YOUR BODY IS GOD’S TEMPLE

od tells us through the Apostle Paul in 1Timothy 6:12(NLT), “Fight the good fight for the true faith. Hold tightly to the eternal life to which God has called you, which you have confessed so well before many witnesses.” This is powerful encouragement and instruction. To fight is to contend. It’s to assert effort and energy to overcome. The image of contending is a very good one to describe the battlefield of faith, because during our sojourn on earth, the good fight of faith takes place in our own minds.

One of the most profound pieces of knowledge that God gives us about faith can be found in Romans 10:17(NKJV). It tells us, “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Another profound piece of knowledge is God’s definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1(NKJV). This verse states, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” God tells us that faith is a spiritual substance, and this means that faith has matter. It has a tangible presence, and Romans 10:17 states that faith comes wherever the truth is heard and believed. As believers, we should pray that we are doing all that God requires to make sure that faith comes. We should also remain committed to the mental fight necessary to make sure that faith is too comfortable to ever leave.

In the natural sense, Olympians train to win, and soldiers train to fight. As brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, we must train and learn to fight as well. 1Timothy 4:7 tells us, “Do not waste time arguing over godless ideas and old wives’ tales. Instead, train yourself to be godly.” This is accomplished through our prayers in the powerful name of Jesus Christ. As we mature and grow in Christ, God expects that our prayer lives will become more disciplined and intimate.

He expects that the communication between Him and us will become sharpened as we learn to hear His voice more clearly. We can grow in Christ to such a degree that we are engrossed in dialogue with our Heavenly Father. We speak, He listens. He speaks, we listen. It is extraordinary to be friends with the Father in this way, and effective prayer is extremely helpful to get to this level of intimacy with Him.

Relationship is very important to God, and it is sums up the reason for our existence. Life is given by God to live in relationship with Him through the Lord Jesus Christ. Our trust in Him is the bases on which our relationship is maintained. Hebrews 11:6 tells us that we cannot please Him without faith, that we must believe that He exists and that He is a Rewarder to those who love and diligently seek Him. We must wholeheartedly have faith that He loved us so much that He gave His Son as a sacrifice for our sins, and He raised His Son from the dead.

Believing in God’s truth, power, and love is accomplished with our hearts and minds, and again, the mind is the battlefield of faith. We are bombarded with distractions and information, and many of us allow these things to take up too much space in our minds. God has given us free-will choice. We choose what we will allow in, and God warns us to be exceedingly careful about this. The body is a vessel that houses our human spirit and soul, but the body itself has no means to believe or think without the facility of the human mind and will. The mind and will are a part of your spirit being, and without them, the brain and heart are just organs. So, we can see why God commands us in Ephesians 4:23(ESV) to “be renewed in the spirit of your minds”, which means to change the way we think so that our thoughts are aligned with the mind of Christ. This is extremely important to building faith.

The intimacy of prayer

Sometimes, we forget that God has given us prayer as an intimate way of communicating with Him. In Philippians 4:6(NLT), He instructs us, “Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.” Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, made this level of intimate prayer available through the New Covenant we now have with God. The Old Covenant was the Mosaic law. It was the Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai. Exodus 34:29-32(NLT) says, “29 When Moses came down Mount Sinai carrying the two stone tablets inscribed with the terms of the covenant, he wasn’t aware that his face had become radiant because he had spoken to the LORD. 30 So when Aaron and the people of Israel saw the radiance of Moses’ face, they were afraid to come near him. 31 But Moses called out to them and asked Aaron and all the leaders of the community to come over, and he talked with them. 32 Then all the people of Israel approached him, and Moses gave them all the instructions the LORD had given him on Mount Sinai.”(*see note) God’s law is perfect, and He gave it to His people living during Old Testament times to instruct them and us about His righteousness, but the law’s purpose was not to save them. Salvation is a gift of God’s grace through the Lord Jesus Christ, and it was only available after his sacrifice and resurrection.

Romans 8:3(NLT) tells us, “The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin's control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins.” Through our precious Lord and Savior, God took care of the sin issue forever. He sent Jesus Christ to the earth on a mission, and he completed it perfectly, without flaw. Because of this, we can have the relationship—the friendship and fellowship that our Heavenly Father always wanted. Ephesians 2:19 declares that we are no longer strangers and foreigners to God. Because of the sacrifice of Christ, we are citizens of God’s Kingdom and God’s holy people. We are members of God’s family and share an inheritance with His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Ephesians 2:20-21(NLT) states, “20 Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself. 21 We are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord.” Because of our union with Christ, God lives in us through His precious Holy Spirit. This is the closeness and intimacy He desires. He is never far from us, but so close that our prayers are heard before our mouths utter them. He tells us in 1Thessalonians 5:17 to pray without ceasing. This gives us confidence that He wants to hear our prayers, and He’s willing and able to bless us as we continue to draw close to God in prayer with gratitude and faith. (Next Session on page 24)

*Exodus 34:29-32 is referencing the second set of tablets on which God wrote the Ten Commandments. After receiving the first set from God and coming off the mountain to witness the sin of the Israelites, Moses destroyed the first set.

