Daily Devotional

Has there ever been a time that you ate a ton of food that ended up making you sick? Growing up one of my favorite TV shows was "Hey Arnold". During one of the episodes Arnold enters into an eating competition but he has to go up against Seymour "the Disposal". And while Seymour doesn't look like much on the outside, he sure can put it away. He's always hungry, he knows how to pace himself, and it's rumored that he has two stomachs. During the contest, Seymour is making minced meat of the competition. During the final round, just as Arnold gets ready to throw in the towel and concede to the Disposal, Seymour freezes, drops his fork, and falls face-first into his sundae. Seymour hit a wall. His food was delicious but the consequences of all that he'd eaten had finally caught up to him. I use this silly illustration because our physical bodies and spiritual health are connected. We can't expect to be physically unhealthy and thrive spiritually.

When talking about physical purity, it’s easy to make this a sexual issue, which it is, but it’s also much more than that. We can struggle with physical purity in the way we eat and drink, how much sleep we get, how much we exercise, or challenges with sexual immorality. We all have struggled with physical sin in some way, shape, or form, whether lusts or pleasures. Titus 3 says, we too at one time were enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. However, we're called to put to flee sexual immorality and put to death our earthly nature (1 Cor. 6:18; Col. 3:3).

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should and like food that hurts you, what tastes good in the short run might have painful consequences later. Paul’s correction shows us that physical purity is incredibly important to the Lord, and we can’t be apathetic about it because our bodies are a part of Christ and the temple for the Holy Spirit! Does what you eat/drink, how much you sleep/exercise, what you do or don't allow to be done to your body, reflect your understanding that said body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? We are to honor God with our bodies. This is a physical challenge as much as it is a spiritual one. If there is anything in your life that is keeping you from physical purity — put it to death today!

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.