The Father’s house is what is on God’s heart – He wants to obtain a house, a dwelling place, where He can express Himself in and through His people. When God gets a built up church as His house, He will be fully expressed and His glory will shine.
To Christ, this is the Body of Christ; to the Father, it is the Father’s house.
May the Lord have mercy on us that we may be unveiled to see, unloaded that we may receive, unoccupied to have the capacity to apprehend, and emptied that we may be filled with God’s heart’s desire to obtain His house, the Father’s house.
Today we want to see the significance of the Father’s house according to the Bible, and also a simple and practical way to cooperate for the building up of the Father’s house.
The Father’s House – Propagating God’s Life
The Father’s house firstly refers to God’s household, the house of Jehovah, which is the church as the realm of God’s life (Hag. 1:2; John 14:2).
In the church as the Father’s house God’s life can be propagated, continued, and multiplied (see John 1:12-13; 20:17).
In the church life today we need to be burdened for the Father’s life to be propagated and multiplied through the regeneration of so many persons.
The Father’s House – God’s Visible and Solid Manifestation
The church as the house of Jehovah is the Father’s house as the visible and solid manifestation of the invisible and mysterious Triune God among men on the earth (1 Tim. 3:15-16).
The Father was pleased in His beloved Son, and He wants the same kind of manifestation – God manifested in the flesh – to be in the church in a corporate way.
Whenever we prophesy in the church meetings according to the principle of “each one has” (1 Cor. 14), the light shines, God is expressed, and even those who visit us will see that God is among us.
The Invisible and Mysterious Triune God has a solid and visible expression in the church life today as the Father’s house.
The Father’s House – the Dwelling Place of God
The Father’s house is the dwelling place of God, the place where God can have His satisfaction and rest.
It is in the church as the Father’s house, the house of Jehovah, that God can live, move, and do everything He wants to do in order to accomplish His will and satisfy the desire of His heart (see Eph. 2:22; 1:5, 9, 11; Phil. 2:13). Here God is satisfied and we are satisfied.
To live for God’s building is to live for God’s satisfaction. We may do a lot of things to satisfy ourselves, our parents, the opinions of others, but within you will never be happy until God is satisfied with gaining the Father’s house.
We can contribute to God’s obtaining His heart’s desire, the place of His satisfaction and rest!
The Father’s House – a Divine-Human Incorporation
The church as the Father’s house is a divine and human incorporation of the processed and consummated Triune God with His redeemed, regenerated, and transformed elect (see John 12:23; 13:31-32; 14:2).
The Son, Christ, was glorified by the Father in His resurrection and He was enlarged into an universal divine and human incorporation! Now in the Son we are in the Father, and the Father in the Son and the Spirit is in us!
All we need to do is just abide in the vine (John 15:5) and we are plugged in, connected, and organically joined to the Triune God. As we turn our heart to the Lord and we exercise our spirit, we enjoy this wonderful divine-human incorporation!
The Father’s House – His Way to Obtain the New Jerusalem
The Father’s house, the church, is for the eternal and purposeful Triune God to obtain the New Jerusalem as His eternal goal for His eternal expression (Eph. 3:9-11; Rev. 21:2, 10-11).
In the church as the house of Jehovah our purposeful Triune God carries out His eternal economy to consummate the New Jerusalem!
As precious as the church life is, it is still in space and time, it is still a procedure – God’s goal is not that we would live forever in the local churches but that we would live for eternity one with Him in and as the New Jerusalem!
He is looking forward to the time when every blood-bought Spirit-regenerated son of God is fully matured and built into the house of God!
The Father’s House – An Entity in Resurrection
The church as the house of Jehovah, the Father’s house, exists in the resurrection life of Christ (John 11:25; 2:19; Acts 2:24). The church is in the heavens, absolutely in resurrection – the church is heavenly and “resurrectionly”!
At times it may seem that the church life is not that smooth, things are torn down, there’s some death operating, etc… God’s way of building is totally different than our concept.
Sometimes He may allow the enemy to tear down, but then He comes in on the third day in resurrection to increase the life and expand His expression.
Everything that is not the divine life has to be torn down, and God uses our spouse, our children, the saints, and everything else to tear us down and bring us in resurrection.
Don’t ever be those who tear down but be willing to be torn down in order to be brought into resurrection!
In The Father’s House We Experience the All-Sufficient God
The Father’s house, the house of Jehovah, is the place where we enter into a corporate experience and enjoyment of God as the all-sufficient God, the God revealed in His house (see Gen. 35:1, 3, 5, 11).
Our God is so rich, so vast, so immense, in all His riches – He is all-sufficient. As individual Christians we cannot comprehend, apprehend, and fully enjoy all that He is.
But as the church, the Father’s house, we can know God and experience Him as the all-sufficient One supplying us abundantly and continually!
A Simple Way to Build Up the Father’s House
There are many ways to cooperate with the Lord for the continual building up of the church as the Father’s house, but one of the most simple one is by being more mingled with the Triune God!
Since the church is the mingling of divinity with humanity, we need to seek to be more mingled with God that we may build up the church!
The principle of God’s building is that God builds Himself in Christ into us, and He builds us in Christ into Himself (see John 14:20; 1 John 4:15; Eph. 3:17). Tell the Lord honestly,
Lord, mingle Yourself with me more today. Saturate me more with Yourself. Build Yourself into me. Lord, make Your home in all my heart. Build me into Yourself. May there be more mingling today! Grow in me for the building. Lord, constitute me more with Yourself that You may gain Your house, Your habitation! Make me a mingled person.
References and Further Reading
- Sharing inspired from, The Church as the Body of Christ (chs. 3, 8, 10) and brother Ron Kangas’ sharing in this message, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of the Minor Prophets, week 10 (entitled, The Building of the House of Jehovah).
- Hymns on the same topic:
# Three aspects rest in this incorporation: / The Father’s house for His satisfaction, / The true vine for His multiplication, / The child of the Spirit for His move on earth.
# Thy dwelling-place, O Lord, I love; / It is Thy Church so blessed, / It is Thy joy and heart’s delight / And where Thy heart finds rest.
# Freed from self and Adam’s nature, / Lord, I would be built by Thee / With the saints into Thy temple, / Where Thy glory we shall see.
Mingle, mingle, hallelujah! Yes, mingling is the way!!!
The all-sufficient God is for the building of Bethel. God is all-sufficient for the church life, for the building of His house on earth. You cannot experience the all-sufficient God in an individualistic way. In order to experience the all-sufficient God, you must be in Bethel, in the house of God, in the church life.
God is too all-sufficient to be experienced by just a few individual believers. As individuals, we are too limited. God’s all-sufficiency requires a corporate body. We need the house in order to experience this aspect of Him. (Life-study of Genesis, p. 1040)
It's so good to see what the church really is. It's not a building on a corner or a religious organization. It's the Father's house as the propagation of His life, the manifestation of the Triune God, His dwelling place where He can have His satisfaction and rest, His divine and human incorporation with His elect, as the way for Him to gain the New Jerusalem and so much more. When we see this what can we say, but "Lord, mingle me with yourself for the building up of Your house."
Amen! Oh Lord Jesus Amen! Thank you God Oh Lord Jesus!!
Amen its a high degree level of enjoyment but the utmost simple way its mingling and dwelling oh mingling and dwelling take place together amen lovely!!!!!!