The New Beginning is all about, well, NEW. Not the same old same old. Not another crack at trying your best, and good luck to you. No, it is literally the life of God (Who IS life) filling us to overflowing and bursting out through the seams. Its about the abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of God. Which is literally a life of love. Because love is everlasting. Love is eternal. Love is what makes the abundant life... abundant. And love is what brought Jesus back to life after He gave His life for us and to us. Look at 1 John 3:14, "We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death." And see, we were already IN death. We were dead in our trespasses and sins. We were the walking dead from the moment Adam (our representative at the time) ate from the tree of death (the tree of knowledge of good and evil). And just real quick, Adam dying was not God punishing Him. That was simply the natural consequence of his action. And if you think about it, what else could have possibly happened? God warned Adam. If you eat from the tree of death... you will surely die. Well. Yeah. But God didn't want that to be the end of the story. So He gave us a New Beginning. A completely new story. He gave us the only thing that could bring us out of death and into life--LOVE! Love is the difference between life and death. Because to live is to love and to love is to live. Living and loving aren't just connected. They are the same thing. That's really what this New Beginning is all about--its about love. But it shouldn't surprise you by now that I think its all about love. In the beginning we were wandering around in the dark, trying to fill that God-shaped (love-shaped) void by looking for love in all the wrong places. By trying to earn something that can't be earned. Then the cross happened. We were drawn out of Adam and into Christ. Out of death and into life. Because God gave us His Spirit. The Spirit of Truth that leads and guides us into all truth. The truth that God is love and He loves you. The truth that the very thing we were trying to earn (and robbing ourselves of enjoying) is the very thing we've always had. We just didn't know it. Couldn't believe it. God's love seems too good to be true. So He proved it to us by laying His life down for us. By giving His life TO us. Picking His life back up and living it in us, and through us, and as us. Jesus walked on water (I think, in large part) to prove to us that we could walk in newness of life. That the old rules didn't apply anymore. Why else would He walk through a locked door, or things of that nature? He wanted to show us that we didn't know it all. We didn't have it all figured out. The things we took for granted weren't necessarily true. Being convinced that we didn't deserve love CERTAINLY wasn't true. See... God's love isn't too good to be true. It is so good that it MUST be true. Because it is the truth. And the way. And the life. God's love is the Alpha and Omega. The beginning and the end. The endless New Beginning!

The best part--the very best part--about the New Beginning that came into fulness on the cross... is that what came before doesn't matter. Who you used to be isn't who you have to be. Your actions, especially your "mistakes," don't define you. Let me say it like this: You are not what people call you. But you are what you answer to. Because what you do flows from what you believe. Let me get my memory verse in here. "If they could have provided perfect cleansing, the sacrifices would have stopped, for the worshipers would have been purified once for all time, and their feelings of guilt would have disappeared" (Hebrews 10:2 NLT). This is talking about the animal sacrifices of the Old Covenant. Where sin would actually be brought to remembrance. Where we couldn't escape out past. But that was merely a shadow of things to come. Because the perfect sacrifice of Jesus... He didn't just shed His blood FOR us, He gave His blood TO us. His DNA. The Divine Nature of the Almighty. He gave His life FOR us, and He gave His life TO us. Not just a reset button and then we're on our own to try again. No, we became completely new creatures. Not the old man who was of the earth, and earthy. No longer tied to the earth realm, or the senses realm. No longer walking by sight--seeing our mistakes and being doomed to repeat them. No more feelings of guilt. No more feelings of doom and gloom. No more running FROM God because we think He's out to get us. Now we can run TO God because on the cross He GOT us. In a good way. In the best way. He was lifted up from the earth on the cross, and He drew us all into Himself. This New Beginning is all us living in Christ (living in love) because Christ lives in us (because LOVE lives in us)! Its totally new. That's why Romans 6:4 speaks of walking in NEWNESS of life. Its not another chance at life as we knew it. Its a new life. HIS life. The abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of God. A life full of being loved by God and loving Him back by loving others with the love that we are loved with. That's what's available to us now. And, really, that's what has always been available to us. We just didn't know it. Because in the beginning it was dark. We didn't know who WE were because we didn't know who GOD was. Because we couldn't see clearly. We stumbled around in the dark and we did things that we probably regret. Those things that we felt (and still sometimes feel) guilty about. But we don't have to feel guilty. We have had our consciences purged with that precious blood of Jesus. What came before is gone. The old has passed away. Its all about the new, baby! Dead to sin. Alive to God. Dead to unbelief. Alive to knowing that we are loved, and because we are loved, we can love! We ARE love. That's the best part; we don't have to be held back by anything. Much less our pasts. Everybody has a past. But its IN the past. It doesn't matter anymore. Because Jesus gave everybody a New Beginning. Jesus gave us a NEW life. HIS life. And HE lives that life of love in us, and through us, and as us. He loves us so that we can love each other!