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Thank you for helping us strive for excellence for the Kingdom of God.

By Kim Times

hen couples who are dating begin to examine their relationships more closely, especially after they’ve been dating a while, sometimes one person has a different realization than the other. This is the partner in the relationship who recognizes that while there are many things they admire about the other person; they can no longer see a future with them. It’s at this juncture that they might think it’s better to breakup. So, this person takes the steps to get it over and done with. The intention to abruptly end things may be a good one. The partner initiating the breakup doesn’t want to continue wasting each other’s time and resources and doesn’t want to deepen an emotional attachment that will only hurt more if things continue. However well-intentioned, the sting of an abrupt breakup can be devastating. There’s no question that in situations like these, one person is likely to be much more hurt than the other.

Life has a way of throwing curve balls at us when we least expect it. A woman who’s on the receiving end of a breakup like this might begin to internalize the hurt. She may become a wounded woman that is fearful of loving again, and this, more than anything else, is what we want to avoid. 1John 4:18(NLT) tells us, “Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.” Many people think of fear only in the context of a response to eminent danger. In terms of our innate reactions of preserving our safety, fear can be viewed as an appropriate response mechanism, but this isn’t the fear that 1John 4:18 is pointing to. This verse is teaching us about the kind of fear that is the exact opposite of faith. Fear in the spiritual sense is rooted in the practice of doubting God’s Word, power, promises, and love. It is impossible to heal when you’re bitter or cynical about how you’ve been treated or rejected. Like me, I’m sure you’ve seen women that have become angry and want revenge. Anger, bitterness, vengeance, jealousy, slander and spitefulness are all responses of fear; the kind of fear that makes us choose to see our pain as being bigger than our all-powerful God. It gums up the flow of our blessings and will lead us in the opposite direction of God’s love. There’s no one or nothing in the entire universe that compares to our Heavenly Father. 3John 1:11(ESV) tells us, “Beloved, do not imitate evil but imitate good. Whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God.”

Fear does not come from God, and it is not a response of God’s love. It will not elevate and cannot help us to move to a higher place, in fact, just the opposite is true. Negative conversations, words, attitudes and behaviors pull us down to a level that is beneath our privilege, and this will only hurt us even more. It’s not what our Heavenly Father wants. He always wants us to go higher in every positive aspect of life, and He is willing and able to help us.

1John 4:8(NLT) teaches us, “But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” Love is not only who God is, love is what He does. He is our Creator, and through Him and the example of Jesus Christ, we learn to love in the way that our Lord and Savior does. A person will never, ever be at a disadvantage from demonstrating God’s love. When we’ve been rejected by someone that we thought was going to reciprocate our love and support, we must turn to God’s love, not to satan’s hate and darkness. We must love God and love ourselves enough to trust that God will never leave or forsake us. Deuteronomy 7:9 (NLT) declares, “Understand, therefore, that the LORD your God is indeed God. He is the faithful God who keeps his covenant for a thousand generations and lavishes his unfailing love on those who love him and obey his commands.” t was God's plan all along to save us through the Lord Jesus Christ. His redemption plan was to redeem and restore us to the place of holiness that Adam once knew in the Garden of Eden. It was to give us access to His matchless and powerful Kingdom, and to accomplish this and more through the sacrifice and resurrection of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Our blessed Redeemer made it possible for us to receive the promise of the indwelling Holy Spirit, and now we can live through his power!

Our wounds do not define us, and we should not behave as though they do. We should never let the voice of a man’s rejection be the loudest in our lives. No one can take away the wonderful blessings that God has clothed us with through Jesus Christ. He’s given us power through His Holy Spirit, and he is our Teacher, Friend, Comforter, and Guide. We must lean on the Spirit’s strength because he is sure to give it, and we should also expect God’s healing comfort to blanket our hearts. It’s true that men will sometimes break a woman’s heart, and a woman will sometimes break a man’s heart, but we can’t sit in that month after month. We are empowered by God to overcome any adversity. We can shake it off, and keep our eyes looking up for what Heavenly Father has in store for us.

