our daily enjoyment of Christ leads us to the continual enjoyment of God in the house of God!

There’s a line through the Psalms which speaks about the enjoyment of God in the house of God – and this enjoyment is much richer than the enjoyment of God in an individual way.

This is a crucial thought conveyed in Gen. 35:7, where we see a radical turn from the individual experience of God to the corporate experience of God.

The corporate experience of God doesn’t refer or imply that you are in all the meetings of the church all the time (even though they are indispensable!), but especially that in your being you have been truly built up and built in, so that whether you are in a meeting or not, you are a corporate person!

Individual Christians can only experience the Triune God in an exceedingly limited way, but the experience of the Triune God in the house of God is immeasurable!

As individual Christians we can experience God and enjoy God only in a limited way, but when we grow and realise that spirituality is a Body matter and that the Triune God is mingled with the church as the Body of Christ, we will see that our God is the God of the Body of Christ, the God of the House of God!

God is not just the God IN the house of God, but the God OF the house of God, the God who makes Himself known as our enjoyment only when we are built into His house as His dwelling place.

It is not too difficult to grasp the concept the concept of “the corporate experience of God”, God being more enjoyable in a corporate way than in an individual way – but it is quite rare to have saints who get beyond their individual spirituality.

The experience of God in the House of God

As believers in Christ to whom the Lord has shown mercy and has brought us in the local church, we are very privileged to be in the place where we can experience God as the God of the house of God.

There’s a tremendous difference to be in a genuine local church as an expression of the universal building of God. Yes, we recognize and love all the believers in Christ and the lovers of the Lord Jesus throughout the earth in various religious institutions – and yes, it is true that they have some experience of Christ….

But you cannot know and you do not know the God as the God of the house of God unless you live the Body life in the local churches! As we daily enjoy Christ individually, we are being led to the corporate and continual experience of God in the house of God, the church!

God is located: He is in His house!

Where is God today? He is omnipresent and He is everywhere at the same time – but in the Psalms and everywhere in the Bible we see that God is in Christ, His expression! And this Christ has been enlarged to become the tabernacle, the house of God.

We need to let everyone know that Christ is where God is today, and more specifically that the church is where you can find God in Christ! When Christ is enlarged in life He is the church as the dwelling place of God, the house of God and the temple of God. Yes, God is everywhere, but the reality of God and the location of God today is in His house.

The Psalmists loved the house of God and the place where God dwells – we also should love the habitation of God: it is here that we can experience God in an immeasurable way!

[sharing inspired from the life-study of the Psalms and message 8 in the recent summer training, as quoted in the Morning Revival on the Crystallization-Study of Psalms (1)]

Lord, we love You! Thank You for being located today in Your house! Increase our enjoyment of You, dear Lord Jesus. Save us from enjoying You only individually – bring us into the experience of enjoying God in the house of God. We want to know the God of the house of God! Build us into Your house, Your habitation, Your dwelling place! Lord, praise You for putting us in the local churches, where we can enjoy and live out the reality of the Body of Christ!