Stir me up!!!!

The Holy Spirit speaks to us through scripture and so I always pray that God leads me to the verses that He has for me each day.  It, very often, takes me reading the same line over and over again to fully get what God is trying to tell me.

This morning I was led to the book of Ezra.  As I began to read, I got to chapter 1 verse 5 (NLT) that says, "Then God stirred the hearts of the priests and Levis and the leaders of the tribe of Judah and Benjamin to go to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple of the Lord."  The Holy Spirit was speaking very clearly to me.

The Bible says our bodies are temples for God.  "Don't you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit,  who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body."  1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (NLT)  With all of this scripture, the Holy Spirit is stirring my heart.  He is drawing me closer to Him. 

Our sin causes us to fall away from where He wants us to be. It destroys the temple that is our body.  God will stir our hearts (Am I the only one that pictures God with a gigantic spoon in His glorious hands?  Insert giggle here) in order to bring us back into His will.  He, essentially, rebuilds the temple when He forgives us and offers grace to a repentant heart. 

When He stirs our hearts, it's our job to recognize it for what it is and ask God to be the contractor for the rebuild.  He gives us a really good blue print called the Bible.

As our temples are rebuilt, the Holy Spirit works from the inside out laying a firm foundation.  If our foundation is not firm, cracks can allow Satan to enter and tamper with the beauty that God intended.  God is the mortar that holds us together firmly, keeping us safe from destruction of the temple that belongs to Him.

As the foundation is laid and when it is complete, we experience a plethora of emotions and feelings that we just have to embrace and enjoy.  And trust me when I say this...it is a roller coaster ride.  But it's normal and good.  Ezra 3:11b-12 says, "Then all the people gave a great shout, praising the Lord because the foundation of the Lord's Temple had been laid. But many of the older priests, Levites, and other leaders who had seen the first Temple wept aloud when they saw the new Temple's foundation." We can see that there can be all kinds of different emotions over rebuilding.
Verse 13 says this, "The joyful shouting and weeping mingled together in a loud noise that could be heard far in the distance."

From this scripture, we can see that it's okay that rebuilding can cause "joyful shouting and weeping".  Let's look at it this way...the Holy Spirit stirs us to be joyful and grateful for goodness of God's grace.  He wants our Temple to have a good foundation. He fixes it and makes it like new, like it was never cracked.  He also stirs sadness and wants us to grieve over the sins that required the correction.  We should also be grateful for that. If we just rejoice over the good, we could forget that the grace is so important.  We grieve over the sins but let them go and live in the forgiveness.  It's all part of the rebuilding of the temple.  Our bodies are God's temple.  His Holy Spirit resides in us.  Don't we want Him to have a good home with a firm foundation?  I know I do.  I know He does-the blueprint says so.