Glorify God in Your Body

It’s a predictable pattern. A young teen does not feel safe in her home.

Alcohol changes people she loves into monsters who cannot be trusted.

This week, her little sister came to ask me to pray for her.

“Sister cuts her legs and arms,” the little one said. Harm begets harm.

When the Apostle Paul told the Corinthians, “You are not your own. You were bought with a price, so glorify God in your body,” he knew the cost of counting our bodies our own.

“My body, my choice,” says the alcoholic.

“My body, my choice,” says the girl who cuts.

“My body, my choice,” we have all screamed when autonomy serves us.

When we rip our bodies out of the loving hands of our Creator, they become puppets or weapons or worse.

This is where “My body, my choice” leads. Bodily autonomy that says alcohol is a fine way to dull past abuses and inhibitions hurts a young girl. The girl views her body as the problem. Her shame incurs the cost of blood. Her little sister sees the harm and despairs.

You don’t have to be your own, brothers and sisters.

Just as Paul pleaded with the Corinthians, so I plead with you. Give control of your body to the Creator who made it. Don’t fall down the spiral of deception that gives you the illusion of control but only leads to death.

“This perishable body must put on the imperishable,” Paul insisted in his letter to those sensuous Corinthians.

And in situations like the one I have described, it is easy to see why.

The perishable is perishing.

“Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Paul wrote to the Romans.

Putting on the imperishable righteousness of Christ is like slipping into a coat of immortality that frees the addict from drink, the tormented girl from her need for blood, and the sinner from the condemnation she has justly deserved.

The little girl I spoke with pulled something sparkly from her pocket. It was a necklace charm her grandmother had given her.

She could not read it, but she gave it to me as a gift. As she ran to play, I looked at it in the palm of my hand.

It read, in silver, sparkling letters: Trust No One.

“My body, my choice” has led a generation of girls to this. They trust no one, including themselves, because they see where it leads.

We must share with them the One they can trust, whose blood covers a multitude of sins, who loves them with a steadfast love that transforms their bodies, minds, and hearts so that they can be what He created them to be and do what He created them to do.

Only in Him can this mortal body put on immortality and be freed from the burdens of sin that teach us to trust no one.

Trusting Jesus breaks these predictable patterns and sets us free to serve Him.