What kind of House are you Building for God?

 

Last Friday, I was given the opportunity to preach at youth.  This is my message from that evening.

 

Have you ever built a house or done renos on your house? Turn to the person next to you and share about if you have ever done some building work. Or the building work you want to do if you could do anything to your house.

 

When Sam and I were little we used to play with our lego. We would build a whole town on Sam’s car mat. It would take us a couple of hours to build the shops and police station and school, and mansion at the end of the street. These houses were amazing they would be mansions not just with an exterior wall but with internal rooms and interior doors, a 2nd storey with staircase, even occasionally a 3rd story, we used to just build more and more on the more people we would find in our lego box or the more we would realised the kinds of rooms they could have, a gym would be added, a craft room, toy room, roof top car park and basketball court, indoor garden the list was endless. After hours and hours of building we would finally set up the town ready to let the people be in it. Almost every time we built the town and particularly this mansion, by the time it had been finished being built, it was time to pack it up and the rooms in the house never got to be used by our lego people.

 

Tonight I’m going to share with you something that I was really challenged on when I was in school and something I was really reminded about earlier this year when I was journaling. In the bible there was a guy called Stephen, now Stephen was a guy chosen by God to look after widows; however he found himself facing the Sanhedrin who are a council of judges. He was persecuted and stoned for his faith. As he stands in front of this council he makes a final speech, Stephen reflects words said by the Lord through prophets. His speech is recorded in Acts 7. As I was Journaling through this chapter one day I was really challenged by Acts 7:49-50 it says;

 ‘Heaven is my throne,

and the earth is my footstool.

What kind of house will you build for me?

says the Lord.

  

What kind of house am I going to build God? When I reflected on that I thought about my terrible building skills, I thought about my lack of design when it came to building houses and I thought about the lego houses I had built with Sam many years ago, the houses that those little lego people never got to actually be in. I knew if I was going to build a house for God I would actually want him to be able to explore the rooms I had built and truly enjoy them unlike my lego people.

 

Now God doesn’t want me to build an actual house, but as a Christian, I know that Christ lives in me, which makes my life kind of like God’s house. In 1 Corinthians 3:16 it says

 

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?

 

So if we think about the image that our lives being God’s House/ his dwelling place - what are the rooms in our house?

 

I think the rooms in our lives are the different areas and things in our lives such as family, friends, relationships, School, jobs, youth/church, sports teams, those kinds of things. As you grow up there are more opportunities available for you, more things which you can get involved in. As we get more opportunities we build a room onto our house. So what kind of house are you building for God? Are you letting God in every room of your house? Ephesians 2:22 says;

 

And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

 

If we are being built and growing to become Gods dwelling place, I question what that means for me in terms of what that looks like? God wants us to give him glory for all the amazing things that happen in our lives, He wants us to rely on him to carry us during the really difficult times and He wants us to be living a life which reflects Christ. Have you ever thought of God being there with you in those moments and in those areas of your life?

  

There are 3 things that need to be looked at as we look at how we approach these rooms of our lives. These are our attitude, speech and actions. We need these things to reflect Christ is all we do. What does that look like though?

  

We need to have an attitude centred in trying to live a life which reflects Jesus and His teachings. How do you approach a difficult or unpleasant situation? We need to think about our speech and how what we say reflects this Christ like attitude. Is what we are saying actually giving glory to God? Or are we swearing, gossiping, and saying nasty stuff about people behind their back. And lastly what does our actions say about us? Are we doing a whole lot of things which our parents wouldn’t approve of, which God wouldn’t approve of, is our behaviour in something which doesn’t show respect and are our responses to difficult people hurtful and damaging?

 

When I was in year 10, I was in this English class; a lot of the class didn’t really want to learn. But the teacher I had didn’t really seem to be teaching us anything in my opinion or care about the rest of the class’ lack of interest. Frustrated with the way the class was turning out, I started not spending time on my assignments and handing up rubbish assignments, hoping if I did badly people would notice what was happening, considering how amazing I had done in English in other years. My attitude turned negative and my action in my work also turned bad. I didn’t speak nicely about this teacher to her, the rest of my class and to my family. I started skipping classes by planning other commitments such as the mentoring I was doing with primary school kids and my instrument lessons during that time. Eventually I went to another teacher who I had the year before and begged to be moved out of the class because I was getting in trouble at home for bad marks. She fought for me to be moved and I was switched classes, into her class. This other teacher was pretty mad, I had disrespected her and then I was blaming it all on her. The work I had done in the beginning of the year got passed along to my new teacher and when she saw it she was disappointed in what I had done as it so clearly reflected a bad attitude and lack of commitment to the class or assignments.

 

This room of my life at that time clearly wasn’t open for God to be in and for his grace and patience to be in that situation. I didn’t give glory to God at all through that class. My attitude was bad when I felt frustrated by the way things were in this class, the negative attitude I brought to this situation in my head meant I was reacting and speaking in a way which didn’t bring glory to God. The way I used my speech to speak against this teacher to classmates and family and the way I unfairly blamed her for my failures was not a way which showed that Christ was dwelling in me. By skipping class and not putting effort into the work I was submitting my actions were not honouring God.

  

When I was challenged by my attitude, speech and action in this situation, I was challenged to strive for more and for whom God wanted me to be and how God wanted me to show Jesus in my school community. This change of attitude, speech and action lead to some awesome things happening in my school such as prayer meetings and students and teachers turning to myself and other Christian students for prayer in difficult situations.

 In 2 Corinthians 6:16 is says;

  

What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

 

 God does live in us, we are his temple, and we are building his house and when we accept Christ into our lives God begins to dwell among us. He wants us to live a life which reflects Christ, a life that gives God glory for all the amazing stuff in our life and God wants to carry us through the hard stuff too. When we live a life full of an attitude which brings glory to God, speech which honours God and actions which reflect Christ We are truly building a good house for God.