Your Life: Abuse It or Preserve It?

There is a duplicity about human nature that’s difficult to understand. We do everything possible to preserve our life, for without life nothing else is possible. Yet we devise ways to abuse the life God has given us to celebrate and enjoy. We abuse our bodies by overindulging them beneath the guise of experiencing joy and celebrating.

The Apostle Paul asked this grappling question, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit whom you receive from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” Thinking of your body as God’s dwelling place is reason to be committed to keeping it healthy. 

Robert Browning proposed, “How good is man’s life, the mere living! How fit to employ the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!” As we remain faithful to Christ in honoring and respecting our bodies as his dwelling place, we’re then invited to enter into his joy. Celebrate God’s gift of life with joy and thanksgiving.  

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You realize, don’t you, that you are the temple of God, and God himself is present in you? No one will get by with vandalizing God’s temple, you can be sure of that. God’s temple is sacred – and you, remember, are the temple.

~1 Corinthians 3:16-17 The Message

So then, my friends, because of God’s great mercy to us I appeal to you: Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him. This is the true worship that you should offer.

~Romans 12:1 Good News Bible