Our Camps

“For the LORD your God moves in your camp to protect you and to deliver your enemies to you. Your camp must be holy…” De 23:14.

It is so easy sometimes to feel as if God is far away, sitting comfortably on His throne in Heaven separated from the reality of this world. Since the beginning of creation through the breath of His own mouth we are told that God lives and moves among man. ‘Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden’ Gen 3:9. ‘As God has said: I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people’ 2 Co 6:16. ‘…the Spirit of truth…for he lives with you and will be in you’ John 14:18.

We do not serve a faraway God but a God who has taken up residence in our hearts through His spirit. Our hearts serve as our camps as we set up our lives while on this earth. God moves about in our hearts during the good and the bad seasons. He is constantly at work in us sorting out our emotions and transforming our hearts. ‘…in order to fulfill the word of the LORD – the LORD moved the heart’ 2 Ch 36:22. When we sin God grieves for us, ‘and his soul was grieved for the misery of Israel’ Judges 10:16. When we suffer God delivers us, ‘…for I am aware of their sufferings. So I have come down to deliver them’ Ex 3:7-8. He is a hands-on God who longs to protect and deliver us from temptation, but we must do our part by keeping our hearts holy. We must release bitterness and a judgmental spirit from our hearts. We must push away from that vice that seems to have control over us. We must accept the boundaries that God places around our lives and live within those boundaries. He is at work in the very areas of our lives that we work hard at controlling and managing.

Is there something in your life that you surrender to God on a constant basis only to take back the reigns? Is there an activity in your life that separates you from the holiness of God? We should all ask God to reveal the very toxins in our camp that keep us from holy living. God will be faithful in building up the very temple in which He dwells.

‘Then…everyone whose heart God had moved…prepared to go up and build the house of the LORD’ Ezra 1:5.