Sometimes God Breaks Down the Temple to Build a Greater One

It seems like all people go through a period when things are going really well followed by a period when everything seems to be falling apart.  I have gone through several of these stages and most recently I was in a stage when it seemed like my life was falling apart level by level.  It felt like a systematic destruction of my life.  Of course my life is not my own so I had to wonder why God was allowing so much destruction, you may have seen this in an earlier post,  and he gave me this answer. Sometimes he breaks down the temple to build a greater one.  We are clay in the hand of the potter and God molds us for particular purposes and when that purpose is done he breaks us down and rebuilds us for our next purpose.  It is when we get so comfortable where we are that we begin to resent the breaking down.  It is hard to do something new when you like what you were doing before. Sometimes we can get so good at being successful that we forget that our life has a Godly purpose on it and that our success is the result of God's doing and not our own. When we forget that God is the author of our lives we begin to revel in how glorious things are in our lives. We begin to worship the things instead of the God who gave us everything that we have.  God is not glorified in this, and God wants to mold us into vessels that show his glory. Other times we do give God glory, but he needs us to fulfill a different purpose.  In either instance God breaks down what we are to build up something better which glorifies him.  Sometimes he just adds a little heat to refine what we already are which also can be somewhat painful for us.  I can compare this pain to that of working out.  It hurts to push your body to do what you want it to.  It is painful to stain your muscles in exercise, but we do it on purpose in order to mold our bodies inside and out into something better.  Sometimes pain and seemingly destructive situations bring about necessary developments that would not have happened otherwise. In other words sometimes there is no gain without pain.  Thank God that he is also a healer, and any pain that we experience he already has the antidote for.  When God allows something to break down in our lives we need to look for what he is building up because he is in the process of doing something that will probably change your life for the better and bring you and everyone around you to a better understanding of who God is.  Ultimately God wants us to know him better. This is why he allows us to see his handiwork in our lives and why he wants others to see it too.  He said that if he were lifted up in the earth he would draw all men unto him.  God wants people saved and if that means that he wants to use my life to show his handiwork then I am okay with that.  I will glorify God with my life because it isn't just about me.  He wants all men saved; he wants to have a covenant relationship with every human creation that he ever made.  Lord build your temple in me.