The Dwelling of the Lord
The Lord has always been with us. In the beginning the Lord walked with Adam and Eve in the garden (Genesis 3), after that we saw the Lord approach man (Genesis 4 & 18, Exodus 3). Following that all throughout the Old Testament the Lord then dwelt with the people in His tabernacle, and temple, that He instructed them to build for Him. To be in the presence of God the people had to come to the tabernacle and temple. Then the Lord came to them once again, this time in the form of a man, a man named Jesus, who was the Christ (Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:23). With this coming, the Lord promised to institute a new, and better covenant (Jeremiah 31, Luke 22:20, Hebrews 8:6).
This new and better covenant allowed the Lord to not just dwell among His people, but within His people. The temple is now His people; man is now His temple, His dwelling place on the earth (1 Corinthians 3:16). As man could see the glory of the Lord and His mighty ways in the temple, we now go and allow man to see the might of the Lord within us and our lives. This is an amazing thing!
Like the horse, we cannot take the horse out of their natural environment to come and live with us in our home, they couldn't handle it. Their natural way would destroy our house, so we must go to the horse in their natural habitat. The same is with the Lord, in our fallen state we cannot dwell in the Lord's house, heaven, for we would soil His dwelling with our sin. So, the Lord came to us, in a form we could accept. Just as when a man walks into a wild herd it makes them scatter because our presence is too much for them. So, we mount a horse to enter the herd, they are still frightened because that horse looks familiar, yet so much different because of its tack and the man sitting upon it, but because man come in a somewhat familiar, so they are curious.
Imagine what life would be like if we could enter that herd as a horse, the spirit of man in the form of a horse. We could dwell among this herd and communicate with them on their level, give them no fear of us because we come in a form natural to them and they would accept us. This is what God did when He came to earth in the form of man through Jesus. He shared His wisdom and His ways in a way that man could understand and accept.
Today the presence of the Lord is active among man very much the same way the rider is with the horse. Are you willing to be used by the Lord to lead more to the kingdom of heaven? We will look similar to man yet so much different because of how the Lord equips us, much like we saddle a horse, and then we are His means to interact with man. This means we must fellowship with the Lord often, we must allow ourselves to be tied to Him and dwell in His pastures, for that is how He keeps us safe. Imagine what your beloved, well broke horse would be like if you turned him out with the wild herd, he would revert back to the ways of the herd. If we allow ourselves to once again run with the world the Lord cannot use us. To use the old cliché, "Be in the world, but not of it."
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