I was talking to a friend of mine not long ago and she mentioned that she’d lost close to 23 pounds. I congratulated her. We’ve known each other for a few years now and in all that time, she’s gone from one diet to the next and never lost more than about 10 pounds – the 10 pounds she always managed to put back on. So how did she do it this time?
When I asked her about it, she hesitated to respond – but then said it started when she stopped thinking about dieting. It started when she stopped worrying about the calories, the fat content and the carbohydrates contained in every morsel of every bite she ever ate.
I can get that. After all, part of the problem we run into with a lot of the diet plans is they don’t look at the long term. But with her history of jumping from diet to diet; what prompted this change?
A sermon.
Now, I admit that surprised me. What did the sermon say that got her attention and so firmly changed her outlook and lifestyle choices? She described the sermon in a few words: the body is a temple and it should be treated as such.
I wanted to know more about the idea and she shrugged her shoulders lightly and then gestured upwards with a careless hand. A Christian her entire life, that sermon actually summed up something she’d forgotten to keep in mind. The body is a temple – to treat it badly is to treat God badly.
To honor the gift of what God gave her meant to treat it well. People dress up for Church, they find the time to be there on Sunday morning at the variety of services that are offered – they find the money to add to the tithing plate. So how can you justify not finding the time to eat well and exercise? When the body is treated as a temple then the body, the mind and spirit all benefit.
There are many churches across the country that are jumping on the health and exercise bandwagon. They are using spiritual fitness as a method to help motivate and encourage their congregations to take better care of themselves. A healthy lifestyle encourages weight loss and improved physical fitness.
So, do you treat your body as a temple?
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