A house for your Spirit

 ‘Ye are not your own,’ Paul says. ‘Ye [have been] bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s’ (1 Cor. 6:19–20;


An important blessing was given to me once stating that,  "You came to earth and gained a house for your spirit."

These few words seem to echo in my mind lately. 

I have always had an interest in physical health and wellbeing. I decided to major in Exercise Science for my degree because Health has always been something that fascinates me. 

Our bodies are incredible machines that take us everywhere we go! Studying the body in Anatomy and Physiology and learning deeply about how each organ functions and maintains itself is so complex and amazing to me.

I have no doubt that before we came to earth we were besides ourselves excited to gain a body of our own, a house for our spirit. Maybe a little like finally owning your dream car? although I feel like that is not an even close comparison to the excitement we felt.

It genuinely breaks my heart for how often we seem to forget how incredible it is to have a body, and how special and important it is, and how it needs constant care and nourishment to stay healthy and strong. 

Donald L Hallstrom stated "We live in a world that can cause us to forget who we really are."

So why are our bodies so important? 

Elder Bednar stated;  "Ultimately the answer affects everything we do: what we think, how we act, where we go, what we eat, what we drink, and what we wear and how we look." 

I will summarize three reasons why our bodies are so important. from Elder Bednar's devotional message "Ye Are the Temple of God."

1.Our bodies make it possible for us to experience everything that we do... Relationships with others, feeling different emotions like; tenderness, kindness, happiness, sorrow, disappointment, and pain. 

2.We've been entrusted with the responsibility to create life and establish eternal families.

3. We are here to be tested and one of the essential parts of the test of mortality is having and properly using our physical bodies.

So....will my body rule over my spirit, or will my spirit rule over my body?  

In Elder Bednar's devotional he says how important it is to be mindful about what we take into our bodies, what we put on our bodies,  what we do to our bodies, and what we do with our bodies.

Elder Russell M. Nelson stated in "The Magnificence of Man"

"When we understand our nature and our purpose on earth, and that our bodies are physical temples of God, we will realize that it is sacrilege to let anything enter the body that might defile it. It is irreverent to let even the gaze of our precious eyesight or the sensors of our touch or hearing supply the brain with memories that are unclean or unworthy.

When we truly know our divine nature, we will want to control our appetites. We will focus our eyes on sights, our ears on sounds, and our minds on thoughts that are a credit to our physical creation as a temple of our Father in Heaven. In daily prayer, we will gratefully acknowledge him as our Creator and thank him for the magnificence of our physical temple. We will heed his counsel.

The magnificence of man is matchless. But, glorious as this physical tabernacle is, the body is designed to support something even more glorious—the eternal spirit, which dwells in each of our mortal frames. The great accomplishments of this life are rarely physical. Those attributes by which we shall be judged one day are spiritual. With the blessing of our bodies to assist us, we may develop spiritual qualities of honesty, integrity, compassion, and love. Only with the development of the spirit may we acquire “faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility, [and] diligence.” (D&C 4:6.)"

Our bodies are an incredible gift, and it is our responsibility to show respect to ourselves, and others. I'm grateful to have a house for my spirit, and I hope that I can continue to grow and learn and exercise and fuel my body properly with the nutrients it needs so that I can reach my divine potential, and accomplish the things that our Heavenly Father wants me to accomplish in this life and the life to come.