050122 Stewardship
M2 Body KSS
We’re still in that time of year when many people are exercising more in response to New Year’s resolutions. Some 80% of all home exercise equipment is sold within the 2 weeks before Christmas time and the week between Christmas and New Years’, but by Easter (i.e. 3 or 4 months later) about 85% of people are no longer using the equipment.
People at this time of year are also concentrating on weight lose. At any given time there is usually quite a vast array of potential diets to choose from: The Atkins “no carb” Diet, the Southbeach Diet, the Abs diet, etc.
Last week Pete was talking about how “everyone” in New York City is having plastic surgery. According to the CNN special “The fountain of youth” people in their 20’s are getting ongoing, expensive anti-aging treatments to minimize their frown lines (I saw wrinkle right here when I smiled or frowned in the mirror--I need to deal with it! I need me some “botox”!) Resisting age is now a multi-billion industry.
As a culture we are “into” our bodies… Most of our desire as a culture to work on our bodies arises from “enlightened self-interest”--we want to feel better, look better, have more stamina because this will be good for us. This will be good for our sense of well-being, our relationships, our careers, etc. These are natural, understandable motives.
But God wants us also to honor our bodies for different reasons.
This morning as we continue our theme on what it means to be a manager or steward of our lives before God we’re going to look at what it means to offer be a steward of our bodies.
If you have your Bibles please turn to Romans 12:1
Paul in this well known passages writes:
1Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship (or this more literally this is your reasonable act of service).
What’s the greatest gift you’ve ever received? This past week Jade our new youth & student ministries pastor was sharing how as a young boy growing up in Edmonton his dad drove him one day to the Coliseum to see if he could watch an Edmonton Oiler’s practice. Jade was able to sneak into through an unlocked door and see people like Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Jari Kurri—the dynasty practice. He was able to grab and pocket the pucks that went over the glass… it was a thrilling gift for him.
What is the greatest gift you’ve every received?
I am sure when you received it--you felt gratitude and wanted to express that in some by giving back.
The greatest gift a person can receive is the gift of the open door to God, a gift made possible because God offered us son Jesus Christ as kind of sponge to absorb our sins in his body on the cross so we could so be made clean and ready to enter the presence of a Holy God.
So, Paul says, therefore in view of God’s compassion toward us, let us respond by offering our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is our spiritual act or worship (or more literally this is our reasonable act of service).
As Paul makes clear in this text, part of what it means to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God is to offer them to God as holy and set part Him…
The natural flip side of offering our bodies as holy to God is to not offer of our body as instruments of sin.
In Romans 6 Paul writes:
13Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life…
When I offer my body as an “instrument of sin” the penalty is typically not a lightening bolt from heaven or a mud slide that destroys my house… but a greater attachment to the sin…
As a teenager, as I’ve shared before with some of you before, one of my favorite hobbies was getting a “5 finger discount” (I didn’t know then that I would have something in common Winona Ryder and Svend Robinson).
Like Augustine stealing pears, I came to enjoy stealing not just because I got free stuff (that was cool), but I began to enjoy stealing for the sake of steeling. My brain began to associate shop-lifting with feeling good.
When we chose as in my case to steal or say to use drugs or pornography or gorging on a particular kind of food that will tend to trigger a “rush” of temporarily good feelings to the brain and we begin will to associate that activity with feeling good. But next time around we will need a slightly large dose of “X” to experience the same rush.
This is how addiction works… we do something and we experience feelings of elation because certain “pleasure” chemicals are released in our brain… Because our brain tends “habituate” or “develop tolerance” to the pleasure we need more of that activity to generate the same level or pleasure… next time and we get hooked…
A week and half ago… I was in the southern U.S. to teach and attend some board meetings of a seminary and I was in airports various parts of the U.S. I am at Fort Meyers airport in Florida and at end of the trip feeling somewhat tired and I’m restless, I go by the bookstore, the thought crosses my mind, no one will recognizes me here… Florida… if I reach for a magazine look at racy no one will know…
Then the truth of Romans 6 hits me, do I want to offer my eyes as instrument of sin, which will lead to slavery…
Paul in writing a very liberal church in Corthin wrote: “Everything is “permissible,” but I will not do anything that will enslave me.”
Part of what… it means to honor God with our bodies means that we will not offer our bodies as slaves to sin but as a slaves to righteousness (chains).
We can become “slaves to sin”--that’s fairly obvious--but we can also become slaves to righteousness.
We’re all aware of how destructive habits can become ingrained and addictive…but positive habits can also become part of the grain of our life as well.
As a child, I remember taking Judo lessons.
We’d train, train, train on how to break our fall.
We do drills: fall on our side, break the fall with by hitting the matt with our arms, tuck in our chin.
We’d run and leap and over a series of bodies in huddled in a kind of fetal position and roll and tuck our heads and break our fall.
Ever since then, whenever I fall, unconsciously, I tuck my head. It’s ingrained.
I want ingrain the kind of habits with body my that honor God.
E.g. In morning I’ve sought to train my body so that my first impulse is to pray. So, I wake up time to pray, time to read the word. I’ll get walk down stairs (sometimes I get paper outside times I won’t, but I sit on our coach and direct my mind to God through the word and through prayer).
I know someone whose first impulse is the slide out of his bed onto his knees…
We can train our bodies to be attentive to God.
I know a counselor in this community, Bill Dyck, who teaches men how to hug their dads… I said how do you that start by touching their arms or shoulder and eventually work up to hug… (gradually so they don’t get a heart attack).
A friend of mine had dinner with Bill Clinton when he was president, and there was a young boy who was close by and Bill said to young boy when you talk to someone make you look in the eyes and listen. For all his faults, Bill Clinton trained his body to pay attention to people. Pete and Geri Scazzero say “Being heard is close to being loved that for the average person they are indistinguishable.”
