Heart of Worship Pt. 5 // Inner Room Of Your Heart

Discover the powerful truth of where God truly longs to dwell—not in grand temples or breathtaking landscapes, but within your very heart. This message looks at how King David dreamed of building a magnificent temple for God, yet God’s plan was always deeper: to make His home within His people. Jesus spoke of the “inner room,” a sacred place inside each of us where His presence abides. In a world buzzing with noise, anxiety, and endless information, that inner sanctuary has never been more vital. What we nurture in our hearts inevitably shapes our words, relationships, and spiritual influence. Through scriptures like Ezekiel 36, John 14, 1 Corinthians 6, Matthew 6, and Colossians, this teaching reveals God’s timeless desire to dwell within us—and offers practical ways to guard that sacred space, nurture His presence, and live from the inside out.

This sermon was recorded at a Sunday morning gathering at Church of the Lookout in Longmont, Colorado.

Visit our website
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on Instagram

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast. Church of the Lookout is in Boulder, Colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love. Visit us online at theLookout.church. Today we are going to open the scriptures together. If you have your Bibles, we're going to start in in uh Ephesians chapter 2, I think. And what I mean by that is we recently just finished a teaching series through the heart of worship, and we're kind of in one of those in-between weeks, and I was just really sensing just this openness from God praying all week. I came into this morning with three potential messages for you, okay? And uh and I'm gonna try not to preach all three. Um I'm gonna try not to preach all three. Um but just praying, you know, especially in the time that we're living in right now, um, and there's a lot that's swirling, there's a lot that could be said. And my hope and my prayer this morning as we're coming in is that together we can feast on God's word to us. That we can drink in of the pure spiritual milk as First Peter in 1 Peter he he talks about the word of God being spiritual milk for us that nourishes us unlike anything else. And that's what we need right now, right? And uh and so uh hang with me this morning as we go on a little bit of an adventure. I think I know where we're starting, but I'm not entirely sure I know where we're gonna end, all right? And the entire time we're not gonna be thinking about the Broncos at all. We are just dialed in right here. Okay. Um look, can we just do this before we open the word, though? Let's just quiet our hearts. Just become aware of the presence of God with us here today. We're not alone. So, Jesus, we call our minds and our hearts to attention right now. We quiet ourselves before you together. For who you are, and that you're with us even now. In Jesus' name. Amen. So let's read from Ephesians chapter two, starting in verse 19. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him, you are also being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Everybody say dwelling place. So a few years ago, I visited St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. Maybe some of you have been there. I haven't had a chance to, I haven't been to uh uh enough of Europe to see any of the brilliant cathedrals and architecture in Europe, uh, but I had a chance to go to St. Patrick's Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan. It was one of the most majestic pieces of architecture I'd seen. It just took my breath away. And uh I actually had come into Manhattan early that morning. I'm like, I'm just gonna go and sit and just be there for a while. So I got the chance to just go sit in the pews before a service, and and uh it really just take in is that the ornate architecture, the stained glass, uh, the stone, uh, the wood, all of the elements carefully crafted over a long period of time. And it was all crafted in order to draw attention to the majesty of God. As I was sitting there, I was like, oh my gosh, if God was ever in a place, it would be this place. It's like this would be the place. The beauty, the awe is one of those places that just is designed to stir up awe in your life and in your heart. And uh have have you, I'm just curious, have you ever been to a place so majestic that you were so certain it's like in this place, surely God is in this place? Uh maybe, maybe that was uh maybe it wasn't a building, maybe it was just the Grand Canyon uh or a beautiful mountain valley, right? Maybe it was uh a hike to a waterfall that just seemed like it was endless, it was tucked away just for you. Uh maybe, maybe that majestic piece was uh sitting on the ocean's edge, just looking out over the vast expanse, you cannot see the end of what you see. And there's something about it that just draws you to the surface, and uh and and and it does evoke something of man, if God was gonna be in a place, if he could inhabit any place, it would be this place. And it's kind of a similar line of thinking. This is exactly what David was thinking. So going back into the story of David that we've been in