Our home can be a spiritually protected Temple
- This page is part of an ERW course: Home Church.
- By John Eagles, September 9, 2009.
How we feel, what we think, much of it is determined by the spiritual environment around us. Spiritual beings, be they people or angels, have their thoughts and feelings and desires. They can project this mentally onto us.
Wherever you come, you enter not only a physical space but also a spiritual environment. This means that there is a certain spiritual atmosphere connected to each physical space. This spiritual atmosphere is determined by what spirits, including people in the physical world, have done there in the past. It is also influenced by the spirits who are presently occupying that space and who have their desires, thoughts and feelings and whether they want this or not, all this will be felt by us in the physical world. Often we are not clearly aware of how we are affected by the spiritual atmosphere of a place or also directly by spiritual beings. But whether we are conscious of it or not, the influences are there.
In order for us to live a satisfying life of faith and spirituality centered on God, we want to live in a protected and sacred atmosphere. Because we spend much time in our home, and because this is the place where our children grow up, it is essential that we know how to make our home into a sanctuary.
A home that is a sanctuary, that can also be called a temple.
How can we make our home into a holy temple? There is very much to be said about this, but here I want to restrict myself mainly to how we can spiritually protect our home.
Whatever you bring into your house, this has a certain origin and history from a spiritual viewpoint. For example, when we burn wood in a furnace, it is important that this wood is not stained too much spiritually. For example, imagine that the wood came from a tree that was used for worship of evil deities? The tree and the firewood from it will be claimed by these evil spirits and they have brought into that wood the energy of their evil thoughts and feelings. When we would burn such a piece of wood, the energies release and fill our room and will then attract evil spirits.
What I said about firewood is true for so many things. For example, when you watch a film on tv that goes about something evil, the spiritual atmosphere of your room will be polluted by the sound and the images. Also in this case, this could attract spirits who for longer time may make trouble in your home.
The examples that I could give are near endless, but I hope I made the point that when we want to make our home into a sacred temple, we need to be careful with what comes in.
Of course, this also applies to our guests. When we allow people into our house who might have evil desires at that moment, it is difficult to keep the sanctity of our home. Usually people are accompanied by spirits and people who have bad desires usually don't have good spirits with them.
We can think of our home as comparable to a temple or tabernacle. There is a front court, there is a holy place, there is the most holy place, and there is the ark.
The front court of our house could be the hall of entrance. Here we put off our dirty shoes that were touching the unholy ground outside. Maybe we want to wash our hands before we enter the more inner parts of our house. This also applies to guests of course.
The holy place of our house could be the dining room where we come together as family. Here is a table, comparable to an altar, on which we offer the food to our family and also to God. The sharing of a meal can be a holy event in which we share the love of God with our family. When the room is protected well spiritually, it will allow our good ancestors to be with us while we share our meal.
The most holy place of our house could be a prayer room with an altar. There might be a cabinet in that room in which we keep books of truth. That cabinet is comparable to the ark and the books to the Word of God (the Tablets of Stone). We could of course also store these books in a box or a suitcase and the comparison to the ark is more clear.
Like the Ark of the Covenant was protected by two cherubim, two angels who were having a task of protection, so when we make our most holy place in our home to a real sacred place, God could send good spirits or angels to protect that room.
This is a very big topic. I wanted to point out some comparisons between a temple and our home and how we can understand our home to be a temple, even though it may look like a very normal house.
