My Body
My body has been marvelously and wonderfully assembled from more than 30 trillion living cells each one intricately designed and incredibly structured. My body is an astonishing gift that I have been given to live in, to take care of, and to use to do good and to serve others and to glorify God.
My body is my home away from my eternal home. It’s my earth suit that I wear during my time on this planet. “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”
I don’t live in my body alone. “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Jesus said: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.” Many years ago, I opened the door. Now this Bible verse applies to me: “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
Jesus predicted that the ancient Jewish temple where the manifest presence of God stayed behind a veil in the Holy of Holies would be completely destroyed. When Jesus died that veil was torn from top to bottom. A few years later the Roman army leveled the temple to the ground in 70 AD. Now the manifest presence of God lives in the innermost being of His children who have opened the door and allowed Jesus in the person of the Holy Spirit to come and live their heart and to lead them from within. “For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.”
Although Christ now lives in me, my body still has a rebellious nature and tries to get me to turn away from Jesus and do what I want to do. By regularly reading and daily applying the Bible in my life I’ve learned that I need to follow Paul’s example: “I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.” Therefore, I’m continually learning and constantly training to be led by the Spirit, not by my own desires.
The human body (which includes the astonishing human brain) is the most marvelous organism on earth. However, the invisible person who inhabits that body is infinitely more marvelous. That inner unseen person has a choice — to seek to draw near and surrender moment by moment to the living God, or to ignore Him.
Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament said: “I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man.” O that all people would begin to do that moment by moment.