the last several weeks, this is what David was thinking when he brought the presence of God back into the city and said, you know what, listen, it's not enough that we have a tent pitch for you that's not good enough for you. God, we're gonna do something, we're gonna go, we're gonna take this to eleven, right? We're gonna build something so majestic, so big, so otherworldly that we will become the envy of all nations, right? And so what happened in David's heart is he looked at, and it was born out of a heart of worship, it was born out of a heart of uh, God, I you are so worth everything that we could possibly do. We want to build you a home that is so outrageous that it's going to catch the attention of the entire world. That's what was going through David's mind. And that ends up becoming this kind of theme through the whole testament of the journey, God Yahweh seeking a dwelling place and finding these pockets and these forms and these times to become close to his people. And so for David, David said, I want to bit, I want to, if I have a shot, I want to build you a place. God said, Okay, well, I didn't ask you to do that, but I will allow you to, but you're not gonna do it. Your son's gonna do it. Um, David had too much war, too much blood on his hands, and so he said, You're gonna, your son is going to build this house for me. And because of this heart, I'm gonna I'm gonna bless you and your entire line and your entire throne, and it will have no end. What I'm going to establish in your house will have no end. And that's how moving it was to the heart of God. But what but what's really fascinating about this passage of something moving in David's heart, I'm gonna build you a cathedral, I'm gonna build you a temple that's only fit for your name, is that God never asked him to do it. And why would that be? Because it's not that God's upset with it, of course. He's like, I will receive that as a gift, but God knew that no matter the size of the dwelling place, it was still always going to be temporary. There was another home that he was after, and that home was the very hearts of the people that he loved. More than the most beautiful cathedral or a man-made temple, God had his eyes set on a home he really wanted, which was you, which was me, which was the entire nations, the hearts of all people and nations. That was the home that God wanted to dwell in. Come on, somebody shout back to me. This is good news today. We could pick anything else. You could sit on a mountaintop and say, surely this is the home that God would want. Surely this cathedral is the home that God would want. Surely we can do better than this right here. But God says, No, clear all that to the side. There is one thing I'm after, and it's that my dwelling place would be with my people. Which is what brings us into the room here today. And as I was preparing for this morning and the three messages that had potential, I just felt like the Lord say, just reminding this nudge over the weekend of, hey, today I want to talk to my people about the heart space within and my dwelling in their hearts. That's what I want to talk about today. And I told God, well, we just finished up our heart of worship series, so you just missed that. No, I didn't say that. Of course I didn't say that. I'm like, okay, I guess we'll just keep going on the heart of worship. But this was the attention of God from the beginning. Ezekiel, the prophet, saw this in Ezekiel 36. He said, the word of the Lord came and he said, I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. How many of you are grateful that your heart of stone has been removed? You have a heart that can feel again. Thank you, God. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. So this was the longing of his heart. I'm gonna do such a transplant in your heart. I'm gonna give you a new one. And it's not gonna be out there, it's gonna be right here in this cavity right here. I'm gonna do something so extraordinary, and you're gonna be my people, and I'm gonna put this inside of you. And this is what Jesus said. This is what he this is what he declared to his disciples. He he in John 14, Jesus answered, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. If anyone loves me, he will keep my word. My father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. So just me tell you, if you've if you've ever questioned the heart of God for you, maybe you're here today, you've never felt that that kind of invitation from God. I'm just saying to you, it's it's here today. If you've never received Jesus into your home, when He when He looks at your life and you're wondering, would God want to dwell with me? There is nothing that God would want more than to dwell with you and in your heart. And if you call on His name, I'm just telling you, this is good news for all of us here today, but some of you, if you have not yet called on His name and say, God, come make your home, He wants to make His home with you even today. He loves you, and you are the dwelling place of His dreams. You're the dwelling place of His dreams. So Jesus said, I am doing something new, and while you build your temples with hands and cathedrals with the best of