A Dwelling Place for God
Learning to get into the Spirit together
Family Matters · Part 3 · Ephesians 2–3
For two weeks we have been laying a foundation. Week one: you belong to Jesus, chosen and adopted before the foundation of the world. Last week: we belong to Jesus, and Paul prays constantly that the eyes of our hearts would be flooded with light to see the hope, the power, and the ascendancy of Christ that we share as a family.
Now Paul tells us what this family is for.
"So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God's holy people. You are members of God's family. Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself. We are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord. Through him you Gentiles are also being made part of this dwelling where God lives by his Spirit." (Ephesians 2:19–22, NLT)
Read the progression slowly, because it's a staircase. Strangers. Citizens. Family. House. Temple. Dwelling where God lives by his Spirit. The family of God is not just a household that belongs to God. It is a habitation that God moves into. The endgame of everything we've studied, the adoption, the access, the one new people, is that God would have an address in his family.
Jesus said the same thing to a Samaritan woman at a well when she asked him the temple question of her day, whether worship belonged on her mountain or in Jerusalem: "A time is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is seeking such people to worship him" (John 4:23–24). Not a place. A people. The Father is seeking, and what he is seeking is worshipers who go deeper than geography, deeper than form, into spirit and truth. A family of worshipers has always been God's design, and those knit-together connections of spiritual family are what actually create the place where his presence dwells. He set the standard low, two or three gathered in his name, because his desire to be among his people is that high (Matthew 18:20).
So this week I want to explore the question that I believe is the key to this whole season of our church's life. It is the question underneath everything:
How do we learn to get into the Spirit together? In our homes, in our prayer groups, in our personal time, in our small groups, how do we make space to go deeper than the rational level?
The House Gets Filled
Before we answer it, look where Paul goes next, because Ephesians 3 shows us that God's intent for his house is not occupancy but fullness. Paul falls to his knees before "the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named" (3:14–15, ESV), and listen to what he asks:
"I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him... May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God." (Ephesians 3:16–19, NLT)
Christ will make his home in your hearts. There's the dwelling language again, and notice where the action happens: in the inner being, by the Spirit, at a depth "too great to understand fully." You cannot think your way into this. Paul is describing an encounter that goes beneath the rational mind, and he ends the chapter praying that God would do "infinitely more than we might ask or think... through his mighty power at work within us" (3:20). More than we might think. The fullness of God is not anti-intellectual, but it is more than intellectual. And that's exactly why the key question matters.
Deeper Than The Rational Level
Here's what I've observed, in my own life and in our church family. Most of us relate to God primarily at the rational level: we read about him, talk about him, discuss the Word, listen to teaching. All of that is good. It edifies the mind, and I am not pitting learning against the Spirit; Paul prayed for wisdom and knowledge two chapters ago. But there is more than learning about God's Word. There is interacting with God through the Spirit. And the doorway into that deeper place is almost always the same: worship, prayer, praying in the Spirit, and the slow, reflective reading of Scripture that turns into meditation and then into communion.
What we usually reach for first is rational discussion. What we have to learn to reach for is entrance. The question in any gathering of believers, whether it's two spouses at a kitchen table or two hundred people on a Sunday, is not only "what did we learn?" but "did we enter in? Did we touch his presence, or did we only talk about him?"
And here is the honest truth about how this skill develops. There is a level of difficulty most people experience, and it runs opposite to what you'd expect. It is easiest to enter into the Spirit in a facilitated corporate environment, at church, where the worship is led and the room carries you. It is harder to do it alone, in your personal time, where no one is leading and your mind wanders. And it is hardest of all in the small settings, the home, the family devotion, the small group, because that's where you bring your preferences, your self-consciousness, and your fear of being vulnerable. Praying in the Spirit in a sanctuary is one thing. Singing to the Lord in your living room, with your spouse and children watching, is another. But learning to engage at that small-group and household level, in prayer, in worship, in authentic sharing that goes deeper than our rational understanding, is precisely the key to becoming a dwelling place for God in the Spirit. The temple is built exactly at the point of our vulnerability, because that's where the joints are. We are "carefully joined together," and joints are where one life actually touches another.
How do you engage at the spirit-man level when you come together? From the deepest parts of yourself. That's the exploration in front of us.
Three Intentional Steps
So let me set a vision and get intensely practical. If we want our marriages, our families, and our church environments to become a dwelling place for God in the Spirit, I believe there are three intentional steps.
First, maintain your personal fire. A bonfire is built from carried flames. Some weeks you will come needing to be reignited, and that's what family is for; there is no shame in arriving cold. But the normal pattern of a burning house is that each of us tends a personal fire through daily devotion, times of prayer, praying in the Spirit, singing and worshiping on our own. When you maintain your personal fire, you don't come to the gathering hoping to catch something. You come carrying something, and you add your flame to the bonfire.
