The ‘El’ of ‘Bethel’: Inviting God Back Into The House

In the Old Testament, the word El means “God” and Bethel means “House of God.”

God was speaking to Jacob, who later became Israel, about the place he named “Bethel” after God revealed Himself when he fled his brother

Now he renames the place “El Bethel.” Like Jacob did here, we need to invite God back in His house. We need “El” back in the “Bethel.”

Inviting God back in His house, first and foremost, means putting Him back in our lives and in our hearts. He needs to be the Lord of our lives in every way because we are the temples of the Holy Spirit. We’ve been purchased with the precious blood of Jesus, so we no longer belong to ourselves but to the Lord.But we also need God back in our families and back in our homes. The family unit is a microcosm of the Church at large as well as the Church across a city or a nation or around the world. Once we get back in order and in proper alignment there, we can truly begin to understand the importance of having the Lord back in the house of the Lord.

Worshipping God or Worshipping Worship?

The institution of the Church is often so formula-oriented or systems-oriented that we forget it is supposed to be a walk of faith with Christ Jesus. We allow the formulas of religion and institutional Christianity to dictate how we respond within our culture or society. But if we learn to put God first and let Him be on the throne of our hearts and on the throne of our families—and thus back into the heart of the Church—then the Church, which is a system of infrastructure, now has a dynamic of the ekklesia, a living organism of God’s Holy Spirit which can in turn move in and through us.

When I say organism, I’m saying we should have organic, authentic relationships, first with God then with one another. But that’s not going to happen if God is not on the throne of our hearts, in our homes, and in the house of the Lord.

Too often we love to worship the worship, or even the worshippers. We worship the concept of how we feel when we worship. We forget that it’s about worshipping God and walking in that place of adoration.

Take King Saul, for example. Whenever he was around King David playing the harp or worshipping, he felt comfort and peace. But it didn’t change him because God wasn’t in his heart. It wasn’t God in his house, so to speak, and it wasn’t El in the Bethel. He just enjoyed being around worship. But when he went out of that place, he went back to being his old self without the characteristics of the Kingdom.

There is so much truth in the Matt Redman song that came out a few years ago, “Heart of Worship.” We need to have a heart of worship again, because that’s where we engage in His presence—and in His presence we are changed, transformed, and renewed so we can make a difference in the world around us.

Simple Obedience & New Wineskins

It’s not about being a part of a “bless me” club or about the good feeling we experience in corporate worship or when we hear good worship songs. It’s about getting to a place that brings us to our knees in humility, appreciation, and adoration; the place where we can say, “Not my will, Lord, but your will be done,” as we offer ourselves in simple obedience, which is the highest form of worship. In fact, the first time the word “worship” is ever used in Scripture, it is not in the context of singing music or playing instruments but in the context of living worshippers offering themselves in willful obedience to the things of God (see Gen. 22).

When I was going through cancer a few years ago, I looked at Lisa one day and said, “I don’t need a mother; I need a wife.” It wounded her deeply—she was just trying to help me. How many times do we have that attitude toward the Lord? We come before Him with all of our own ideas and expectations of what we want Him to be, but He just wants to love us. He wants to do a work in us.

God wants to bring forth a spirit of revival, but he’s not going to build on old institutions. He’s looking for new wineskins. He wants to bring us into a new season, a time of refreshing, so we can enjoy His manifest presence, where darkness cannot dwell.

Sometimes we have an individual need, but when we gather in authentic worship in the presence of God, we experience a corporate release of His presence and His anointing, which breaks the yoke of bondage. And under that corporate anointing, God does something far beyond what we could do on our own.

By Doug Stringer