your architecture and thinking, I have a different cathedral in mine. It's an inner room, a sanctuary in the midst of your body. It's open 24 hours a day. And it's the place where our spirit dwells and God's spirit dwells. Do you realize that? Inside of you, you were made to be a sanctuary, a temple of the living God. How wild is that! You look at the person next to you. It's like, oh my gosh, them. You. It's like you are a temple. It's like, gosh, really? You really want to do that? You want to make me the cathedral? Yeah, you. I want to make you the temple. And Jesus says, Listen, there's something so secret and precious inside of you. There's a place I want to dwell, and I want you to practice going to that place. And this is kind of similar to what Jesus was saying as he was rebuking the Pharisees who were praying in the streets, and they were being loud and clamorous and bombastic with their words. They were drawing all of the attention to their spiritual elitism, their prowess on the city streets, of we've got this and we know how to pray. And so Jesus to these guys says, listen, in Matthew chapter 6, he says, But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret. And some of the translations say, go to your prayer closet, go to that secret room. And when he said this, this kind of Greek word tamiyon actually means that there were a lot of these first century Jewish homes actually had like a secret room that you could go to and just shut out all the world, and it just nobody could see you. You couldn't have there was no noise that was coming from the outside in. It was just hiddenness. And so he was referring to a physical place, but also a spiritual invitation as well of this word tamion, meaning this inner, there's an inner room that you can go to, and your father will still hear you. And what Jesus is saying is that you can come to know a new kind of place. There's a new kind of place that you're invited to. It's an inner, holy place. And once you find it, it will be you will you will discover that it is the most beautiful, expansive, precious, valuable place that you could ever spend your time in. It's better than anywhere you could travel to on earth. Is the sanctuary of his presence that God has put in your very being. It makes you want to stay there forever once you've been there. You guys with me? The inner place, the abiding life in God is the reason he came. It is our source of strength, it's our source of life. It's the place that we live from. He's not asking us to pilgrim, to be, to be pilgrims anywhere else, to go find his presence somewhere else. He he deposits his very spirit in us, which that doesn't sound like new information to a lot of us. That's a that's a it's a core of why we gather, it's a core of why we call ourselves Christians. But the reason we have to be reminded of this, I believe, is in a time such as this where the world is spinning so fast and changing beneath our feet, it's easy right now to feel this kind of ambient anxiety over our nation, over our culture, over the entire world right now. Do you guys feel that? We're living in a time that is very unsettling and very disturbing, and for a lot of different kinds of reasons. Okay? And if you know, if my experience is anything like your experience over the last couple of weeks, you can feel, you can feel that in the hearts. You can feel that kind of settling over people, this kind of oh no, oh no, oh no. And what happens when an entire culture is captivated by this kind of collective anxiety, what can happen is we can get very reactive, we can get frantic and finicky and frenetic. And we, you know, what's what drives us underneath is oh man, we've got to do something. I gotta figure this out, we gotta solve this problem, we've got to do stuff. And and everything in us wants to start trying to solve things on the exterior and to live from the outside in where God wants to meet us from the inside out. It's so easy right now to be drawn towards external things versus living from our inner room with Jesus, where his very life resides. Okay, this is part of the battle that we fight. Is where do we live from? Where do we live from? Everything wants to pull us, but we're not just anybody. We are a set-apart people of God, the temple of his dwelling, as Peter says, you are living stones built into a spiritual house, because you are what I'm building, not a cathedral made with hands that would be the envy of nations, it's a people that I'm building by my very spirit to declare the my praises and my glory to the very ends of the earth. He wants to declare to the earth not through brick and mortar, but through bones and marrow, through human people that are surrendered to his name. And the degree to which we live into that and from that place has everything to do with the lives that we live and the overflow of the inner place with God into our neighborhoods and cities and our whole world. It's the inner place with God that is given to us to cultivate and to fight for. Are you guys hearing me? So, but part of the problem is this inner room has a little competition, and maybe you felt this before. There's all kinds of things that happen when we in our lives. And