It has been quit interesting to watch the debate in recent weeks over the decision made by Olympic Athlete Simone Biles. She is a 24 year old, African American gymnast who has won a combined total of 32 Olympic and World Championship medals, thus making her the greatest gymnast of all time. And though she has repeatedly represented the United States extremely well on the world stage, along with her team, under enormous pressure, she has recently received praise from most and sharp criticism from others over her decision to withdraw from several of the competitions during 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. She had just recently discovered the passing of her aunt and was experiencing the “twisties”, which is a condition where you loose air awareness while doing certain twist routines. She was feeling the intense mental pressure of the Olympics and didn’t want to jeopardize her safety and a team medal. Therefore she withdrew in order to attend to her mental health and better position herself to represent her country. In spite of her critics calling her a quitter, she withdrew to focus on self-care, because she knew that she’d be no good to anyone if she wasn’t ok.

It’s with this story in mind that we now enter Romans chapter 12, which comes after Paul has just spent the previous 11 chapters giving his fullest explanation of the Gospel of Jesus Messiah. His goal in doing this was to unite the Jews and Gentiles of the church in Rome as one in Jesus Christ, which would give a powerful witness to the onlooking unbelieving world and set him up for his long desired missionary trip to Spain. And after hearing Paul expound, with crystal clarity, on the astonishingly abundant mercy God has given the entire world, Jew and Gentile alike, through the righteousness of Christ, we could expect, by this point of his letter, for gratitude and love to be welling up in their hearts. Praise would’ve been breaking out among the church in Rome as they were gathered in a house, listening to Paul’s letter being read and preached by a women named Pheobe. They likely now want to give themselves completely over to the service of Christ; pouring themselves out, with all the energy they could muster, for His cause. And maybe this is how you felt went you first received, in your heart, the Good News of salvation through the grace of Christ. Yet is it possible for us to push ourselves to a point that’s unhealthy? Could we find ourselves in the same place that Simone Biles found herself? In light of God’s abundant mercy towards us, how do we best position ourselves to be given to Him in complete worship? Well, I believe the Holy Spirit, through Paul’s letter to the church in Rome is going to help us find this balance today, beginning in verse 1 of chapter 12, which says.

“Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.”

— Romans 12:1 NASB

In light of the abundant mercy of God given to us through the Gospel, Paul urges us, he pleads with us, he begs us to give our bodies to God as a living, holy and acceptable sacrifice. I mean, can you hear his voice crying out through the text? You see, what you may have picked up, if you’re familiar with the story of Scripture, particularly in the Old Testament, is that this is sanctuary service language. This is the language of the sacrificial offerings that must be holy, set apart, without blemish, or ceremonially acceptable. It is a total and complete sacrifice of the animal for the worship of God. Yet as he applies this imagery to believers, instead of the sacrifice being completely given over in death, he paradoxically calls us to be living sacrifices. Now, this metaphor makes me a little bit uncomfortable, because sanctuary sacrifices were always a picture of the atoning sacrifice of Christ for our sin, yet Paul is using this language not to refer to our atonement for sin, but to our giving ourselves totally and completely to God for His service. Yet, we may hear this and immediately start to pour ourselves out in service to and for God in an unhealthy way, without any consideration for how we best position ourselves to do this. You see, we best position ourselves to be given to God in complete worship when we…

CARE FOR OUR BODIES.

I’ll confess that one of my biggest struggles in my marriage has been to maintain the upkeep of our vehicle. As my wife and I agreed upon early on in our biblically egalitarian marriage, I would be responsible for taking the car or van to get washed, to get the oil changed or to get any maintenance needs serviced. And in her eternal patience with me, she would repeatedly come to me to remind me to take care of one of these maintenance needs or to simply remember to fill the van up with gas. And more often than I’d like to admit, I’ve allowed myself to get so caught up with all my other responsibilities, even doing the work of the Lord, that I’d forget to prioritize in my schedule taking care of our vehicle. It would often get to the point where she’d just inform me that she’d just go ahead and handle it herself, which she’s more than capable of doing. However, I'd committed to taking care of it myself, and felt terrible that she had to get to this point. How many of you couples know what I’m talking about? You see, what my wife understood was that if care wasn’t prioritized for the maintenance of our vehicle, it wouldn’t be long before we didn’t have a vehicle to care for! And this is the problem that many of us have with our physical bodies. Or maybe some of us have fallen into the temptation of giving more care to our car’s body, than to our own physical bodies! And just like we’ve got to care for our vehicles so they can effectively serve us, we’ve got to care for our bodies so they can effectively serve God and others!

This is the principle that’s also coming out of 1st Corinthians 6:19. And though in it’s context, Paul is referring to not giving our bodies over to sexual immorality, the same principle of overall care for our bodies comes out when he says, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?” 1st Corinthians 6:19 NASB. We cannot just treat our bodies any old way, because our bodies are the holy dwelling place for the presence of the Holy Spirit! As a matter of fact, we’re to care for our bodies and not just do whatever we want to them, because they ultimately do not belong to us anyway. Our bodies belong to God as a holy temple and therefore He has a right to tell us how to care for what He owns!

And so if we’re going to give ourselves completely over to the service of God, then we best position ourselves to do so by caring for our bodies with things like regular exercise, drinking approximately 64 ounces of water per day, and getting an average of 8 hours of sleep per night. We need to set healthy boundaries for our time, relationships and for the guarding of our hearts against sin. We need to embrace the gift of limits, recognizing that we’re not machines. Our bodies need a healthy diet, fresh air, regular doctor check ups and time to play. We also desperately need the rhythms of hobbies we enjoy, the weekly 24-hour experience of the seventh-day Sabbath rest and vacations from work that are planned out way in advance. And there are several other things that you can do, some of which may even be popping up into your minds right now, that are meaningful to your physical well being. The point is, you need to make the choice, right now, to prioritize doing them. It could be one of the most spiritual things you do!

Yet one of the biggest obstacles to you moving forward with this commitment to care for your body is if you neglect the very thing that directs your body to do anything. In fact, we sometimes focus so much on our physical health, that we neglect an aspect of our health that directly affects our physical health. Therefore, Paul says in verse 2…