"Do you not know that your bodies are temples 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 bodies."
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (emphasis mine)
Wow, just take a minute to let those words sink in.
Let's break it down into the 3 phrases that I put in bold.
Your bodies are temples. What did the temple mean to the Jewish people? Well if we look back to Genesis, the temple was the dwelling place of The Lord. The first temple was a tent in which God came down from Heaven to give Moses instructions. So Paul is telling us that our bodies are dwelling places for God. Right, now what do we do with this information. Well let's look at the next phrase.
You were bought at a price. Do you know that price? Who bought you? Jesus bought us when He paid the price of our sins on the cross----death. So Jesus paid for us with His blood, cleansing us from sin. How does that relate to our bodies being temples?
Paul says "you are not your own". God created us to use us. He wants to come and dwell within us. Read that again. He paid the price of our sins so that He could dwell within us. He needed to cleanse us from all past, present and future sins before living within us because He cannot ever be near sin. How amazing and wonderful is our God????
Now for the last phrase: Honor God with your bodies. The hardest part I believe. What does this mean? From my point of view, it is about freeing yourself from the bondage of sin and especially sin that hurts this physical body of ours. Your physical body is a gift from God to use while here on Earth until we go to Heaven where we won't need bodies (and until we get our ultimate resurrection body). How are you treating that gift? I am going to be honest and say that I haven't been the best at using my body to honor God, but I'm learning how to take better care of it.
I say this post is perfect timing because I have just signed up to be a Coach through Beachbody. I want to help others take care of their bodies, whether it is to serve God or not. I think we all need to feel good in our skin because it's the only body we will have here on Earth. Let me tell you straight up why I exercise and fuel my body properly: so that I can better serve My Lord. That's my reason, what is yours? I want to be in the best shape to have the strength to get through the day and use all the resources that God has given me to serve Him.
Before I wasn't taking care of my body, running it down and not using it to honor God. The main way that I needed to improve taking care of my body is my health. I have always been a runner and I thought that was enough but when I started to put on weight and not keep it off I knew there was another aspect that I was missing: my eating habits. I ate everything and anything I wanted. The little voice in my head said "hey you ran x amount of miles today go ahead and eat those 3 extra cookies" well it got me into loads of trouble. I was tired and cranky all the time and never looked like I was active. I wanted to have muscles and couldn't figure out why I never increase muscle mass.
My nerdy science side is going to come out for a minute. God created our bodies. He gave us the amount of fat cells we would have for the rest of our life. We can never decrease or increase the amount of fat cells of our body. So you might be asking how can we gain or lose weight?? The fat cells act as storage units of energy. When we eat more calories than our bodies need, the excess gets stored as fat. Why fat? Because the design of the molecule can have the potential for great amounts of energy, in case food sources are scarce. So to lose weight (percentage of fat) you need to use up fat storage and shrink those fat cells down. You do this by exercising but more importantly your diet!
I wasn't eating right and not fueling my body with what it needed to be successful. After a few weeks of flexible dieting (I say flexible because I still have one cheat day a week and I count my macronutrients-carbs, fat, and protein, in addition to calories so as long as the foods fit the parameters then I'm good to eat it!) and a few months of strength training I am starting to see results and the muscles I have craved for years. It's hard work but sooo worth it because I have energy and I feel like I can better serve God when I'm not weighed down with bad eating habits.
 |
| Finally seeing some definition! |
If I can help you in any way, please drop a comment or message me! Remember your body is a gift but more importantly are you treating it like the Lord lives in it? If we look at it that way, then maybe we will be a little nicer and fuel it with foods it needs to perform amazing tasks everyday.
With Love,
A
No comments:
Post a Comment