Living Temples

The Spirit Filled Life. C. Stanely.

Paul's reference to believers as temples underscores this point [earlier statement in book telling us that the Spirit takes up residency in us forever]. Having grown up a devote Jew, Paul had a great deal of respect for the temple. To the nation of Israel, it represented the presence of God among the people. ...[God] was free to take up residency in the heart of man. The barrier of sin had been removed. 

First off, small issue in the fact that Paul was generally teaching gentiles, who would not have had that thought of the temple; admittedly they could understand the concept that Paul was teaching in general...so in the aforementioned point, I disagree...
One might wonder why the Spirit did not take up residence before--He had in limited times in the past. Those people were faithful to God, such as Abraham being considered righteous because of his faith, and David considered a man after God's own heart for his faith. The lack of a complete sin offering must have kept the Spirit from being as available as He is to believers. Timothy Keller stresses in his books that suffering could not be stopped before Jesus' coming because of our sin being not completely covered...we were still so evil that the only way to stop suffering was to destroy us. By Jesus' coming, we can accept Him and have a covering for our Sin. The Spirit can dwell in us, teach us, lead us closer and closer to God's unbelievable love and light...suffering remains because there is still sin in the world (and the generational sins), leading to suffering today. Suffering will be gone with Jesus' second coming, when evil is destroyed and sent to suffer alone in the dark while we go to Paradise in the light, never to suffer again. 
I never realized before this RA hit me how much I did not really think of the Spirit...or perhaps even care. Once the RA hit me...and I got sicker and sicker with the pain...and I cried out to God more and more, I began to revel in the Spirit. He was there, in me...giving me the strength to bear the pain and sickness. He still is. Even as I write this, I feel nauseated, and I have ice packs on my feet, trying to get swelling down. Yet I feel His presence. I almost always do, now, if I just "be still". I feel so happy about having this closeness to God.
We get that closeness from hard times, being alone and not knowing what to do. We get that closeness when we cry out to God with our whole hearts. Many times when we cry out....there is a lingering, squirming worm in our mind, telling us we can actually, probably, maybe do this ourselves. We don't need God! We are so amazing! We went to college! Studied all the new things science says! We just watched on TV how this and that happened, which just goes to show God isn't real.
Yeah. Right. That worm keeps us from crying out fully. A worm of pride. But when the pride worm is killed, which usually means a really hard thing has happened....we can actually call out with fullness...we can "be still" and feel God. And while whatever we go through may just about kill us....it almost doesn't matter. God is right there, His arms wrapped around His child.