Episode Transcript
PRAYER OF CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Exodus 15:25–26
Then Moses cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a piece of wood. He threw it into the water, and the water became fit to drink.
There the Lord issued a ruling and instruction for them and put them to the test. He said, “If you listen carefully to the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you.”
CONSIDER THIS
Something tells me the Egyptians were not the healthiest people on the planet. After all, the Israelites were doing all their heavy lifting. There is a reference coming in chapter 16 to the fleshpots of Egypt and eating their fill of bread. It seems reasonable to infer that the Egyptians ate pretty high on the hog and steered clear of the gym. I mean, if their slaves were enjoying all-you-can-eat "fleshpots" buffets, imagine what the average Egyptian ate on a daily basis.
As it relates to the reference about the diseases suffered by the Egyptians, it strikes me that we may see something of the law of sowing and reaping here. Later in Exodus, we will see God give the Israelites all sorts of dietary restrictions as part of the Law. These dietary laws had to do with ritual purity, and yet they also had to do with good health. Some of you see where this is headed—straight to the refrigerator!
Today, we get a bit of a foreshadowing. God puts the Israelites on notice that health and healthy living matter. He doesn’t want them to live like the Egyptians, who were presumably overweight, with dangerously high cholesterol, suffering from hypertension, pre-diabetic, and consumed massive quantities of high fructose corn syrup. I’m kidding—sort of. It seems clear to me this is what is going on here:
“If you listen carefully to the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you.”
God cares about our bodies and our health. So many Christians live in the illusion of a hard separation between things spiritual and things physical, with the former being superior to the latter. At this point in history, we are settled into the deep ruts of a dualistic worldview, which at times borders on Gnosticism, pitting the soul or spirit against the physical body. This is increasingly the emerging dominant worldview of our culture, as evidenced by the insanity we are witnessing around matters of gender, sexuality, and the human body.
Our bodies matter. They carry enormous weight (in my case, too much weight). Hear Paul in his letter to the Corinthian Christians. “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies” (1 Cor. 6:19–20). Though he references sexual ethics here, which also figure prominently in the Mosaic law, there are much broader implications for the point he makes.
The point is crystal clear. We must honor God with our bodies. God does not bring the Israelites into the wilderness in order to put them on a diet. He aims to comprehensively change their entire way of life. He is crafting a people who will live for the praise of his glory at every level of life.
Let’s revisit the question Paul asks the Corinthians: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?”
It’s a question. Until recently, I think I knew that more in theory than in fact.
Some of you may remember a year or so ago when I shared with God and the whole Wake-Up Call community the confession I was obese. I noted I had been overweight by as much as 60 pounds. I confessed I had tried every diet and exercise plan under the sun and failed at them all and that I sensed the Lord was calling me to something altogether different than I had tried before. He was inviting me to transfer the title of my physical body to its Creator and true owner. He let me know he wanted me to take his word both literally and seriously and to "offer my body as a living sacrifice holy and pleasing to God as my spiritual act of worship." (See Romans 12:1) I remember getting down on the floor that day and making an altar. I didn't ask God to help me. I invited God to have me—my physical body—as a living sacrifice; that I no longer claimed ownership. On that day, I became a steward of his property.
I am not sure how to describe what happened other than to say God received my offering, and things began to change. He began a deliverance on that day, which continues to the present one. It's been well over a year since that day. My entire relationship with my body has changed. My entire relationship with food has changed. And while I don't want to make this about weight loss, I will testify that I have lost quite a lot of weight. Let's just say I am getting back down to my fighting weight.
I think my overall witness concerning this would be: for I am the Lord, who heals you.
THE PRAYER FOR DELIVERANCE
Lord Jesus, you are my Deliverer.
I want to bring you my physical body. I want to say that I don't have a body but that I am a body. And I want to say that my body is actually your property. My body is your temple. I confess I have either indulged my appetites or battled against them. I have tried to do so much in my own strength when what I have needed is your power. I am ready for a new and better way. You are the Lord, my healer.
I receive your deliverance from the brokenness of my body and my ways of seeing my body. Today, I give you my body. I renounce my self-will to make it a showplace for my vanity. I offer it to you as a living sacrifice for your glory—I receive your deliverance of my body into a temple for the demonstration of your kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. I renounce the idolatry of weight loss. I seek your kingdom and your righteousness and trust you will bring the increase I need (or decrease, as the case may be).
Let it be now for my good, for others' gain, and for your glory.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. World without end, amen! Amen!