We train our bodies to honor God and love people.
Dallas Willard in his book Renovation of the Heart recommends that we lie down and offer every part of our body to God in kind of ritual.
He recommends that we lie down and slowly offer every part (name them) of our body to God. Ask him to take charge of each part. If we take this seriously it will have tremendous implications.
In view of God’s compassion toward us, Paul says let us offer our bodies as living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God… this is our reasonable service.
Part of what it means to honor God with our body is to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God, holy and pleasing to God, another part of what it means honor God with our bodies is to take care of our bodies so we can love God and people well.
(Transition)
The motivation that many people to remain physically fit is to feel better, to look better, to perform better (not all necessarily wrong). But a follower of God, our primary motivation to honor our bodies is to love serve God and people.
What does this mean and include?
Part of this includes exercise… We a someone whose been part of this community Jim Murphy who’s a professional trainer, formerly a professional baseball player with the Chicago Cubs baseball organization and Olympic baseball coach. I’ve asked him to share some ideas of how we can honor God with our body through exercise (use dumb bell prop).
Recently TIME had an article to live to be 100. One of the key factors in health and longevity is exercise. The well-known Okinawians of Japan live to 100 in part because they work in the fields well beyond age 65…and through this they get their exercise.
A week and half ago, I was with a doctor who teaches at Harvard Medical School. Joe Viola tells me that with every 30 minutes of excercise we add an hour to our lives.
The motive for exercise is not to live as long as possible, but so we can best serve God and others.
Dieting: cutting back on fat, processed sugars, salt, fast food (if you need a really great sermon on eating well that watch the documentary film Supersize me. Morgan Spurlock decides to eat MacDonalds 3x a day for a month: Spurlock's body goes through a major deterioration. He gains about 30 pounds, his cholesterol shoots up 65 points, his liver becomes poisoned, his he gets headaches, his energy drops off, and becomes depressed and He thinks he might die). The implicit message is not just to cut back on fast-foods, but to eat a nutritionally balanced diet.
Making sure we get enough fruit and vegetables and whole grains… and water…
According to life coaches Jim Loerh and Tony Schwartz water maybe the most undervalued source of energy. Researchers in Australia have shown that drink reduces your risk of heart disease (studies those who drank 5 glasses of water were significantly less likely to die to heart disease than those who drank 2 glasses).
Fasting… can be a great way rest the organs… and cleanse the body. If you don’t a medical condition would prevent you from doing so, have you ever giving your organs a day once a week from having to digest food? Or twice a year going on longer fast perhaps fasting for 5-10 days. If you go an extended fast you want to do with some research on how to do in a way that is safe.
Fasting should never be seen as legalistic requirement…it’s not one of the ten commandments: it has been a blessing in my life; that’s why I commend for your consideration…
The Japanese Okinawans practice a philosophy called hara hachi bu, i.e., to eat the point where you’ll only 80% full. The average Westerner consume 2,500 calories a day the average Okinawan consumes 18,000 calories. That’s part of the reason they live so long.
Sleep. A number of studies show that most of us need 7-8 hours a night.
Studies show women, typically, sleep longer and rest better than men.
Dr Alexandros Vgontzas of Pennsylvania State University, believes women live longer than men because they rest better than men.
Winston Churhill, no slouch, highly recommended getting in to bed and napping at some point between lunch and dinner….
According to Dr. David Dingis at Chief of Sleep and Chronobiology at University of Pennsylvania concurs, he says it ideal if you can nap from noon to 6 p.m. the peak time between one and 3.
It’s true that too much sleep reduces your life span, but I don’t anyone who sleeps too much.
Sabbath… our need to stop (Sabbath literally means to cease), rest, delight in God… (I recommend Abraham Hescel book Sabbath).
Bernard Clariveux says that busyiness is a kind of sloth because it take hard work to plan properly for Sabbath).
(In some season we’re going ballistic e.g., single mom, with young kids, who need to work, needs to their attend kids… hard…)
Rest is a foundational virtue: if we’re rested we’ll be less likely to offer our bodies as instruments of sin, more able to offer them as instruments to God… more able to love people….more able to pay attention to God… The purpose is not to be more productive, but to able to love God and people better.
Our bodies, mind, our soul is all connected…
Parker Palmer says "Self-care is never a selfish act-it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others.
To Paraphrase: So Parker Palmer self-care is never a selfish gift, it is the stewardship of the only gift I have to God and the world.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians our bodies our not our own we are bought with price there honor God with your bodies.
You know how some people, it’s my body, I can do with it what I want. Paul says no you can’t. Thinking about doing will compromise or harm your body? Think about this truth.
This past year, when some friends were on vacation, Sakiko and I were asked to walk their dog… a beautiful God Retriever… we took this do endowment lands and to Jericho Beach we extra careful with this dog (tried to avoid crossing busy streets) because it wasn’t our own.
You know careful when you drive someone else’s car? Especially if like a BMW or Lexus?
You see where I’m going with this.
19Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
Your body is worth even more than a pure bred retriever, certainly more than a friend’s BMW or Lexus, it cost God the blood of his son to redeem you… he paid full price for you, he didn’t pick you up on bargain table, paid in full… he’s redeem you…. You’re his.
When you deeply understand this deeply you will tend not consciously offer your body as an instrument of sin, you’ll offer it as an instrument of righteousness. In so far as you able, you use your body to serve God and people.
(pray for to understand this)
Therefore, I urge, with Paul, in view of God’s mercy to offer your bodies, as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God this is your reasonable service.
