… Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have from God? and ye are not your own; for ye were bought with a price: glorify God therefore in your body. I Corinthians 6:19–20.
Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers: for what fellowship have righteousness and iniquity? or what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what portion hath a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement hath a temple of God with idols? for we are a temple of the living God; even as God said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be to you a Father, and ye shall be to me sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. II Corinthians 6:14–7:1.
I have heard these passages preached on, and have preached on them myself, emphasizing the cleansing, emphasizing the purifying, the separation, the sanctified walk before God. However, there is a better emphasis in this passage that, if we can grasp it, can transform every moment of every day for us from now on. It is contained in one little word: awareness. These passages are not designed primarily to goad you into a conformity of behavior. They are designed to expand your consciousness so you will become aware of your relationship to God. You are a temple of the Holy Spirit; you are bought with a price. Come into an awareness of a transaction having taken place—God possessed you so that He can dwell in you and make you His temple. Nothing could be more wonderful than to come into that awareness.
He says, “I will be your God.” You are going to be sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty. The passage in II Corinthians 6 is entreating that you come into that awareness. It will automatically regulate behavior. Don’t you realize what you are? Don’t you realize who you are? Don’t you realize what is taking place? Just become aware of it, and as you do something seems to happen.
There is an old saying, “Nothing succeeds like success.” That can mean a lot of things, but on a psychological level, once a person is aware that he has it made, he has even greater confidence and presses in—until something happens to make him just a bit unsure. The champion always gets into the ring with a little more confidence than the challenger. He is not cocky, but he has more confidence—he is the one who is wearing the belt. When you come into an awareness that you are more than a conqueror through Jesus Christ, you go into the ring with the old devil with a lot more confidence. When you begin to realize your relationship to God and that He indwells you, it is beautiful. The awareness is there.
A little girl was telling what it meant to be a Christian. She said, “It used to be when the devil would come and knock on the door, and I would open the door to see who it was, the big old devil would overpower me. But since Jesus came into my heart to stay, when the devil knocks at the door, I say, ‘Jesus, You answer the door,’ and when the devil sees Jesus, he runs away.” That is the way a little girl would talk, and you and I would do well to talk that way too.
Recognize that the Christ within you is not something separate from you. Christ is not dwelling somewhere in your rib cage, unrelated to the rest of you; Christ is dwelling in your spirit, your soul, and your body. He is infusing and invading every part of you: He is coming forth to be glorified in His saints and to be admired in all them that believe (II Thessalonians 1:10).
As He comes forth within you it is not for the purpose of your walking in defeat. You can look back and point to moments in which you were very low, moments in which you were defeated. But you can also point to something else. Study the graph carefully: it is working ever upward in that beautiful nature of Christ coming forth in you. And if you develop an awareness of who you are, of your relationship to Christ, and what is coming forth, it will be the greatest incentive and motivation you can have, to appropriate the life and the blood of Jesus Christ. You know that what He has begun, He is able to perform (Philippians 1:6). What the Lord Jesus Christ is to you today is just the beginning, so be encouraged in the Lord.
Back to that word, “awareness.” Are you aware of your weakness? Are you aware of your frailty? Are you aware of the problems? Good—but don’t get them out of perspective. Are you aware of Him? Are you aware of His fullness? Are you aware of the promises? Are you aware of a new day? Are you aware that the person walking around in your shoes and walking under your hat is in the Kingdom of God, is blessed and anointed of God, and has been brought into great things?
If you can develop that awareness of what you are and who you are, not to produce a spiritual pride, suddenly all of the human frailties and defeats will seem to fade into insignificance, because God has infused you into His own Being. He has linked you with all of His attributes of omniscience and omnipotence. You are complete in Him who is the Head, even Christ (Colossians 2:10).
We will lose a great deal of frustration when our faith goes beyond some philosophical exercise, kicking it around, trying to understand it, and we come down to the total realization of who we are, an awareness of the Lord Jesus and how He loves us. If you are feeling like a failure, defeated, that will change the minute you look up and say, “Abba, Father, I’m an heir of God. I’m a joint heir with Jesus Christ. I’m a temple of the Living God.” We are sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty. If you don’t have that relationship with Him, you had better get it right away. Open your heart immediately. Don’t let another second, don’t let a moment pass, without opening your heart to Christ.
Let’s dump the blues. Let’s dump the sense of failure. If we tried yesterday and didn’t quite make it, today we’ll do it. Tomorrow we’ll do even greater things! The path of the just will shine more and more unto the perfect day (Proverbs 4:18).
What is going to happen for us? We are going to walk in the Kingdom. We will walk over earth that is trembling and convulsing with the death of a whole age and a whole order of things. Our eyes are going to behold the King, and the day of the Kingdom coming.
What a tremendous day to be alive. Yet, you have the audacity to allow yourself to get all stirred up and occupied with your own little problems—straining at gnats and swallowing camels, eyes blind to see. I’ll tell you what you need to do—take some dynamite and blast those walls that are limiting your horizons. Open your eyes and see who you are. Get an awareness for the day.
Lord, give us an awareness for the hour in which we are living, the magnitude of what you are bringing forth. Thy Word has stirred our hearts. We have begun to realize who we are: children of the King, sons of the Almighty, part of the remnant, linked with the Lord God Almighty as His sons and daughters, a temple of the Living God, kings and priests of our God, brought forth at a crucial hour to be manifested in the earth. This is not to make us spiritually proud, but it is to eliminate the awareness and overfocus we have upon the passing scene that is actually working out Your perfect will in our lives. In the name of Jesus, we submit ourselves to You.
We defy all gravity. The cares that seem to bow us low, we cast right up to the heavenly places. There we take the blessing, “Blessed with Thee with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places.” We come before Thine altars, Lord, to receive the body and the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. For us it is life, divine life, a new nature. What we are becoming is so essential that we feed upon Thee, so we may be like Thee, that You may infuse within us Your very life and being in full measure. We put off the old nature—everything with its old tendencies, everything of its openness to the world, to the flesh, and to the devil—and we put on the new nature with its openness to God, its awareness of the Lord, its awareness of all the blessings and wonder of Him whom we really love. Amen.
You go through times of testing and assault to see if you really believe the Word of the Lord. But you must skip one last pitfall: distractions. The enemy will try to distract you on any level: mental, emotional, circumstantial. Whatever it might be, just forget it, and set your heart on the Lord; walk on with Him because it is a day of fulfillment and great blessing. It is a day of release.
The things that God has spoken are not going to come to pass, they are coming to pass. We are in the hour of fulfillment. We’re walking in it, in the name of the Lord.
I’m very much impressed in the Lord that there should be a voicing, a confession of faith: people should position themselves in God. Your position should not be one of doubt, fear, or uneasiness. Unbelief, fear, or mistrust dwells on what it chooses to dwell upon, and it buries all its help. Your unbelief, your fear, your mistrust will dwell on whatever it chooses. Your mind will stay on it and will forget all the promises; it will bury it.
We can reverse that. We can set our hearts on God and not be filled with unbelief. We will not be filled with distractions. In the name of the Lord, we review the promises of the Lord and stand upon them. We position ourselves in the Lord in faith.