Now You Know!

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.

However, it is NOT the temple we imagine!

There are those who take this idea into the galaxy of You Don’t Even WANT to Imagine! The Super Bowl of gods and goddesses, so to speak, vying for the MOST SHOCKING worship they hope will become our new normal, so that they themselves will become the ones all eyes and hearts are in awe of. Unfortunately, all roads of this new normal lead to Hell, roads built and maintained by all the crews of pornography!

It shouldn’t surprise any of us, and it certainly doesn’t surprise me, that evil (Satan by name rather than description), would take from God and re-mold the idea into his hatred for anything created and blessed by his enemy, The One True God of Israel. Knowing his hatred and desperate goal to destroy/devour anything and everything God loved, we, everyone of us (because we ARE God loved), should passionately avoid Satan’s GPS and  keep our eyes on only God’s road, the details fully provided in God’s Book of Maps… also known as Scripture/God’s Word/The Holy Bible.

One of the life changing principles I have learned (and cling to) in recent years is that God is the God of DETAILS. If you have questions about the details of your life, or your loved one’s life, look to God!

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return there without watering the earth And making it bear and sprout, And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. Isaiah 55:10-11 

Every detail… EVERY DETAIL of life – yours and every created thing – was known, planned and blessed by God before He spoke it into being. It will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.

I’ve also learned (and cling to) that what God began, He carries through all of creation. NOTHING is random nor independent of the whole of creation. The highest example of this is God’s prophetic promise, made at the moment sin entered the life of His most prized creatures and the destruction of all He had made for us, was imminent. To protect us from eternal damnation (eternity without The One True God), He promised to provide Salvation (the wages of sin is death), Redemption (He stands at the door and knocks), and Sanctification (we become His children and are trained to inherit His Kingdom).

Yes, He sent us out of the garden (protection from eating form the tree of life and making our life of sin, eternal), but did not abandon nor forsake us. Immediately, EVERY DETAIL necessary for His beloved creatures to become His children were brought forth and sent forth to accomplish and succeed so that His most precious Creation WOULD return Him. He does not wish for any to perish but for all to come to repentance… 2 Peter 3:9 To insure this, He had to send the best of the best Word to lead the way. He sent Himself! Starting with the first tabernacle (built after the people took it into their own hands to do what we also tend to do today – build golden calves and worship them with all our souls), God has “tabernacled” with His people.

Someday I want to do an entire study of all the details of God brought forth in the first “temple”. I can only imagine the foreshadowing of the temple the Holy Spirit is building in each and everyone of His congregation. Exodus 35:4-5 Moses spoke to all the congregation of the sons of Israel (you do remember that Jesus makes us a part of this congregation, right?!), saying, “This is the thing which the Lord has commanded, saying, ‘Take from among you a contribution to the Lord; whoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it as the Lord’s contribution:’

Because FREE WILL requires FREELY GIVING (duh), here’s the first DETAIL that connects our tabernacles. Not just a foreshadow but a principle that has remained, is still required and will always be a DETAIL that God spoke into His most prized creature… “Let us make man into our own image” Love is the full image of God! But, LOVE is only LOVE if it is given without condition – a choice of the heart for no other reason than the heart wishes to love.

The first tabernacle was built with the donations of the people’s most prized possessions. Our temple today is built by the Holy Spirit with our most prized possession… our self!

Romans 12:1-2 Therefore I urge you brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

The first tabernacle was built so that God could be with His people… Exodus 40:34 & 36-38 Then the cloud covered the tent of the meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Throughout all their journeys whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the sons of Israel would set out; but if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out until the day when it was taken up. For throughout all their journeys, the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and there was fire in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel.

Our tabernacles temple is built to house God Himself, not just to be in our sight but be IN US!

God, Himself!

I can’t wait to do a deep study of the tabernacle built by our forefathers with all the details being given by God. Not only will it deepen my understanding of what my body houses, but I am sure it will also provide a deepening reverence for WHO it houses.

I encourage all of us to spend some time in the first tabernacle (Exodus, chapters 35-40) – the tabernacle built by God through His most precious creatures.

I pray it will open our eyes to the difference between the temples built by Hell and those built by our One True God. I pray we will understand the Holy Ground our temple is built upon and remains as long as the Holy Spirit remains. I pray we will be literally sickened when we are tempted to allow the unholy to dance on the holy altar God has built in our hearts. I pray we will confess our sins of offending the Holy Spirit as He prepares us to inherit the kingdom of our ABBA.

Now that we know… that our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in us…

I pray… before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant each of us, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that we, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that we may be filled up to all the fullness of God.  Ephesians 3:14-19

**All Scripture quoted comes from the “Bible Gateway” app and is the NASB version of the Bible unless otherwise noted.