Stop treating your body as if it belonged to you. “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20 NKJV).
Child of God, you were meant for something more. Jesus was crucified to pay for your sins, and then He sent the Holy Spirit to give you power over your sins. God’s immeasurable, immutable grace is not a license for you to sin but the power to set you free from it.
God isn’t as concerned about what you can do but about what you will let Him do in your life. “But the Lord said, ‘My grace is all you need. Only when you are weak can everything be done completely by my power.’ So I will gladly boast about my weaknesses. Then Christ’s power can stay in me.” (2 Corinthians 12:9 ERV).
The Word of God says that as a believer, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God Himself dwells within you, and if you’re willing, with the power from heaven, the Holy Spirit can help you to live a holy life pleasing to God.
Just as a violin cannot take credit for the music the artist has produced through it, so it is with your life in the hands of God. “Yes, it is God who is working in you. He helps you want to do what pleases him, and he gives you the power to do it” (Philippians 2:13 ERV).
The world will try to entice you into defiling your own body, which, as the temple of the Holy Spirit, will grieve the Holy Spirit as He dwells within you. You may think you cannot overcome sin, and you’re right, but the Holy Spirit in you can.
The Lord is trying to set you free from the very things you’re holding onto. “You were made free from the power of sin. Being right with God has power over you now” (Romans 6:18 NLV).
Many churches in our day have made far too many compromises with the world, and are leading God’s people in the wrong direction. They will preach that inclusion represents the love of God, but what they teach is a rotten stench in the nostrils of a Holy God.
So long as you care two cents about what man thinks of you, God can’t do very much in your life. The more popular you try to be with man, the further you must become from God. “Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not of this world…’” (John 18:36 NKJV).
Jesus said the world would only love its own, and we are not of the world. Be the temple and let the world hate you, and God will smile on your life. Stop saying you can’t overcome and simply fall to your knees and let the Holy Spirit help you.
God doesn’t tell us to do our best, but to let Him do His best in us and through us. “So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves” (Galatians 5:16 NLT).
Jesus taught us to be perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect. Was He kidding? Jesus always means what He says. He never said we would be on our own, but that He would give us the Holy Spirit to help us forever. We will need His help forever.
Apart from the Holy Spirit, you’re on your own. Jesus promised, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another ·Helper [Counselor; Advocate; the Holy Spirit] to be with you forever” (John 14:16 EXB).
Are you letting the Holy Spirit help you? It’s easy to know when you are because you will be living by the principles of heaven in a way you never could on your own. Nobody being led by the Spirit can be prideful because they know it is Him who gets all the glory.
You don’t have what it takes to be holy, but the Holy Spirit in you does. God promised us, “I will put my Spirit inside you and cause you to live by my laws, respect my rulings and obey them” (Ezekiel 36:27 CJB).
Child of God, what is it going to take to finally, once and for all, surrender all to a mighty God and let His Spirit reign inside you? Will God have to break you to fix you? Will your circumstances become such that you finally learn? Be the temple.
It’s a foolish thing to try to change yourself only by your own power when you have the superpower of the Holy Spirit standing by, ready to help you. Jesus promised, “You will receive power and ability when the Holy Spirit comes upon you” (Acts 1:8 AMP).
What would you bring into a temple of God? You are that temple. What profane things would you do in the temple of God? You are that temple. Scripture says to be holy, and then, just to take away your excuses, God gave you His Spirit to do it for you.
If you want to know your calling, it is to be holy. “For the Scriptures say, ‘You must be holy because I am holy’” (1 Peter 1:16 NLT).
The dark is always trying to overtake the light, but it cannot. All the light has to do is shine, and it will always have the victory. Let the light of Christ shine in you. Get into the light, stay in the light, and the darkness will never overtake you.
You don’t need a sword or a club to do battle with the darkness, but only a small light shining brightly from within you. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it” (John 1:5 NLT). “Once you lived in the dark, but now the Lord has filled you with light. Live as children who have light” (Ephesians 5:8 NOG).
Child of God, you have no idea of the immeasurable, unstoppable, undefeatable, eternal power that lives inside you. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Father, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of God, has no limits, except what you refuse to let Him do. Stop refusing His help.
As Christians, we grossly underestimate the true power of the Holy Spirit that dwells within us. This is what Jesus said: “These are the miraculous signs that will accompany believers: They will use the power and authority of my name to force demons out of people. They will speak new languages. They will pick up snakes, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them. They will place their hands on the sick and cure them” (Mark 16:17-18 GW).
It’s hard to overcome the enemy when you live in his camp.
