“Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” 1 Corinthians 6:19–20
It was day eighteen…that is, eighteen days of waking up congested, going to sleep congested, and coughing until my abs felt like I’d been in the plank position for an hour. The virus settled deep into my upper respiratory system. I tried supplements, over-the-counter meds, forced myself to eat, and did everything a health-conscious person would do. I was still worn down, frustrated, exhausted, and stripped of any sense of control over my own body.
One night at 1 a.m., I had a coughing fit was so violent that I had to get up. I was not just in pain…I was plain irritated. I questioned God. There, in the wee hours of the morning, He took me to the book of Job. There, in the middle of my sickness, he taught me something remarkably unexpected from the life of Job.
Most people who have read the book of Job know that satan was allowed to strip Job of his wealth, his livelihood, and—all in one day—his ten children. We’ve read how Job did not curse God. Sure, he grieved; but still, he worshipped. (Job 1:20–21) But then, did you know that satan went back to the courts of heaven with another challenge to God? He told God a man can endure the loss of things and people as long as his own skin is intact:
“Skin for skin! Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life. But stretch out Your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will surely curse You to Your face!” Job 2:4–5
God responded:
“Behold, he is in your hand, but spare his life.” (Job 2:6)
You might ask, “Is God a sadist who would allow this to happen to one of His beloved children?” My friend, when we study the Bible and we begin to know God for who He says He is, we see, like Job did at the end of the book, that we can come out on the other side with an even more blessed life than we had before. The book of Job paints one of the most staggering portraits of suffering in all the Bible. His suffering included:
- 1. Painful boils covering his entire body. “So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and struck Job with painful boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.” Job 2:7
- 2. Sleepless, restless nights. “When I lie down, I say, ‘When shall I arise, and the night be ended?’ For I have had my fill of tossing till dawn.” Job 7:4
- 3. Tormenting nightmares and terrifying dreams. “Then You scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions, so that my soul chooses strangling and death rather than my body.” Job 7:14–15
- 4. Worm-infested, cracking, scabbing skin. “My flesh is caked with worms and dust, my skin is cracked and breaks out afresh.” Job 7:5
- 5. Skeletal wasting and physical deterioration. “My bone clings to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.” Job 19:20
- 6. Blackened, peeling skin and burning bones. “My skin grows black and falls from me; my bones burn with fever.” Job 30:30
- 7. Failing eyesight. “My eye has also grown dim because of sorrow, and all my members are like shadows.” Job 17:7
- 8. Offensive breath. “My breath is offensive to my wife…” Job 19:17
- 9. Total social abandonment. “He has removed my brothers far from me, and my acquaintances are completely estranged from me. My relatives have failed me, and my close friends have forgotten me…Even young children despise me; I arise, and they speak against me.” Job 19:13–14, 18
Job suffered a comprehensive, full-body, mind-and-soul siege, without relief, for an extended stretch of time.
And yet Job did not curse God.
Look, I was not anywhere close to Job’s suffering. I had a respiratory virus. Job had worms eating through his skin and nightmares that made him beg for death. But this comparison is not about the scale of suffering. It’s about our reaction. My health, whether excellent or mediocre, or whether I am fighting for my life, is completely in God’s hands. Not in the hands of my WHOOP score, my supplement stack, my macros, my HRV, my workout routine, or my sleep score. It’s a question of whether I truly believe what His Word says about ALL things working for my GOOD?
“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28
If so, that gives me clarity in my suffering and reminds me that I have one job: to glorify God. I must love God with all my heart, soul, and mind, and trust Him completely—in everything! This frees me to stop feeling sorry for myself and instead develop a hopeful expectation to see what God will do with my weakness.