050122 Stewardship M2 Body KSS
We’re still in that time of year when many people are exercising more in response to New Year’s resolutions. Some 80% of all home exercise equipment is sold within the 2 weeks before Christmas time and the week between Christmas and New Years’, but by Easter (i.e. 3 or 4 months later) about 85% of people are no longer using the equipment.
People at this time of year are also concentrating on weight lose. At any given time there is usually quite a vast array of potential diets to choose from: The Atkins “no carb” Diet, the Southbeach Diet, the Abs diet, etc.
Last week Pete was talking about how “everyone” in New York City is having plastic surgery. According to the CNN special “The fountain of youth” people in their 20’s are getting ongoing, expensive anti-aging treatments to minimize their frown lines (I saw wrinkle right here when I smiled or frowned in the mirror--I need to deal with it! I need me some “botox”!) Resisting age is now a multi-billion industry.
As a culture we are “into” our bodies… Most of our desire as a culture to work on our bodies arises from “enlightened self-interest”--we want to feel better, look better, have more stamina because this will be good for us. This will be good for our sense of well-being, our relationships, our careers, etc. These are natural, understandable motives.
But God wants us also to honor our bodies for different reasons.
This morning as we continue our theme on what it means to be a manager or steward of our lives before God we’re going to look at what it means to offer be a steward of our bodies.
If you have your Bibles please turn to Romans 12:1
Paul in this well known passages writes:
1Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship (or this more literally this is your reasonable act of service).
What’s the greatest gift you’ve ever received? This past week Jade our new youth & student ministries pastor was sharing how as a young boy growing up in Edmonton his dad drove him one day to the Coliseum to see if he could watch an Edmonton Oiler’s practice. Jade was able to sneak into through an unlocked door and see people like Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Jari Kurri—the dynasty practice. He was able to grab and pocket the pucks that went over the glass… it was a thrilling gift for him.
What is the greatest gift you’ve every received?
I am sure when you received it--you felt gratitude and wanted to express that in some by giving back.
The greatest gift a person can receive is the gift of the open door to God, a gift made possible because God offered us son Jesus Christ as kind of sponge to absorb our sins in his body on the cross so we could so be made clean and ready to enter the presence of a Holy God.
So, Paul says, therefore in view of God’s compassion toward us, let us respond by offering our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is our spiritual act or worship (or more literally this is our reasonable act of service).
As Paul makes clear in this text, part of what it means to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God is to offer them to God as holy and set part Him…
The natural flip side of offering our bodies as holy to God is to not offer of our body as instruments of sin.
In Romans 6 Paul writes:
13Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life…
When I offer my body as an “instrument of sin” the penalty is typically not a lightening bolt from heaven or a mud slide that destroys my house… but a greater attachment to the sin…
As a teenager, as I’ve shared before with some of you before, one of my favorite hobbies was getting a “5 finger discount” (I didn’t know then that I would have something in common Winona Ryder and Svend Robinson).
Like Augustine stealing pears, I came to enjoy stealing not just because I got free stuff (that was cool), but I began to enjoy stealing for the sake of steeling. My brain began to associate shop-lifting with feeling good.
When we chose as in my case to steal or say to use drugs or pornography or gorging on a particular kind of food that will tend to trigger a “rush” of temporarily good feelings to the brain and we begin will to associate that activity with feeling good. But next time around we will need a slightly large dose of “X” to experience the same rush.
This is how addiction works… we do something and we experience feelings of elation because certain “pleasure” chemicals are released in our brain… Because our brain tends “habituate” or “develop tolerance” to the pleasure we need more of that activity to generate the same level or pleasure… next time and we get hooked…
A week and half ago… I was in the southern U.S. to teach and attend some board meetings of a seminary and I was in airports various parts of the U.S. I am at Fort Meyers airport in Florida and at end of the trip feeling somewhat tired and I’m restless, I go by the bookstore, the thought crosses my mind, no one will recognizes me here… Florida… if I reach for a magazine look at racy no one will know…
Then the truth of Romans 6 hits me, do I want to offer my eyes as instrument of sin, which will lead to slavery…
Paul in writing a very liberal church in Corthin wrote: “Everything is “permissible,” but I will not do anything that will enslave me.”
Part of what… it means to honor God with our bodies means that we will not offer our bodies as slaves to sin but as a slaves to righteousness (chains).
We can become “slaves to sin”--that’s fairly obvious--but we can also become slaves to righteousness.
We’re all aware of how destructive habits can become ingrained and addictive…but positive habits can also become part of the grain of our life as well.
As a child, I remember taking Judo lessons.
We’d train, train, train on how to break our fall.
We do drills: fall on our side, break the fall with by hitting the matt with our arms, tuck in our chin.
We’d run and leap and over a series of bodies in huddled in a kind of fetal position and roll and tuck our heads and break our fall.
Ever since then, whenever I fall, unconsciously, I tuck my head. It’s ingrained.
I want ingrain the kind of habits with body my that honor God.
E.g. In morning I’ve sought to train my body so that my first impulse is to pray. So, I wake up time to pray, time to read the word. I’ll get walk down stairs (sometimes I get paper outside times I won’t, but I sit on our coach and direct my mind to God through the word and through prayer).
I know someone whose first impulse is the slide out of his bed onto his knees…
We can train our bodies to be attentive to God.
I know a counselor in this community, Bill Dyck, who teaches men how to hug their dads… I said how do you that start by touching their arms or shoulder and eventually work up to hug… (gradually so they don’t get a heart attack).
A friend of mine had dinner with Bill Clinton when he was president, and there was a young boy who was close by and Bill said to young boy when you talk to someone make you look in the eyes and listen. For all his faults, Bill Clinton trained his body to pay attention to people. Pete and Geri Scazzero say “Being heard is close to being loved that for the average person they are indistinguishable.”