The best thing about the New Beginning that the cross brought about is that it wasn't just Jesus pressing a reset button for us so that we could try again; it was much more than that. Much better than that. Because we didn't just get another chance at life as we knew it. We got HIS life. Jesus gave His life for us, and He gave His life TO us. His abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life. A life of love. Being loved, and loving with that same love. And this is so powerful because that's all we've ever really wanted. In the beginning, when it was dark, we stumbled around looking for love in all the wrong places. We wanted it so badly... but couldn't believe that we were worthy of it. We couldn't believe that it could ever really be ours. We tried so hard to grab that elusive carrot, but the stick kept moving it just out of reach. We were literally void (as Genesis 1:2 tells us. We had a God-shaped (love-shaped) void. And we tried anything and everything to fill it. We were more than willing to try to earn something that can't be earned, because we wanted it SO BAD. That's why it was so easy for Eve to swallow the serpent's lie. "Do in order to be? Well, clearly I'm not good enough as is, so, yeah... that makes perfect sense." And to the carnal mind that DOES make perfect sense. But watch this: "Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you your heart's desires" Psalm 37:4 (NLT). One of my favorite verses. But don't think this is a formula. Don't think this is an "If Then" statement. That's not how God works. You don't earn the desire of your heart by delighting yourself in the Lord. The Lord IS the desire of your heart. Because God is love. And what else could the heart desire BUT love? Remember when I Ranted about what the heart knows? It (HE) knows love. Pure and simple. So the beginning was seeking that desire. And the New Beginning is finding it. When you guard your heart (by keeping it open to love) that's when--and how--you delight yourself in the Lord. When you let God love you, that's when you CAN love others. That's what the Holy Spirit is all about. He is the Spirit of Truth that leads and guides us into all truth. The truth that God is love, and He loves you. That's the ultimate truth of the universe. That's what we see when the light of the world shines. We see it when God shines His love on us, and we see it almost even more powerfully when it shines OUT of us! We ARE that light of the world. Jesus gave His life to us so that we could have it. So that we could know the Father, and know ourselves as His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. So we could see that things ARE in Divine Order. We don't need to PUT things in Divine Order. We don't need to earn God's love (or anything else). Because He has already given us everything. He didn't say, "Try again. Good luck." He said, "I'm going to give you my life... and I'm going to live it in you!" That way we are sure to get what He gave us. Know it and believe it. Receive it and release it. Stop trying to earn something that can't be earned. Something that you already have! Stand up (in a posture of rest) and walk by faith. Not by sight. Walk in newness of life. Enjoy the gift that you've been given by giving it away. By sharing it. Love IS giving. You can give without loving, but you can't love without giving. That's what the New Beginning is all about. Trading your sorrowful, hard, exhausting life of labor for the freedom of a life filled with love. Being loved and loving others with that same love!

