Living Outloud: From Awe to Action
Awe is hard to come by these days. Our world is loud, fast, and full of distractions. But Scripture keeps inviting us to slow down long enough to feel awe again—to remember that God is not small, predictable, or manageable.
One of those invitations shows up in 2 Chronicles 6. Solomon stands before a glittering new temple and asks a question that still stops us in our tracks: “Will God really dwell on earth with humans?”
He names the paradox honestly. Even the highest heavens can’t contain God—so how could a building? Solomon was building a house, but God was preparing something far more intimate: a home in human lives.
The God Who Moves In
John 1 turns Solomon’s wonder into astonishment. The Word—who was with God and was God—became flesh and tabernacled among us.
That word “tabernacled” ties the whole story together:
Backward to Israel’s portable sanctuary
Forward to Jesus walking, eating, weeping, and dying as a real human
Solomon built a curtain to guard the Holy of Holies. Jesus stepped through the curtain to dwell with the unholy and make them holy.
The incarnation isn’t a poetic metaphor. It’s rescue. God took on a body because bodies die, and justice requires death for sin. The eternal Son embraced a human nature so He could suffer, die, and rise—where mercy and righteousness meet without compromise.
If anything, awe should grow when we realize this was the plan since the first sin.
From Sacrifice to Surrender
If the temple’s primary function was sacrifice, Jesus fulfills it once and for all. The cross doesn’t lower God’s standards; it satisfies them with divine self‑giving love.
But that doesn’t mean our lives are sacrifice‑free. It means sacrifice is transformed.
Paul calls us living sacrifices—not bleeding to earn love, but yielding because we are loved. That surrender reaches into the practical corners of life:
Our habits
Our desires
Our schedules
Our attention
So ask yourself: What clutters the temple of your heart? What routines feed holiness—or starve it?
Awe becomes action when we lay down what can’t coexist with God’s presence and pick up practices that welcome His voice.
Your Body Is a Temple—Literally
Then Paul sharpens the point in 1 Corinthians 6: your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.
He applies it to sexual integrity, but the implications stretch wider:
What you eat
How you rest
What you watch
How you speak
How you steward your resources
Bodies matter because God made them, Jesus redeemed them, and the Spirit inhabits them.
“We are not our own; we were bought with a price.” That truth humbles our autonomy and heals our shame.
Humility, because ownership changed hands at the cross. Healing, because the One who owns us is the One who loves us.
Holiness becomes less about grim determination and more about cooperative dependence—an embodied “yes” to the God who lives within.
The Spirit Who Works From the Inside Out
Romans 8 shows how this dependence actually works. The Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead now dwells in believers, reshaping desires, empowering resistance to sin, and infusing our mortal bodies with resurrection life.
This power is personal, not mechanical. He convicts without crushing. He comforts without coddling. He leads without forcing.
We become temples that honor their Builder:
Prayerful
Joyful
Repentant
Awe matures into steady reverence when we realize the Christian life isn’t God watching from a distance—it’s God working from within.
Let Awe Slow You Down Today
Solomon’s question becomes our confession: The heavens cannot contain God, yet He chooses to dwell here.
Let that truth slow you down. Let it clear space. Let it shape your ordinary choices—what you click, say, eat, give, and forgive.
Those small decisions become the worship of a living temple.
