God Made Your Body Good

I remember the very first instance in my life where I felt insecure about my body. I was in fifth grade, and up until then I don't remember ever having thoughts about my body - good or bad. My grandmother was helping my sister and I get ready for picture day at school and I remember her saying, "be sure to use your hair to cover your ears so they don't stick out in the picture." Immediately I felt a since of shame about my ears and from then on, I was always self-conscious about them. To the point that I barely wore my hair up until high school, and even then I'd try to find a way to peek some hair around my ears so they didn't "stick out" so much.

I tell you this story, because it was important for me to trace back the first time I ever felt like there was something wrong with my body. That was the first moment I felt like my body wasn't the way it should be and that something was wrong and needed to be covered up or fixed.

Have you had moments like that? Where you've looked at yourself and thought "I should be _______" Maybe you filled that in with "skinnier" or "stronger" or "healthier" or "more toned." No matter what thoughts you've had about your body before, I want to tell you something I wish someone had told my 5th grade self -

your. body. is. good.

Travel back in history with me a moment and let's trace some truth. Let us travel all the way back to the Garden of Eden, where life itself began. If you look in your Bible at Genesis 1:31, it says, "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day." Do you know what He had just created? Man and woman, Adam and Eve, and He said it was VERY good. Out of all the things He created, only after making humans did He say it was "very good." Read this loud and clear in your mind right now:

A righteous and Holy God can only make good things.

You'll see only a chapter later that sin entered the Garden and brought consequences, and some of those consequences we see in our flesh right now and every single day. We see:

• disease
• severe health conditions
• body image issues (hello my years of trying to cover up my ears)
• mechanically processed foods
• dying flesh, and so much more

When you choose (it is a choice) to believe that what God made (you!) was very good, then you choose to believe that He made your body very good too, and that will lead you to choose to believe that He made your body ON purpose and FOR a purpose. If He wanted to just make you a floating soul, He could have, but He didn't. God is a God of order, He had a reason for each and everything that He created, and so it is with your body. When you make the choice to believe that God made your body good and on purpose, then you begin to reframe your mind that what you do with your body matters.

What foods you put into your body matters, what exercise you do with your body matters. Even though your exact earthly body won't be with you in Heaven, that doesn't mean it doesn't have purpose in the here and now. God made YOU good, He made your body good, and ultimately that means you have to make the choice to treat it as such, not to elevate your body over who God is, but to treat and honor your body with respect because He made it for you with a purpose. 

I'll leave you with what Jess Connolly said in her book Breaking Free From Body Shame: 

"In the Kingdom, you are not the one naming your body good; it's not your thought repeated over and over again until you believe yourself. You're taking your cues and following the God who created the Universe"