First there was the beginning. Of the story. When God created heaven and earth. The mind and the body. You. The beginning of YOUR story. And in the beginning of your story you didn't know very much. Babies don't. And that doesn't mean babies are bad. My son, Logan, doesn't like babies because they cry a lot and he doesn't like loud noises. But, as I've Ranted on before, babies don't cry to be mean. Babies cry because they need to be taken care of and they don't know any other way to communicate. So when, say, an adult is crying and throwing a fit... use some wisdom. There are times when... let me quote the gambler... You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. Sometimes when someone is crying they need help. Sometimes when someone is crying they need to be told to knock it off. Discernment. Wisdom. But the point I'm TRYING to make today is that you learn and grow. Or... you need to learn and grow. When it was dark out OF COURSE we stumbled around. We couldn't see clearly. We tried to do the best we could with what we had, but we didn't think we had anything. So we ran around--in the dark--like chickens with our heads cut off trying to get whatever we could. Because when you think you have nothing, anything seems better than that. But I can tell you from experience, unless its the RIGHT thing you're better off without out. So the problem wasn't that we were babies. The problem was that we couldn't see clearly. We couldn't see that even in our infancy the Spirit of God--the Spirit of LOVE--hovered over the face of the deep. God swore He would never leave us nor forsake us. And that didn't just start when He said that. That's how it has always been and will always be. Forever doesn't start or end. Everlasting life has always been there. Will always be there. Because everlasting life is everlasting love. And in the beginning God created. Love created. In the beginning was the Word (Jesus, LOVE). That Word, "Let there be light"... that Word, "I love you and I can't stop loving you"... is the creative power of God. Look at John 1:3 real quick, "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." All things were made by love. There is nothing that was made... that wasn't made by love. Love is what makes everything. Love is what holds things together. Even when you can't feel it. When its so dark out that you can't see any reason that anybody would possibly love you. COULD possibly love you. That's when people cry out. That's when people need help. When its dark out, that's when you need the light the most. And the best part is... we ARE the light! We don't just have it, we ARE it. We are the light of the world. The same light that Jesus is. Because HE is that light IN us. Not just shining ON us, but shining out from WITHIN us. That's what happened on the cross: It was the New Beginning. The light shined. Everything was revealed to be in Divine Order. We were--in a sense--transformed into a new creature. Conformed into the image of God's Son. Our new, TRUE, identity revealed so that we might know who we are and, in knowing, BE who we are!

I like the creation story. Always have. And people sometimes ask me about it: "Do you really believe Adam was the first man on earth?" Like that's the point of the story. Look at Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." So if there was already God, then what does the Bible mean by "in the beginning"? I look at it like this--in the beginning of the story God created the heaven (mind) and the earth (body). In the beginning of YOUR story... God created YOU. We sometimes get so stuck on things that really don't matter that much. Adam was humanity's representative up until the cross. Before there was a before, and an after. Before the cross, and after the cross. A way things were, and a way things are. That's what's important. The first Adam was of the earth, earthy, right? He was made from the dust of the ground. And I've heard one preacher say that means Adam was a dirtbag. He couldn't do any better because he didn't know any better. He was tied to the earth realm. He did the best he could with what he had. But that was the problem. Because if you follow the creation story it goes on to say, "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" (Genesis 1:2). God created you. In His image. But it was dark out. The deep calls out to the deep. What's inside of us always has been and always will be true. But there was darkness. We were made in His image, but we didn't know what that image was because we couldn't see. We were without form. There was a God-shaped (love-shaped) void inside of us. It wasn't until the cross that the light shined in fulness, and we were conformed to the image of God's Son. It wasn't until we got to the New Beginning that things started to come together. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). The Word of God. Which is Jesus. Which is love. In the New Beginning God spoke that Word (that was with God, and that WAS God) and said, "Let there be light." Let there be love. He gave us His only begotten Son so that we might not perish--or keep stumbling around in the dark--but have life. The abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of God. The abundant, eternal, everlasting, Resurrection Life of LOVE. That's what the cross was all about; Not God transforming us into something that He could finally love, because He already loved us. Always has, always will. Not God being mad enough to kill someone, but loving us so much that He would rather die than be without us. What the cross did was it filled us with the Holy Spirit--the Spirit of Truth that leads and guides us into all truth... the truth that God is love and He loves you--so that we might know and believe the love of God. So that we might live a new life as new creatures. So that we might live that life of God as God Himself lives it in us, and through us, and as us. The New Beginning was the death of the old and the birth of the new. The shift from death unto life. And that's what I want to focus on in this Rant series: We WERE dead in our trespasses and sins, but now we are alive unto God. Alive unto love!

