“Or don’t you know that your body is the temple of of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? you do not belong to yourself…”

In the business world when we think of what we own, we consider the hard assets that we have on the balance sheet like buildings, equipment and hardware. We also can own intellectual property. We own cash assets too. But we don’t own the people in our organizations. Or should I say, we don’t own the body of our businesses. Although, we can too many times forget this and begin to act like we own the body, no one can own another adult in our country so in a certain term we can only borrow or rent the body of our companies. This begs the question of how we treat those things we own versus those we rent. Imagine how nice hotel and motel rooms would be if everyone treated them like they owned them? Not to be. The same can happen to us in our businesses. We can abuse our bodies and not think much about it because we look at them as assets that can be replaced with someone else. Companies that continue to think this way over time will ultimately never grow to what they could be. If the body is abused, it will stop growing and eventually die. We should be doing body scans in our companies, functions, departments and teams. No, not the type of body scan we get when we go through airport security, but instead scans to reveal our true body health and a sense of confidence that our people want to grow with us.

The Bible tells us that our physical bodies are not ours and that we are only “renting” them from God for a season. But my how we abuse this gift of God! We act like they are rented, until we get sick or the abuse catches up with us and then we are angry that God would allow us to falter. We have to take our bodies seriously as they are indeed the temple of God. Think about it. How does God’s work get done on the earth? Yep, through you and me. If we are not at our best spiritually, intellectually, relationally, and physically, can we bring the full glory of God to those around us? Of course we can’t spend all of your time and thoughts on keeping our bodies in tip-top shape. If we do that, we run the risk that we will even put our physical nature and appearance as a priority above our relationship with Christ. But, that said, we are challenged and told to respect our bodies and yes, to be sure that we are always scanning to make sure that we are respecting His temple.

Reference: 1 Corinthians 6:19 (New Living Testament)