My body is a temple of a living God. He lives and dwells in me. It’s where he chooses to rest. When I need rest, I can find rest in him, always in and with me.

My temple is a tent. It’s temporary. It’s a temporary housing for the Holy Spirit on this earth to do his work. That housing is as stable as the foundation of which I keep it up with.

I am a body, soul and spirit. I am spirit born again with the living God. I’m soul with my mind, will and emotions. I have crazy emotions sometimes, and I have a will that sometimes wants to fight what God wants me to do. I have a body, and my spirit and my soul reside in the body.

Up until now, I’ve taken care of my body mostly for selfish reasons. I’ve taken care of it to look good in a swimming suit in the summer. Somewhere along the way, I kind of gave up. When I started taking care of my body again, I did it to beat my body and tell my body, “Hey, listen. You are not going to control me. You’re not going to tell me that you’re in pain. You’re not going to tell me I can’t do something because you are not the author of what I can do. You are not the author of my limits. You are not the author of my successes.”

The battle is in my mind. It’s between my ears. I have overcome that with running and speaking to my body – telling pain to leave and then running through it and pushing through it. That is what I learned to do. I learned to shut down my emotions and control my thoughts and really beating my body and making it my slave.

Now, what I find is that I really left my mind and my body and my taste buds kind of control what I put into my temple. It has become a trash can, honestly, of everything. My eyes have been lustful for food.

Honestly, I’ve been kind of living in lust. “If I want it, I’m going to get it.” We look down upon that if it’s sexual lust. But has anybody ever stopped to evaluate lust of food and really the lust of flesh. “I want what I want and I want it now.” That is a big, old, adult brat.

Saying that, I found that I let my body control me. Basically, the vision that I had for my temple is too shallow, too short term. It went from year to year. Like, “I’d like to fit into these pants.” “I want to look 10 pounds lighter when I speak.” “I would like to not look so pudgy in my pictures.” “I don’t want to look so fat in my swimming suit.” I would wear clothes that had a voice, that spoke for me. “I’m insecure. I feel fat. I want to cover up. Please don’t look at me. Hopefully, you don’t notice that I am overweight.”

What I missed in the last thirty years of trying to get healthy was a bigger vision. The bigger vision is that I want to be able to do cartwheels in the yard with my kids, with my grandkids. I want to be healthy from the inside out. I want to have strong muscles so I can lift things well into my old age. When I stand, I don’t want my legs to wear out because the muscles are too weak. I don’t want to hike a flight of stairs and be out of breath. I want to keep my balance. I want to keep my core strength strong so that when I get ready to fall, I can stand. When I am in my 70s and 80s and 90s, I don’t want to be using a cane or walker. I want to be free of assistance. I want to be like Moses in Deuteronomy 34:17, that his strength is not abated nor his eyesight not dimmed. I want to see 20-20. 

I want my strength to not be abated.

What I know is that you have to lift things to keep your muscle. I think, as we age we start letting other people lift for us because it gets heavier and heavier. Our muscles are tired and weak. If you exercise them and go against what is crying out for you to stop and just do it anyway, you gain in strength.

So my vision for my future is that –
I wouldn’t have a stomach that rolls over my britches that makes me feel fat or it’s hard to bend over to touch my toes because my stomach is in the way.
My vision for my future is that my clothes would fit and I would feel good in them forever.
My vision is that I will be able to sit on the floor with my grandchildren and play with them.
I envision myself having a lot of energy, being fueled all day long.
I envision my future being one that my arms may wrinkle and my skin may wrinkle but when people look at me, they see strength. I want people to look at me and say that I honor the Lord with my body.

Sin is inward. It may be your thoughts or your criticalness of people or it could be an ugly attitude but it’s all inward. Gluttony and the sin of mis-eating and abusing food is an outward sin and people can see it all over you. My prayer is that my inward life and my outward life would be flawless and holy when the day of the Lord comes.

I want the Lord to be my fuel. Scriptures say that I have food that you know nothing about. That is where I want to be. I don’t want the desires of my flesh to make me stop my day and go get something that I am lusting after.

For example, I was recently out of town and I really wanted a salad from this one place. My lettuce was kind of wilty. I really wanted a salad and I really wanted pickles. So I just thought, “It’s not far away. It will just take me a minute and I’ll run over there.” I just sat there for a moment and I thought, “Am I going to let the desires of my tongue and my taste buds determine what I do with my time? Because I have food here. I have fuel here. It’s not what I want but it’s good for me. 

It’s available. It doesn’t require me to go and get it. Should I listen to my flesh and go feed it what it wants or should I just say, eat what you have?”

I realized at that moment, when making that decision, that I spent my whole life tending to my flesh. I spent my whole life agreeing to my flesh and going to get what my flesh wants. “Oh, let’s leave and go get ice cream. Oh, let’s go get pickles. Let’s go get whatever.” Like a pregnant woman, she gets what she wants. But I never got out of that stage.

So in that moment, in making the decision, “Do I want this salad and these pickles? It’s healthy food, right? It’s not a big deal. Just go get it.” No, it’s not. It’s not about being healthy or not healthy but it’s about not being a slave to the desire of my tongue and my flesh. That was a huge overcoming moment for me because I did not go get it. I’ve done it since.

This week, all week long, I’ve wanted a banana. I haven’t had any bananas in the house and I haven’t been to the store to buy any bananas. I could easily make a special trip to the store and buy some bananas because I want bananas and bananas are healthy. I just decided that I have this great food in the house and it may not include a banana but there is another choice. You need to choose what you have and at some point, when you go to the grocery store then you can get the bananas. Don’t let the desire for the banana make you go out of your way and skip something else you need to do to have and feed and fuel your fleshly desires. Continue to deprive it. It’s like a fast. Crazy. This whole last three and a half months has literally been like a fast. I’ve made my body be deprived of what it longs for. Wow.

Given that, my long term vision is that what I crave wouldn’t direct what I would do but I would only be directed by the Holy Spirit. He would be my guide. He would take my hand. He would lead my way. It wouldn’t be the cravings of my tongue and my taste buds and my flesh but that I would continue to put those things down and trust God that he is going to give me the food that I need to eat and no one else knows anything about.

The biggest scripture for me for the last year and a half has been, “The Lord is my shepherd, and I shall not want.” I have spent the last ten years just wanting and craving and fulfilling. I cannot tell you how many times I’m like, “I want a cherry limeade.” Whoop. I’m in my car in five minutes with little kids, getting a cherry limeade. “Because you know what, I’m going to get what I want. I don’t really want it from this place but I want it from this place, okay? I’m going to go get what I want.” “I want to get a coffee. I’m going to go get it.” I’m desperate in the middle of the day for Coke. I’m going to go get it.