"Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies." 1 Corinthians 6:19,20
In a new study published this week from RunRepeat.com, a team of experts analyzed how Americans’ health influenced their running performance and found that American runners are getting slower in all distances from the 5k to the marathon. The team perused data from more than 24 million race results from 1996 to 2016 and found that they were the slowest in history-and their theory based on these results, and dispelling other possible answers, was this... "it is the decline in health among Americans."
Considering that the NIH reports that 68.8% of adults are considered to be overweight or obese, these findings are not surprising are they? But the Bible makes it perfectly clear that, since we are "temples of the Holy Spirit" and have Christ living in us, we are expected to take good care of ourselves. Scripture also makes it very clear that, since our bodies are not our own, you and I are merely caretakers of them-trusted to be good stewards of that which we were entrusted with. So you see, to "honor God" with our bodies means treating them as a temple where the Holy Spirit resides.
So I ask you this question. If you saw someone vandalizing or damaging a temple built to "honor God", would you consider that a crime? Of course you would. But that's the very thing we do to our bodies when we fail to take care of them by eating right, resting well and keeping our stress levels down. So let us treat these "temples" with the respect they are due that we might "honor God" with our bodies as we are called to do.
Heavenly Father, thank you for your Word that serves as a reminder that we are merely stewards of these bodies we have been given. And as any good steward, we are called to take care of what we have been given. Help us to grasp that idea that we might treat our bodies as they were intended to be treated. It's in your precious name we pray, Jesus. Amen.
Happy Running!!!
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