Two words: self care
Not a bad thing on their own. You cannot fill somebody else’s bucket if yours is empty. Every parent, pastor, bus worker, Sunday school teacher, employer, and Christian trying to serve others runs into the same wall. If you do not care for yourself, you cannot care for anybody else. The bucket has to be filled before it can be poured out.
But those two words can get twisted. Self-care and self-worship look almost the same on the outside.
The Line Between Care and Indulgence
Care serves God’s calling and indulgence serves your appetite. Care maintains the temple and indulgence decorates the throne. Care has limits and indulgence has no ceiling. Care is measured by fruit for the Lord and indulgence is measured by feelings.
If your self-care makes you more useful to God and others, it is good care. If it makes you more focused on yourself, it is selfworship.
The whole question of self-care comes down to one verse.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
You are not your own; you were bought. The temple is not yours to worship and it is not yours to neglect. It is yours to maintain for the One who owns it.
Your Body Is a Temple
How do you maintain a temple?
You clean it and you inspect it and you repair what is broken. You make sure it looks presentable. You do not decorate it for yourself and you do not let it fall apart either. A temple caretaker who never dusts, never paints or fixes leaks, and never checks the foundation a bad caretaker.
Practical maintenance of the temple includes:
* Sleep on a real schedule, not whenever you happen to collapse
* Eating in a way that keeps the temple functional
* Drinking water
* Fixing what breaks instead of pretending it will heal itself
* Moving your body so it stays strong enough to serve
* Go outside and get some sun
* Reduce your screen time
* Maintain your appearance
None of that is worldly and none of it is soft. You would not let a temple crumble because you were too busy, and you should not let your body crumble either. It belongs to God.
Paul told Timothy the same thing in a very practical way.
1 Timothy 5:23 “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.”
An apostle told his son in the faith to pay attention to his stomach. Timothy had digestive problems. Paul did not tell him to pray harder about it and he did not tell him to ignore it as a weakness. He told him to change how he was caring for himself. Sometimes the spiritual answer is a practical one.
You Are a Living Sacrifice
Every sacrifice in the Old Testament was the best of the flock. No sick, leftover or animals nobody wanted. Only the best was to be brought to God.
Romans 12:1 “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”
If your body is a living sacrifice. That changes how you think about what you put in it, what influences you let shape it, what you allow to weaken it, and what you allow to strengthen it. A sacrifice with rot is not acceptable. God does not need us to run ourselves into the ground and offer Him a burned-out shell. He wants an offering that can keep serving.
Paul used athletic language his whole ministry.
1 Corinthians 9:27 “But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.”
Paul disciplined his body on purpose. He did it so he could keep preaching without disqualifying himself. The gym, the meal plan, the sleep schedule are not the point. The mission is the point. The body is the tool that carries the mission, and Paul kept his tool sharp by saying no to his flesh!
But Paul also made clear that bodily care has its place and not first place.
1 Timothy 4:8 “For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.”
Bodily exercise profits little, but not nothing. Godliness profits everything. Care for the body while keeping it in its proper rank. Keeping your body moving and strong matters, but the prayer closet matters more. A Christian who spends two hours in the gym and five minutes with God has his priorities backwards, and a Christian who neglects both is worse off than either.
The Two Ditches
Self-worship gets talked about all the time. Self-neglect is the other ditch and just as unbiblical.
Neglecting your body dishonors the temple God gave you. It shortens your ministry opportunities for the Lord. Neglect is poor stewardship.
Proverbs 23:20-21 “Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and the sleeper shall be clothed with rags.”
Overeating, drinking, and oversleeping are indulgence. The drinker and the glutton come to poverty. The sleeper ends up in rags.
Neglect on one side and indulgence on the other: Both dishonor the temple and both shorten the ministry and both leave you unusable when God calls.
The narrow road runs right between them, and it is called stewardship.
You are not your own. You were bought with a price. Maintain the temple like the Owner is coming back…
Because He is.
