This is us.

Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest. 2 He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house. 3 Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself. 4 For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. 5 “Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house, bearing witness to what would be spoken by God in the future. 6 But Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory. - Hebrews 3:1-6

As a child, when I heard, “God’s house,” my mind often went to the brick structure with the steeple where we met on Sundays. It was common to hear little footsteps plodding up and down the hallways, followed by an adult yelling, “Hey! No running in God’s house!!!” On Sundays, we shed our exuberant rambunctiousness, our childlike curiosity, and our messiness at the door. “God’s house” was a place only for dresses and suits – our buttoned-up Sunday best. “God’s house” was NOT a place for giggling out of turn, clapping, or uncombed hair. It was a place to pretend to be something we weren’t everywhere else.

It was as though God dwelled solely within those four walls on Sunday mornings, and what’s more – God approved of us only when we were on our best behavior within those four walls.

In Acts, shortly before the apostle Stephen was to be stoned to death, he said this:

Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands, as the prophet says, “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.
What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord,
or what is the place of my rest?

Did not my hand make all these things?"

The Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands!

He dwells within and among His people. Us. You and me. Individually and collectively. We are His church. Through Jesus as our indispensible, precious cornerstone and our high priest, and with God as the master builder and creator of all things, we are living stones being built into a spiritual house and a holy priesthood for God Almighty's habitation (1 Peter 2). Loved by Him, we love one another. We are God’s house!

This is not a building.

This is a people.

This is us.

So on Sundays and every other day, we bring our exuberant rambunctiousness, our childlike curiosity, and our messiness. We bring our laughter, our clapping, our uncombed hair, and our dresses and suits and jeans and t-shirts. We bring it all, and we lay it down.

And as we hold firmly to Jesus, our confidence and the hope in which we glory, He transforms and builds us into something we could have never even imagined apart from Him: His beloved and redeemed church, now and forevermore. Home. 

See you Sunday!
Erika