Press Play: Moving Forward Our of the Pause - Week 2

3 Truths to Believe, Confront and Do Something About

1.    Circumstances Don’t Reverse Resurrections.

2.    Dead Stuff Stinks.

3.    Doubt Keeps You Out of the Room and Your Hands in Your Pocket.

3 Roles of Pastoring

Maintenance

Mentoring

Challenging

Simply defined, a temple is a dwelling place of God and thus a place of worship.  

The first 2 Commandments are as follows:

1.    You shall have no other Gods before me.

2.    You shall not make idols.

What do these two commandments tell us?

·      There are other gods that vie for priority in worship.

·      We are capable making our own gods to worship.

Psalm 135:15-18. 15 The idols of the nations are silver and gold, made by human hands. 16 They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see. 17 They have ears, but cannot hear, nor is there breath in their mouths. 18 Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.

Temple #1 Our Bodies

 
John 2:18-22 18 The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to ddo all this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” 20 They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

1 Corinthians 6:12-19 (Message) 12 Just because something is technically legal doesn’t mean that it’s spiritually appropriate. If I went around doing whatever I thought I could get by with, I’d be a slave to my whims. 13 You know the old saying, “First you eat to live, and then you live to eat”? Well, it may be true that the body is only a temporary thing, but that’s no excuse for stuffing your body with food, or indulging it with sex. Since the Master honors you with a body, honor him with your body! 14-15 God honored the Master’s body by raising it from the grave. He’ll treat yours with the same resurrection power. Until that time, remember that your bodies are created with the same dignity as the Master’s body. (Now that is a heavy statement) You wouldn’t take the Master’s body off to a whorehouse, would you? I should hope not. 16-20 There’s more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, “The two become one.” Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever—the kind of sex that can never “become one.” There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others. In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love, for “becoming one” with another. Or didn’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So, let people see God in and through your body.

Romans 12:1-2 says, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

 
Temple #2 Our Homes

Deuteronomy 6:1-9 These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. 3 Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, promised you. 4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Press Play Challenge

·      Temple #1 Change how you view yourself and live.

Prayer: Father I offer myself anew to you. I chose to believe I am who you say I am. Continue to transform me from the inside out.

·      Temple #2 Establish your home as a temple.

Prayer: Father I dedicate my home to you as a temple. As a parent, I take back my role as priest and priest-es of my home.

·      Temple #3 Let’s not go back to normal.

Let’s double down on connecting to Christ, one another and our real purpose.