Seventy-five years old?! How is that possible? My husband, affectionately known as my boyfriend, turned seventy-five years old on June 24. It just seems impossible that he is three-fourths of a century old and that we have been married for more than five decades. I would not say time has flown, but it certainly moved a little faster than I expected.
Gaylon and I have been blessed in life. In the area of the material, we are certainly not wealthy people, but we have no lack. It is actually hard to buy gifts for each other or to communicate to our children, when asked, what to give us as gifts.
Seventy-five, what could I give Gaylon for age seventy-five? I recalled that on several occasions Gaylon said he would like to have a metal detector. He thought it would be fun for him and fun for the grandchildren. Therefore, on his birthday, Gaylon opened his nice, shiny, red metal detector. He assembled it and began toying around with it. He would hide his wedding band or coins and slowly pass the metal detector over them. Quickly the detector would let out a loud sound to indicate metal was present. The metal detector communicates that there is something hidden in the grass that should not be there
Do you have a metal detector? If you are a child of God, you do. Well, technically it is not a metal detector but a fruit detector. His name is Holy Spirit. As we walk with God, we are not immune to things entering our lives that do not belong there. First Corinthians 6:19:20 teaches us, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your bodies.”
The Holy Spirit is present much like a metal detector. He reminds us that our bodies no longer belong to us. He lets us know when something has taken up residence in our bodies, bodies bought with the price of the precious blood of Jesus. Holy Spirit isn’t revealing things that need to be uprooted or forsaken because He loves to condemn us. No, not at all! He wants us to be free and open to receive all that God has intended for us. I narrow the flow of God in my life when I allow bitterness, envy, strife, fits of anger (that’s the way the Bible says it), drunkenness, and other works of the flesh to reside in the temple that belongs to the Holy Spirit. Being free from these things places me a position to receive all God has for me, and allows me to be more like Jesus.
The verse which proceeds First Corinthians 6:19, 20 is very enlightening. Verse eighteen says, “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.” In those three verses in First Corinthians, the metal detector known as the Holy Spirit lets us know that we are not free to use our bodies any way we choose sexually.
As God’s people, we should keep our minds on things from above and not give into fleshly temptations. By accepting Jesus as our Savior, we waive the right to do whatever we choose with our bodies. Sometimes in our sexually charged environment, it seems this truth has gotten lost. Since we are now a holy house set aside for God’s purposes, nothing unclean or defiling should be allowed take up residence. In other words, no Christian should engage in sin, including sexual immorality. We might have to renew our thinking in today’s environment where sexual matters are concerned. The world does not have to follow this instruction, but God’s people must.
Christians should abstain from whatever defiles the temple of the Holy Spirit. Because Christ gave us these bodies as a temporary gift, we should honor Him with them. Taking care of the temple involves other things such as exercise, eating healthy, and filling ourselves with spiritual nourishment. We do not have to give entrance to everything knocking on the door of the temple. Let us intentionally draw closer and listen to the Holy detector living within us. His purpose is to bring us into a closer walk with Jesus and to make us more like Him.