Keep your temple of God fit and healthy for Him to dwell in and for you to live a full life.
Your Body is the Temple of God
Your overall health means you must coordinate your physical body, mental body, and spiritual body. Your body is your "temple", your temporary dwelling place for this sojourn, it is our physical body as well as God's spiritual residence.
When we dwell upon our own beauty or the physical beauty of othrs, it tends to become easy to give praise and become proud of what "we" have accomplished for ourselves. A good self image and natural fitness is good, but too many people pay more homage to the outside than to the inside. Even more so, not giving recognition to what God wants to do through us. Behind this very statement lies my point: Is your body an idol, or is it art?
We can not coordinate an attuned healthy temple of God to the body, mind, and soul, if the glory is focused on beauty, or money, or material possessions. This is where idols are born. When we quit giving the glory to God, instead worship our own bodies, we have then created an idol.
Let the history of the Bible remind you that God is a jealous God. Idols are a dishonor to Him. FOR IT IS WRITTEN: (Cor. 3:16) "Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwells within you? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is Holy, which temple you are". The Word does not tell us in vain that "the spirit wars against the flesh", (ego). We are to give the glory to God, in our body, and in our spirit, which are actually "His".
An idol is not art. Art is the "definition" of our praise. An idol is merely the "recipient" of the praise. Realizing this will keep us from becoming egotistically proud when we are told how great we look. It is when your work of art stops you from giving recognition and glory to God, and demands total focus, than it is an idol.
Paul asks us in Gal. 3:3; "Are you so foolish? Having begun in the spirit, are you now made perfect in flesh?" His message is clear in Gal. 6: 7-8: "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man soweth, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh (ego) reaps corruption, but he who sows to his spirit reaps everlasting life".
This awareness is an essential step, and part of the pivotal role of coordinating the physical body, mental body, and spiritual body to a healthy temple of God. If we are to be healthy, we must deal with the flesh. Romans 12:1 "I beseech you therefore brothers (& sisters), by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service". See that? "Your reasonable service". YOU! You are ultimately responsible.
"Honor your Earthly Mother and keep all Her Laws, that your days may be long on this Earth, and Honor your Heavenly Father that Eternal Life may be yours in the heavens. And who is our Mother, and where is her kingdom? Your mother is in you, and you are in her. It is she who gives us our bodies, and to her we shall one day return. Happy are you when you come to know her and her kingdom."
By Damion Stone, Professional Trainer and Body-Mind-Spirit Coach and President of Bodies of Stone www.bodiesofstone.com where more of his holistic features are found.
Not I, but God, be honored, loved, exalted; not I, but God, be seen be known , be heard. Not I, but God, in every action, in every deed, be demonstrated through me. Here is where your chiseled and sculpted Body of Stone, becomes a work of great "art", and not an idol, praiseworthy only to the glory of God.
I feel it necessary to inform you that "not giving recognition to what God wants to do through us" can be accomplished by seeing to it that He would use us to help bring his Kingdom upon earth. By disseminating truth, by eradicating error, by refining, by educating, by helping guide even a single step of someone else's journey through life, by enabling them to be closer relationship with who they really are. By helping to make mankind more gentle, more loving, more peaceful, more virtuous (and in my opinion) more like the one who left us the perfect example to follow, Jesus The Christ.
Foods for Cancer Prevention
Researchers studying the diet-cancer link are devoting a new level of scientific attention to a dietary factor that many people take for granted - variety. As studies involving single foods or food components often fail to uncover strong protective associations, scientists around the world are turning to approaches that can reliably track the complex protective interactions taking place in the overall diet.
According to researchers at the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) 11th Annual Research Conference, the renewed focus on variety in the diet was spurred by many factors. New methods and technologies are allowing scientists to track multiple influences and effects at the same time, and in a more precise fashion than ever before. Meanwhile, evidence that foods interact to provide extra health benefits (a concept that has come to be known as synergy) has been building steadily for years.
Finally, the scientists expressed concern that studying individual foods and isolated food components has left the public with mistaken impressions about the diet-cancer connection.
"A diet is more than the sum of its parts, and you can often be misled by breaking the diet into artificial pieces such as carbohydrates, proteins and fats," said conference speaker Dr. David Heber of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition. "We eat foods, not just nutrients, and there is overwhelming evidence that eating up to a pound of diverse fruits and vegetables can markedly reduce the risks of common forms of cancer and other diseases."
Studies that compare the diet and disease rate of different populations have long shown that risks of cancer and other diseases are substantially lower in countries where diets high in a variety of vegetables, fruits and whole grains are the norm. For decades, researchers have been seeking to identify the precise factors in such diets that offer protection. But this, Heber said, is a daunting task, because diets that include such a rich diversity of plant foods provide over 25,000 different phytochemicals.
"Moreover, there are 150,000 to 200,000 different edible plant foods in the world, and most Americans eat only three per day," said Dr. Heber. "Compare that to existing hunter-gatherer populations eating over 800 varieties of plant foods. We have a long way to go to increase the diversity and amount of plant foods in the American diet."
As science on the diet-cancer link progresses, more and more foods and food substances are showing cancer-fighting potential. It is becoming clear to researchers that the search for "magic bullets" - single substances or foods that prevent many kinds of disease throughout the body - may be doomed to failure.
"We need to stop treating fruits and vegetables as if they were drugs," said Dr. Heber. "Every vegetable and fruit has a unique profile of nutrients and phytochemicals, and these families of compounds exert beneficial effects on our bodies to prevent disease."