We train our bodies to honor God and love people.
Dallas Willard in his book Renovation of the Heart recommends that we lie down and offer every part of our body to God in kind of ritual.
He recommends that we lie down and slowly offer every part (name them) of our body to God. Ask him to take charge of each part. If we take this seriously it will have tremendous implications.
In view of God’s compassion toward us, Paul says let us offer our bodies as living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God… this is our reasonable service.
Part of what it means to honor God with our body is to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God, holy and pleasing to God, another part of what it means honor God with our bodies is to take care of our bodies so we can love God and people well.
(Transition)
The motivation that many people to remain physically fit is to feel better, to look better, to perform better (not all necessarily wrong). But a follower of God, our primary motivation to honor our bodies is to love serve God and people.
What does this mean and include?
Part of this includes exercise… We a someone whose been part of this community Jim Murphy who’s a professional trainer, formerly a professional baseball player with the Chicago Cubs baseball organization and Olympic baseball coach. I’ve asked him to share some ideas of how we can honor God with our body through exercise (use dumb bell prop).
Recently TIME had an article to live to be 100. One of the key factors in health and longevity is exercise. The well-known Okinawians of Japan live to 100 in part because they work in the fields well beyond age 65…and through this they get their exercise.
A week and half ago, I was with a doctor who teaches at Harvard Medical School. Joe Viola tells me that with every 30 minutes of excercise we add an hour to our lives.
The motive for exercise is not to live as long as possible, but so we can best serve God and others.
Dieting: cutting back on fat, processed sugars, salt, fast food (if you need a really great sermon on eating well that watch the documentary film Supersize me. Morgan Spurlock decides to eat MacDonalds 3x a day for a month: Spurlock's body goes through a major deterioration. He gains about 30 pounds, his cholesterol shoots up 65 points, his liver becomes poisoned, his he gets headaches, his energy drops off, and becomes depressed and He thinks he might die). The implicit message is not just to cut back on fast-foods, but to eat a nutritionally balanced diet.
Making sure we get enough fruit and vegetables and whole grains… and water…
According to life coaches Jim Loerh and Tony Schwartz water maybe the most undervalued source of energy. Researchers in Australia have shown that drink reduces your risk of heart disease (studies those who drank 5 glasses of water were significantly less likely to die to heart disease than those who drank 2 glasses).
Fasting… can be a great way rest the organs… and cleanse the body. If you don’t a medical condition would prevent you from doing so, have you ever giving your organs a day once a week from having to digest food? Or twice a year going on longer fast perhaps fasting for 5-10 days. If you go an extended fast you want to do with some research on how to do in a way that is safe.
Fasting should never be seen as legalistic requirement…it’s not one of the ten commandments: it has been a blessing in my life; that’s why I commend for your consideration…
The Japanese Okinawans practice a philosophy called hara hachi bu, i.e., to eat the point where you’ll only 80% full. The average Westerner consume 2,500 calories a day the average Okinawan consumes 18,000 calories. That’s part of the reason they live so long.
Sleep. A number of studies show that most of us need 7-8 hours a night.
Studies show women, typically, sleep longer and rest better than men.
Dr Alexandros Vgontzas of Pennsylvania State University, believes women live longer than men because they rest better than men.
Winston Churhill, no slouch, highly recommended getting in to bed and napping at some point between lunch and dinner….
According to Dr. David Dingis at Chief of Sleep and Chronobiology at University of Pennsylvania concurs, he says it ideal if you can nap from noon to 6 p.m. the peak time between one and 3.
It’s true that too much sleep reduces your life span, but I don’t anyone who sleeps too much.
Sabbath… our need to stop (Sabbath literally means to cease), rest, delight in God… (I recommend Abraham Hescel book Sabbath).
Bernard Clariveux says that busyiness is a kind of sloth because it take hard work to plan properly for Sabbath).
(In some season we’re going ballistic e.g., single mom, with young kids, who need to work, needs to their attend kids… hard…)
Rest is a foundational virtue: if we’re rested we’ll be less likely to offer our bodies as instruments of sin, more able to offer them as instruments to God… more able to love people….more able to pay attention to God… The purpose is not to be more productive, but to able to love God and people better.
Our bodies, mind, our soul is all connected…
Parker Palmer says "Self-care is never a selfish act-it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others.
To Paraphrase: So Parker Palmer self-care is never a selfish gift, it is the stewardship of the only gift I have to God and the world.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians our bodies our not our own we are bought with price there honor God with your bodies.
You know how some people, it’s my body, I can do with it what I want. Paul says no you can’t. Thinking about doing will compromise or harm your body? Think about this truth.
This past year, when some friends were on vacation, Sakiko and I were asked to walk their dog… a beautiful God Retriever… we took this do endowment lands and to Jericho Beach we extra careful with this dog (tried to avoid crossing busy streets) because it wasn’t our own.
You know careful when you drive someone else’s car? Especially if like a BMW or Lexus?
You see where I’m going with this.
19Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
Your body is worth even more than a pure bred retriever, certainly more than a friend’s BMW or Lexus, it cost God the blood of his son to redeem you… he paid full price for you, he didn’t pick you up on bargain table, paid in full… he’s redeem you…. You’re his.
When you deeply understand this deeply you will tend not consciously offer your body as an instrument of sin, you’ll offer it as an instrument of righteousness. In so far as you able, you use your body to serve God and people.
(pray for to understand this)
Therefore, I urge, with Paul, in view of God’s mercy to offer your bodies, as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God this is your reasonable service.
