Later on at the student meeting this sunday a different elder (John) brought a word from Ezekiel 47. What a passage! He read about the river from the temple, and how the river first comes into our lives like a trickle but God's love overflows and overwhelms us so we can no longer stand in it and have to swim in his living water.
Wonderful imagery of a promise God sets out for us.
I was then drawn to reading all about the temple in Ezekiel, the vision of how the temple will be, we hear about the words on each gate, the rooms for priests, rooms for sacrifices, the altar, the glory of the temple, the people who live in the temple and then how the river flows from it. It is seven chapters of detailed description of the temple of God, going into amazing depth.
Then I thought about how we are the temple of God, how he is dwelling inside us and Ian Portwine pointed 1 Corinthians 3:16 to me where we read that we are God's temple, and I realised that we are described that intricately by the Lord, he goes into that much depth (like in Ezekiel) about how wonderful we are, how precise we are made to be; this made me joyful.
Then I was drawn to John 7:37 (the verse our student meeting is named after - "737"), and read about how Jesus tells those who are thirsty to come and drink. I then read on as he says - "Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."
Streams of living water flowing out of the temple as we believe in Jesus. We are not just overwhelmed by the water that God gives to us, by his love and joy, but we are where his love and joy flow from. We have streams of living water flowing from inside us, we are temples of God.
Quality.
We need to acknowledge this and treat ourselves in this way. We are a wonderful beautiful temple, we need to treat sin and dirt as if it has no rite to be anywhere near us (it doesn't have any rite) and we need to remember that we are home to the holiest of holies, this makes us holy and this makes us pure.
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