"Good morning! Glad to know you are awake and ready for the day that you have in front of you. Without a doubt your body needs a goodnights rest and I hope yours was, but it also needs the right food intake and plenty of exercise so as to remain healthy and sharp. It is here that I want to talk to you about your body. The Bible teaches us that our bodies as believers, are the temple of the Holy Spirit. The upkeep of it is our responsibility and none other. As I have gotten older I have come to the place that if I intend to live long with quality of life then I have to do my part. Just standing on the promises of divine health because Christ paid for it will not bring automatic results when I keep abusing it. We must manage our bodies as good stewards just as we are instructed in God's Word to manage our finances with wisdom. Our bodies are important and should be taken care of. To ignore this, guarantees that soon enough it will fail you if you neglect the nourishment and proper exercise that it needs. But the body only houses the greater part of you, this of course is your spirit man, and therefore, you can't afford to be sloppy with what it needs to be healthy.
Henry David Thoreau tells us: Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, and it has nothing to do with hammering marble. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. I certainly know that many people worship their bodies in this life, just stop by the local gym and you will see some of the more serious ones like clockwork faithfully worshipping within their church, thus their attention to right eating, intense exercise, and rest is all to feel good about themselves and their needed attention from others to admire their bodies and their beauty. This kind of serving your body will make it your god and that won't work well for you down the road of life. These bodies healthy or sick, will all end up in the grave and then how will that person answer to the real God? We are spiritual creatures with temporary bodies. I hope you took note that the body is TEMPORARY, whereas, the spiritual is eternal. If the body is temporary why then do people place so much attention on it rather than the spirit which will live forever?
Our bodies speaking more correctly, are our work clothes that we wear in order to be a part of this world. Without them we cannot be here. This is why we need to take care of them, but not at the expense of the real work, ignoring God's business of why we are here relationally. The apostle Paul said in his letter to Timothy: “Physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better, promising benefits in this life and in the life to come.” (1 Timothy 4:8 NLT). So, as you can see taking care of your physical body is important and with obvious benefits, but greater benefits follow those who train in spiritual matters rather than physical exercise alone. Here is some good advice from Roger Von Oech: The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a good kick in the seat of their pants. I like that, maybe this devotional will do this for you if you have found yourself spending all of your time working on the physical and little time on the spiritual.
I am not trying to discourage the idea of staying healthy through proper exercise or the importance of keeping oneself looking great. These are good in their own right for feeling good about yourself mentally and physically; but when it becomes an obsession, you have forgotten the most important of all exercise, the spiritual, and when it is weakened the whole of life is lost, but at least I guess you will look good even though you're not living the real life. I can't express it enough at how important your spiritual life is. I have met many people who looked beautiful or handsome and would have been rated a TEN by Hollywood standards, but their spirit man was so obnoxious to where it was difficult to be around them and enjoy the relationship. What good is looking great outwardly but the inward person is so ugly that no one wants to be around them; and who really cares about good looks when the person becomes so repulsive to be around because its all about: how they look, does this make me look fat, I think I need another Botox injection, I'm going to get a facelift next week, I wished I look like that while wearing that dress or bathing suit, etc.
Geez...this wears me out just thinking about how many times this has been the culmination of topics within the conversations of some people I've been around. Their whole importance is in how they look outwardly, but rarely give any indication that they care about how their spirit looks. It seems to me that addiction, obesity, starvation (anorexia nervosa) are really political problems, rather than a psychiatric problem as so many use as an excuse: each person participating in this matter condescends and expresses a contest between themselves and some other person or persons within their environment over the control of who has the best looking body. This is why they compete against another, they are starving for attention. Oh, they don't always have to speak it out, just watch some of them when they pass by a glass window or some other mirror and when they see their reflection in it, it is here you will catch them modeling to make sure everything looks good in case someone is watching. Yet, this same person will snootily look down on another person they deem unkempt, dirty, unhealthy, or not in the same league as them and not once see how ugly their personal judgment as being the most repulsive of all interactions between humans. My conclusion: take care of your physical body indeed, but not at the expense of forgetting the more beneficial part of you, your spirit man." ~Dad~ |
