Is Your Body Your Own?

What is the most expensive or the most delicate thing you have ever borrowed from another person?

When you borrow your friend's clothes, you handle it with extra care, right?

You touch it so softly, you hold it ever so gently.

When you're trying it on, your hand and your arm muscles are activated in a more mindful way. If you could and if it wouldn't look stupid, you are willing to spend more time just to prevent it from being damaged.

Your legs' every step is made very cautiously, you know it would not be the best time to trip.

On the day you wear it outside, you are more vigilant of liquids or other stuff nearby that could stain what you're wearing.

You want the clothes to be in best shape when you return it to its owner.

These are just clothes - not yet the most expensive or most delicate thing in the world.

But you take care of it more conscientiously because you know it's not yours.

Hmm...

You know what is the most expensive and the most delicate thing in the world that you borrowed?

It's your body.  

Your body is not yours, it is a borrowed thing from its wonderful Creator.

That being said, isn't it the most special and the most delicate thing you've borrowed?

Since it is borrowed, we should not act as if it is our own.

We must not walk around doing whatever we want with our bodies.

(If you do that, you're like that classmate who stole your eraser in grade school and uses it abusively. When you already need it and you get it from him/her, the eraser is already black and erases terribly.)

If you want to perceive your body as something ultimately God's and not yours, try to imagine as if God is watching you how you use your body everyday.

Does He see you doing just whatever you please with the body you've borrowed?

Does He see you trying to show the world every part of the body you've borrowed, as if it's yours to display and boast to everyone?

Does He see you loving that borrowed body more than you love its Creator?

You know, if you want to change the way you regard your body, maybe it's best to consult its Creator about everything you do with it.

Isn't it supposed to be like that?

When you borrow a laptop, you don't download just anything you want and use all its storage for your data -you ask permission from its owner.

When you borrow something, it is should be obvious that everything you do with it should have its owners approval.

And this is why I consider modesty a very humbling experience.

It is surrendering everyday to the Lord, recognizing that you are ultimately His.

It is submitting to the real owner of the body you have - and not succumbing to your selfish desires.

It is telling God that even in the littlest of your daily decisions, you recognize that His wisdom would always know best!

God did not lend you that body just so you could walk around and obliviously making it harder for men to resist temptation.

God did not lend you that body to boast about its beauty as if it's yours to boast about.

God did not lend you that body for your own expense.

God has bigger reasons why He lend you the body you have now!

He wants you to take part in His work here on earth - be His hands and feet.

He wants you to help men who struggle, to make them praise the hands of God instead of worshiping your body.

He wants to use your body so the world will see that true beauty comes from the Lord and not from the trendiest fashionable clothes!

God does not want you to be defeated by your selfishness and have a body that does not reach its full potential.

Your body will only serve its purpose and would be used by God to the fullest when you resist its desires and pursue God's desires for it.

You'd learn to obey the Lord in the greatest commandments like making disciples, if you learn to obey the little everyday instructions.

Likewise, you would know how to surrender your body to the Lord to be used in great ministries when you first learn how to offer your body in little ways such as modesty.

God did not design a woman's body just to show off the world's latest fashion trends.

God designed a woman's body to touch lives, to bring people closer to Him, to bring glory to His beautiful name.

How would you start using your borrowed body for that deeper purpose?

What are the things you used to do which show that you failed to recognize God as the real owner of your body? How do want your body to be used in a more meaningful way? How would you fight the urge to succumb to deliberate immodesty?