Hi, welcome to Redeem the Commute. I’m Ryan, your host of the Daily Challenges. Today’s Wednesday, so it’s the day we try to let our thoughts be challenged and transformed by the words of the Bible that we saw yesterday.
This week, we’re looking at how following Jesus resets our view of food and the body. We saw yesterday how God didn’t give us things in this world, like food, or our bodies, or any other resource we have, for unlimited use and abuse. When we do that, what happens is it can become something to be worshipped. It can dominate our lives and control what we do and how we do it.
Just think, if we allow food to become the center of our lives, if we pursue food to excess … we keep trying to find emotional stability, or love, or whatever it is, through food … it very quickly destroys our lives. It very quickly controls our lives. You just look at some of these stories of people who weigh hundreds or almost a thousand pounds, who are confined to their homes. Food has absolutely come to dominate their lives. It determines what they can do for a living, if anything. It determines when they can leave their house. Food has completely consumed them, even though they thought they were the ones consuming food.
It’s an extreme example, but this can happen in smaller ways in all of our lives. When we take something in this life and we assume it’s ours to enjoy to unlimited excess, it very quickly takes over. It controls us. To use the language of idol worship, when we take something in this life and we pursue it to unlimited excess, we’re basing our lives around it. It’s like we’ve begun to worship as our god. Since it is just something physical in this world, that’s idolatry, whenever we take something God created and we pretend it’s Him.
God has always given us limits on the resources that he’s given to us as a gift. First example was in the Garden of Eden, when God created a garden with all the food that the humans He put in that garden could ever need. He said, “Don’t eat from that one tree, of the knowledge of good and evil.” God gave a limit, that this world wasn’t created for us to destroy and overrun. It was created for us to live in under God’s care and guidance.
When humans went ahead and ate that fruit they weren’t supposed to eat, they were jumping out from under God’s care and guidance, and saying they wanted to worship themselves, and their decadence, and their feelings of contentment, and their feelings of power, more than God.
Later in the history of the Bible, we see the nation of Israel being given all sorts of explicit instructions by God, especially around food. What kinds of foods were safe for them to eat, what kind of foods were unclean. Some of those laws seem arbitrary to us today, but we can see how, looking back, they were made to preserve the Israelite people to be God’s people through history. God had a plan for them, and food was at its center. Limits on food were at the center of God’s laws for that people. God wanted them to know that they were under God’s care and provision, and under God’s love as His chosen people. Part of that was symbolized in how He gave them limits on their consumption of food.
Paul reminds the Corinthians that they were bought at a price, kind of like the Israelites were brought at a price when God led them out of Egypt, out of slavery into freedom. The same way, he’s saying, Christians in Corinth, you were bought at a price.
He uses the language of ransom, somebody paying the ransom, not to free somebody who was kidnapped, but to free somebody with such a debt they could never repay it on their own. Somebody would come to a market, find somebody like that, and buy them out, buy them essentially as a servant, and say, “I will release you from your debt. You don’t have to pay that debt to other people, that now you work for me. You can pay it off by working for me.” Kind of like when at a restaurant, somebody can’t pay their bill, they might end up doing dishes in the back until it’s all paid off.
Paul uses the language of ransom. He says, “Corinthians, you have been paid for a price,” reminding them of that, to remind them that their bodies are not their own. They didn’t create themselves. They didn’t buy themselves. God created them. Even when they rebelled against God, God bought them back with His own blood by coming to Earth as Jesus Christ and dying for us.
Jesus bought our debt for us, paid it off, a debt we could never repay on our own. We so separated ourselves from God through something called sin that we could never get back to Him on our own. The ultimate sign of that separation was our death, our spiritual and physical death being the final end of our lives. Jesus took that debt upon Himself, He took death upon Himself, die for us, so we could have freedom. He paid the price to free us, not to have unlimited freedom and just run off, and run amuck, and do whatever we wanted, but so we could now work for Him. He paid the price that we needed to pay. He paid our bill here at the restaurant so we could now work for Him.