one of the things I just felt from the Lord even this last week is be careful what you let into the inner room of your life. Be careful what you consume, be careful what you behold, be careful what you see, be careful what you listen to, because there's a place that is designed for the dwelling of God, and yet because of our connectivity, we allow all kinds of things to dwell in the same spot. Everybody smile at me for a second. I I wonder sometimes if the new addiction of our day is staying informed. We say staying informed is that's virtuous, that is staying informed. I'm not saying be uninformed, but I wonder if the new addiction of our day is staying informed and staying connected. Because what happens is right now we have an unparalleled amount of things coming into us from all kinds of different angles, and it's competing for a space that was designed for God Himself. Which is why in 1 Corinthians, what Paul says is, Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own. You were bought with a price, so glorify God in your body. Now, that particular passage was actually written in the context of abstaining from sexual immorality, which you should do. Sex is reserved for a covenant, a lifelong covenant between a man and a woman. That's what it's for. And Paul is saying in this passage, like, listen, sex is not just this neutral thing that you do it. You can just do whatever you want with your body. It has consequences. Why? Because the Holy Spirit of God lives inside of you. I just think this it in this context, that's what he's talking about, but it goes so much beyond that. I feel like we're living in a day where we have to guard ourselves from all kinds of impurities because it can come in and contend for the same heart space that God designed us for, that we would be agents, sons and daughters walking on the earth, fully given to him and his purposes and his will in our lives. You are a temple of the Holy Spirit. And we together are a temple. We are what God is building. He's not building this building, he's building us as a people. All right? That's what he's building for the sake of the world, so that the whole world can say, surely, God, surely anything can happen if he can take those, those people and and rewire them from the inside out and transform them on the interior of their lives so that their lives actually have a consequence and effect that love just leaks out of their life everywhere they go. That's what his master plan was. I'm gonna do something so extraordinary among them that it won't compare to anything that man could ever build on his own. I'm gonna make for myself a people for my own possession. And so that's what he's doing in us. And part of, I believe, the encouragement right now is to remember that we have to return to that inner room with Jesus every day. Every day. We need to start every day in the inner room with Jesus. We need to end every day in the inner room with Jesus. If we want to be preserved for his purposes on this earth, living righteous lives in a wicked generation, we have to prioritize our time and our attention and what we allow into the sanctuary of our life. Why? Because the inner fruit the inner room overflows into our outer life. Jesus would say it like this in another time out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. So the way people experience you has everything to do with what takes place in your inner life in God. You understand that? When people the way people experience you, that has everything to do with the work of God coming from the inside out. It's not just your spiritual life and then all of the other parts of life that's just separated. That's not how it works. What you call Cultivate from the inside always leaks and uh goes to the outside. And this is also where the authority that God has given us comes from the way that we tend to the presence of God on a daily basis, the way that we return to the sanctuary of our inner life with God. If you want to be people where your words have weight, where your prayers are heard, where when you speak encouragement into the life of another, it actually lands. That comes from a secret place with God. His voice and his thoughts actually moving through your life in a way that it's marked by a different kind of substance. It's marked by a different kind of authority. The authority in the scripture is reserved for people who spend time with Jesus, in the intimate places with Jesus. That's what it is. Authority comes from personal relationship, friendship with God. This is how David had his authority. He did not have authority just because of his stature and his know-how. He had a few skill sets, particularly, you know, killing animals, and he was handy with the slingshot, which I wouldn't oppose that. You know, I probably could work in my slingshot skills too. But David's his authority over his enemies and over the Philistines was not his size or his stature. It was the assurance that came from his time on the hillside and the secret place, becoming completely acquainted with the heart of God. Come on, somebody talk to me. The authority of David was a secret that everybody missed on the outside. Nobody knew. Like, who