The importance of the body...

        Yesterday, many braved icy roads and freezing rain to show up at Mountain Lake's two campuses. As I said yesterday, everyone that showed up must really love Jesus. I actually know for a fact we had first time unchurched guests who had been invited by friends.
        Yesterday I talked about not overlooking the importance our BODIES play in presenting ourselves to God.  The message should be uploaded here some time today. Here's my outline from yesterday's message. Hope you WERE or you WILL BE challenged and encouraged by it:

Romans 12:1a (NLT) And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will accept. 

Presenting my body to God means valuing my body.

(Embracing the uniqueness and significance of the way God created ME! If I'm critical of my body, I'm critical of the God who made me this way!)

Psalm 139:13-16 (NLT) ¹³ You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. ¹⁴ Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—and how well I know it. ¹⁵ You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. ¹⁶ You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.

Presenting my body to God means taking care of my body.

(Perhaps one of the best gifts I can give to God is a healthy body that doesn't limit what He wants to do through me!)

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (NIV)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.

Presenting my body to God means worshiping God with my body.

(through sexual purity and through service to Him, especially through His body, the church!)

 1 Corinthians 6:15-18 (NIV) ¹⁵Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! ¹⁶Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” ¹⁷But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit. ¹⁸Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. 

Romans 6:13 (NLT) “Do not let any part of your body become a tool of wickedness, to be used for sinning. Instead, give yourselves completely to God since you have been given new life. And use your whole body as a tool to do what is right for the glory of God.”