Temple part 4
Don't you realize? That's the question that the Apostle Paul asks in our key verse for this Rant series. He never went around telling people what they weren't. Or what they should be. He went around from church to church trying to help people realize who they already were. Don't you realize that you are the temple of the Holy Spirit? Don't you realize that God lives inside of you? And because He lives inside you... He lives THROUGH you. You are the shrine to God--to love--that puts God--LOVE--on display. You are the visible face of the invisible God. You are how God expresses Himself to the world. God's love letter to the world. Because that's who God is. That's what God does. He is love. He loves unconditionally. He loves YOU unconditionally so that you can love OTHERS unconditionally. He filled you up with Himself, His Spirit, His love, so that you could truly live. Because to live is to love. To love is to live. You can't have one without the other. You can't do one without the other. Living and loving aren't just connected. They are the same thing. That's why God doesn't live in a temple built with hands. He can't be limited to one place. Even in the days of Moses God didn't want a temple. He wanted a tabernacle. Because He was always on the move. That's why Jesus went to the cross and gave His life for us, and to us. God didn't want to dwell in just one human body. He wanted to dwell in all human bodies. Remember: I'm a temple, and you're a temple, and together all of the temples make up the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of Love. Because that's what the temple is for: It is a shrine to love. It puts love on display. Front and center. And when we know its in there, it WILL come out. Naturally. Because we have been filled to overflowing with the only thing in the universe that is so good you can't keep it to yourself. Love IS giving. You can give without loving, but you can't love without giving. You have to give it away--or share it--in order to experience it. The temple doesn't close its doors. We don't guard our hearts by keeping them shut down. We guard our hearts by keeping them open. Keeping them open to love. That's the heart's purpose--receive and release love. That's how we let the mind of Christ (that's already in us) BE in us; we think the thoughts of God. Thoughts of goodness, and peace. Not of evil. Not bad and getting worse... but upward and God-ward! Not trying to get whatever we can to scrape by, but by letting the love of Christ control us. Letting what's inside of us come out by knowing and believing its (He's... love's...) in there. Living the abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of God by letting Jesus live His own life in us, and through us, and as us. That's how we put God on display--by letting Him do what He wants to do. Not by trying to follow in His foot steps, but by letting Him make His own foot steps with our feet. Letting the Word become flesh every time we act in love. Charity. Love in action. That's what being the temple is all about... not about making people come to us and worship us, but by taking what we've got (what everybody needs) straight to them! Jesus is the vine and we are the branches, right? So we reach our our limbs and bear the fruit of the Spirit (LOVE) to those that are hungry. We know that Jesus built the house, and that He decorated it the way He wanted it. He filled it up with HIS stuff (again, LOVE). So we have what we need. We are who we need to be. We just need to know what we have. We just need to realize who we are. And then BE who we are. Not by trying to be someone we're not, but by letting Jesus be who HE is in us, and through us, and as us!