“You realize, don’t you, that you are the temple of God, and God himself is present in you? No one will get by with vandalizing God’s temple, you can be sure of that. God’s temple is sacred—and you, remember, are the temple.”
1 Corinthians 3:16-17
I have to make a confession today, and as a man, it’s a pretty controversial statement, so I hope you won’t judge me too harshly. The truth is, I love HGTV. Chip and Joanna? The Property Brothers? I love it all. It’s incredible to me to see how they can take spaces that were bland or chaotic and turn them into places full of beauty and harmony. And the vision they have, what they can see in these homes before anyone else can, always utterly amazes me. Within moments of seeing the house, they already have hundreds of ideas of what they want to do. Things they want to remove, things they want to add, and things they want to change. It’s really fascinating to me in general, but one thing I’ve found I always can’t help but be amazed by is the way that they can improve spaces, or even make more space, by what they put in the house. The right lamp or addition of a window can make a space look so much bigger and full of light, or the addition of a few plants can make a place that was cold and uninviting seem warm and cozy, and somehow it always perfectly suits the personality of the owner. And as I read through scripture and see passages where it says we're temples of God, I often find myself thinking about how similar it may be for us. What sort of house are we making out of ourselves, and who would want to live in it?
In 1 Corinthians 6:19, it says, “Didn't you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don't you see that you can't live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body.” If we are children of God, if we believe in Him and are in pursuit of Him, we are meant to be temples of the Holy Spirit, He dwells within us. And if that’s the case, by our choices, our actions, our speech, and what we consume, are we making more room for the Holy Spirit in us, or less? Are we making ourselves a comfortable place, warm and inviting for the Holy Spirit within us, or is it cramped, dirty, and gross? And for whatever room we have made for the Holy Spirit inside us, if He is with us constantly, what are we subjecting Him to? With what we watch and how we speak, what we listen to or read, how we treat people, is the Holy Spirit excited within us, or squirming in discomfort? As it says in 1 Corinthians 3:17, if we are His temple, are we vandalizing it with the life we’re choosing to lead?
And look, there’s no judgment here, none of us is perfect (God knows I’m not), we’re all in the process of growing and that’s okay, but if we want to see miracles, if we want to hear God’s direction, and if we want to experience His transformational power in our lives, that requires the presence of the Holy Spirit. Are we making ourselves a space for Him to fill, or is there hardly any room left? That passage from 1st Corinthians says “let people see God in and through your body.” So, put simply, through the way we live, are we making ourselves more, or less, a conduit for the life-giving and transformational power of the Holy Spirit? In 2nd Timothy 2:20-21, it says, “In a well-furnished kitchen, there are not only crystal goblets and silver platters, but trash cans and compost buckets—some containers used to serve fine meals, others to take out the garbage. Become the kind of container God can use to present any and every kind of gift to his guests for their blessing.” Are you a vessel for beauty, or for trash? You get to decide. As we go through this week, let us ask ourselves, if we were preparing a home for Jesus to live in, would it be full of the things we watch, read, and listen to? Would we speak and act inside of it the way we regularly do? Because in truth, our lives are a constant process of decorating His dwelling place. I hope we’re building a home for Him that gets better with each passing day. I think we can.
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