[Spirit100]

God is Our Strength

He erected the pillars before the temple, one on the right, the other on the left, and called the one on the right Jachin [he shall establish] and the one on the left Boaz [in it is strength]. – 2 Chronicles 3:17 AMP
Solomon is building the Temple of the Lord, the holiest structure in human history, and the two pillars that would welcome everyone into that place were Jachin [he shall establish] and the one on the left Boaz [in it is strength]. And so as o...ne enters the temple of God, the reminder every time is that it is God who establishes. It is God who builds up and tears down – that our times, our lives, our hopes are all established by God. And on their left, they are reminded that in the place that God dwells, there is strength.

And so we have to understand the weight of this thought – that establishment and strength come from God. And the opposite is also true – that there is no establishment or strength apart from Him. How much of our lives have we given away to establishing ourselves and finding our own strength, and yet we realize that these things come from God alone. The opposite of establishment is destruction and the opposite of strength is weakness. When we choose to look at other means of establishment and strength, what we find every time is only things that destroy and weaken.

Now, take that context from the physical location of the Temple in the Old Testament, and read Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 3:16 - Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? (NIV) The temple is now within us. God brings His establishment and strength from the external Temple to the interior of our lives. And so the way to strength is not outward, but rather a journey within us to meet God right in the center of our lives.

The choice that we have is to live in constant communion with the God who establishes and strengthens, and who through the Spirit who lives in us. But so many of us choose to live out of our own establishment and weakness, while missing the God who establishes us on our right and strengthens us on our left. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit. May we choose to live in the Spirit, to allow God to build and establish our lives, and to be our strength.