Our Bodies, Our Temple
I've been asked to think about physical health and how your physical health contributes to your spiritual health.
The first scripture that came to mind was Romans 12:1 “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God... (which is your spiritual service of worship.)”.
Our bodies are a vehicle of praise. What we do with them and to them is a show of our worship, or lack thereof, to Christ. If we’re truly put on this earth to honor and praise the Lord, what right do we have to defile and abuse our body?
We have one vessel to use and despite the hype of modern science, we can’t trade in what we have for something new when we wear our bodies out. It’s not like a car or a boyfriend, where we can trade in for the latest and greatest. If we’re lucky, we get to patch our bodies back up but at the end of the day what you are looking at in the mirror is all you have to work with.
We come into this world feeling indestructible. As little kids we take risks riding bikes with no training wheels, and then with no hands. We jump off spinning marry-go-rounds and flying swings. As teenagers we take the risk of exposing ourselves to foreign substances. Perhaps via unprotected sex with someone we barely know, let alone their medical history. Or maybe it’s getting high off Ecstasy, marijuana, or alcohol. Quite frequently we take the risk of loading up on these drugs and seeing what it’s like to drive a car. As adults some of us wane off the more extreme scenarios (and some of us, maybe not quite yet) but we still have an attitude of indestructibility. Getting 4 to 5 hours a sleep a night on a good day, compared to the recommended 8 or more, eating greasy or over processed foods with high percentages of sodium and saturated fats. Treating exercise as a disease instead of a tool for longevity. We go about life in this manner until something drastic happens. A close friend dies of an illness that is preventable. Our doctor tells us if we don’t lose weight, we’ll be crippled in less than 2 years. We ourselves become ill because we’re battling a chronic heart condition or lifelong physical or emotional disease but have become lax in taking the medications needed to sustain our very beings.
Taking risks in life is needed for growth. We learn from our mistakes and gain a greater appreciation for our circumstances. But having a spirit of indestructibility goes beyond this learning curve. Indestructible by definition means impossible to destroy. This we are not. We are careless with our physical bodies, our physical heath. Some of us flat out refuse to attend to the signs that indicate it’s time for a physical change. If we were driving down the street and our gas light came on, we’d think “oh, I need some gas” and start looking for a gas station. Very few of us would drive the car until it completely stopped and then wonder why we are no longer moving. [] Even if you don’t own a car, if you are riding in a car with someone else and their gas light comes on and you are nowhere near close to being at your final destination, I’m sure you begin to encourage them to look for a gas station. It goes pretty much the same if our “check engine” or “low oil” lights come on – we pause to investigate what the issue is and then proceed to make a change in the car’s current condition so the lights will go back off. Or at least that’s what I do. And I might not get to it the same day that it happens, but it becomes a high priority because I know if my car’s not running right, my safety and perhaps life is in jeopardy. Our bodies are much more complex than a car, and with God as the engineer, he’s built in many more signals and signs to indicate we need to make a change. The problem is, we often don’t take the time to listen. You know when you need more sleep. You know when you overindulge in food and libations. Your body tells you. It starts to react in a negative way, rejecting your desire to function as normal. You’re sluggish, you have less energy and motivation to accomplish daily goals, or even worse you’re stuck in bed because you’re too sick to function for the day. But I’m not here to be an infomercial on health so let me quickly draw the correlation of how your physical health directly impacts, or impedes your spiritual health.
Think of your spiritual health as a school exam. If you show up on test day with little sleep, no breakfast in your stomach, and a hangover from the night before, there is a good chance you will not do that well on the exam because you are distracted by the physical things going on with your body. All your energy goes to focusing on your growling stomach or your pounding headache, not the material that sits in front of you that you need to understand to pass the test. Your spiritual life cannot be tended to if there are physical things set up as road blocks.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 reads “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” Christians are notorious for praising God yet having self-induced high blood pressure, hypertension or diabetes. Believers go out and visit the sick and shut in and offer up prayer but yet get drunk to the point of vomit. Faith becomes convenient by day, and forgotten by night. It’s easy to close our eyes and pray, or show up at church and sing a few songs with the choir. But at some point our faith has to be manifested in our lives. At some point our faith should be changing who we are for the better. Changing us spiritually, emotionally, and physically. We can praise God with all the talents that we are given but still be slaves to our physical vices. If you come to church on Sunday, but are giving your body to a different person every other week, you chalk it up as being a work in progress. Maybe you just need a little more prayer. This frustrates me because I think it is a cop-out. We have control over our actions and our being. God created us that way. If we are disciplined enough to pray and to show up to church every Sunday at 1:30pm, why can’t we invoke discipline and self-control over what we do with our holy temples?
It’s not easy, I know. It’s not easy for me to resist the urge of alcohol, wanting to drink to the point of feeling a buzz. Prior to my relationship with Alejandro, it wasn’t always easy for me not to turn a lonely single night into an excuse to get felt up at a bar or be wrapped up in the arms of a strange man. And now that I’ve put on some pounds and am battling with arthritis and chronic bone issues because my frame wasn’t meant to carry this much weight, it’s not easy for me to get up in the morning and head to the gym or change my eating habits to get in better shape. It’s not easy, but I’m trying. I’m trying because I strongly believe it is our mandate as believes in Christ to honor our body in all that we do. I’m trying because I affirm my body is indeed my holy temple, and what I do to it is one of the ways I honor God. God entrusted us with his temple when he gave us this body. What are we doing for the upkeep? In what ways are we presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God? We stretch ourselves spiritually by believing in something we’ve never touched. Faith by scripture definition is the evidence of things not seen. But how do we use our body to stretch ourselves physically? Many people at Liberation don't believe they can meet the physical challenge so they eat through, snack through, their issues of depression and low self-esteem. Much of the weight I gained was acquired as my relationship with Jason was ending, as I experienced all of the emotional pain wrapped into closing that chapter of my life. Today’s message is about reclaiming your body as a temple. Acknowledging that you have control over what you do with this one body God has given you...
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