what was this guy packing? Nobody knew. They didn't know what he was doing on the hillside. When he stepped in front of that Philistine, nobody knew. They thought he was insane. You are insane. You are going to die, and we're all going to watch. That's what everybody was thinking. His brothers saw, they're like, all right, well, you can go do what you're going to do. God be with you, you know. They blessed him to go out. And he said, Listen, I have no other choice but to fight this enemy of God. Because I've spent time with him. And I know who I am. I know who he is. I don't know who this guy's not. And this voice that is radiating through the atmosphere, it has no place among the people of God. So David drew from an inner place with God that had been cultivated without anybody knowing. And because of this, there was a there was a force, there was a favor, there was a supernatural protection and provision and momentum behind it. What if we were the what if we carried the heart of David that we were so steeped in the secret place on the hillside when nobody was watching, that even the most dominant, defiant enemies of our day wouldn't stand the power against those who are spending time in the inner room with Jesus? What if that's what he's doing in our day? You can muster up as much strength, you can you can rally, protest as much as you want against the problems of our day, but I'm telling you, the way that God designed it is for a people living from his presence as a spiritual house, a dwelling place from God, to live from that place as an effect on the earth. Prayer is the way that we tend to this place. Prayer is how we start every day in the awareness of God. It's how we stay anchored in a friendship with the Father and the Son and the Spirit as the world spins out of control. He says, I'm going to change you on the interior of your life, not just manage the exterior of your life. There's something else I want to do. I was reading and Henry Nowen, who's one of my favorite authors, he was he was kind of riffing on this whole theme about the inner room and this place that we must return to. And he said, when you go into the inner room with Jesus and you you look at the walls, you can start to see a history with God that you're drawing from. And I'll just kind of paraphrase this, and I actually want to lead us in a just kind of a short exercise through this, but there's something about your inner room that's different than everybody else's inner room. It's different. You have a place with God that is marked by memories and healing and breakthroughs and prayers and scriptures and promises and stories and attributes of God. And you go into this room, and this room is decorated with the qualities of who God has been in your life. Just like the temple in the Old Testament, Jesus, or God was, Yahweh was very particular with what actually was in the temple. Do you guys notice that? The chapter after chapter of here's the furniture I want, here's the sense that I want, here's, you know, here's how it's to be laid out, here's where the curtain goes and the whole thing. It was meticulous because he had a design within that. Do you know that within your own heart before God, your life before God, that God has deposited things in you to decorate the room of your very heart? And when we become aware of that, it changes everything. And so, Henry, now in his book, he's talking about returning to this room and and and actually gazing upon the work of God so that we can draw from that and create a place to welcome others into in our life. Here's what this morning. Oh, I missed it. Hold on a second. Let me pull it up. This is so good. We were in pre-service prayer this morning, and Martha prayed this out from Colossians. There is a divine mystery, a secret surprise that has been concealed from the world for generations, but now is being revealed, unfolded, and manifested for every holy believer to experience. Living within you is the Christ who floods you with the expectation of glory. The mystery of Christ embedded within us becomes a heavenly treasure chest of hope filled with the riches of glory for his people, and God wants everyone to know it. Come on. Do you understand that hidden with you, hidden in you are the treasure chest of the riches of Christ? He has given you everything pertaining to life and godliness. And what a shame when we get distracted and pulled away into the exterior of our lives when God is wanting to encounter us right from within. That's the invitation, and I just believe there's a reinvitation for some of us. And maybe again you're like, yeah, I've, you know, that's my life. And I just want to say, keep going if that's your life. But I just believe that in this time, in this day, what we draw from is what we live from. What we draw from is what we represent. For some people, you are the closest thing they will see to Christ until they meet him. So the what you draw from and live from has everything to do with how God is continually wanting to release light and salvation into the world that we live in. Amen. So I'm gonna have, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna have the worship team come up, but I want to do