Juleeta

Mountain bike riding, swim team, flag football, water polo, and my favorite- soccer. Sports have been a vital part of my life.

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I have never striven to be the thinnest or the prettiest, but to be the strongest. I believed my physical strength was how I could stand out to others. That was where my worth could be found.

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I thought I would be looked at more highly by others because I was physically strong. I have always been good at sports, not always the best on the team but I could make up for that with physical strength, or at least that is what I believed.

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I believed my physical strength to be one of my most attractive “qualities.” I believed people would be more attracted to me if I was stronger and had more muscle than the normal girl. Therefore, that was what I strove towards.

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However, I was not satisfied…..and never could be satisfied through this.

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While physical strength is so important, I have learned it is not the most important trait. It is not what defines me. It is not who I am.

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As 1 Timothy 4:7-8 says, “Train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”

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I was not depending on Jesus for who I was in Him or who He had created me to be. I had unconsciously put all my trust in my body rather than in Jesus.

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1 Peter 5:6 states, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.” Reading it reminds me of something important.

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I am nothing without the Lord.

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The Lord is my strength, my peace, and my rest. Without him I am nothing.

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I will choose to seek Him first in everything. The body I have been given is a gift from God, and I have the choice to either glorify Him with it or myself.

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I’m learning to follow the direction of 1 Chronicles 16:11: “Look for the Lord and His strength; seek His face always.”

Whenever I was younger, I was extremely self-conscious of the way I looked, mainly because my body looked very different from my other siblings. I was considered to be the chubby sibling, and it started to get to me; especially if that was the first thing people noticed.

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As I went through puberty, this only got worse. Throughout middle school and high school, I hated the way I looked, and hated the fact that I was one of the few black girls in a predominantly white school. I started to be ashamed of my body and the fact that I was black, primarily because I wanted to fit in with the other girls at my school.

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I wanted my peers to consider me beautiful despite my skin color being difference than theirs. I was trying to find validation in other people, instead of God.

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It was not until my freshmen year of college, that I started to see my body as a gift of God.

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I have always heard of Psalm 139:13-16, but I never truly reflected on the importance of this verse. This verse reminded me of how much God loves me. It blew my mind when I started to think about God creating me in my mother’s womb, he specifically made me the way I am, and not being satisfied in my body is to not be satisfied in the way God created me.

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Instead of trying to change myself, or coveting other people’s bodies, I should be satisfied in myself and my body because my body is a reflection of God and his love.

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Psalm 139 talks about God creating people wonderfully, meaning we are his masterpiece. Realizing this made me start being proud of the fact that I am black, and that I look different from most of the girls at my school. Since God made me wonderfully, and God never makes any mistakes with his creations, it made me consider my skin color as beautiful.

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I started to be proud of the way I looked, and started to realize that God created diversity, and that diversity is a beautiful thing.

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The other thing that God calls us to do is treat our bodies like a temple, which reminded me that I should take care of my body. This means, being careful of what I put in my body, and making sure that my body embodies the temple of the Holy Spirit!

While working on this post over the past week, I have been able to really reflect on 1 Corinthians 6:19-20. Growing up in the church, I am very familiar with this passage, but this week God really spoke to me through this verse.

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These words have reminded me that my body is a temple in which the Holy Spirit dwells. The Lord has blessed me with my body to be used for his good and his kingdom. What a sweet gift!

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The Lord has put on my heart to remember that my body is not my own, but a gift from Him to be used to glorify Him through the way that I talk, the way that I dress, and the way that I take care of myself.

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God also commands us in this verse to glorify him with our bodies. What better way to do that than by viewing and treating our bodies as a gift from our heavenly father?

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This week I have also been reminded of the power of viewing my body as created in the image of God. This is a truth that I have also heard plenty of times but after dwelling on it this week, I have realized the power of it.

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God loves us so much that he created us to be so like him. That is so humbling.

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All of these truths have reminded me of how loving our God is. He has blessed me with the priceless gift of a body made in his image that can be used to glorify him and serve his kingdom!