THINGS WE DON'T REALLY BELIEVE

THINGS WE DON’T REALLY BELIEVE

                “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.” 1Cor. 6:19, 20.

                As children growing up, this text was used as a reason why we should not smoke or drink. And of course, that applies, but the ramifications of this text are far greater than that and most Christians live far short of its realities. If we really believed that the Holy Spirit actually dwells in our t would we not sense His presence and hear His voice? Would it not change everything?

                Gabriel said to Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God.” Luke 1:35.

                Do you ever stop to think that this same process is repeated in every person who is born again?

                Mary replied to Gabriel: “Behold the bondslave of the Lord; be it done to me according to your word.” Luke 1:38.

                When the Gospel is preached and the word is received… when we in our own way say; “Behold the bondslave of the Lord; be it done to me according to your word,” the Holy Spirit comes upon us and a new spirit is given to us and we are born again. And that is what Paul is talking about when he says that our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.

                So why is it that so many Christians feel like their prayers aren’t making it through the ceiling to a God who dwells far beyond the stars? We live our lives as if we are alone in the world. We pray as if God is far away. We live as if God doesn’t see and we do things and make choices as if the Holy Spirit who dwells within us is not grieved.

                According to Genesis 3:15 there are only two kinds of seed in the world. There is the seed of the woman and the seed of Satan. All of us are born into this world as the seed of Satan. It comes with the territory. We live in a fallen world. IN the flesh we are children of fallen Adam and unless, we do something about it, we will share the fate of a fallen world.

                Our only hope then is to receive the seed of Christ into the womb of our hearts and to nurture it and to feed it until that Seed of promise literally takes the place of our flesh as the master of our lives.

                “For God who said, “Light shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves… always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.    2 Cor. 4:6, 7, 10.

                When we are born again, it means that we have received a seed of promise into the womb of our hearts spiritually the same way Mary received the seed both spiritually and physically. So if we are nurturing that seed and living by that seed then we should be increasingly aware of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our hearts. If we are feeding that which has been conceived in us will it not grow into maturity and eventually take over? Did not Jesus say ; ”He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ’from his belly (innermost being) shall flow rivers of living water”? John 7:38

                Are you pregnant? Is your water about to break? Do you feel the Baby kicking inside of you?  If that baby is growing inside of you then, as we know, there comes a time when the baby can no longer be ignored. That bump in your belly begins to take over. It changes the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you eat, the way you rest, the way you exercise… it changes everything and you never have to say, “Where is the Baby when I need Him?”

                If the Holy Spirit dwells in this temple, should we not be able to hear Him speak to us? The world scoffs when we say that the Lord told us something. They are quick to say that we can’t hear God speak and they are right. God is Spirit. He lives in our spirit and He speaks to our spirit and most do not understand or recognize His voice because they live life as if He is not inside of them.  They don’t live by the Spirit. They have done very little to feed that Spirit with spiritual food so that the Baby would grow and take over their lives.

                If we will nurture that new birth that was planted in our hearts by the Holy Spirit and if we feed it and learn to live by it, will it not become noticeable within us?

                Christians say all the time, “I pray and I pray, but God never answers. His promises don’t work for me.” But see, too often we want the promises to work from the outside like magic. We want God to do something FOR us rather than IN us. But if we want God’s promises to bear fruit in our lives we need to become pregnant with them. In the process of nurturing that Seed, it changes everything… the way we walk, (The walk of faith) the way we talk,(speaking according to His Word) the way we eat (Partaking of the Bread of life) the way we rest (Trusting in HIm) and the way we exercise ( live our lives).

                How many Christians do we meet that are so pregnant with the Holy Spirit that it has consumed their lives? How many live by divine appointment? How many truly nurture the promises of God in a way that changes everything? How many are following in the footsteps of Jesus so that they hear God’s voice and do only what they see the Father doing and say only what they hear the Father saying.

                The seed of the woman spoken of in Genesis 3:15 is still being planted in hearts every day and it is that seed that takes us out from among the seed of Satan and causes us to walk in the Kingdom of God. IN His cross we literally die to Satan’s fallen kingdom and in His resurrection we are born again into the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It makes us aliens and strangers in the kingdom of Satan, but we are citizens of an eternal kingdom that will far outlast this present darkness.

                In the Bible we can trace the line of the seed of the woman through history. We can also trace the seed of Satan both before the flood and afterwards when Nimrod picked it up and became the father of all false religion, even as around the same time God called Abram out of Nimrod’s kingdom and made of him a nation carrying the seed of promise.

                In Galatians 3:16 Paul explains: “Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, ”And to seeds,” as referring to many but rather to one, “And to your seed, that is Christ.”

                So if you have received that Seed, you have received Christ. He is the child of promise now dwelling in your temple. You have become a part of the seed line of faith. And Paul goes on to say to us in Gal. 3:29: “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.”

                God’s promises, however, are not like Santa’s wish list. When we claim the promises of God, He first makes us into the kind of vessels that can rightly carry the promise to fruition. And if you are the same today as you were yesterday, or last week or a decade ago, then you simply have not been nurturing and feeding the Child of promise in you. You have not been allowing God to transform you into one that can rightly carry the promise.

                One of the most deadly combinations that have ever attack the Body of Christ is a combination of Prosperity teaching and hyper grace. The prosperity message teaches us that we can have what WE want from God and hyper grace tells us that we do not need to be transformed by the Seed that dwells in us.

                Unlike Santa’s wish list, the promises of God, once planted in us will change everything. They will change the way we walk, the way we talk, the way we eat, the way we rest and the way we exercise.

                We are nearing the harvest. It is time to grow up, to bear fruit according to the kind of Seed that has been planted in us. It is the Holy Spirit that bears the fruit, but He can’t do so if we are living in the flesh. “All who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.” Romans 8:14.

                Do you really believe that you are the temple of the Holy Spirit? Is He interacting with you in your daily life? Are you hearing His voice? Are you feeding Him the spiritual food that will bring forth the man child in you?

                It is high time to take our faith to a new level of reality. Either Christ is in us or He is not… and if He is then we are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to promise. We walk in a different kingdom. We have a different world view. We march to the beat of a different drum.

                “For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. And not only this, but we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.  For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born of many brethren.” Romans 8:19, 23, 29.

                He then is the first-born of many brethren and we are that “brethren.” We are born again of the same seed as He was born and that seed, once planted in us will cause us to be conformed to the image of Christ. Selah.

                In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit I pray to you today, please plant in me afresh the Seed of promise so that by it I might be transformed into the image of Your Son Jesus. Today I choose to believe that I am indeed a temple of Your Holy Spirit. Amen