something together. I want to actually take a moment together and do this and just visit and just become aware of the dwelling place of God in our lives. Okay, this might be a new kind of experience for you. But my prayer is like this is really good news. If you can connect, like just visit Jesus inside of you. How awesome is that? So if you're a believer in Jesus and you received him into your heart, um, this is gonna be a lot of fun. And if you want to receive them in your heart, you can start now. Just say, Jesus, I receive you. And I thank you that you want to make your home with me. So just across the room, close your eyes. Close your eyes, take a couple deep breaths here. We're not in a rush. The Broncos are probably losing anyways, but okay, you can smile. Take a deep breath. Um just thank, thank Jesus in your own words. Just thank him. And I just want you to imagine God at home with you. You are his delight. You were the the home he always wanted. Yeah, even with all the shadowy corners and the things that maybe you're not proud of, you're still the home that he always wanted. You might think that no one wants to live here, but God says, I absolutely want to be here. And I want to be nowhere else but with you, at home with you and in you right now. This is perfect. Now imagine kind of stepping into this room with the Lord. It's a room that only you and God know about. Nobody else can see it. I want you to step into this room and pay attention. What do you see in this room? What do you hear? What do you smell? What do you feel? Is it an expansive room, like a cathedral, a bright cathedral? Is it dimly lit in an intimate setting? And what does the room feel like? What are the colors on the walls? Is there any furniture? Lights or candles? Now take a look to what's on the wall. How is this room decorated? Notice the photos on the wall. And it's you notice that the photos on the wall in this inner room are people you love. Who who's on the wall in your heart? Maybe some of these photos have people who have poured their lives into yours and you're just thankful. Thank you, God. Maybe it's people you're praying for. What else is on the walls? Are there scriptures on the walls? Scriptures that you've held with God. That you brought into your inner place. Maybe provision, maybe a miracle. Can you see the scenes on the walls of your heart? And maybe there's still places that are unresolved, places of pain. And bring those in as well because you know that this is the place God wants to meet you. Just take a breath and just become aware of God with you in this place. The Father and the Son and the Spirit with you. And as you do, you can just pray this for it and say, God, I welcome you here. Make this place what you want to be. Thank you for meeting me here, God. Nobody expected that in the inner room. Just thank him that he made his home in you. And as you hang in this place, just remember this place. As much as you were able to enter into this place, this is what you were made for. This is available to you. 24-7. A hidden place with God where everything is secure. Everything belongs. You're safe. You have the courage you need. You have the confidence you need. To do exactly what God's called you to do. This is what you were made for. This was what it means to be a temple of God, the very dwelling place, the dream home of God. Amen. As you hold that place, let's stand up. Open your eyes, let's stand up together. Thank you for going on that little journey with me. You can I don't mean to be jarring or abrupt here, but I just want to connect us back. That place that we're made for that has everything to do with the kinds of lives that we live and how we move into the world. God wants to resource you from the inside out. He wants to transform you on your interior. Where everybody is trying to change everything out there, he wants to change us first from the inside out. Because he loves us, and this is what he's called us to do as the church, right? So I bless you in that. And we're gonna sing together before we go. Sing of the God who's with us, sing of the God who makes a way for love and for connection. And so, Jesus, I thank you today as we talk about and we experience your love and your life inside of us. I just, I thank you for all of us, Lord God, that we are recipients of your great love. We don't deserve to be your dwelling place, but you've made us your dwelling place because you love us, God. I thank you even now for healing across the room that you heal, you're healing wounds of our hearts, you're healing places that we're ashamed of, and you're coming in and you're bringing your light and your goodness and your joy. We thank you, God, that we are your church. We are the temple of the living God. And this was your plan. As crazy as it sounds, this was your plan. So help us to live according to your plan and your will. In Jesus' name. We pray. Amen. Come on, somebody thank Jesus today. Let's let's sing together. This is where you are. Thank you. The rest of you just wanna bless you as you come, may the Lord bless you and keep you. May He be gracious to you and look his confidence upon you and give you in the name of Jesus. Love you guys.