Derek Prince - Don't Defile The Temple Of The Holy Spirit
This is an excerpt from: War In Heaven And Earth - Part 2
Now put compulsion and enslaving together, and you get addiction, and our culture today is full of addictions. And I'd say 99.9 percent of that is demonic. Let me give you a scripture from 1 Corinthians 6. This to me is the Biblical definition of addiction. Verse 12. All things are lawful to me, but not all things are useful. I'd rather say inexpensive. So all things are lawful. I'm not talking about a law that says, "Thou shalt not eat, and thou shalt not do this or that." But not everything is useful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not allow myself to be brought under the power of anything. The food is for the belly and the belly for the food, but God will destroy both the one and the other. But the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. So overeating and sexual immorality are specifically mentioned by Paul as possible examples of addiction.
And an addict is a slave and I'm sorry to say that the church is full of addicts. Not all of them are addicts, but there are many, many good Christians who are slaves anyway. Slaves to masturbation, slaves to idle talk, slaves to polluting habits, slaves to wrong attitudes, slaves to wrong eating and drinking. I have come to see that my body is a temple to the Holy Spirit and I am responsible for how I treat that temple. I am not free to defile her. I'm not free to do anything that would make it less good than it should. I am very careful about what I eat and drink. I am under no law, but I try to honor God's temple. And you? Do you take good care of your temple? If it was a physical material temple you would be very careful with it, wouldn't you? I mean, you'd keep it swept, you'd keep the windows clean, you wouldn't let dust build up, you wouldn't clog the toilet. What about your physical temple? How well do you maintain it?
Let me say this and I won't charge extra for it. I came to the United States in the 1960s. And I have myself; this is my own subjective impression. There's been three strong men, one after another across this nation, trying to dominate it. The first was rebellion. In the 1960s, there was a resurgence of rebelliousness. The Bible says, "Rebellion is the sin of witchcraft." When people rebel, they end up in the occult. So the next demonic power was sorcery. But in my personal subjective judgment those are a thing of the past. They are still very active, but the number one strongman seeking to dominate the United States today is self-indulgence. And while both witchcraft and rebellion were considered wrong by the church, self-indulgence is practiced by the church. You can still love me anyway. But a while ago someone said to me, "If you want to know the best restaurant in town, ask a preacher".
And it is true. I mean, it's definitely true. Pastors know what the best restaurant is. Well, I'll go a little further. In about 1990 I was diagnosed with a serious physical ailment and I prayed to God many times. I said, "God, I don't understand. I believe in healing. I preach healing. But I'm not healed. I've seen many healed. I'm not healed." Well, God didn't give me a definitive answer, but He gave me a brief overview of the way I had lived in previous years. And He never said nothing; He never made a comment. But He just showed me in different situations. Do you know where most of them were? At restaurants. And I saw that I had become a slave to self-indulgence.
In 2 Timothy chapter 1 verse 7 Paul says: For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and love, and self-control. That's the NIV translation. Everyone wants power. Everyone wants love. But how many people want discretion (or self-discipline)? You see, the Holy Spirit will not discipline you unless you discipline yourself. He will not take over and do the work for you. But if you make up your mind, He will help you. I mourn for people who are very close to me but who are slaves to their stomachs. Strange silence, don't you think? And they destroy themselves and they defile the temple of the Holy Spirit. As someone said, now he has stopped preaching and he is meddling in other people's business.
What about coffee? Coffee is a medicine. I mean, everyone knows that. I'm not saying you're addicted, but I'm saying do this. Just stop drinking coffee for 48 hours and see if you are addicted or not. You'll find that if you get through it, it's all right. But if you can't live without it, then you have to do without it. Paul said, "All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of anything." And really, what it comes down to for modern America is food and drink. That's where we have to say, "Am I under the power of anything"? And many, many good American Christians are slaves to their stomachs to call it by its proper name. And it's an addiction and it's demonic. I'm not saying you need to get rid of a demon per se, but check it out and see. And mind you, you won't be saved if you want to keep doing it.