We’re still in that time of year when many people are exercising more in response to New Year’s resolutions. Some 80% of all home exercise equipment is sold within the 2 weeks before Christmas time and the week between Christmas and New Years’, but by Easter (i.e. 3 or 4 months later) about 85% of people are no longer using the equipment.
People at this time of year are also concentrating on weight lose. At any given time there is usually quite a vast array of potential diets to choose from: The Atkins “no carb” Diet, the Southbeach Diet, the Abs diet, etc.
Last week Pete was talking about how “everyone” in New York City is having plastic surgery. According to the CNN special “The fountain of youth” people in their 20’s are getting ongoing, expensive anti-aging treatments to minimize their frown lines (I saw wrinkle right here when I smiled or frowned in the mirror--I need to deal with it! I need me some “botox”!) Resisting age is now a multi-billion industry.
As a culture we are “into” our bodies… Most of our desire as a culture to work on our bodies arises from “enlightened self-interest”--we want to feel better, look better, have more stamina because this will be good for us. This will be good for our sense of well-being, our relationships, our careers, etc. These are natural, understandable motives.
But God wants us also to honor our bodies for different reasons.
This morning as we continue our theme on what it means to be a manager or steward of our lives before God we’re going to look at what it means to offer be a steward of our bodies.
If you have your Bibles please turn to Romans 12:1
Paul in this well known passages writes:
1Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship (or this more literally this is your reasonable act of service).
What’s the greatest gift you’ve ever received? This past week Jade our new youth & student ministries pastor was sharing how as a young boy growing up in Edmonton his dad drove him one day to the Coliseum to see if he could watch an Edmonton Oiler’s practice. Jade was able to sneak into through an unlocked door and see people like Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Jari Kurri—the dynasty practice. He was able to grab and pocket the pucks that went over the glass… it was a thrilling gift for him.
What is the greatest gift you’ve every received?
I am sure when you received it--you felt gratitude and wanted to express that in some by giving back.
The greatest gift a person can receive is the gift of the open door to God, a gift made possible because God offered us son Jesus Christ as kind of sponge to absorb our sins in his body on the cross so we could so be made clean and ready to enter the presence of a Holy God.
So, Paul says, therefore in view of God’s compassion toward us, let us respond by offering our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is our spiritual act or worship (or more literally this is our reasonable act of service).
As Paul makes clear in this text, part of what it means to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God is to offer them to God as holy and set part Him…
The natural flip side of offering our bodies as holy to God is to not offer of our body as instruments of sin.
In Romans 6 Paul writes:
13Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life…
When I offer my body as an “instrument of sin” the penalty is typically not a lightening bolt from heaven or a mud slide that destroys my house… but a greater attachment to the sin…
As a teenager, as I’ve shared before with some of you before, one of my favorite hobbies was getting a “5 finger discount” (I didn’t know then that I would have something in common Winona Ryder and Svend Robinson).
Like Augustine stealing pears, I came to enjoy stealing not just because I got free stuff (that was cool), but I began to enjoy stealing for the sake of steeling. My brain began to associate shop-lifting with feeling good.
When we chose as in my case to steal or say to use drugs or pornography or gorging on a particular kind of food that will tend to trigger a “rush” of temporarily good feelings to the brain and we begin will to associate that activity with feeling good. But next time around we will need a slightly large dose of “X” to experience the same rush.
This is how addiction works… we do something and we experience feelings of elation because certain “pleasure” chemicals are released in our brain… Because our brain tends “habituate” or “develop tolerance” to the pleasure we need more of that activity to generate the same level or pleasure… next time and we get hooked…
A week and half ago… I was in the southern U.S. to teach and attend some board meetings of a seminary and I was in airports various parts of the U.S. I am at Fort Meyers airport in Florida and at end of the trip feeling somewhat tired and I’m restless, I go by the bookstore, the thought crosses my mind, no one will recognizes me here… Florida… if I reach for a magazine look at racy no one will know…
Then the truth of Romans 6 hits me, do I want to offer my eyes as instrument of sin, which will lead to slavery…
Paul in writing a very liberal church in Corthin wrote: “Everything is “permissible,” but I will not do anything that will enslave me.”
Part of what… it means to honor God with our bodies means that we will not offer our bodies as slaves to sin but as a slaves to righteousness (chains).
We can become “slaves to sin”--that’s fairly obvious--but we can also become slaves to righteousness.
We’re all aware of how destructive habits can become ingrained and addictive…but positive habits can also become part of the grain of our life as well.
As a child, I remember taking Judo lessons.
We’d train, train, train on how to break our fall.
We do drills: fall on our side, break the fall with by hitting the matt with our arms, tuck in our chin.
We’d run and leap and over a series of bodies in huddled in a kind of fetal position and roll and tuck our heads and break our fall.
Ever since then, whenever I fall, unconsciously, I tuck my head. It’s ingrained.
I want ingrain the kind of habits with body my that honor God.
E.g. In morning I’ve sought to train my body so that my first impulse is to pray. So, I wake up time to pray, time to read the word. I’ll get walk down stairs (sometimes I get paper outside times I won’t, but I sit on our coach and direct my mind to God through the word and through prayer).
I know someone whose first impulse is the slide out of his bed onto his knees…
We can train our bodies to be attentive to God.
I know a counselor in this community, Bill Dyck, who teaches men how to hug their dads… I said how do you that start by touching their arms or shoulder and eventually work up to hug… (gradually so they don’t get a heart attack).
A friend of mine had dinner with Bill Clinton when he was president, and there was a young boy who was close by and Bill said to young boy when you talk to someone make you look in the eyes and listen. For all his faults, Bill Clinton trained his body to pay attention to people. Pete and Geri Scazzero say “Being heard is close to being loved that for the average person they are indistinguishable.”