When the Corinthians, or we, abuse our bodies, when we don’t treat them well today, what we’re doing is we’re basically pretending they’re our own. That we weren’t bought at a price but that we own everything we have, that we created it all from nothing, that we’re essentially God. That’s why Paul wanted to remind the Corinthians they were bought at a price. You are not God. You owe a debt. Your freedom was bought at a price. Your bodies were bought at a price. Treat them as if they were precious, knowing how much you lost before and how much you gained through Jesus Christ.
Followers of Jesus don’t have the luxury of pretending our bodies are our own. We always need to remember that we were bought at a price by Jesus. Following Jesus resets everything, including how we view our bodies and food.
There’s another line from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. Shortly after Paul applied this whole food argument to sexuality, he concluded by talking about our bodies in a very specific way. He said, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”
This whole body-is-a-temple thing is a common line for bodybuilding guys to remind people around them, especially women, that their body is a temple and should be worshipped. No, the temple was never made to be worshipped. For the Jewish people, the temple was a building where God’s physical presence on Earth was going to reside. God was the one to be worshipped, not His building.
When Paul says “your body is a temple,” he’s reminding them that since they were bought at a price, the Holy Spirit now resides in them. God’s spirit is now in them. Their body is a temple. All the reverence that was once shown to the physical building of the temple now needs to be shown to their physical bodies, since God resides in them and God bought them. Their bodies now belong to God as followers of Jesus.
I’ve got a question for you to consider today and hopefully discuss with others you know from the commute, or from work, or from home. Here’s the question.
Question: How should a Christian treat their body differently, since it is a temple for the Holy Spirit? How can we show reverence and respect for the body as a temple bought by God, and not our own?
Have a great discussion. Don’t forget we’re reading the Bible in sync as a community, so check our website or app to see what today’s reading is. Have a great one. I’ll see you tomorrow.
Read the Bible in Sync Today
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Hi, welcome to Redeem the Commute. I’m Ryan, your host for the daily challenges. Normally, we follow a weekly rhythm that helps us explore a different topic, and how following Jesus impacts that topic. This week’s going to be a little different. We’re going to be taking an opportunity to just see where we are as a community. Now, you probably know us as a mobile app and website for busy commuters, but we’re also trying to become a church community. As we explore what it means to follow Jesus as individual people engaged in a busy lifestyle, we want to make sure that we’re not completely disconnected from one another, and that even though we’re usually quite scattered as a community, we want to take time to gather as well.
As a gathered community, we want to make sure that we are committed to some of the same things in common. That’s why through this week, this week alone, it’s going to be kind of a special week. We’re going to be looking at each of the things our community is committed to one by one, and see how we’re doing as a community, by hearing the stories of individuals who are a part of our growing online community or our in-person courses who are seeing their lives changed. We hope that will inspire you to see some transformation in your own life as well.
Now, the five things that we’re committed to as a community start with being committed to growth in discipleship. We have some common content to learn together. We also want to be committed to God in worship, committed to generosity in our resources, committed to grace in our lifestyles and witness, and finally, committed to groups and community. We’re going to be looking at each of those points one by one this week. Today, the Monday, we’re going to start by looking at growth in discipleship. Each day, we’re going to tell you the story of somebody, a real person, who is in one of our courses as a community or engaging in our online content.
The firs story we have is about somebody who came to us through our Christianity one on one course. After having discovered it online, and taken a few of the courses through the app, she decided that she wanted to come and try that in person when we offered a course in Whitby last fall. After the course was over, she met with me for coffee, and told me that she decided to do something really important in her life. Back when she was in her early 20s, she decided that she was an atheist. She very publically cut all ties that she had to the church, to her family’s Christian faith and to God himself.
