What God Won’t Let Me Forget
“We are the temple of the living God.”
2 Corinthians 6:16
I have never really cared about appearances – my own or others’. Jenny gonna show up in a headband or a baseball cap with no makeup and a T-shirt with a message on it, and you’re either going to sit with me or you are not. It’s an aura thing. Jenny always gonna Jenny.
That’s not to say I have it all figured out, and I assure you that I do not. As appearance woes go, I constantly struggle with and worry about my weight.
I gain, I lose, I lose, I gain. When I lose, I gain confidence, and when I gain, I lose self-worth. It’s a frickin’ roller coaster of monster proportions with which I know many women (and men!) are all too familiar.
Being a Christian and a Bible lover, of course I have heard so many times “the body is a temple.” Sometimes the very fit and pretty people use it as a weapon. To quote the illustrious and immortal Prince, “the Beautiful Ones always smash the picture. Always. Every time.”
The soul has to be the holy priority, otherwise, the temple (our body) has no purpose at all.
They say if you love Christ the right way, you will eat right and exercise. They smash you over the head with the prayer-hammer and tell you that you are not praying enough.
Hogwash.
Let me tell ya. That ain’t the case. I have prayed my whole life for a slim body, and apparently it is not God’s will that I have one. My spiritual maturity is hearing a whisper that maybe He is teaching me a lesson about vanity and idolatry, and I just haven’t been listening for 50+ years. See paragraph one, though – my appearance is not and has not ever been all that important to me. Or is that just a lie that I’m telling myself?
I have recently started realizing this desperate need for a fatless body has been a lifelong obsession, and maybe it’s an “idol” I need to stop worshipping.
Our bodies are temples, yes.
Temples are holy, yes.
But I have realized that temples are not holy because they are visually beautiful and built with ornate materials. They are holy because of what they contain. They contain God’s presence.
God is very specific in the Bible about the dimensions of the tabernacle, the temple, and the Ark of the Covenant, but the Bible says nothing about the dimensions of our bodies. Not one word. It doesn’t say anywhere in Scripture that “Thou shalt be more holy and chosen first if thou hast smaller thighs and less belly fat than your neighbor.”
God never asks someone to fix their body before He dwells in them. Jacob became physically impaired and walked with a limp after wrestling with God but he still carried the covenant and was literally renamed Israel. Zacchaeus was short. Moses had a speech impediment. David was small and unimpressive compared to his brothers. Leah is described as less attractive than her sister Rachel.
During the wilderness days, the portable tabernacle housed God’s presence within the Ark of the Covenant. Then the Israelites reached the Promised Land and built the permanent temple to house God’s presence.
When Jesus was conceived, Mary became the quote-unquote “temple” that very literally housed God’s presence as Jesus.
Then Jesus ministered, died, and was resurrected, and we became the temple that houses God’s presence. Paul says this plainly in 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 (Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?), and he says it again in 1 Corinthians 6:19.
Jeremiah 31:33 says it even plainer. God promised a covenant that would no longer be written on stone tablets, but within us believers: “I will put My law within them and write it on their heart; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”
In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul describes Jesus as the cornerstone. Many of you know I work in construction, and over the years, I have learned a thing or two. In the construction vernacular, a cornerstone is the first stone laid in the foundation of a structure, and it is the starting point for calibrating the alignment and stability of the entire building.
Since Jesus is our cornerstone, our body is a temple (no matter what it looks like). It’s our souls that are the seat of God’s presence now. The temple exists to protect the place where God’s presence is joined to our souls.
Think “Precious cargo, not precious car”.
I don’t mean to minimize care of our bodies. Of course health and care and exercise and diet are important. But if you’re a little plump, too skinny and bony, maybe your skin is dry, or your hair is mousy, or your feet look weird – whatever flaw you want to name – our bodies are merely the tabernacle tents that protect our souls in this wilderness we are living in.
Sure, I think we should take care of our bodies – but not so we will look good in a bikini. We should care for our temple so we can keep living and sharing the gospel.
Think “function” over “form”.
I don’t mean to say “we” like I’m trying to boss you around. This message is mostly for myself! I personally want to be more mission-driven than appearance-driven.
Eventually, our bodies are going to fade, break, and fail, but our souls are eternal. The soul has to be the holy priority, otherwise, the temple (our body) has no purpose at all.
In the Bible, every physical temple fell. Every structure failed. Our bodies are also going to fail. God’s presence, however, has never been the thing that failed. The body should serve what dwells inside. Because once the body becomes the idol, God’s presence becomes secondary.
Over time, we as a society, and more specifically Christian society, started believing the body matters most because it is the temple. The word “temple” itself provokes thoughts of awe and holiness, but we forgot the main purpose of a temple. It’s not the grandeur of the covering. It is protection of the inner Holy of Holies.
So this is me. Trying to hear. Trying to listen. And trying to change my focus.
Prayer for When I’m Feeling Fat
Lord, let what You are doing inside me matter more than how my body looks on the outside.
Help me remember that it’s Your presence that defines my worth.
Did you miss the Still Waters from earlier this month? No worries. Click here: I Want To Know What Love Is