The Word - April 20, 2012 - THE SPIRIT WITHIN US

"Don't you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives within you and was given you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body" (1 Corinthians 6: 19-20) NLT

Just stop!....Think for a moment of the magnitude of the truth in our Scripture; that the physical body of each individual believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is the temple, the dwelling place of Almighty God, who dwells within us in the person of the Holy Spirit!

The God who declares, "Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool" dwells within you. This God of unimaginable greatness, this God of infinite proportions, resides within the confines of your finite being!

And He dwells within every believer regardless of conduct! I think it is significant that God picked the carnal Corinthians to receive the clearest declaration of the indwelling of His Spirit. Obviously then, the indwelling Spirit is not a reward for good behavior, but rather a blessing of which we should always try to walk worthy (1 Cor. 6:20).

It is for sure the Corinthian believers had brought fornication into the church itself. We live in a society not much different, what was considered sin 50 years ago is readily accepted as just a normal expression of our flesh by even some believers today.

As we come to the end of this teaching, if you are one who has defiled the temple of your body, the Holy Spirit within you is able to perform an extremely practical function of which you should be aware: It is to the Christian that Paul says, "To be carnally minded is death" Romans 8:6). It is to the Christian that he says, "If you live after the flesh, you shall die" (Romans 8:13).

As a believer you cannot lose your salvation, but if you continue to deny God's claim on your life, there is a virtual death you can experience, a comatose state in which all of your spiritual vital signs are "flat-lined." You don't need to be "re-saved" but only awakened. So it is that Paul says to the believer: " Awake, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will give you light." (Ephesians 5:14).

Equipped with the light of God's Word, the Spirit can return even the most backslidden Christian to a healthy spiritual relationship with the Lord.

May God help us all to always live lives that make our bodies hospitable temples for the Royal Guest within us!