Second, set aside intentional time, and use it to engage the Spirit, not just the mind. Put it on the calendar: a virtual prayer meeting, a family worship night, a weekly hour with your spouse. And then, inside that time, be intentional about how you engage. Don't only talk about the Word, as edifying as that is. Worship together. Take an actual moment of prayer instead of only discussing prayer. Pray in the Spirit. Read a passage slowly and sit with it until it turns from information into encounter. I'll be honest: this is something I am actively seeking to grow in with my own family. It is easy for our table to be full of talk about God. I want it to be a table where we encounter his presence. The way in is almost always the same: worship, prayer, and reflective meditation on Scripture. Rational discussion can describe the door. These things walk through it.
Third, learn to enter in together, especially in the small places. This is the step that costs the most and builds the most. Believers usually have to learn to enter the Spirit alone before they can do it together, and doing it together in a home or small group requires a vulnerability that a big room never demands. So go first. Be the one in your small group who says, "before we discuss, let's worship for a few minutes." Be the spouse who reaches for a hand and prays out loud. Be the friend who shares from the deepest part of yourself instead of the most defensible part. Every time somebody goes first, the room gets easier to enter for everyone else, and stone joins to stone. This is how a temple goes up: not in the abstract, but two or three vulnerable people at a time, carefully joined together in him.
What Happens When A People Become A Dwelling
Why pursue this? Because of what happens when God actually takes up residence in a people.
Look at the church in Jerusalem. Just weeks after Pentecost, the believers were "one in heart and mind" (Acts 4:32), gathered daily in prayer and worship. And the presence of God rested on that community so tangibly that Luke records something almost unbelievable: "As a result of the apostles' work, sick people were brought out into the streets on beds and mats so that Peter's shadow might fall on some of them as he went by. Crowds came from the villages around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those possessed by evil spirits, and they were all healed" (Acts 5:15–16, NLT). Think about what that means. There was nothing magic in Peter's shadow. A shadow is nothing. But the manifest presence of God so saturated that praying, united family that it overflowed the walls of their gatherings and spilled into the streets, and people arranged their sick along the sidewalks just to be near the overflow. The dwelling place had become larger than the house. The city itself came under the shadow of the presence.
And this is not only an ancient story. In 1949, on the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides islands off the coast of Scotland, two elderly sisters in the village of Barvas, Peggy Smith, who was eighty-four and blind, and her sister Christine, in her eighties and bent with arthritis, could no longer attend church. So they turned their cottage into a house of prayer, praying twice a week, often late into the night, holding on to the promise, "I will pour water on him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground" (Isaiah 44:3). Across the parish, a handful of men began meeting in a barn to pray the same way. One night a young deacon stood and read from Psalm 24: "Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? He who has clean hands and a pure heart," and as the story is told, the presence of God fell on that barn and the men knew revival had come before it ever reached the pulpit.
When the preacher Duncan Campbell arrived that December, what unfolded was beyond anything a meeting could contain. Services ended and no one went home; crowds gathered outside the church at midnight without being invited by anyone but God. Lights burned in cottages across the parish as households prayed through the night. Men were struck with conviction at their looms, in the fields, beside the road, people who had never come near a church suddenly unable to escape the awareness of God. In the village of Arnol, during a late-night prayer meeting, a local blacksmith prayed and the house itself shook. Campbell's own description of those years is the best definition of our vision I have ever heard: a community saturated with God.
Notice what both stories have in common. The revival did not start with a platform. It started with a dwelling place: two sisters and a cottage, a few men and a barn, a hundred and twenty in an upper room. Ordinary believers made space, went deeper than the rational level, entered in together, and kept the fire burning until God moved in. And when God dwells in a people, the presence does not stay inside the walls. It gets into the streets. It gets into the parish. It saturates a city.
A Dwelling Place In Our City
That is the vision I am asking you to carry for Atlanta. We've said it before: our city already knows how to keep things running night and day, and devotion that doesn't sleep is already offered here to gods who cannot hear. This week, after twenty years, a house of prayer in Lawrenceville had to adjust its schedule of night-and-day worship, and I believe with all my heart that this is a step back in order to move forward. Billy and I have been driving through Buckhead praying about what comes next: a work with physical and digital elements, a place where the word is studied, where worship and prayer are stewarded in the heart of our city. But hear me: the building is not the strategy. The family is the strategy. Dwelling places are carried by families who know their identity and have learned to enter in together. Two sisters in a cottage carried a revival. A praying church in Jerusalem healed a city with its overflow. The way we build a sanctuary for God in Atlanta is by building people, marriages, families, and small groups that know how to get into the Spirit together.
The call
So here is the call, and it's wonderfully practical.
Tend your fire this week. Daily devotion, prayer, praying in the Spirit, a song sung to the Lord with no one listening. Come carrying a flame.
Set one intentional time. One family worship moment, one hour with your spouse, one virtual prayer meeting. And inside it, don't just discuss. Worship. Pray. Enter.
Go first in a small place. In your group or your home, be the one who opens the door past the rational level. Vulnerability is the joint where the stones connect.
Ask God for the saturation. Pray for the physical place in the heart of our city, and beyond it, pray for what Lewis had and Jerusalem had: presence that spills past the walls, into the streets, until the sick are laid where the shadow falls.
The Father is seeking worshipers in spirit and in truth. He is looking for a house.
Let's build him one, together.
