Loving Our Bodies as God’s Masterpieces - Encouragement for Today - September 23, 2019

Peace and perspective from God's timeless truths. [View this email in your browser]( Encouragement for Today --------------------------------------------------------------- September 23, 2019 Loving Our Bodies as God’s Masterpieces [MELISSA D’ARABIAN]( [Listen to this devotion]( “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?” [1 Corinthians 3:16]( (NIV) I’ve found myself stuck in a no-man’s-land of wanting to eat healthy but somehow slipping into eating a specific diet just to be prettier. The world wants us to love our bodies by changing them, but Jesus wants us to love ourselves unconditionally. I wish it were that simple! My goal hasn’t always been making my body the best temple for God. There’s a fine line between eating healthy and exercising as a way to worship God and care for His temple, versus eating healthy and exercising to “be pretty” or admired by the world. The behaviors look very similar, but they’re different in a crucial way: One worships the Creator, and the other worships the world He created. God created us in His image, and He loves us deeply. If I received this love fully, my natural response would be tremendous gratitude for how He made me. Yet if I’m honest with myself, for much of my life I haven’t been grateful for my body. The best way I can describe my attitude toward my body was a grumpy acceptance of the sub-par lot I had drawn. I’ve always joked about having “childbearing hips” — long before I ever knew I’d birth four girls — or about my tendency to gain a pound just by looking at a holiday pie. Harmless self-deprecation, I thought. Do you do this too? All these tiny jabs are not directed at ourselves; they are actually directed at God. He tells us we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” ([Psalm 139:14]( and then we respond by essentially saying, “Your handiwork is just not good enough for me.” What would happen if we were grateful for our bodies instead? What if we dared believe that we truly are complete in Christ? What if, when we looked in the mirror, we saw ourselves through God’s eyes and saw the beauty He sees? What if we simply chose to see our beauty, trusting that God’s eyes are more qualified than our eyes and society’s eyes? It sounds simple, but the familiar shame easily creeps in. Quit eating and get back to the gym, whispers the voice in my head. Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. All lies. And the worst kind of lies: half-truths! Skinny, slender, thin — all mere adjectives, innocent descriptors, but they have morphed into a synonym for beauty. We have Satan to thank for that. Satan works his best evil in sneaky half-truths. Why? Because outright lies are too obvious. We all know not to read those emails that say, “Lose 25 Pounds in 5 Days!” But a cleverly worded ad that is seemingly written by a well-known medical professional saying, “Eating this one food will change your life!”? We might fall for it if it contains some elements of truth. [Continue reading...]( [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [Read about Salem Web Network]( | [Subscription Preferences]( | [Unsubscribe]( --------------------------------------------------------------- © 2019 Salem Web Network. All rights reserved. 111 Virginia Street, Suite 500, Richmond, VA 23219. This email is never sent unsolicited. You are receiving this email because your email address, {EMAIL}, is signed up to receive newsletters, updates, and special offers from Encouragement for Today. [Link](