Originally published Friday, 04 September 2015.
There are voices that speak devastation, demolition and destruction to the temple of God.
Can you hear them?
Ordinary words that travel extraordinary distances to injure.
Words that cut deeper than a machete and further than a scalpel.
Ones that appear to rip the seams of God right out, if you let them.
They are ready steal your passion for bended knees, raised hands, and uplifted eyes. They charge into your face, yelling, "You little, ...(fill in the blank.) You always.... You never.... You can't...."
Maybe the voice isn't even so loud, but the injury is.
Words a mile a minute - the pressure can seem inescapable. These declarations of powerlessness became my anthem song, they defined my ins and outs, my worth and value, and my hope and future.
Yet, God moves technology, just as he does our hearts and these old cassette songs became just that old - it was time for something that doesn't take up so much space and without the weight. God gave me a new song.
If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person; for God's temple is sacred, and you together are that temple. 1 Cor. 3:17
My temple is sacred.
Am I protecting it? Am I keeping it strong guarded?
Sometimes you have to. People seem to come at you.
But I will encamp at my temple to guard it against marauding forces. Never again will an oppressor overrun my people, for now I am keeping watch. Zech. 9:8
The temple of God always was and always will be a monument God calls us to enforce.
As temple carriers, we must strong-guard it from foreign objects, set up to desecrate and devastate it's beauty.
Remember Jesus in the temple? He flipped false goods, on their heads. Just the same today, he doesn't want us accepting falsities or hyperboles about our self - in his house.
What have you let dwell in the temple of the most high God?
What labels, libels and litanies from years past still hang out?
What humiliation, intonations and accusations from today won't leave?
What doesn't start and end with God, usually starts and ends with shame. What stands outside his holy grounds, usually tries to force a way in to ransack his house.
God is a fan of forged walls, when they are ones that protect his sonship covenant with us - a covenant that always says: I love you. I am for you. I will not hold you - against you. I will rush back every time you call on my name.
When we let God's promises become do what they were intended to do - protect, we no longer:
Push out godliness to usher in helplessness.
Wash out purity to welcome in fragility.
Remove honest humility to greet a faith disability.
God's temple always waits to be our refuge, our safety, our barrier, our new confine, our hope, our insight, our wisdom, our future. We don't need a magic ball, because we have the majesty of Christ's Spirit in us.
The walls of God's temple wrap us in love and fortify our hearts in truth. They continually confess our hope of glory.
When atomic warfare is thrown at God's temple, the temple that bears his name, we can take refuge under the bomb shelter of his love.
The name of the LORD is a fortified tower; the righteous run to it and are safe. Prov. 18:10
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