To illustrate his point, Heber cited the results of recent studies that go beyond the well-known antioxidant properties of fruits and vegetables. Tomatoes and tomato-based products, he said, are a rich source of lycopene, which becomes concentrated in the prostate gland where it seems to normalize prostate cell function and inhibit prostate cancer growth.
Spinach, avocado and other yellow or leafy green vegetables contain lutein. Heber presented new findings at the AICR conference showing that lutein concentrates in the retina and the lens where it reduces the risk for cataracts and macular degeneration, the leading preventable cause of blindness in America, which affects 13 million people. Surprisingly, he said, lutein also slows prostate cancer cell growth. And when it is combined with lycopene, lutein demonstrates independent and additive preventive effects on prostate cancer cell growth.
"These examples are only the beginning," he said. "There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of such substances in vegetables and fruits that stimulate the metabolic pathways of genes in different organs to provide protection against cancer and other diseases. After all, cancer is not one disease but many, and no single food or compound can provide the different kinds of cells in the body with the unique kind of protection they require. That means that beyond eating five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day, you need to ensure that you're getting a diverse array of these foods."
In fact, surveys show that most Americans are not even eating five servings a day - unless you count snack foods. Heber cited studies showing that the average American's total intake of fruits and vegetables is about three servings a day. "That boils down to two vegetables and a fruit," he said. "And if those three servings consist of iceberg lettuce, French fries and a little ketchup for color, you're in big trouble."
To Add Variety, Use Color as a Cue
Health professionals have historically used many different strategies to urge people to increase the variety in their diets. The once-prevalent "Four Food Groups" gave way, in 1992, to the FDA Food Guide Pyramid, which has been adapted to different populations over the years.
Last year, the American Institute for Cancer Research launched a new educational program called "The New American Plate," which calls for Americans to shift the proportions on their plates for lower weight and better health. By emphasizing how healthy proportions will look on the plate ("two-thirds or more vegetables, fruits, whole grains and beans; one-third or less animal protein") and offering recipes that emphasize the flavors, colors and textures of plant foods, the New American Plate has helped thousands of people consume a more varied and healthy diet.
Source: c2001 American Institute for Cancer Research
The emotions are significantly interrelated with the endocrine glands, and the endocrine glands are very much related to your cardiovascular system through the hormone they supply to the bloodstream. Negative emotions can literally make your body sick. With this in mind, you begin to piece together part of the contributing factors to health or disease. Balance of a sound mind equals balance of organs, endocrine glands, and proper nerve function of the ganglia of the autonomic nervous system, which is involved in normal physiology of the body. Let me explain. Our emotions, attitudes, and belief patterns bring about physiological changes in the endocrine glands through the hormones they supply to the body. Therefore, what we think, feel, and experience becomes directly related to our physiology and thus, to our health or lack of it.
It is in the reactions that we have to life's situations that we are able to see what we have programmed into the conscious mind. Attitude is one of the most significant factors in the prevention and/or remission of any disease. I know that life can have it’s ups and downs, sometimes we feel stressed out, depressed, angry, even life can be a struggle. On the other hand, love is the highest emotion, it makes the world go round. As you choose love, peace, positive emotions, you coordinate through the endocrine glands a state of harmony and health that would emanate as a glow about yourself, visible to all. Dissenting attitudes only create disruption and disease.
Through choice we choose to "create", and that choice is reflected in our physical body as either health or illness. The glands then, manifesting our attitudes, reign supreme over the body’s physiology. Each cell, no mater how microscopic they are, are nevertheless endowed with life and intelligence, and they respond to the stimulus of the mind. If you were to gain an idea of what happens to an endocrine gland when it is being patterned and developing a new approach to life through "choice", you would see it gaining strength (all forming habits do this, good or bad) through a flow of energy, divine energy, coming into the gland, to be distributed throughout the body through the nervous system, and through the hormones being released into the cardiovascular system, which creates a system of health.
Again, negative attitudes create disturbances in the endocrine system, so the message given to the body through the nervous system, hormones and bloodstream is how clinical manifestations have their origin. You see, each gland sends out hormones right? Endocrine organs are neuron-hormonal transducers. They link the nervous system together with the vascular/hormonal system. Therefore, each gland sends out messages through neurological impulses to every cell of the body. At the same time this supplies hormonal and bio-chemical influences to those same cells.
To let worries besiege you, to let jealousy blind you and sway you against any rhyme, reason or common sense, to allow fear of any kind cause you to become the victim, means stimulating the endocrine glands in to secreting the catabolic/cannibalistic stress hormone Cortisol, as well as the adrenal glands into injecting quantities of concentrated Adrenalin. This insidious poison is only insidious poison when it is not used for its original purpose, i.e.; "The Flight or fight Response". If this surging adrenalin is not used for it’s purpose, than it becomes toxic.
If we would have learned this early on we’d learn better how to control our emotions, and that would help us to understand other people, enabling us to fully enjoy this dance called life. We would have learned the positive side of people who are faced with crisis or disaster, those who perform the kind of heroism that would seem impossible or even superhuman, due to courage rooted into us by virtue of a constructively functioning adrenal gland. If you take all these functions into consideration, and relate one to the other, you can readily see the chain of consequences manifesting when one succumbs to dissenting emotions.
Self discipline is one of the most important and vital efforts we must make in order to become master over self. -
