Not Smoke and Bones: John Stott On Our Bodies

Mission Statement

In classical sacrifices, the people get the good bits, and the gods get the refuse, the bits that would get thrown out otherwise.

Not our God. Leviticus (particularly Leviticus 3) describes the sacrifices that our LORD demanded from His people of Israel. God gets the kidneys, the tail, and all the fat. He gets the prime steak, He gets the best.

Today we do not literally give sacrifices of animals. For us the ultimate sacrifice has been made through our Lord, Christ Jesus. But should always be our ambition to do the same thing - to offer God the best of what we have, to offer Him the fat, and not the smoke and bones.

Wednesday 10 March 2010

John Stott On Our Bodies

Our body has not only been created by God and one day will be resurrected by him, but it has been bought by Christ's blood and is indwelt by his Spirit. Thus it belongs to God three times over, by creation, redemption and indwelling. How then, since it does not belong to us, can we misuse it? Instead, we are to honour God with it, by obedience and self-control. Bought by Christ, we have no business to become the slaves of anybody or anything else. Once we were the slaves of sin; now we are the slaves of Christ, and his service is the true freedom.

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Humility does not think much or little of itself; it does not think of itself at all.
- Charlotte Mason

Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus.
- Mother Teresa

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
- GK Chesterton

...it is not an extraordinary spiritualitythat makes one refuse to do ordinary work, but a wish to prove that one is not ordinary - which is a dead giveaway of spiritual conceit.
- Elisabeth Elliot