We train our bodies to honor God and love people.
Dallas Willard in his book Renovation of the Heart recommends that we lie down and offer every part of our body to God in kind of ritual.
He recommends that we lie down and slowly offer every part (name them) of our body to God. Ask him to take charge of each part. If we take this seriously it will have tremendous implications.
In view of God’s compassion toward us, Paul says let us offer our bodies as living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God… this is our reasonable service.
Part of what it means to honor God with our body is to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God, holy and pleasing to God, another part of what it means honor God with our bodies is to take care of our bodies so we can love God and people well.
(Transition)
The motivation that many people to remain physically fit is to feel better, to look better, to perform better (not all necessarily wrong). But a follower of God, our primary motivation to honor our bodies is to love serve God and people.
What does this mean and include?
Part of this includes exercise… We a someone whose been part of this community Jim Murphy who’s a professional trainer, formerly a professional baseball player with the Chicago Cubs baseball organization and Olympic baseball coach. I’ve asked him to share some ideas of how we can honor God with our body through exercise (use dumb bell prop).
Recently TIME had an article to live to be 100. One of the key factors in health and longevity is exercise. The well-known Okinawians of Japan live to 100 in part because they work in the fields well beyond age 65…and through this they get their exercise.
A week and half ago, I was with a doctor who teaches at Harvard Medical School. Joe Viola tells me that with every 30 minutes of excercise we add an hour to our lives.
The motive for exercise is not to live as long as possible, but so we can best serve God and others.
Dieting: cutting back on fat, processed sugars, salt, fast food (if you need a really great sermon on eating well that watch the documentary film Supersize me. Morgan Spurlock decides to eat MacDonalds 3x a day for a month: Spurlock's body goes through a major deterioration. He gains about 30 pounds, his cholesterol shoots up 65 points, his liver becomes poisoned, his he gets headaches, his energy drops off, and becomes depressed and He thinks he might die). The implicit message is not just to cut back on fast-foods, but to eat a nutritionally balanced diet.
Making sure we get enough fruit and vegetables and whole grains… and water…
According to life coaches Jim Loerh and Tony Schwartz water maybe the most undervalued source of energy. Researchers in Australia have shown that drink reduces your risk of heart disease (studies those who drank 5 glasses of water were significantly less likely to die to heart disease than those who drank 2 glasses).
Fasting… can be a great way rest the organs… and cleanse the body. If you don’t a medical condition would prevent you from doing so, have you ever giving your organs a day once a week from having to digest food? Or twice a year going on longer fast perhaps fasting for 5-10 days. If you go an extended fast you want to do with some research on how to do in a way that is safe.
Fasting should never be seen as legalistic requirement…it’s not one of the ten commandments: it has been a blessing in my life; that’s why I commend for your consideration…
The Japanese Okinawans practice a philosophy called hara hachi bu, i.e., to eat the point where you’ll only 80% full. The average Westerner consume 2,500 calories a day the average Okinawan consumes 18,000 calories. That’s part of the reason they live so long.
Sleep. A number of studies show that most of us need 7-8 hours a night.
Studies show women, typically, sleep longer and rest better than men.
Dr Alexandros Vgontzas of Pennsylvania State University, believes women live longer than men because they rest better than men.
Winston Churhill, no slouch, highly recommended getting in to bed and napping at some point between lunch and dinner….
According to Dr. David Dingis at Chief of Sleep and Chronobiology at University of Pennsylvania concurs, he says it ideal if you can nap from noon to 6 p.m. the peak time between one and 3.
It’s true that too much sleep reduces your life span, but I don’t anyone who sleeps too much.
Sabbath… our need to stop (Sabbath literally means to cease), rest, delight in God… (I recommend Abraham Hescel book Sabbath).
Bernard Clariveux says that busyiness is a kind of sloth because it take hard work to plan properly for Sabbath).
(In some season we’re going ballistic e.g., single mom, with young kids, who need to work, needs to their attend kids… hard…)
Rest is a foundational virtue: if we’re rested we’ll be less likely to offer our bodies as instruments of sin, more able to offer them as instruments to God… more able to love people….more able to pay attention to God… The purpose is not to be more productive, but to able to love God and people better.
Our bodies, mind, our soul is all connected…
Parker Palmer says "Self-care is never a selfish act-it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others.
To Paraphrase: So Parker Palmer self-care is never a selfish gift, it is the stewardship of the only gift I have to God and the world.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians our bodies our not our own we are bought with price there honor God with your bodies.
You know how some people, it’s my body, I can do with it what I want. Paul says no you can’t. Thinking about doing will compromise or harm your body? Think about this truth.
This past year, when some friends were on vacation, Sakiko and I were asked to walk their dog… a beautiful God Retriever… we took this do endowment lands and to Jericho Beach we extra careful with this dog (tried to avoid crossing busy streets) because it wasn’t our own.
You know careful when you drive someone else’s car? Especially if like a BMW or Lexus?
You see where I’m going with this.
19Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
Your body is worth even more than a pure bred retriever, certainly more than a friend’s BMW or Lexus, it cost God the blood of his son to redeem you… he paid full price for you, he didn’t pick you up on bargain table, paid in full… he’s redeem you…. You’re his.
When you deeply understand this deeply you will tend not consciously offer your body as an instrument of sin, you’ll offer it as an instrument of righteousness. In so far as you able, you use your body to serve God and people.
(pray for to understand this)
Therefore, I urge, with Paul, in view of God’s mercy to offer your bodies, as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God this is your reasonable service.
