What’s in Your House?

This is part 2 in the Your Body and You series. You can read Part 1 here.  I would also recommend reading Faith is the Foundation.

In the first post, we talked about what stewardship is and what it’s not. We also talked about how your body is home to God’s precious Holy Spirit.

If you were Holy Spirit, how would you feel about the body you were living in?

In health coaching, it’s important we ask ourselves powerful questions to shift the status quo and move forward. So take a moment to close your eyes and ponder that question. Imagine your body as an actual house. What does it look like, inside and out? Is it neat and tidy on the outside but in shambles on the inside? Is the grass cut and the garden kept, or is it overgrown with weeds?

What about how it’s furnished? Is it dirty, stained, torn, or smelly? Or is it clean, comfortable, and welcoming? Is it cluttered and chaotic, or is it well-ordered? Are the dishes done, the carpets vacuumed, and the floors mopped? Or are dust bunnies hiding out in all the corners?

Be honest in your assessment. What emotions are evoked by what you see?

I love doing this exercise myself. If I am not willing to honestly and transparently look at myself, I cannot change. When I first started, quite frankly, I was embarrassed. If there was a knock on the door and Holy Spirit was there upon opening it, I would have wanted to slam the door shut and go tidy up first!

But then I realized that, no matter the condition, He wanted to come in anyway. This is so important to know! We don’t have to have everything cleaned up before we invite Him in. He is there to help us. In fact, one of His names is Helper. He is so full of love and acceptance and comes to empower us. He knows us and our circumstances, and He also knows our character traits, personality, and habits.

He is here to remind us of all of the things Jesus taught and then to help us do them.

Once we are saved through the sanctifying blood of Jesus Christ, we are to move from glory to glory, becoming more Christ-like every day. This is a process and doesn’t happen overnight. Our spirits are instantly reborn upon salvation, but it is definitely a work in progress for transforming our flesh.

Romans 12:2 (AMPC) says, “Do not be conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight for you].”

We are called to transform how we think about things and not continue to conform to our lives and patterns of thinking pre-Jesus. Our actions, which include the stewardship of our bodies and health, are an extension of our thoughts. Our thoughts are the seeds for change—either positive or negative. (For more information on this, read Don’t Conform – Transform!)

Part of being a good manager, or steward, is to know what the owner wants and then do it. How do we know what God wants?

By cultivating a relationship with Him.

This means spending time daily getting to know Him and allowing Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus and Father God to us.

As we spend time in prayer and reading and studying His operations manual (the Bible), He will gently begin to show us where adjustments need to be made. It is by the love of God that we become convicted of areas in our lives that are not lining up with His will for the purpose of repenting and mending our ways.

God is a gentleman and will not force His will on us. Man’s will is holy in the sight of God, and it is always our choice to choose to submit to Him or not. It starts that way from the moment of salvation: we have to choose God and choose to surrender our lives to Him. Our lifelong journey with Him continues in the same way: we have to choose to love Him, honor Him, worship Him, respect Him, submit to the workings of Holy Spirit, and obey Him on a daily basis.

When we choose His ways over our human tendencies or the voices of others, it allows us to walk in freedom and liberty, not in bondage, and affords us the protection of the Lord. Sometimes sickness and disease can be a result of open doors in our lives, which subsequently give the enemy the right of entry and access.

We have an enemy that is hell-bent on destroying us, and he is always looking for and will take advantage of any entry point he can.

These entry points can be where we have sin patterns in our lives or where we make decisions that are contrary to the will of God. To say this differently, we choose thoughts and actions that line up with and come into agreement with satan’s way instead of God’s way.

The importance of this is shown in the temptations of Jesus. In the beginning of His earthly ministry, Jesus was led by Holy Spirit into the desert to be tempted. He, just like us, had to choose. He had to choose to listen to the appealing voice of satan and give in to temptation, or to choose to stand His ground, resist temptation, and obey Father God.

The Bible says that Jesus was tempted in every way that we are. It had to be that way because through that, He displayed His perfection and therefore His ability to lead a sinless, blameless life and become the perfect substitutionary sacrifice for our sins. He also set an example for us for when we are tempted of how to overcome, and that is through using His word.

At the end of the temptations, when Jesus was victorious over the tempter, let’s see what satan’s response was: “And when the devil had ended every [the complete cycle of] temptation, he [temporarily] left Him [that is, stood off from Him] until another more opportune and favorable time” (Luke 4:13 AMPC). Satan had to back off because he found no sin—no entry point—into the life of Jesus. But he is always there, waiting and watching for another opportunity.

It’s good to be reminded that satan is the antithesis of God in every way.

He is the exact opposite, or reciprocal, of God. Just as there is the Kingdom of God where God rules supreme, so satan has his own kingdom where he rules.

Before we are saved, we are not part of God’s Kingdom. We make the choice to become citizens of God’s Kingdom through belief in the Lord Jesus Christ (see Romans 10:10). Once we do that, satan becomes a very sore loser and will try every way possible to get you back or put his filth on you. He is very sneaky, manipulative, and a smooth talker, and he is always looking for opportunities to tempt us and gain access to destroy the temple of Holy Spirit. Remember from the first article I said how every decision we make, every action we take, and every thought we think has a trickle-down effect, either for the good or the bad.

This all circles back to the beginning of this article and our exercise on visualizing your body as a house where Holy Spirit lives. We are triune beings. We are spirit beings that live in a body and that have a soul (mind, will, and emotions). Your physical health, mental health, emotional health, and spiritual health are all interconnected and all are entry points for sickness, disease, or imbalance.

That means that as good stewards, we not only need to look to correct the symptoms that appear, but we must also trace back and address the gateway. If you don’t close the door, whatever it is will continue to come in and flow throughout the entire body, like water flowing along the course of a stream, depositing sediment on the river bed as it goes. This applies whether the gateway is in the natural or the spiritual. For example, if water becomes stagnant and stops moving (like from sitting too much and not moving enough), a slimy, sludgy, stinky, disease-prone mess happens.

As we bring this article to a close, let’s do the visualization exercise again, but a little differently.

Imagine what you’d like your “home” to look like. Close your eyes and imagine you and Holy Spirit sitting on the couch in the living room, having a cup of tea, and talking. See yourself as open, interested, engaged, eager, curious, and attentive to what He’s telling you and showing you. Imagine you have your Bible open on your lap, and He is teaching you. You are amazed, excited, and motivated because it’s so clear, because you are in the presence of the Spirit of Wisdom and Truth.

Imagine now, you start taking furniture out with His help. It’s hard, sweaty work, but you feel good. Holy Spirit says something funny, and you start laughing. You are busy vacuuming, dusting, and cleaning. You are down on your hands and knees scrubbing the baseboards, and He’s watching. You see Him point, and you see a spot you’ve missed. You go back and do it again, but this time more carefully. He comes closer, inspects, and points again. There’s the tiniest speck. You look at Him and say, “Really? Do I have to do it again?” He just smiles, and you know the answer, and so you choose to. He says, “It is a change of seasons, and the threshing floor must be completely cleaned out to receive the new harvest.”

If you are interested in Biblical health coaching, contact me for a free discovery session! You can learn more about me here.