Love is a commitment, and when we get knocked down, we must be committed to hold tightly to God’s love. We must also see the person’s rejection of us as a call-to-action to rise up to a greater level of God’s love. The Lord Jesus Christ is perfecting you, polishing you like gold for God’s divine purpose. Why be angry, dejected, and sad because someone didn’t have an awareness of your destiny? This person isn’t for you. Bless them in the name of Jesus Christ, wipe the dust off your shoulders, and let them be on their way. Don’t be the woman with the wounded heart. Be the woman that is healed and better than ever! Trust God for treasures with your name on them, and pray that in this season, He teaches you to love through His strength and wisdom so that you are prepared for the blessing that is sure to come.

SCRIPTURES:

1John 4:13(NLT): And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us.

The Holy Spirit is not an ‘it’ or an abstract essence. The Holy Spirit is more of a person than we could ever hope to be, and he lives inside every born-again believer. We desperately need his strength and power, and we can lean on him through our faith, because He cannot fail.

John 16:13-14(NLT): 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own but will tell you what he has heard. He will tell you about the future.14 He will bring me glory by telling you whatever he receives from me.

The Holy Spirit is our best friend. He’s our Teacher, Leader, Guide, Helper, and Comforter. He delights in helping us, and because of him, we can live a successful Christian life.

Ephesians 4:30(NLT): And do not bring sorrow to God’s Holy Spirit by the way you live. Remember, he has identified you as his own, guaranteeing that you will be saved on the day of redemption.” od told His people in Isaiah 45:3(NLT), “And I will give you treasures hidden in the darkness- secret riches. I will do this so you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, the one who calls you by name.” As believers, we should never underestimate or overlook the reality that God tied treasures and riches to His identity. This is astoundingly good news, especially for those of us that are seeking Him to cross paths with our marital partners.

God has identified us as His own by giving us His precious Holy Spirit. This means we should be committed to live according to the example of Christ. We grieve the Holy Spirit when our thoughts and behaviors go against the grain of God’s love. He doesn’t ever want us to head down a path that will harm us in some way. He wants us to remain in continual fellowship with God by living according to God’s Word. He will help us to do this so that we can please God, live abundantly, and grow stronger in the power and authority of Jesus Christ.

For single believers that have been praying for marriage a while now, we have an acute awareness of ‘treasures hidden in the darkness and secret riches’, because ‘hidden and secret’ is exactly how finding the right person feels to us. We know that marriage is God’s institution, and that it is ordained and blessed by Him. He has given this institution to us as a way of blessing us and our family units. He desires that Godly parents will raise Godly children, and He has commanded parents to take care of their kids and bring them up in Godliness. So, marriage is a really big deal in the Will and Plan of God. It is to be honored as such, and this is one of the reasons why most of us view a Godly compatible, loving, and compassionate partner to be such a treasure.

In this verse in Isaiah 45:3, when God refers to treasures that are hidden in the dark and secret riches, He is instructing us about treasures and riches that are hidden from our physical eyes. Our Heavenly Father is not withholding these goodies from us, and they are not treasures that belong to the realm of darkness, but somehow satan has managed to hide them from our physical eyes. The reason for this is because we do not yet have the spiritual vision to see beyond satan’s tricks and plots.

1Corinthians 2:14(NLT) tells us, “But people who aren't spiritual can't receive these truths from God's Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they can't understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means.” Every person that is born-again through the Lord Jesus Christ has received God’s Spirit, but every person that is born-again is not walking in God’s Spirit to the extent that they can and should.

Just as we have five senses in the physical world, we have senses in the Spirit as well. It would benefit us greatly to strengthen them. In the physical realm for instance, newborns have five senses, but as infants that are not adept at using them. They can see no further than eight or twelve inches away, and anything further is blurry to their little eyes. Most often, if a child continues to grow and flourish, their vision, hearing, and other senses will sharpen and increase. Likewise, in the spiritual, God expects that we will spiritually grow in Christ. He expects that as we increase our faith through the knowledge of His Word, our spiritual vision will not be foggy or blurry. Instead, we will mature from spiritual infants to spiritual maturity in Christ.

In 2Peter 3:15-17, God warns us not to misuse the truth of His Word by twisting it to mean something other than what He has spoken. He warns us not to be tricked by wicked people who use clever words to distort the truth. We will slip away from the faith if we do this. If we fail to seek the truth by walking in the Spirit, we might become full of ourselves and think we can bend God’s truth to fit our selfish desires. This is not good. It will work against us. God warns that it will bring destruction to our lives.