050122 Stewardship M2 Body KSS
We’re still in that time of year when many people are exercising more in response to New Year’s resolutions. Some 80% of all home exercise equipment is sold within the 2 weeks before Christmas time and the week between Christmas and New Years’, but by Easter (i.e. 3 or 4 months later) about 85% of people are no longer using the equipment.
People at this time of year are also concentrating on weight lose. At any given time there is usually quite a vast array of potential diets to choose from: The Atkins “no carb” Diet, the Southbeach Diet, the Abs diet, etc.
Last week Pete was talking about how “everyone” in New York City is having plastic surgery. According to the CNN special “The fountain of youth” people in their 20’s are getting ongoing, expensive anti-aging treatments to minimize their frown lines (I saw wrinkle right here when I smiled or frowned in the mirror--I need to deal with it! I need me some “botox”!) Resisting age is now a multi-billion industry.
As a culture we are “into” our bodies… Most of our desire as a culture to work on our bodies arises from “enlightened self-interest”--we want to feel better, look better, have more stamina because this will be good for us. This will be good for our sense of well-being, our relationships, our careers, etc. These are natural, understandable motives.
But God wants us also to honor our bodies for different reasons.
This morning as we continue our theme on what it means to be a manager or steward of our lives before God we’re going to look at what it means to offer be a steward of our bodies.
If you have your Bibles please turn to Romans 12:1
Paul in this well known passages writes:
1Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship (or this more literally this is your reasonable act of service).
What’s the greatest gift you’ve ever received? This past week Jade our new youth & student ministries pastor was sharing how as a young boy growing up in Edmonton his dad drove him one day to the Coliseum to see if he could watch an Edmonton Oiler’s practice. Jade was able to sneak into through an unlocked door and see people like Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Jari Kurri—the dynasty practice. He was able to grab and pocket the pucks that went over the glass… it was a thrilling gift for him.
What is the greatest gift you’ve every received?
I am sure when you received it--you felt gratitude and wanted to express that in some by giving back.
The greatest gift a person can receive is the gift of the open door to God, a gift made possible because God offered us son Jesus Christ as kind of sponge to absorb our sins in his body on the cross so we could so be made clean and ready to enter the presence of a Holy God.
So, Paul says, therefore in view of God’s compassion toward us, let us respond by offering our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is our spiritual act or worship (or more literally this is our reasonable act of service).
As Paul makes clear in this text, part of what it means to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God is to offer them to God as holy and set part Him…
The natural flip side of offering our bodies as holy to God is to not offer of our body as instruments of sin.
In Romans 6 Paul writes:
13Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life…
When I offer my body as an “instrument of sin” the penalty is typically not a lightening bolt from heaven or a mud slide that destroys my house… but a greater attachment to the sin…
As a teenager, as I’ve shared before with some of you before, one of my favorite hobbies was getting a “5 finger discount” (I didn’t know then that I would have something in common Winona Ryder and Svend Robinson).
Like Augustine stealing pears, I came to enjoy stealing not just because I got free stuff (that was cool), but I began to enjoy stealing for the sake of steeling. My brain began to associate shop-lifting with feeling good.
When we chose as in my case to steal or say to use drugs or pornography or gorging on a particular kind of food that will tend to trigger a “rush” of temporarily good feelings to the brain and we begin will to associate that activity with feeling good. But next time around we will need a slightly large dose of “X” to experience the same rush.
This is how addiction works… we do something and we experience feelings of elation because certain “pleasure” chemicals are released in our brain… Because our brain tends “habituate” or “develop tolerance” to the pleasure we need more of that activity to generate the same level or pleasure… next time and we get hooked…
A week and half ago… I was in the southern U.S. to teach and attend some board meetings of a seminary and I was in airports various parts of the U.S. I am at Fort Meyers airport in Florida and at end of the trip feeling somewhat tired and I’m restless, I go by the bookstore, the thought crosses my mind, no one will recognizes me here… Florida… if I reach for a magazine look at racy no one will know…
Then the truth of Romans 6 hits me, do I want to offer my eyes as instrument of sin, which will lead to slavery…
Paul in writing a very liberal church in Corthin wrote: “Everything is “permissible,” but I will not do anything that will enslave me.”
Part of what… it means to honor God with our bodies means that we will not offer our bodies as slaves to sin but as a slaves to righteousness (chains).
We can become “slaves to sin”--that’s fairly obvious--but we can also become slaves to righteousness.
We’re all aware of how destructive habits can become ingrained and addictive…but positive habits can also become part of the grain of our life as well.
As a child, I remember taking Judo lessons.
We’d train, train, train on how to break our fall.
We do drills: fall on our side, break the fall with by hitting the matt with our arms, tuck in our chin.
We’d run and leap and over a series of bodies in huddled in a kind of fetal position and roll and tuck our heads and break our fall.
Ever since then, whenever I fall, unconsciously, I tuck my head. It’s ingrained.
I want ingrain the kind of habits with body my that honor God.
E.g. In morning I’ve sought to train my body so that my first impulse is to pray. So, I wake up time to pray, time to read the word. I’ll get walk down stairs (sometimes I get paper outside times I won’t, but I sit on our coach and direct my mind to God through the word and through prayer).
I know someone whose first impulse is the slide out of his bed onto his knees…
We can train our bodies to be attentive to God.
I know a counselor in this community, Bill Dyck, who teaches men how to hug their dads… I said how do you that start by touching their arms or shoulder and eventually work up to hug… (gradually so they don’t get a heart attack).
A friend of mine had dinner with Bill Clinton when he was president, and there was a young boy who was close by and Bill said to young boy when you talk to someone make you look in the eyes and listen. For all his faults, Bill Clinton trained his body to pay attention to people. Pete and Geri Scazzero say “Being heard is close to being loved that for the average person they are indistinguishable.”
