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 .