She made it very clear that she was an atheist now. She said after taking the Christianity 101 course, she decided she wasn’t an atheist anymore, and is looking for a way to make that public, just as public as she made her atheism back in her 20s. What happened? What made her say those words and decide to take public action declaring such a significant change? Why would she go back on her words like that, and risk the embarrassment of letting everybody know that she was wrong?
Well, as a follower of Jesus, I believe that it’s the Holy Spirit who can grab hold of our hearts, and transform them to be open to hearing the good news of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit works behind the scenes, and sometimes very publically, in this kind of transformation in a story like the one I just told you. I’m sure the particular content of our courses had some impact, but through it all, the Holy Spirit was guiding, and directing, and teaching, and helping just open her ears to hear the good news, and opening her heart to actually be transformed by it. The Holy Spirit is behind every story of transformation that we hear from in the Bible or in life today.
The Holy Spirit uses all sorts of resources in his work. That includes things like routine and just learning some habits of discipleship. One of those that we use in our community is this daily, weekly rhythm of discipleship that our daily challenges follow. Every Monday, we introduce a new idea. Every Tuesday, we study the Bible. Every Wednesday, we allow it to grab our hearts and transform us in some way. If we’re trying to live differently on Thursday, and Friday is our day of reflection, this whole rhythm and routine comes from the way monks and nuns used to order their lives as a community.
Even if they were a part, even if they were traveling, they knew they were in sync with the rest of their community because they had this regular rhythm of prayer and learning that they were engaged in, whether they were gathered or in scattered mode. Now, the story I told you today is just one story that I happen to know because I met her in person, but there have got to be other amazing stories out there. What’s your story? We know that the mobile app for Redeem the Commute has been installed on mobile phones and tablets over 1,200 times. We know that hundreds of you are using and accessing our content each month.
We’d love to hear from you and hear your story. How is God speaking to you? How is God’s Holy Spirit working in your heart, in and through the rhythm we’ve developed as a community, or through the content that you’ve been hearing, or watching or reading on Redeem the Commute? Well, I’d love to hear your story. There are a number of ways you can communicate that. One, come out and meet me at the Coffee Hours, or check the app or website live events listings to see when our next Coffee Hours are. It’s a great opportunity to just connect with me, tell me what you’ve been experiencing, see if I can have any help or advice for you.
Another way would be to fill in some of the one-question surveys we’ve got going on right now. When you open the app, it’s going to be asking you a simple question. I’d love to hear your answer because we’re trying to get a bit of a read on our community, our people being transformed by the contents that they’re hearing. We’d love to hear what you’ve learned, and what questions you still have to see if I can help you find answers to any of those questions still. We’d love to hear if this is content that you’re hearing and exploring for the first time in your life, or maybe if you’ve explored Christianity before, and you’re just looking at it in a new way at a later point in your life.
We’re not trying to become a church community that gathers together people from other churches. We truly want to become a community of people who are exploring Christian faith for the first time, and those who are committed to helping other have that kind of experience. We’d love to know if you’ve been part of a church community before, or if maybe this is your first time being part of a church community, outside of maybe attending a wedding or a funeral. Each day in this one-week series, we’re going to have a challenge for you to take on. Like I said, we’ve got some one-question surveys going on right now, where you can answer all those questions at once in the survey that you’ll find at the bottom of today’s challenge posting.
Please, answer some questions for us. Tell us how we’re doing in developing as a community of people learning to follow Jesus, and how we can help you take the next step. Make sure you leave your email address, so we can follow up if you’d like a bit of coaching. Have a great time putting that into practice. If you are working with a group of people who are learning alongside you, maybe share with them your answers to the survey questions that we’ve put at the bottom of today’s post. Well, have a great discussion. Don’t forget, we’re reading the Bible in sync as a community. The way to really get connected in our community would be to take our parenting course that we’re offering just at the end of April.
It’s going to be held at the Ajax Public Library, and costs just $50. It includes a delicious dinner each night for five weeks. You can find more information in the live event listings in the app or website. I hope to see you there. Bye for now.
