Thou Shalt Take Care of Yourself
(19) Or don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you? Don’t you know that you have the Holy Spirit from God, and you don’t belong to yourselves? (20) You have been bought and paid for, so honor God with your body.
1 Corinthians 6:19–20 (CEB)
Hello Readers, hope all’s well. Time for another post.
It’s my great pleasure to inform you that the day I wrote this post, I enjoyed a refreshing swim in the morning. I’m sure you’re happy to know about that. I went to a nice, quiet little pond and river very close to my house. It’s an off-the-map, hidden place. One of the perks of living in the countryside. And swimming is one of the best and most pleasant ways to get good exercise.
But I’m not writing about my swimming pond today. I’m writing about health and exercise more generally. You may wonder what health and exercise have to do with Christianity. But I say both are fundamental to Christianity, since our bodies are temples for the Holy Spirit. We must respect and care for our bodies.
So today I highlight a few ways we can be healthier and show greater respect to our bodies. A couple ways we can make our bodies a more pleasant home for the Holy Spirit.
As you already know, this is an extremely broad topic and if I get started, I could go on and on and on forever. But I don’t have that kind of time and neither do you. So I will limit my comments to three areas: fighting obesity, abstaining from alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs, and getting proper rest.
Let’s get started.
Temples for the Holy Spirit
Let’s start out with the scriptural truth all my statements rest on. Our body is a temple for the Holy Spirit, who is in us. So we should honor God with our body. This well-known passage can be found in 1 Corinthians 6:19–20.
(19) Or don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you? Don’t you know that you have the Holy Spirit from God, and you don’t belong to yourselves? (20) You have been bought and paid for, so honor God with your body.
