God’s ultimate purpose is bound up with obtaining a home for the everlasting Father…He is homeless, and He longs
for a place to dwell…It begins in Genesis, and it continues straight through to Revelation…This quest governs everything that God does…That dwelling place would be where He communicated. It would be where He revealed His mind. It would be where He expressed Himself freely…the very purpose of creation was to produce the construction materials for God’s house…Genesis 1 and 2 is a description of a building site and a description of the building materials necessary for the assembling of God’s house…When we get to the end of the Bible in Revelation 21 and 22, we see these same building materials mentioned…The building is complete, and God has His house…the purpose of man is to labor with his Creator in the building of God’s house…
-Frank Viola (@frankviola), From Eternity to Here
God’s big idea has to do with His expression; for Love is only fulfilled when it is expressed. We’ve already explored the Person whom He has chosen to receive His expressed Love; the Bride of Christ. Another view of His eternal purpose has to do with the PLACE in which that expression will occur. This place is where God will abide and be all in all for all of eternity. This is what your Bible is about. This is where all of this is headed.
This place is being built as you read this. The building materials are being created in us that will be used to complete construction. Sure, we’ve acted like bad sub-contractors and disappeared from the building site for days, weeks, months, years, and centuries at a time. But, God is patient. He is waiting for us to put our tool belts back on and get to work.
What is that work? To eat of the Tree of Life and drink of the Flowing River that produces in us the gold, pearl and precious stone that are used in the building of God’s house. Those were the materials in the Garden. They are the same ones that build the house of God in Revelation. Your purpose is to become the building materials for God’s house, where He can be freely expressed.
Your turn…what do you have to add? Questions? Learn anything new?
*The first post for this book is here. The next post is here.
Michael Fleming lives near Canton, Ohio with his wife Kristin. Michael is involved as a teacher with the Soul Care Center, a non-profit school in Canton that provides Christian counseling, teaching and coaching to the Stark County area. He also writes and records music for his pop alternative music project (also called 2nd man united) that can be heard in the sidebar of the site.
2MU latest posts
We’re writing about the same topic today: “We all build, but not in the same way.”
Isn’t it interesting that we are both the house and also the tools that God uses to build the house…
-Alan
Yes, He is really into us more than we know or imagine, isn’t He? It’s really mind-blowing and life-changing to know we are at the center of His purpose.