My Temple

Father, this body you have given me is not my own..yet I have abused it, neglected it, tortured it, stressed it out and stretched it beyond capacity.  I confess to you that I have not treated my body as a temple that You have given me.  I have defiled it Lord and I want to have a mind shift.  Help me not to give in to temptations that lure me.  Help me to keep a steady hold on this body that you have given me and help me to focus on honoring You with my body instead of myself.  For You have written, Do you not know that your body is a temple 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 body (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).  If You cannot trust me to take care of the one thing that is with me all the days of my life, how can You trust me with anything else?  Help me Lord so that You might trust me with more that might be withheld from me until I learn how to care for the things You have given me.

Passion

From the book “Jesus + Nothing = Everything”...I have a confession to make: I’m addicted to the Gospel.  It burns inside of me.  And it seems to get hotter every day.  I can’t stop thinking about it, talking about it, writing about it, reading about it, wrestling with it, reveling in it, standing on it and thanking God for it....Like ASlan in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, the gospel is good but not safe.....
I don’t have that passion.  When did that intense burning for the Gospel die-with my marriage?  Probably.  The author goes on to write: Worn out, afraid and angry, I insisted that God give me my old life back.  The gentle but straightforward answer from God that I received from the pages of Colossians that morning was simple but sobering: “It’s not your old life you want back; it’s your old idols you want back, and I love you too much to give them back to you”.  What do I long about my old life?  The safety of a relationship, the security of knowing my place?  A coworker described her life and it made total sense to me...I feel like I had this jigsaw puzzle all constructed and perfect.  Then someone came up behind me and totally destroyed the jigsaw puzzle and I’m trying to put the pieces back together but the pieces are different and so is the picture.  I’m getting frustrated that the pieces aren’t fitting together nicely the way they should even though I’m trying to force the pieces back together.