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One of the most challenging parts of living on planet earth is how we deal with our mobile home — our body.
God has given us an awesome body in which to live while we are here. You may not believe it is awesome if it does not perform up to your expectations.
However, if you are alive, you are an amazing work of art. Even the most advanced scientists have not yet discovered all the bells and whistles God put in a human body.
As awesome as our bodies are, we must remember they are only the covering of something far more precious.
We are containers of God’s Spirit. Paul said,
“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 .. Therefore honor God with your bodies.”
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
So how do we honor God with our bodies?
First of all, we must know because our body is the outer covering of The Great Treasure, it will be the prime target of satan.
He cannot get into The Treasure unless we open the door for him. He is betting if he keeps up the assault on our body long enough and hard enough we will give up.
He is betting if he can convince us there is nothing more important than our body, we will do absolutely anything to save it.
When satan wanted to bring Job down, he said to God,
“Skin for skin! A person will give all he has for his own life.”
Job 2:4-5
We can make some crucial mistakes in considering our bodies. We may recognize their awesomeness, but forget Who made us awesome.
We can believe we are so beautiful, handsome and talented that we should be worshipped. That was satan’s downfall.
He was beautiful. He took the affirmation from others like an addicting drug and he wanted more. His focus turned from worshipping God to worshipping himself. Then he thought everyone else should worship him too.
On the flip side, we may believe we are ugly, untalented and created poorly by God. We can despise our bodies. We can try to recreate them in our image instead of recognizing we were already created in The Image of God.
We can decorate and try to cover our bodies to try to hide who we think we really are. We will end up living behind a mask and feeling afraid that if anyone truly knew us, they would reject us.
We might believe we will please God by taking scripture and dictating how people should dress or present their bodies. We may believe this is glorifying God, but in reality it is judging, proof texting and keeping our focus on ourselves.
We might use our bodies for pleasure. Satan offers a variety of “feel good” options, which can temporarily distract us.
However, all of his options should come with a warning they are only temporary fixes and will never satisfy. Every one of satan’s schemes is designed by him for one purpose — to get you to open the door to The Treasure.
Some use bodies as objects of punishment and humiliation. They use other people’s bodies to make themselves feel more powerful. Whether it is through unwanted sex or child abuse called discipline, it is all about using another person’s body to feel powerful.
All of those ways of using our bodies involved our choices. We got to make choices about our bodies. However, there are other things that can happen to our body that we would not choose.
Stay tuned for the next post in this series on The Body.
But for today, review the choices you have in how to glorify God and not yourself with the amazing body He has given you.
For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.
Ephesians 2:10