As this began to dawn on me, at 1 a.m., I released my health to God. Then I began to see how He was working across my prolonged weeks of illness. I saw things He did IN me and FOR me that I would have never seen had I been able to do them myself and too busy to notice. He moved in ways that required nothing more than my availability—not strength, not energy, not my optimal output. It reminded me of what God told Paul about his health issue and how Paul responded:
“But He [God] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12:9–10
The Bible is clear that our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Caring for the body is stewardship for God’s glory. Nutrition, sleep, and movement matter. But stewardship and obsession are two different things, and the line between them is easy to cross without even noticing. For example, when I check my WHOOP data before I’ve said good morning to God, it is a sure sign of imbalance. When a low recovery score shapes my entire emotional outlook before 7 a.m., or when I am calculating whether I have enough steps to justify sitting down for a conversation about God with a lost soul who has crossed my path at 6 p.m., my health has crossed over from stewardship to worship.
This is the temple becoming the idol, and the Bible says:
“For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.” 1 Timothy 4:8
“Profits a little” is not nothing, but very little. The body is our house, and it is crumbling day by day. But the day we are born again, the Holy Spirit occupies our soul—which is housed in the body. We maintain the house for the sake of glorifying the One who lives there, not for the sake of the house itself. I am not saying to throw out the WHOOP, or stop tracking or eat whatever you want because God is sovereign. That’s a sloppy way to live. What I am saying is this: The pursuit of good health needs a governor—kind of like what is installed on an 18-wheeler to keep it under a certain speed. Our health needs to be held loosely enough so that when God says, “leave the steps and go share the Gospel with that person,” we go—without a second thought. We need to be okay with where we are, so on day eighteen of a virus, we can say: “God, my body is Yours, and whatever You want to do through this broken-down version of me—I’m available.” Job made this remarkable statement from the ash heap, as he was scraping his skin with a broken piece of pottery:
“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” Job 13:15
That is not the statement of a man who has made his health his god. It is the statemtent of a man who has chosen, against every physical instinct, to trust God instead of cursing Him. And trusting God doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to complain to Him! One of the most remarkable things about the book of Job is how God permitted Job’s questions and complaints. He did not silence Job. He did not rebuke him for weeping, for questioning, for pouring out anguished complaints, or for saying things that sound almost like accusations against Him. For example:
“Why do You hide Your face, and regard me as Your enemy? Will You frighten a leaf driven to and fro? And will You pursue dry stubble? For You write bitter things against me.” Job 13:24–26
God let him say it all. Every anguished, bewildered word! And then, from inside that same cracked, wasted body, at the end of the book, Job’s sense of God was deepened beyond what it had ever been when he was in good health and prosperity! He said:
“For I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth; and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” Job 19:25–27
That declaration came from a man whose world had been stripped down to nothing but God Himself—and who discovered that God is enough. And at the end, after God speaks to Job from the whirlwind, his response is not bitterness; it is worship:
“I know that You can do everything, and that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You…Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” Job 42:2–3
“I have uttered…things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” That is the ultimate destination of every anguished lament—to take us deeper into our relationship with God. Job did not understand what God was doing or even, really, Who He is; but he kept directing his questions toward God. And at the end, the very incomprehensibility of God became his place of peace.
This is the invitation I received in my weeks of illness.
I didn’t need to understand what God was doing. I just needed Him. I needed to complain to HIM, to worship HIM, to glorify HIM, and to trust 100% that what He was working in me was more than I could have ever done in my own power! When I release my health to God, I am in a position to live in the mighty power of God instead of the puny power of my own strength. What a great tradeoff!
“For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12:10
Prayer:
Father, I confess that I have made my body more central than You ever intended it to be. I have let a score tell me how I feel before I let Your Word tell me who I am. Forgive me for the subtle idolatry of treating my temple as a god. I thank You that all I am is Yours—bought at a price I did not pay and cannot repay. I thank You that even in weakness, You are not absent. You are working. You are using exactly what I have to offer, even when what I have to offer is almost nothing. Teach me to care for this body as a trust You’ve given me—not as a project that defines my worth or commands my attention above all else. And when You lay something in front of me—a person who needs You—let me choose that without guilt, without calculation, and without one eye on my step count. You are the God who works all things together for good. I trust You with all of it. My health is in Your hands, and there is no safer place for it to be. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