Jesus said He would tear down the temple and rebuild it in three days. That's what happened on the cross. That's what happened to us. We are the temple that He made without hands. We are the dwelling place of the living God. He lives in us. He lives through us. He lives as us. God expressed Himself to us in the person of Jesus. He expresses Himself through us every time we let what's inside come out. Every time we act in love. That's what charity is: Love in action. And that's WHY Jesus rebuilt the temple. He wanted it to hold HIS stuff--love--instead of all the traditions of man, or all the religious garbage that had accumulated over time. The Word (which is Jesus, which is love) became flesh and dwelt among us. And then the Word (Jesus, love) took up abode within us. So that the Word (Jesus... LOVE) could fill us up to overflowing and come out of us. That's the true purpose of the temple. It puts something on display. That's what we are. We are the visible face of the invisible God. We are what love looks like. Jesus said, "If you've seen me you've seen the Father." A Father's love for His Son. A Creator's love for His creation. This temple is not for hoarding anything either. Jesus kicked over the tables that were used to buy and sell religion. He wanted to make sure that we knew what it was really all about. And what its really all about... is love. Receiving it and releasing it. Receiving it BY releasing it. Letting what's inside come out. Naturally. By knowing and believing that its in there. I think one of the most important things about our memory verse for this Rant series (1 Corinthians 6:19) is the phrase, "...the temple of the Holy Ghost..." The Holy Spirit is our love receptor. He is what equips and empowers us to love... by leading and guiding us into the truth that we ARE loved. You can't give what you don't have, right? I keep saying it. So... well, let me say it like this: "We love him, because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). And in the NLT it reads, "We love each other because he loved us first." See, we love Him BY loving each other. Jesus said whatever you do unto the least of them you do unto Him. How we treat others is how we treat God. Because God lives in us. He lives in me and He lives in you. So what comes out of me goes into you. We are connected on that love level. The deep calls out to the deep. We are all different parts of the same body. HIS body. Its HIS temple. The House of the Lord. The House of Love. And since I'm a temple, and you're a temple, together we make up the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of Love. In the beginning we were made in God's image. And then, on the cross, when Jesus rebuilt the temple, we were conformed to the image of God's beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. What was always true came to light as the light of the world shined on us, and in us, and through us. We ARE that light. We ARE that temple. Love is on display... in us! God's love. The love that He gave to us. So that we would have it. So that we could share it. We love God by loving each other. By laying our lives down for each other. By letting what's inside come out. By letting God love us so big and so hard that we couldn't keep His love inside the temple if we tried. Its too big. Its too good. God loved the hell out of us so that we could love the hell out of each other!

Don't you realize? That's the question that the Apostle Paul asks in our key verse for this Rant series. He never went around telling people what they weren't. Or what they should be. He went around from church to church trying to help people realize who they already were. Don't you realize that you are the temple of the Holy Spirit? Don't you realize that God lives inside of you? And because He lives inside you... He lives THROUGH you. You are the shrine to God--to love--that puts God--LOVE--on display. You are the visible face of the invisible God. You are how God expresses Himself to the world. God's love letter to the world. Because that's who God is. That's what God does. He is love. He loves unconditionally. He loves YOU unconditionally so that you can love OTHERS unconditionally. He filled you up with Himself, His Spirit, His love, so that you could truly live. Because to live is to love. To love is to live. You can't have one without the other. You can't do one without the other. Living and loving aren't just connected. They are the same thing. That's why God doesn't live in a temple built with hands. He can't be limited to one place. Even in the days of Moses God didn't want a temple. He wanted a tabernacle. Because He was always on the move. That's why Jesus went to the cross and gave His life for us, and to us. God didn't want to dwell in just one human body. He wanted to dwell in all human bodies. Remember: I'm a temple, and you're a temple, and together all of the temples make up the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of Love. Because that's what the temple is for: It is a shrine to love. It puts love on display. Front