We can’t navigate being single without God’s guidance and leadership. Many single people don’t believe this, and they are committed to doing what they’ve always done. They think their way will lead to success, but Proverbs 19:21(NLT) tells us, “You can make many plans, but the LORD's purpose will prevail.” When we ask for God’s help in our quests for marriage, He’s going to examine if we are spiritually mature enough to steward or manage His Godly treasure. Are we still spiritual infants, not yet pursuing God’s Word the way He expects? If we are, God doesn’t tell us “no”, He waits for our spiritual maturity to increase and equal the blessing we seek. Physical maturity occurs as we age, but unlike the physical, God has given us the responsibility for the acceleration of our spiritual maturity, so we should never blame Him for not blessing us. Instead we should pray and increase our commitment to grow in Christ.

The blessing is ours, but we can’t do things our own way and neglect to meet God’s requirement. We must humble ourselves before Him. We must attend to our relationship with God and be committed to go and grow higher in Christ. God commands us in 2Peter 3:18(NLT), “Rather, you must grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Spiritual maturity is obtained by reading, studying, and meditating on God’s Word. Our level of commitment to this will increase our spiritual vision and strength. Then, the Godly treasures we seek will no longer be hidden, they will be in plain sight, clothed in all their glory, and perfectly suited to fit our lives. ■

Kim Times, Minister, Writer, and Editor

s believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and children of the Most High, we all know that God can do anything and everything. There is nothing that He cannot do, but when we study His Word, we learn that there are some things that God will not do. Hebrews 6:18(NLT) states, “So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us.” It is impossible for God to lie. This is something He simply will never do. It’s a staggeringly magnificent piece of knowledge to have in our arsenals. As God’s people, He wants us to have full confidence that His Word is true, and that we can count on what

He says with all that we are. God wants us to be anchored in His Word, and He confirms His Word to us as we build it in our hearts and minds. This means that as we study and live it, over and over again, we will witness that God blesses His Word and rewards us for standing upon its truth. His Will is for His Word to be the foundation of our lives. For this to happen, we need to study the scriptures continually, so we can know them. There’s a well-known saying that tells us whatever we focus on, we become. There’s some Biblical precedent for this. God instructs us in Ephesians 4:22-24(NLT) to “22 throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. 23 Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. 24 Put on your new nature, created to be like God--truly righteous and holy.” Our new nature the moment we accepted Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior and believed in that God resurrected Jesus from the dead. Our human-spirit was recreated, and we received a new nature, the same nature as Jesus Christ.

This new nature doesn’t come natural to us, because we were born in a sinful world with sin in our bodies. The psalmist, King David, wrote in Psalm 51:5 (ESV), “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” This is true of all of us. Romans 3:23 (NLT) tells us, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” When we were lost in sin, God rescued us. We didn’t earn His salvation. God, through His amazing grace, has given it to us through Jesus Christ. Now we have a new way of life.

In our old life, from very early on we were trained by others, and we also trained ourselves, to think, speak, and behave a certain way. Many aspects of this certain way go in the opposite direction of God’s love. Since we have been made brand new in Christ, God commands us to throw away our old sinful nature, because it is not useful to our journey in Christ. This means we must strip off our old way of thinking, speaking, and behaving and put on the mind of Christ. God tells us in to be like our Lord and Savior in every way because he is the Living Word of God. John 1:14(ESV) tells us, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh. As we shift our focus off of self and focus on Christ, we will become like him. This

is what God wants for every person.

Many of us are struggling these days. Instead of being razor-sharp focused on Christ and living out of our new nature, we’ve allowed our minds to be captivated by what is happening in the world, and this causes us to lose focus on the Lord. We’re not able to draw as near to God as we should because there’s too much of the world’s chatter going on inside our heads and hearts. We’re sinking rather than building our faith in God, and we need to turn this around. We must begin to make choices that keep us strengthened, empowered, and growing in Christ.

Romans 8:28-29(NLT) tells us, “28 And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. 29 For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” We need to get it anchored in us that God causes everything to work together for our good. This is possible! It can be a reality in our lives because God says it can. No matter what our circumstances and situations look like, no matter what anyone says, God will do what He said He will do. We can take this to the bank.

God is the One who tells us what is possible and what isn’t possible. He sets this standard according to the brilliance of His Word. He can do anything and everything, but God limits Himself to the boundaries of His love. You and I should be walking in that love increasingly day by day. We must increase our faith in God’s empowerment. Ephesians 1:3(NLT) tells us, “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ.” God says that He has given us every single spiritual blessing in His heavenly realm because we are united with Christ through the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. There’s not one spiritual blessing that isn’t included in our lives because of Christ. We can journey through life with total faith and confidence in God and manifest all that He has made available. God saved us! It’s possible to be spirit-filled, full of God’s grace and oozing over with His love because this is what He’s made available to us through Christ.

Continued on page 27