Thursday, December 08, 2005

Being God's temple

This is the passage that stuck out to me in my bible reading this morning:

Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are.
1 Corinthians 3:16-17

Thinking about these words, I realize that there are some areas where I am not respecting myself as God's temple, I am letting some things into my mind that are causing impurity. In trying to avoid legalism, I have gone too far in some freedoms.

Personally, I don't find much value in living by a long list of rules, in fact, I believe it can be a way to kill the spiritual part of my relationship with God. But I realize that there has to be some balance in deciding what is OK and what is not.

Knowing myself, my strengths and weaknesses, is an integral part of walking with God; I do myself a disservice by remaining unaware of what causes me to stumble.

Of late, in my desire to learn and read thought-provoking books, I have allowed myself to read some unsuitable material. I don't believe it is necessary to limit myself to Christian books, but I do need to raise the bar a couple of notches when it comes to making decisions about what to read. And considering the fact that there is so much to choose from, I won't be missing out by passing up a particular book. I won't make up a list of rules for book selection, but I will have to put a book down if it contains uncomfortable subject matter. Since I am God's temple, I would like to do a better job of keeping myself clean and pure.