and center. And when we know its in there, it WILL come out. Naturally. Because we have been filled to overflowing with the only thing in the universe that is so good you can't keep it to yourself. Love IS giving. You can give without loving, but you can't love without giving. You have to give it away--or share it--in order to experience it. The temple doesn't close its doors. We don't guard our hearts by keeping them shut down. We guard our hearts by keeping them open. Keeping them open to love. That's the heart's purpose--receive and release love. That's how we let the mind of Christ (that's already in us) BE in us; we think the thoughts of God. Thoughts of goodness, and peace. Not of evil. Not bad and getting worse... but upward and God-ward! Not trying to get whatever we can to scrape by, but by letting the love of Christ control us. Letting what's inside of us come out by knowing and believing its (He's... love's...) in there. Living the abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of God by letting Jesus live His own life in us, and through us, and as us. That's how we put God on display--by letting Him do what He wants to do. Not by trying to follow in His foot steps, but by letting Him make His own foot steps with our feet. Letting the Word become flesh every time we act in love. Charity. Love in action. That's what being the temple is all about... not about making people come to us and worship us, but by taking what we've got (what everybody needs) straight to them! Jesus is the vine and we are the branches, right? So we reach our our limbs and bear the fruit of the Spirit (LOVE) to those that are hungry. We know that Jesus built the house, and that He decorated it the way He wanted it. He filled it up with HIS stuff (again, LOVE). So we have what we need. We are who we need to be. We just need to know what we have. We just need to realize who we are. And then BE who we are. Not by trying to be someone we're not, but by letting Jesus be who HE is in us, and through us, and as us!

The human body is a shrine to love. I don't know how else to put it. The most important thing in the world is on full display inside of us. And that means it can be on display THROUGH us. That's the key: What's inside--what you know and believe is inside--WILL come out. We live from the inside-out. Even when we don't realize it. Because you can't give what you don't have. And you can only give what you do have. Hurting people hurt people. But loved people love people. So that's why I think the Apostle Paul asked the question, "Don't you realize?" We are who we are. Always have been. Always will be. We were made in the image and likeness of God. And then, on the cross, we were conformed to the image of His Son. Our temple was filled, if I can say it that way. And, listen, to be perfectly clear, the Holy Spirit doesn't fill us with God's love. We have always been loved. We will always be loved. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth that leads and guides us into all truth. The Holy Spirit doesn't make God love us. The Holy Spirit reveals the truth about God's love to us! He is the love receptor. Through the Holy Spirit we can receive and release the love of God. And in that way, experience it. Love IS giving. So you FEEL love when you GIVE love. If you want to know that you are loved... love someone. Because that's how we walk by faith. If you give it away, that means that (at least on some level) you believe you have it. Again: Can't give what you don't have. If you give it, that means you believe you have it. What you believe is inside WILL come out. It has to. What you do flows from what you believe. Yesterday I think I mentioned part of one of my favorite verses about Christ's love controlling us. And here's the deal with that: Either you don't believe you are loved and you do everything you do in order to get what you think you don't have. You look for love in all the wrong places, and you're willing to settle for just about anything. OR. You know that you ARE loved, and you do everything you do in order to share what you've got. Because its too good to keep to yourself. It comes out. Naturally. When you know its in there. That's what a shrine is for; you put the important thing front and center so everybody can see it. Put it on display. Let people worship it, if I can go to that level. And I know it kind of weirds people out a little bit when I say things like, "I'm obsessed with love." Or, "I worship love." But guys... God IS love. That's the whole point of the whole thing. Jesus said people would know His disciples by the love they had. And yet, in this day and age, it seems like people assume you're a Christian if you're mean and judgmental and hypocritical. That's not right. Our bodies are not supposed to be temples of all that nonsense. That's why Jesus kicked the tables over, right? To redecorate. To put things in Divine Order. And now that the light of the world is shining we can see that things ARE in Divine Order. The Holy Spirit lives in us. LOVE lives in us!

