Question 9: Is it important to live a healthy lifestyle?

This world is a crazy place. In a country like America, the body is incredibly important. We buy and sell thousands of products to clean us, paint us, fix us, and help us look however we want. Everybody seems concerned about what they are shaped like. We have thousands of diets and pills that use chemicals to help lose weight and look as thin as we want. More often then not people are also concerned about their physical health. They are watching cholesterol, salt intake, blood pressure, and being sure to eat enough foods that are green. We are so focused on what we look like that sometimes we just neglect the consequences of being paper thin. Or we lose the weight in an unhealthy matter and just end up making ourselves sick and usually just put the weight right back on. We then find ourselves wondering if any of it was worth the effort. Just the other day on the news I saw a news story that said that the obesity rate amongst Americans are rising, even among kids as they stop going outside and having fun and sit in front of the tv and the computer and don't get any exercise. So then we ask, is it important to live healthy as a Christian?

In 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 it says, "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body." This has several implications for us. The first is that this makes our body a temple. Yes a temple. We all, each and every true believer, are temples for the Holy Spirit. God lives in us. The temple in the Old Testament was constructed very carefully and intricately with a large investment of time and money that was put into it (1 Chronicles 29:1-5). Large quantities of all the most expensive materials were poured into the temple of the Israelites. It was supposed to be exceedingly clear that the Temple was the place that God dwells.

But, that was before the Holy Spirit had come. After Jesus came, died, resurrected, and returned to heaven, he sent us his replacement, the Holy Spirit. After that happened our bodies became the new temples. Just as much time and resources were poured into our body. Just look at the brain. We cannot recreate a brain or the nervous system. If you lose a nerve or are paralyzed, we can't fix it. We can't even make blood, probably the simplest thing in the human body cannot be synthetically made we must depend on others to give us compatible blood if we bleed too much. God has put great care in designing each and every one of our bodies knowing that after His son came that they would be the temple for the Holy Spirit. God designed our bodies with great love and care so that everyone would see upon examination that this is a place that God dwells.

This also shows that God desires to relate with each of us. If this were not true why would he make our body His temple? Exodus 25:8 and John 1:14 are just two of the several verses in the Bible that speak to God's want to fellowship with His creation. God the Father even sent the Holy Spirit to live within us. A God lives within you. How does that work? Who knows, all that we know and understand is found in John 14:15-26, which says:

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me, Because I live, you will also live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them he it is who love me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, "Lord how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?" Jesus answered him, "If anyone loves me he will keep my word, and my Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me. These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you

So Jesus said there quite clearly that, "we will come and make our home with him." That we is God. The trinity as a whole. That speaks to our bodies being a temple of God. We will get our strength from God and He will take care of us because our bodies are His temple. The Holy Spirit came down on Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4; 4:31) and later in Romans 8:11 it talks about the fact that the Spirit lives in us even more. The result for us is that when we need God he will be there in power as referenced in Acts 1:8, Romans 15:13, and Ephesians 3:16. The Holy Spirit is here, living inside of us to regenerate us (John 3:3-5), anoint us (1 John 2:27), baptize us (Acts 2:17-41), empower us (Micah 3:8), sanctify us (Romans 15:16), comfort us (John 14:16-26), give us joy (Romans 14:17), help us make decisions (1 Corinthians 2:10-16), and give us gifts (1 Corinthians 12:3-11).

So what does that mean for us? How does that help answer our question? Well if the Holy Spirit is in our bodies and our bodies are temples of God than that should cause us to want to take care of it. So, the easy answer is yes, we need to live healthy lives because people will look at us, know that we are believers, and decide for themselves based on our witness. We as Christians need to be careful how we eat, in terms of remaining within a healthy weight, keeping control of our cholesterol and blood pressure, etc. Our body is a temple of the living God so we must be careful where it goes, what it does, what our brains ponder, and how it reacts in different situation because what the world thinks of God is partly based on what the world see God's followers doing and how they living and taking care of themselves. With the Spirit living in you this also means that the Holy Spirit knows you, your strengths and weaknesses, your sins, your good deeds, in fact, the Holy Spirit probably knows you better than you know yourself.

So, take of yourself. Live healthy. You can have fun watching tv and playing games but just remember to get enough exercise and eat right so that people will look at you, know you are a Christian, and be drawn to the Spirit of God that dwells within you.