Cleanse: Week 3
CLEANSE WEEK 3: CLEANSE THE BODY
I Timothy 4:8 AMP: For physical training is of some value, but godliness (spiritual training) is of value in everything and in every way, since it holds promise for the present life and for the life to come.
"There is no use trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it." – C.S. Lewis (1898–1963 AD)
"The body is not of the essence of the soul; but the soul by the nature of its essence can be united to the body, so that, properly speaking, not the soul alone, but the 'composite,' is the species." – Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274 AD)
"One of the ironies of spiritual formation is that every 'spiritual' discipline is a bodily behavior. We have to involve the body in spiritual formation because that's where we live and what we live from." – Dallas Willard
"Shall that very flesh, which the Divine Creator formed with His own hands in the image of God; which He animated with His own Spirit, after the likeness of His own vital vigour; which He set over all the works of His hand, to dwell amongst, to enjoy, and to rule them; which He clothed with His sacraments and His instructions; whose purity He loves, whose mortifications He approves; whose sufferings for Himself He deems precious;—shall that flesh, I say, so often brought near to God, not rise again? God forbid." –Tertullian (155–220 AD)
Romans 12:1 NIV: Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.
"When we speak of spiritual formation we are speaking of the formation of the human spirit. And the spirit is the will or the heart and by extension, the character. And that, in practice, lives mainly in our bodies. The one reason why the idea of spiritual transformation through being merely preached at and taught doesn't work is because it does not involve the body in the process of transformation." –Dallas Willard
Zechariah 7:9-10 (NIV): This is what the Lord Almighty said: 'Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.
Isaiah 58:6-7 (NLT): No, this is the kind of fasting I want: Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless.
Proverbs 22:22-23 (NIV): Do not exploit the poor because they are poor and do not crush the needy in court, for the Lord will take up their case and will exact life for life.
Psalm 146:7-9 (ESV): He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free, the Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down... the Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow.
Proverbs 14:31 (NLT) – "Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but helping the poor honors him."
