A place to call Home

I have no home, It is hard to explain, but I feel it. I long for the comfort of the home I once had - predictable, happy, perfect fit for our family, I long for the home - not the mortgage payment - but the home.
Funny thing is I still have to pay the mortgage, but I can't live there. I feel so cheated - angry - and disappointed. I drive by what was once a beautiful home and see a burned out shell. My heart aches, I wish I could turn back time, I wish things were different, but they aren't so I stand in front of a shell and mourn.

One word in the New Testament used to describe the Holy Spirit is "oikeo" it is a verb which means to live or dwell. It comes from the greek noun "oikos" meaning a house or a home. As a Christian I am the home to the Holy Spirit.
I am the brick and mortar God chose to indwell, I am the house.

On New Years it is easy to look around your spiritual house and see where there needs to be some cleaning going on. We make lists, review life goals and ponder how we can make more money, lose more weight, and delight ourselves in our homes.

How then can I delight the Holy Spirit with His home?

I wonder if God feels about my spiritual home the same way I feel about my physical home. He still paid the mortgage, but he only sees an empty shell. He takes a walk through and can picture the way things used to be, when things were new, and feels cheated, and grieves the current state of things.
It is easier to accept what Christ did on the cross - the payment- than it is His Lordship - the building of a good house.

"Christ says ‘Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked–the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.’"*

I guess my New Years Resolution this year is simple, give over my spiritual house. Stop accepting payment and rejecting ownership.
Amanda

* Taken from :C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, London: Geoffrey Bles, 1952, p. 155.