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Now it was in the heart of my father David to build a house for the name of the Lord, the God of Israel.
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David, a man after God’s own heart, desired to build a dwelling place for the Lord’s name—something that the Lord had not allowed him to do—and now his son King Solomon desired to build a lofty place for the Lord to live in forever. And yet, he knew, and he said,”But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain Thee, how much less this house which I have built!” {1Ki.8:27}

I grew up in a religion that proclaimed that God literally lived inside every ‘church building’ of theirs and was required to honor it as such. As a bit of an aside, I had a cousin, a girl who was quite like a sister to me, who had a young son who said to us one day out of the blue that God drove a Volvo. We asked why he thought that was the case and he explained that every day as his mother drove him to school they passed the local church and there was a Volvo parked outside. Logically to him, God’s house, it must be God’s car! Indeed a logical response to what is a very illogical belief!

To be accurate today (a very good thing for believers) there is indeed a temple that the Lord built to be His house and it is a lofty, glorious place: “Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” {1Cor.3:16} He had said that He would build His church. {Mat.16:18} We, the children of God, are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit {Eph.2:22} built of living stones! {1Pt.2:5}

I have been blessed to travel quite a bit of the world for about the last fifty years bringing the word of God, the joy of God and the presence of God wherever the Lord led me. I have seen the massive old cathedrals of Europe and Latin America, the mega-churches of the United States and the West. Buildings that have been erected at incredible human cost and meant to impress people with their ‘glory’. And I have also been to many, many humble little buildings and have seen the magnificent glory of God on the faces of believers there.

We should not point people to our buildings hoping to impress them and draw them in, we should be pointing people to our Lord desiring that they would see His glory and would then draw them in to the Kingdom!

As in the days of Jesus on earth, it is still true today that many church buildings have been turned into places of business. {Jn.2:16} They may be forgetting that the true “business” of the church is to freely give every thirsty soul the living water that springs up to eternal life. {Jn.4:14} And please remember as you see those lofty buildings that the ‘church’ is building as houses of God that God’s glory was most clearly seen by a cross on a little hillside in Jerusalem. The Lord said, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.” {Jn.12:32} Do we really imitate Jesus as Paul wrote we should? {Eph.5:1}

“And Jesus said to him, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” (Matthew 8:20)

FIX YOUR EYES ON JESUS CHRIST