DAILY LIFT UP – Saturday, 18th October 2025
Theme: CHURCH
Lesson: THE CHURCH, A BUILDING
Scripture Reference:
Eph. 2:19-21.
Those who build their houses do so either for their private use or for commercial purposes. The reason God designates the Christian Church (you and I that have actively believed the Gospel of Christ in both individual and corporate senses) as a house is to provide Himself shelter here in a physical realm. God is Spirit. For Him to do business in a physical world, He must need visible agents which must not be detrimental to His interest. That is why we have such Scriptures as “2Cor.6:14-18”.
Although God built us for this purpose originally, He does not force His way into us without our permission. He stands at the doors of our hearts (this building) and knocks with the preaching of Jesus Christ. (See Rev. 3:20) Those who introduce this Gospel are Christ’s original Apostles. Ours is to continue in their doctrine which is also the doctrine of Christ as in “Acts 2:42 and 2John 9-11”. When the debris of sin is purged from our hearts and the Holy Spirit (spirit of righteousness) replaces through faith in the good news about the atoning work of Christ for us, then, God has had a house to live in on earth to do business.
It is in this sense that the Bible calls us “workers together with God” in ‘1Cor. 3:9’. But, we must allow God to complete the building process so that He can live in. That is important because some of us (believers) have been so incomplete a building that we are not willing to allow God’s Spirit to both kill our sinful nature on the one hand (see Gal. 2:20; 5:16,17) and to renew our minds in order to know how good, pleasing and perfect the new will/nature of God in Christ is on the other. (cf. Rom. 12:1,2) This is imperative because Scriptures preserved for our learning before now have illustrated this in the call of Abraham to, as a matter of principle, LEAVE his father’s house, place and people before God would bless him. (Gen. 12:1,2) The shadow or analogy of leaving has its substance today in how we are believers in Christ only after we have left the standards and customs of this world system to be transformed into the image of God through Christ. That is where the real enemy and the warfare is – the enemy of the cravings of our old/sinful nature, and until we kill all as illustrated in Israel’s war against Amalek (1Sam.15:1-3), we cannot be a building for God’s indwelling.
Dear sister, your war is not against that mother-in-law. Bro., the war is not against that supposed witch. (See Eph.6:12) Read “Jam. 4:1-4” and discover the source of the problem. Upon some who profess the Christian Faith, God has lavished His resources with an expectation to qualify them as teachers (house in which to live) of the life of Christ to others. But, as we speak, to the chagrin of God, are still infants in the things of Christ and therefore learners. (cf. Heb. 5:11-6:3)
This concept of believers (individually and collectively) being shelter for God also presents God as a tenant in a way. But get this, if God tabernacles in a person, it undoubtedly makes that individual a landlord automatically and imagine the attendant honour and security therein because of the kind of tenant resident in him! Praise God!
EVALUATION:
1. In “1Pet.2:4,5 & Eph. 2:20-22”, God says He has built His house or Temple with what?
2. God neither lives in material houses nor is He served with human hands in “Acts 17:24,25”, if He doesn’t live in Church cathedrals/halls to receive what we offer there, who receives what is offered by those who think of such places as His house according to “1Cor.10:19,20”?
3. When Paul was distressed in Athens because of what he saw (Acts 17:16), what did he see that he called “shrines for idols”?
VIA:
Michael Ekperikpe (MSN)
READ AND REAP BIBLE ENTERPRISES
P/S:
-Any issues to commit to God in prayer?
-Any seemingly difficult Scripture(s)?
Feel free to share with me. Remember, ‘Iron sharpens iron’. (Prov. 27:17)