One of the "coolest" (in the sense that we like to make God in our image instead of understanding what it means to be made in His image) stories in the Bible is the one where Jesus gets mad and flips over the tables in the temple. And I think we like that story because of the "human" reaction. Because when we get mad we sometimes flip table over. Or at least we WANT to. And here Jesus actually did it. But lets look at WHY He did it. "And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves" (Mark 11:17). The problem was that they were misusing the temple. It was more important to make money than it was to bless people. (And if you go even further, you understand that the money changers were selling sacrifices to the people, so in a sense Jesus was overturning that whole religious system. But that's not for today.) Jesus wanted to tear down the temple (His body) and rebuild it in three days. The temple made without hands. The temple that we are. The house of God. The house of love. The house where the Holy Spirit dwells. So let's keep our analogy going: Sometimes it feels like Jesus is flipping tables over in US. But not out of anger, certainly. Out of love. Let me say it this way: Jesus built the house. He gets to choose what goes in it. And, again, with the understanding that the work is finished... He already chose what went in it. Its like when you move into a new house, and you realize how much stuff has piled up in the old house. Stuff you don't need. Stuff that doesn't fit anymore. Stuff that doesn't serve the purpose of the temple. Remember, a temple is a shrine. The most important thing in the world is, if I can say it this way, placed on a pedestal. Put on display. And the most important thing in the world is, of course, love. We are God's love letter to the world. WE are how God's love is put on display. Jesus was--and we are--the visible face of the invisible God. We are the temple where the Holy Spirit lives. And because He lives IN us, He also lives THROUGH us. What's inside comes out. It is put on display when the Word (which is Jesus, which is love) becomes flesh. When love as an idea becomes acts of kindness. Charity is love in action. A living temple. And, in a sense, since there are a bunch of different temples... it makes up a Kingdom. Get it? But its so easy to try to build our own temple. Our own house. Our own kingdom. And that's why we end up with so much unnecessary stuff. We try to decorate our lives with whatever we can find because we so often look for love in all the wrong places. Better to be still and know that HE is God. Let me wrap this up with part of Psalm 127:1, "...Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it..." So just enjoy the work that the Lord has done. The work that has been finished. Don't flip any tables over. Don't let anger control you. Christ's love controls us. The house has the right stuff in it. The temple is full!

The carpenter Jesus built a house. And that house... is you. "Don't you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself" (1 Corinthians 6:19 NLT). And that right there is the problem. We don't realize it. We're so busy trying to build our own houses (or, worse yet, kingdoms) that we don't understand that the work is finished. And we don't understand what it means that the work is finished. To use another Biblical picture: The gardener Jesus HAS already pruned every tree in His garden. So when it feels like things are being cut off of you--things that you never needed in the first place--what is really happening is the manifestation of the fulness of what happened 2,000 years ago on the cross (and really what happened before anything else happened, because the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world). You don't need to chnage. You need to see the change that has already taken place. This idea that God loves you just the way you are BUT loves you too much to leave you that way has never held any water with me. Because love doesn't demand its (HIS) own way. Love doesn't want you to change. Love loves you for who you are. But at the same time, love DOES want the best for you. Love doesn't want you to struggle to be someone you're not. Love wants to show you who you REALLY are. By loving the hell out of you. By shining the light of the world ON you, so that it can shine THROUGH you. When you see who you really are--by seeing Jesus--you can BE who you really are. You CAN realize that you are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and that God lives inside you. LOVE lives inside you. Its not about getting the garden ready for God. Its about how God got the garden--YOU--ready for Himself. God was in Christ on the cross reconciling you to Himself. When we were running from God He was running towards us with His arms wide open. When we didn't have anything to offer... He gave us everything He had. Everything He is. He gave His life for us, and He gave His life to us. He took up abode within us. Its not a temple made with hands. Its the temple that WE are. And, since we're building the foundation of this Rant series tonight, let's define "temple." In the KJV of 1 Corinthians 6:19 "temple" is number 3485 in Strong's Greek Concordance and it means, "to dwell. a fane, shrine, temple." And obviously I like the dwelling place part. We dwell in Him because He dwells in us. We dwell in LOVE because LOVE dwells in us. We're going to hit that hard in the next few days. But I also want to talk about the idea of our body being a shrine. To love. According to dictionary.com (and, again, we'll get into this a lot more in the next few days) a shrine is "any structure or place consecrated or devoted to some saint, holy person, or deity, as an altar, chapel, church, or temple." So WE are a place devoted to... love. That's our whole purpose. We were created to be loved and to love. That's why the carpenter built us. He wanted a house to live in. He wanted a place to keep (and by keep I mean store until it can be given away) His stuff. His... love!