is what God sees in us. Value. We carry within us treasure. That is the beauty of being human. We are treasures in earthen vessels ,,, yea that sounds like lily among the pricky thorns . Out of the miry clay we are formed and established upon the rock who is Christ.

What a status we have now? We are loved and actually this is the status we had right from the point of our creation. For God Chose us in Christ before the creation of the world to be Holy and blameless, in Love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons in conformation to his pleasure and will.(Eph 1:4-5)

love has been our design ever since . Our true design is compatible with love . Like the beloved we resonate with an accurate expression. We have been taken into the banquet hall and showered with love immense. His banner over us is love. God is in the eternal activity of loving us.

Love has set everything in motion, its like the software that runs every system harmoniously. We have been installed in love and the fruit of his love has become sweet to our taste. We know this because of our capability and potential to love and to respond to love. All this is in conformation to his will. The way God has designed us is that he is sure that we have everything good and fit within us to love and to respond to love. We just have to pay attention to the symphony that is in the atmosphere for the glory of God fills the earth like a canopy. I believe the glory of God is also in his love. Gods love is immense and great and available to our joy and bliss. If surely there was no love, the universe would not be running.