You are inhabited
The temple of the Spirit
For a thousand years there was one room on earth where the presence of God was said to settle, the holy of holies, deep inside the temple in Jerusalem, sealed off behind a heavy veil. No one entered but the high priest, and only once a year, and only with blood and trembling. The presence lived there, behind the curtain, in the dark, untouchable. Hold that picture, and then hear what Paul writes to a quarreling, ordinary, far-from-perfect church in Corinth, the kind of people who would never have been let near that inner room. Your body, he says, is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Not a building down the road. Not a sanctuary you visit on the holy day. You. The Spirit of the God who raised Jesus from the dead has not dropped by for a visit; He has moved in, settled down, taken up residence in the plain clay of a human life. The veil is not merely torn. The presence has relocated. After a season when you may have felt emptied of God, forsaken, scraped hollow, this is the re-rooting truth that resets everything. The holy of holies has an address now, and the address is you.
“Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God.”
— Paul, to the Corinthians — 1 Corinthians 6:19 (WEB)
“But if the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised up Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”
Reconnect insists the Spirit does not visit and leave; He stays. After Corinth's chaos and your own, Paul relocates the holy of holies from a sealed inner room into the clay of a human life. Re-rooting here is the discovery that you are not a spectator waiting for a distant presence on the holy day, but a temple, consecrated, inhabited, the dwelling re-made. The presence that once hid behind a veil now lives in you, and means to stay.
In the worst of the upheaval you may have felt emptied of God entirely, as if He had withdrawn and left a hollow where He used to be. Hear, then, where He actually is. The Spirit dwells in you. Your ordinary body has become the temple where His presence settles, the holy presence relocated from a far-off, sealed sanctuary into the plain clay of your own life. Indwelling is a large word for a simple, staggering fact: the Holy Spirit, God Himself, lives inside you, making your ordinary body the temple where His presence settles.
He is no visitor who comes and goes with your moods, present on the good days and gone on the bad; He has taken up permanent residence, and residence does not pack its bags when you feel nothing. Consider whose Spirit this is. The very Spirit who raised Jesus out of the grave now lives in you, and the same power that rolled the stone away will one day give life to your mortal body too. So when the emptiness whispers that you were abandoned, answer it with the truer word. The presence that once hid behind a veil now keeps house in you. You are inhabited.
Whole stretches of the Church have taught people to meet God only in special rooms, on holy days, through ordained intermediaries, leaving the ordinary believer an outsider to the presence. Then Pentecost is remembered, and the temple relocates: the Spirit poured out on all flesh, dwelling in His people, each of them and all of them together. Across history the Body has rediscovered this truth whenever its structures grew too heavy, in renewal after renewal that returned to the indwelling Spirit. Where the current upheaval strips away the buildings and the standing, what it cannot strip is the dwelling itself, the living God keeping house in His whole people. Before a watching world, the Church is not a sanctuary you visit but a temple the Spirit inhabits. The holy of holies is not down the road.
Feelings of God can drain away, and a whole season can pass with the sanctuary seeming dark and empty. What cannot be shaken is the residence itself: the Spirit who raised Jesus has moved into you for good, and a resident does not leave when the lights feel low. He dwells, and the same power that emptied a tomb will one day fill your dust with life.
- When did I last feel emptied of God, and what would change if I believed the Spirit never actually left?
- Do I treat the Spirit as a visitor I must coax back, or as a resident who has settled in to stay?
- What part of my ordinary life have I assumed is too common to be a temple of the living God?
Lord, I have stood outside the veil so long I forgot You tore it down and moved in. When I felt hollow, You were not gone; You had taken up residence in this plain clay. Thank You that Your Spirit dwells in me and does not pack His bags when I feel nothing. Let the same power that raised Jesus quiet my fear of being abandoned, for I am inhabited by You. Amen.