Your Body is About God
Life is all about God. It's all about showing forth the glory of God. And Lucado in book It’s Not About Me says in Chapter 11 that my body is about him.
That's different to the way of the world. The world says. “My body, my rules. I can do with it what I want. If I want to honor God on a Sunday, that's fine. But if I want to go wild on a Saturday, that's fine. It's my choice.”
Paul in 1 Corinthians 6 makes it clear that our bodies ought to be used for God's glory, not our own self-gratification. Verse 15 says, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself?” In verse 19, he says, “Your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. You are not your own.” He says “You were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your bodies.” Your body is an instrument - God's instrument intended for His work, and to show His glory.
Taking Care of Your Body as God's Temple
Lucado uses the analogy of a house sitter who you've asked to come and look after your place when you're gone. And he says, “Let me describe two nightmares. The house sitter redecorates your house. White paint is changed to pink, Berber carpet to shag. An abstract plastic chair sits in place of your cozy love seat. His justification? ‘The house didn't express me accurately. I needed a house that communicated who I am.’ And of course, you would say to him, ‘But it's not your house. I asked you to care for it, not to take over it. It's my residence, not yours.’ And so next time you go away, you invite somebody else to look after your house. But she does something else. She didn't redecorate. She neglected the house, didn't wash a dish, didn't make a bed, didn't take a trash. She says, ‘Well, my time here is temporary. I don't really care about that stuff.’
That's often the way we treat our bodies. Just saying, ‘Well, I'll do what I want with my body, it doesn't matter.’ Or ‘You know what? I'll neglect it and not really look after it because it's just the body.’ And God is saying ‘Your body is a temple of my Holy Spirit! Your body is a member of Christ. Care for it! Look after it!
Honoring God with Our Bodies
Do you own honour God with your body? Does your eating, your exercising, your sexuality honor God? It’s not about you, friends. Our bodies are not about us. Our bodies are - once again - tools for us to glorify God.
I pray that you and I will submit our bodies to God today and say, ‘Lord, use us for your glory so that somebody looking at our lives will see the glory of God in the way we care for our bodies.
