“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple. Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” 1 Corinthians 3:16-23
In every sense, we are Christ’s — body, mind, and spirit. The world tells me that kind of identity is limiting, narrow and boring. To be entirely about Someone other than myself. But how wrong the world is. Every day new and unique. Me, growing and changing, confident and doubting, weak and strong. Journeying on until the end. Knowing and being known. Loving and being loved.
My life is not my own. I am Christ’s, and it’s delightful, and humbling. To dedicate my days to knowing His nature. To trust Him with all matters, matters too great or too wonderful. To hide myself in His beauty, His greatness, His care.
A woman I respect wrote these words years ago, and I relate to them: I’m convinced that the only story I have to tell is one in a forward motion, always moving forward, even if it lands on the same conclusions over and over again.
It’s reminiscent of my long-loved A.W. Tozer quote: “Nothing here is new except in the sense that it is a discovery which my own heart has made of spiritual realities most delightful and wonderful to me. Others before me have gone much farther into these holy mysteries than I have done, but if my fire is not large it is yet real, and there may be those who can light their candle at its flame.“
May it be true of me: that Christ be my all, my singular pursuit, my sweetest delight. Everything else is bonus. That I wouldn’t need the glory of anything more than a persistent posture toward God. A posture of openness, enjoying, trusting, surrender.
This is abundant life. Through which every other endeavor can flow and every other dream be built on.
“One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.” Psalm 27:4
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