2 Corinthians 5:8-9 We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.

When our faith gets to this point, all sorts of things are taken care of. However, most of us aren’t quite there yet. We are very attached to our physical bodies, in all the meanings of the phrase. That’s a good reason for God to allow them to wear out over time, so that we can look forward to being free of them! When that really is our perspective, then we are free to let pleasing God be our overriding motivation. Sadly, for most of us, pleasing our bodies takes precedence over pleasing God, and that gets us into all sorts of trouble. That is one of the major benefits of fasting: training in choosing to please God over pleasing our bodies. We are called to be good stewards of our bodies, but not to be ruled by them. It’s not wrong to eat good food in appropriate quantities, for example, but choosing more food over pleasing God shunts us away from blessings He desires and has prepared for us.

I probably don’t fast as often as I should, but it’s certainly not a foreign concept to me. What has taken more time to work through my head and into my lifestyle has been exercise. I’m certainly not a sportsman, so I have had to choose exercise for the sake of exercise, not to pamper my flesh but to keep it in good operating condition for as long as God says I need to keep using it. My body shape hasn’t changed much over the past 40 years, and I’m certainly not into “plus sizes,” but there has been a migration over time from muscle to fat. Most of that is a natural change in metabolism with age, but the Lord pointed out to me that I don’t have to accept it passively. That takes on urgency when I consider that I am practically a clone of my father, cholesterol balance and all, and he didn’t wake up after heart surgery a few days after his 64th birthday. Since that milestone comes up for me in just a few months, I need to focus on pleasing God! It was said of my father, by a missionary who visited him in the hospital a couple of days before his final surgery, that “I never saw a man with more reason to live, or more ready to die.” I desire to live like that, pleasing my Lord until He calls me home.

Father, You know my heart better than I do. You know the ways in which I live this out, and the ways in which I fail to do so. Thank You for Your grace and patience with me. Help me be a good steward of this body for as long as You want me to use it, but keep my focus on You rather than on my body. May I indeed be pleasing to You, now and throughout eternity. Thank You. Praise God!