We train our bodies to honor God and love people.
Dallas Willard in his book Renovation of the Heart recommends that we lie down and offer every part of our body to God in kind of ritual.
He recommends that we lie down and slowly offer every part (name them) of our body to God. Ask him to take charge of each part. If we take this seriously it will have tremendous implications.
In view of God’s compassion toward us, Paul says let us offer our bodies as living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God… this is our reasonable service.
Part of what it means to honor God with our body is to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God, holy and pleasing to God, another part of what it means honor God with our bodies is to take care of our bodies so we can love God and people well.
(Transition)
The motivation that many people to remain physically fit is to feel better, to look better, to perform better (not all necessarily wrong). But a follower of God, our primary motivation to honor our bodies is to love serve God and people.
What does this mean and include?
Part of this includes exercise… We a someone whose been part of this community Jim Murphy who’s a professional trainer, formerly a professional baseball player with the Chicago Cubs baseball organization and Olympic baseball coach. I’ve asked him to share some ideas of how we can honor God with our body through exercise (use dumb bell prop).
Recently TIME had an article to live to be 100. One of the key factors in health and longevity is exercise. The well-known Okinawians of Japan live to 100 in part because they work in the fields well beyond age 65…and through this they get their exercise.
A week and half ago, I was with a doctor who teaches at Harvard Medical School. Joe Viola tells me that with every 30 minutes of excercise we add an hour to our lives.
The motive for exercise is not to live as long as possible, but so we can best serve God and others.
Dieting: cutting back on fat, processed sugars, salt, fast food (if you need a really great sermon on eating well that watch the documentary film Supersize me. Morgan Spurlock decides to eat MacDonalds 3x a day for a month: Spurlock's body goes through a major deterioration. He gains about 30 pounds, his cholesterol shoots up 65 points, his liver becomes poisoned, his he gets headaches, his energy drops off, and becomes depressed and He thinks he might die). The implicit message is not just to cut back on fast-foods, but to eat a nutritionally balanced diet.
Making sure we get enough fruit and vegetables and whole grains… and water…
According to life coaches Jim Loerh and Tony Schwartz water maybe the most undervalued source of energy. Researchers in Australia have shown that drink reduces your risk of heart disease (studies those who drank 5 glasses of water were significantly less likely to die to heart disease than those who drank 2 glasses).
Fasting… can be a great way rest the organs… and cleanse the body. If you don’t a medical condition would prevent you from doing so, have you ever giving your organs a day once a week from having to digest food? Or twice a year going on longer fast perhaps fasting for 5-10 days. If you go an extended fast you want to do with some research on how to do in a way that is safe.
Fasting should never be seen as legalistic requirement…it’s not one of the ten commandments: it has been a blessing in my life; that’s why I commend for your consideration…
The Japanese Okinawans practice a philosophy called hara hachi bu, i.e., to eat the point where you’ll only 80% full. The average Westerner consume 2,500 calories a day the average Okinawan consumes 18,000 calories. That’s part of the reason they live so long.
Sleep. A number of studies show that most of us need 7-8 hours a night.
Studies show women, typically, sleep longer and rest better than men.
Dr Alexandros Vgontzas of Pennsylvania State University, believes women live longer than men because they rest better than men.
Winston Churhill, no slouch, highly recommended getting in to bed and napping at some point between lunch and dinner….
According to Dr. David Dingis at Chief of Sleep and Chronobiology at University of Pennsylvania concurs, he says it ideal if you can nap from noon to 6 p.m. the peak time between one and 3.
It’s true that too much sleep reduces your life span, but I don’t anyone who sleeps too much.
Sabbath… our need to stop (Sabbath literally means to cease), rest, delight in God… (I recommend Abraham Hescel book Sabbath).
Bernard Clariveux says that busyiness is a kind of sloth because it take hard work to plan properly for Sabbath).
(In some season we’re going ballistic e.g., single mom, with young kids, who need to work, needs to their attend kids… hard…)
Rest is a foundational virtue: if we’re rested we’ll be less likely to offer our bodies as instruments of sin, more able to offer them as instruments to God… more able to love people….more able to pay attention to God… The purpose is not to be more productive, but to able to love God and people better.
Our bodies, mind, our soul is all connected…
Parker Palmer says "Self-care is never a selfish act-it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others.
To Paraphrase: So Parker Palmer self-care is never a selfish gift, it is the stewardship of the only gift I have to God and the world.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians our bodies our not our own we are bought with price there honor God with your bodies.
You know how some people, it’s my body, I can do with it what I want. Paul says no you can’t. Thinking about doing will compromise or harm your body? Think about this truth.
This past year, when some friends were on vacation, Sakiko and I were asked to walk their dog… a beautiful God Retriever… we took this do endowment lands and to Jericho Beach we extra careful with this dog (tried to avoid crossing busy streets) because it wasn’t our own.
You know careful when you drive someone else’s car? Especially if like a BMW or Lexus?
You see where I’m going with this.
19Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
Your body is worth even more than a pure bred retriever, certainly more than a friend’s BMW or Lexus, it cost God the blood of his son to redeem you… he paid full price for you, he didn’t pick you up on bargain table, paid in full… he’s redeem you…. You’re his.
When you deeply understand this deeply you will tend not consciously offer your body as an instrument of sin, you’ll offer it as an instrument of righteousness. In so far as you able, you use your body to serve God and people.
(pray for to understand this)
Therefore, I urge, with Paul, in view of God’s mercy to offer your bodies, as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God this is your reasonable service.
posted by Shigematsu at 9:51 PM
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