My pastor referenced this verse in church this week. As soon as he said it, God dropped a thought into my head. And it had to be God, ya know? ‘Cuz I’ve heard this verse spoken SO MANY times and never before thought about the correlation …
I can’t post a picture of Solomon’s Temple (copyright laws), and I’m not good enough to draw it for you, so here’s a quick link to my Pinterest page, so you can reference what I’m about to say* … https://wwhttps://www.pinterest.com/gingers219/blog-references/22647340510/
So, the thought …
We are the temple of God. We have “areas” similar to the original Temple:
- Gentile areas (also for women)
- the Court of Israel (for men)
- The Holy Place (for priests)
- the Most Holy Place or the Holy of Holies (for the High Priest only)
The Gentile areas represent the surface parts of our lives. We change simple things here, like our speech or daily habits. Some of this could probably fall into legalism, where we show our piousness to others. These are the parts that are easily seen by the outside world, but don’t necessarily reflect the heart of who we are.
The Court of Israel digs a little deeper, but is still on the surface. Maybe this is the place your family sees–the person you are behind closed doors. It reveals a little more but isn’t too deep.
Then we get to The Holy Place. This is deeper. This is close to the place where we hide most of who we are. It also holds the hurts of our past. We don’t like coming in here much (at least I don’t), because it’s here that we see who we really are and have to come to grips with what we need to change about ourselves.
And finally, we come to the Holy of Holies. This is where we hide our biggest wounds, our greatest fears, the worst parts of ourselves. These are things we may not even realize we hold on to, at least not until God deals with them. We have hidden them so deep that we are surprised when He shows us this part of ourselves. They can be things done to us or lies we believe about ourselves, except we don’t know they’re lies.
It’s in the Holy of Holies of our lives that true healing and forgiveness are found. And it’s this place–our true soul/spirit–that Jesus wants to touch. He wants to be at the center of who we are, and to be such, we have to allow Him access to our deepest parts. We have to “tear the veil” and let Him in when He knocks on the door.
But it’s hard to face those things. They hurt. They’re hard to deal with. AND these are things that Satan LOVES to remind us of … past hurts, past sins–things we’ve begged forgiveness for and things we’ve had to forgive. We have to remind ourselves–once we’ve dealt with them–that we ARE forgiven and that we HAVE forgiven. Over and over. Ad nauseam.
How far do you let God into your life? Have you let Him have access to the Holy of Holies?
Blessings,
* I did not read and do not necessarily support anything found on the actual websites where I found these pictures. I wanted only to reference the pics.
