What Have We Been Designed For?

[HKHaugan]

What Have We Been Designed For?

I might have mentioned this little vignette before, but it’s worth repeating.  Many years ago, I knew a family that wanted to build a house that fit who they were.  It was a family that had a beach house on the Gulf and spent a lot time there.  I would fish occasionally with one of their sons and dive for scallops out in the shallow weed circled sand beds where those tasty delicacies thrived. 

 They were a unique family with outdoor interests and wanted their house to reflect their interests.  They owned several acres in a heavily wooded area. They invited a well-known architect to come stay with them and design the house, which he did.  It was shaped like a boat, two elongated half circles joined at each end.  The front curve of the house was mostly open glass to enjoy the trees and natural shrubbery in the area.  The back curve of the house had two stories.  The first floor was the wide living room, the kitchen and storage area.  A curved stairway led to the second floor where all the bedrooms appeared like staterooms.  That’s as best as I can remember it. 

 The point being, it was the way the architect saw them and his design fit them to a tee.

 Now shift to David’s vow: 

“I will not enter my house or go to my bed---I will allow no sleep to my eyes, no slumber to my eyelids, till I find a place for the Lord, a dwelling for the Mighty One of Jacob (Ps.132:3-5).” 

 Wandering in the desert, as the people of Israel did with their portable tabernacle, then having a land in which to live and build homes, the anointed David felt the calling to build a worship center,  that would last in the midst of this world’s temporariness.  It would be a building sitting on a hill, Mt. Zion.  Thus, came the idea to be carried out by David’s son Solomon; the building of the Jerusalem Temple in which all the tribes and families of the Jewish people could worship (Ps.2:6).  

 While David wanted a physical place, a special building wherein the Lord would be properly worshipped, something new happens when Jesus arrives on the scene.  Obviously, Jesus worshipped in the Temple but as He moved through Galilee and met different kinds of people along the way, a teacher of the Law tells Jesus he will follow Him wherever He goes.  In reply, He makes a rather cryptic reference about what it takes to be one of His followers, “Foxes have holes in the ground and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has no place to lay His head (Mt.8:20).” 

 The Old Testament was laying the groundwork for a new experience, a spiritual experience, believing Jesus (Jn.3:16), trusting Jesus (Jn.14:1) and following Jesus (Mt.4;19).  Jesus was looking for another place to dwell, the heart of every human being.  What David was doing set the stage for the spiritual evacuation of sin and the indwelling of Jesus by the Holy Spirit, the deactivation of sin and the activation of the Holy Spirit, the egress of evil and the ingress of goodness. Immanuel, God with us and in us, a personal relationship with the Son of God in the Spirit of God, each person a temple. 

 We really get a feel for this when we read Paul and his three descriptions of a temple: the individual believer’s body (1Cor.6:19, add Jn.2:21), the local gatherings of believers (1Cor.3:16) and the universal fellowship of believers (1Cor.1:2).   The individual heart is the place the Lord Jesus wants to recover for a dwelling place.  Like John the Baptist, we are called to prepare a place for Him.  Our temples have been occupied by a foreign power and need to be restored.  Our minds, hearts and spirits have been taken over by cultural forces hostile to God, sin being the vulnerable entry way. 

 Think of the mind as a grand entrance, the heart a great banquet hall and the spirit our power system.  Here I will leave it up to you to determine what your entry way, your vestibule, your front room are filled with.  In each of us are the attitudes we have filled our relational banquet hall with.  Our power system?  What motivates our actions?  Is it the Lord, the original architect, or the attitudes and opinions of the world that cause us to put up the drapes and curtains that look like everyone else’s home, you know, fitting in?

 If the Lord God is the architect of the universe, He is also the architect of each one of us.  Each of us has a unique design, to be unique like Jesus was unique.  His temple was fully filled with the Holy Spirit and His gifts.  His entry way was the will of His Father, the Father’s Word His banquet hall, His Spirit the power system of His grace, love and truth to be His witnesses.  How we appropriate those factors in us is the way our temple is restored and our heart recovered to be in Him a special servant, disciple and missionary in a local Body of Christ in the larger universal Body of Christ.  The shape of the entry way is belief in Jesus, the shape of the banquet hall is trust in Jesus and the shape of the power system is faith in Jesus leading us in the Spirit.

 What is being said here is this:  there are three temples.  We start with the one in which each of us lives, our body.  The second mooring for our personal temple is the temple of gathered believers.  The third is realizing the larger universal Body of Christ beyond us.  However, before we go off thinking we individuals are more important than the local gathering or the larger Body, get this.  All three are equally yoked.  Remember when Paul said if one believer suffers we all suffer?  That the individual spiritual gifts are meant to serve others and to top it off when Jesus told us to love God with our whole being and our neighbor as ourselves?  Well, all of it starts with where we are in our personal temple.

 Each of us was designed to be a temple in which we worship the Lord God.  When you hear the words of that marvelous song saying, “I’m going back to the heart of worship, it’s all about you Lord, it’s all about you…”, then and only then do we get our bearings as to where and what worship means.  The heart of worship is the consciousness of Jesus in our heart. 

 The heart of worship is in the heart where we asked the Lord to be.

 So, David’s vow to build a suitable structure in which the Lord could be properly worshiped was necessary to prepare for the coming of the Messiah Lord.  It is when Jesus came that a new understanding of temple worship was revealed.  It was to start in the temple originally designed for worship, our individual mind, heart and spirit in a physical body.  In that temple, relationally intimate worship with God, what we do in every next moment, was His intention.  That’s exactly what we see in Jesus, the restoration of temple worship in the heart, mind and Spirit.  Remember Jesus’ words about His body, “Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days (Jn.2:19)”…”But the temple He had spoken of was His body (vs.21).”

 Then, as Jesus gathered His disciples, began the intimate relational sharing worship when believing brothers and sisters gather to open their lives to one in another in the consciousness of Jesus’ presence among them.  Not to be left out of course, is the realization we have of that same worship when we pray for the brothers and sisters in the larger world and find ways to support them through prayer and assistance.

 So, just what has every human being been designed for?  Let’s revisit David’s passionate oath and vow, applying them to our own personal mind, heart and spirit while we are on our way in every next moment.

  “I will not enter my house or go to my bed, I will allow no sleep to my eyes, no slumber to my eyelids, till I find a place for the Lord, a dwelling for the Mighty One of Jacob (Ps.132:3-5).”