My Temple
Guess what I was able to do this past Sunday? Go ahead and guess. Okay, okay, I will put you out of your misery. I brought forth the Word! That’s right! Now anybody that knows me, knows that I claim to be NOBODY’S preacher, I leave that to my Pastor/Husband because he does it so well, but from time to time, the Lord will touch me with a word. This week was a good word too. I was lying in bed last week and awoke to the word “temple”. I had to explore this, and what I found was pretty interesting. Let’s dig in.
So, you know how we always hear about how people say our bodies are a temple? You know, they say we must eat right, exercise, and drink more water. Well, all of these things are true. We definitely need to be doing all of those things, at least I know I do. They are important, however, our bodies being a temple have absolutely nothing to do with them. In 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, the bible tells us that our bodies do not belong to us. So what does that mean? It means that; God himself created our bodies, Jesus gave his life to redeem them, and if we are believers, the Holy Spirit is supposed to be dwelling inside of them. THIS and this alone is what makes our bodies a temple. ANYTHING ELSE IS JUST MAINTENENCE AND UPKEEP. We have a responsibility to take care of this earthly vessel so it can last a long time, but our spiritual responsibility is far greater.
NOW LET ME BE VERY CLEAR…everyone’s body IS NOT a temple. In Romans 8:9-11 the bible talks about those who do not belong to Christ. They DO NOT have the Holy Spirit, therefore disqualifying their bodies as being a temple where he dwells. The bible specifically uses the word temple for a few reasons. The temples have importance. It signifies the house of the Lord, it is where God reveals himself, and it is the central place of worship. Now let’s compare that to our bodies, if the Holy Spirit dwells in us then; people should be able to identify that we are Chrisitan people, God should be able to communicate with us and show us, us, and we should be able to worship no matter where we are. This should have been proven during the height of Covid season when churches were closing their buildings. A lot of Christian people’s faith was tested because they had a hard time not being in a building, but if the Holy Spirit lives inside of you, a building is not necessary because you are able to worship the Lord ANYWHERE. (That may be a little controversial, feel free to drop a comment, and we can have a discussion)
For those of us who CLAIM to have the Holy Spirit living inside of us; we need to do a self-examination. The bible tells us that “The Comforter” would be with us forever. That means that we can not lose him once we have him, but we can surely quench and grieve him. Quenching and grieving the Holy Spirit simply means that we can suppress and extinguish his fire in our lives and cause him grief and sorrow.
How in the world can you do that to the Holy Spirit T? Glad you asked. I will be more than happy to tell you. A few ways in which we can quench the Holy Spirit would be; to rely on any other source other than the Holy Spirit, diminishing his personality and his position in the Holy Trinity, not using our spiritual gifts, and despising prophetic utterances. Now that last one is controversial too. There are a lot of people I know who are very skeptical when it comes to prophesy. The bible tells us, however, in 1 Thessalonians 5:20 not to despise it though. We can, however, like verse 21 says, examine and judge it. There are people who take that gift and use it for their own personal gain, and that is a sin, but we are to not despise the gift because we have some that don’t know how to act. Trust me, God will deal with them accordingly.
Now we can also grieve the Holy Spirit. How do we do that? Glad you asked! Ephesians 4:29-30 gives a list. Let me break that list down. We grieve the Holy Spirit by; using foul language, the way we live, bitterness, rage, using harsh words (don’t mean cursing people out Christian people!! We can be so ugly sometimes and harsh, running people from the church, God is not pleased), being slanderous, and being malicious. All of these things grieve the Holy Spirit. So if he is inside of us, he doesn’t leave because we behave this way, but he also CAN NOT AND WILL NOT work because we behave and live this way.
So I am saying ALLLLL of that to say this; CHRISITAN PEOPLE DO BETTER. We all like to throw up that our bodies are a temple, you better know what that REALLY means, and if you do know what it means, you better make sure you are living accordingly because how we behave, what we say, how we think, and what we let inside through our eyes and ears, are all seen by him! Now think about that!
