MAKING OUR HEARTS HIS HOME

In Psalm 27:4, King David declared “One thing I have desired of the Lord, that I will seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple.”

Do we have the same heart as King David, desiring to dwell with the Lord not just in eternity but also here on Earth? In order for us to dwell with Him, our lives first have to become suitable dwelling places for His presence.

While God wants to dwell with us, there may still be things in our lives today that hinder this. So how do have the same heart as King David, a heart that will be a home for God?

Our lives have to be in order.

A house has to be in order and organized for it to be maximized. It cannot serve its purpose well if furniture and appliances are not in their right places. It can also be stressful to live in a house that is filled with clutter. That is why we always ensure that our living spaces are in order and free of clutter so that it is comfortable and restful to live in.

The same goes with our God, He seeks to put our lives in order to make it a suitable dwelling place for Him.

How does God put our lives in order?

1. He fixes the broken parts of us. Just like any house that has malfunctioning appliances, there are also parts in our lives that are probably broken. We may have issues in our marriages or families, or perhaps in our walk with God, but our Lord Jesus Christ is so willing to fix each of these broken areas.

2. He aligns our lives according to His righteousness and purposes. The Lord desires for us to live our lives according to the calling He has set for us. And when God finds us doing what He has not called us to do, or being in a place where He has not called us to be, He steps in and puts things in order.

He also wants us to do that which is right according to His Word and not according to what the world dictates. He deals with the areas in our lives where there are still compromises and He helps us eliminate wrong desires and motives in our hearts.

3. He ensures that everything in us is in its proper place and does not go beyond it. We always want our furniture to be in its proper place. In the same way, God wants to make sure that our emotions are always in the proper place. What does this mean?

Our emotions are not in their proper place when we get mad when things do not happen the way we want them to or when we get so easily depressed and discouraged when we go through trials. The Lord wants to help us overcome these uncontrolled emotions by developing in us true meekness, humility, and patience.

4. He removes entanglements. God has to remove things in our lives that entangle us and keep us from pursuing Him. He does this by removing relationships, vices, and habits that are not right in His sight.

5. He removes unnecessary stuff or clutter. Just as how we desire to declutter our living spaces, God also desires to remove things in our lives that take up space and consume energy but are not making us productive.

He does not want us to hold on to so many things in our hearts or spend our time and effort with so many other things that we no longer have the time and strength for the things of God.

Our lives have to be clean.

We need to keep our lives clean and pure before the Lord. First Corinthians 6:19-20 tells us that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit.

We are not our own and we have to glorify God in our bodies and spirits. 

This means we cannot use our bodies for things that are sexually impure because if we do so, we are claiming that our bodies are actually our own. We need to glorify God, following His standards and plans rather than giving in to the desires of our flesh.

Matthew 21:12-13 narrates to us how Jesus Christ cleansed the temple in Jerusalem. He was so enraged by the corruption that He saw that he drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple. He did this because they made the house of God a den of thieves. In the same way, we must allow Jesus to sweep away the corruption in our own hearts.

We also have to love that which is clean. We have to have a passion for what is pure and hatred for what is evil.

Our lives have to be filled with the presence of God.

Matthew 12:43-45 tells us that when an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes and seeks for other places to dwell in. When he finds none, he returns to his previous dwelling place and when he finds it empty, he comes back and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself. Now the state of this man is worse off than at the first.

This passage warns us about the danger of having an orderly but empty life. When a person allows the cleansing of the Lord yet does not seek to be filled with His presence afterwards, the enemy that once oppressed him will come back and this time bring other oppressive spirits along.

With more enemies in once life, they have a tighter hold on him making it harder to remove them. That person becomes worse off than the first.

This is why it is so important that our lives are not just clean and in order, but we also have to be filled with the presence of God.

How do we become permanent dwellings of the Lord?

The temple became the permanent dwelling of the ark of the covenant, which symbolized the presence of God.

But before the ark of the covenant was placed in a temple, it was first placed in tents – particularly, the Tabernacles of Moses and David. Unlike temples, tents are not permanent. The Tabernacle of Moses moved around following the presence of God wherever it went.

Those were the years that the Israelites followed the cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. They had to obey the leading of the Lord every step of the way until they reached the Promise Land where the tabernacle was finally replaced with a temple.

The same goes with us. We too ought to learn to move with God. We have to obey Him and follow His presence and directions for our lives before we could ever become His permanent dwelling place. It is as we learn to faithfully follow the Lord that we are established as His dwelling places.

We are warned by the life of Saul of the consequences of discontinuing to move with God. Saul experienced how it was to have the presence of the Holy Spirit dwell within him.

But because he disobeyed God, the Lord rejected him from being king over Israel (1 Samuel 15:22:23; 26). Because of his disobedience, the Spirit of the Lord departed from him and he became a dwelling place of a distressing spirit (1 Samuel 16:14).

It is therefore possible for God to stop inhabiting a life. And even worse, when God leaves, someone else takes over.

CONCLUSION

If our hearts’ one desire is to dwell with the Lord all the days of our lives, may we be willing to have our lives put in order, cleansed, and filled with the presence of God; and may we learn to follow Him.

For if we endure the deep cleansing as King David did, and if we cry out to be filled with the Holy Spirit, then our hearts will finally be His home.