2 Corinthians 6:14-18 ERV
We Are God’s Temple
You are not the same as those who don’t believe. So don’t join yourselves to them. Good and evil don’t belong together. Light and darkness cannot share the same room.
How can there be any unity between Christ and the devil? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?
God’s temple cannot have anything to do with idols, and we are the temple of the living God. As God said, “I will live with them and walk with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
“So come away from those people and separate yourselves from them, says the Lord. Don’t touch anything that is not clean, and I will accept you.”
“I will be your father, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord All-Powerful.”
I’m praying for you, oh timid and isolated sojourner, who has not yet surrendered all to the All-Powerful Spirit of God living within you. Don’t you go one more day on your own. God never intended for you to go it alone. Start yielding to the Holy Spirit today.
Your potential requires God’s help. “With God’s power working in us, God can do much, much more than anything we can ask or think of” (Ephesians 3:20 ICB).
Blessings to you always,
Paul Balius
Go deeper
If this spoke to you, there is more. Paul Balius has written a book called “The Promise of the Holy Spirit”. It goes deeper into all of this, for anyone who senses they were meant for something more.
Paul has written three books. See them all
This entire Holy Spirit writing of yours Paul is such an exceedingly excellent exhortation. With intense intention I purpose to prove same the more to myself, by actually being lived by the Spirit of holiness and intercession, filling and flooding me, consistently.
I appreciate acutely your analogy, “Just as a violin cannot take credit for the music the artist has produced through it, so it is with your life in the hands of God.”
Galatians 3:3 AMP
Are you so foolish and senseless? Having begun [your new life by faith] with the Spirit, are you now being perfected and reaching spiritual maturity by the flesh [that is, by your own works and efforts to keep the Law]?
John 14:16-17 AMP
Role of the Spirit
16 And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper (Comforter, Advocate, Intercessor—Counselor, Strengthener, Standby), to be with you forever— 17 the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive [and take to its heart] because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He (the Holy Spirit) remains with you continually and will be in you.
Ephesians 3:20-21 AMP
20 Now to Him who is able to [carry out His purpose and] do superabundantly more than all that we dare ask or think [infinitely beyond our greatest prayers, hopes, or dreams], according to His power that is at work within us, 21 to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen.
Thank you my brother. One of my favorite teachers is Oswald Chambers. He wrote: “God not only expects me to do His will, but He is in me to do it.” That’s it right there. Once we get of the self effort mouse wheel, drop to our knees, and let the Holy Spirit do it all in us, then everything changes!
Galatians 2:20-21 AMP
20 I have been crucified with Christ [that is, in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith [by adhering to, relying on, and completely trusting] in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. 21 I do not ignore or nullify the [gracious gift of the] grace of God [His amazing, unmerited favor], for if righteousness comes through [observing] the Law, then Christ died needlessly. [His suffering and death would have had no purpose whatsoever.]”
Proverbs 20:12 NLT- Ears to hear and eyes to see, both are gifts from the Lord. A year ago a brother in the faith suggested that a book written by a man I was not really familiar with, the book was on the benefits of fasting and the various ways to fast and the reasons for so doing. I have fasted and still do fast, therefore I do not questions the discipline or concept. I looked up the author of the suggested book on fasting and discoverable that the author was morbidly obese and had been for decades. I did not buy the book and committed the thought of doing so to God. The answer came in minutes, Proverbs 20:10 NLT- False weights and unequal measures the Lord detests double standards of every kind. Speaking personally when I fast the hardest place to be around is the traditional church, many and even most events called fellowship include food and lots of it. Perhaps the harsh messages of a departed saint bore some painful truth. I refer to J. Vernon McGee who gave a number of messages linking Gluttony to Drunkenness. The verses are in the Bible and there is more than one. Please pardon the pun, food for thought.
This is a very interesting word, thank you for posting it. It made me think of a book I have on fasting, and the author is overweight, maybe we are talking about the same one. I have even recommended it to some people. I had thought the author’s fasting may have contributed to his weight issue, as fasting can cause the body to go into famine mode and store up fat. Or perhaps he suffers from genetic issues that caused it. I’m not sure, but I know some who struggle with their weight is not always due to gluttony. Still, I really appreciate your desire to discern teachers that are saying one thing but doing another. False teachers will abound in the end times because that is what most people want. I want to be careful where I get my teaching because I want to be standing only on what is aligned to God’s Word. It was a joy to hear J. Vernon McGee’s name, I remember listening to him on the radio when me and my dad were on some cross country trips years ago. It’s interesting how you say he equated drunkenness with gluttony. When the flesh rules, the spirit does not, regardless of what the flesh is going after. God bless you Brother, I’m blessed by your teaching.