Kierette at the 2002 Summer Glory Convention at Walton on the Naze - An extract from her testimony

Did you know that God is so passionate about you?  We need to know God is passionate about us! We can sometimes think that God condemns, dislikes or even hates us because we can do things that offend Him but because of His passion towards us, we can always turn to him.

John 3:16 says that “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only begotten son so that whoever believes in Him may not be lost but have everlasting life.”

Because of this we didn’t get a cheap salvation, we got a costly salvation with the bill paid in full by the Lord Jesus Christ. This is how passionate God is! Every person in this world matters to God. If you were the only person alive God would have still sent His son Jesus to die for you and because of His great sacrifice He is risen. He went to the cross for all the people of that time and all those who would follow. Just to think that your descendants and those who go after you, your children and your children’s children can also be bought with that precious blood of Jesus! He gives us a new life in Him and He makes us His children. We are adopted into the family of God. “The father loves us so much that we are called children of God (1 John 1:3).”

Is the way you feel today based on truth and feeling? How do you value yourself? God says that His word is truth. What is written in the word is more true about us than what our emotions can sometimes indicate. Most of us don’t value ourselves on God’s truth. We value ourselves on the way that we feel and this can so often lead to guilt. God’s truth is “In Christ we are set free by the blood of His death and so we can have forgiveness from the things we have done wrong (Eph 1:7,8)”. We must not and cannot value ourselves on guilt. We need to value ourselves on God’s forgiveness and grace. “Those who are in Christ Jesus are NOT judged guilty (Romans 8:1)” If you have accepted Jesus into your life, God desires you to be free from the guilt because you have a brand new nature in Christ Jesus.

If you feel that you cannot value yourself and consider yourself inadequate, be encouraged! Psalm 139 tells us that we are made in an amazing and wonderful way. We have been made for a reason. We ALL have something to offer because we are made like God. So many people value themselves on things that are negative and conveniently forget the positive. This is not the victorious living that God has designed for us. God has in fact designed us as a temple and when we get saved, we become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Did you know that you are God’s Temple and God’s Spirit dwells in you. Your heart is God’s throne room. Be careful what things you allow into the throne room. Is there any rubbish in your temple? Rubbish is representing anything that is between you and your walk with the Lord. What kind of temple are you?

Are you like a garden shed? Your temple is placed at the bottom of the garden, which is seldom visited. It is an outside part of your main body and dwelling within is a lot of junk that you seldom ever clear out.

Are you like a mobile caravan? Your temple is not always needed so it is left on the driveway; it is only used when it is specifically needed – you can be hook up to something more powerful than you and you can get led down the road sometimes and you just go from one place to the next.

Are you like a show home? You find your identity by making people think that you are faultless, you don’t like to be messed about and everything in your life has a set place and nothing must ever be changed or moved.

Maybe you are none of these things that I have mentioned but I believe that God wants us to be like a greenhouse whereby you don’t mind people looking into you and you are full of life (there’s lots of new life and fruit in your temple), you live the life reflected by the powerful rays that of the Sun that you just soak in.

Whatever you feel like, be encouraged that you are a Holy Temple and the King of kings and the Lord of lords is in residence. Praise Him!

So today don’t beat yourself up about the past, forgive yourself and let God’s forgiveness reach you. It was once said to me that God’s forgiveness is like a letter on a table waiting to be picked up and accepted. It never changes and it’s always there. Feel free and let Him live in a heart that has no rubbish in it.

Kierette Paulson Clacton