What would you do if you saw someone vandalizing your church?  Imagine arriving at church and seeing a group of children from the Sunday school program practicing their finger painting skills on the walls of the sanctuary?  Or seeing who can hold the most number of lit candles in one hand while running around the church?  Or trying to answer the age-old question of “what happens when you throw rocks at stained glass windows?”

What would you do?  Would you just stand by and watch?  Would you allow someone to desecrate and vandalize your place of worship?  Wouldn’t you say something?  Or even more, wouldn’t you do something about it?

My guess is that if you saw someone vandalizing your church, you wouldn’t stand for it.  I know I wouldn’t.  The church is the House of God and therefore must be treated with dignity and respect.  We can’t allow anyone to casually mistreat God’s House and degrade its value in such a manner.  Right?

That’s what we say, but I promise you, THAT’S NOT WHAT WE DO!

“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)

This weekend, we are kicking off an exciting new series at The Well called THE DANIEL PLAN.  The Daniel Plan is revolutionary, six-week program that focuses on healthy living.  The program is based on five essentials of long-term health: Faith, Food, Fitness, Focus and Friends.  The goal of The Daniel Plan is to promote healthy living in these five areas and to provide the practical tools needed to maintain it.

But wait a minute… does God really care about how we treat our bodies?  Isn’t it our spirits that matter more?  It sounds awfully unspiritual and worldly and SECULAR to talk about healthy eating and exercise at church doesn’t it?”

I couldn’t disagree more.

Taking care of your physical health is not ‘unspiritual’ or ‘worldly’ or ‘secular’ (whatever that means).  In fact, I could argue that the most spiritual thing that some of us could do today is invest in our physical health.

Why?  Because our bodies are the place in which God dwells.  Not caring for our bodies is showing disrespect towards God’s home…His dwelling place.  We agreed that we’d never allow anyone to desecrate the Church because it is God’s home, so why would not care equally as much about our bodies, since God calls that His home as well?

“Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?  If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are.”  (1 Corinthians 3:16-17)

Get rid of the idea that the body is bad and we shouldn’t care what happens to it.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Both your body and your soul were created by God to form the complete YOU.  Neglecting either component for the sake of the other is wrong.  We need to care for BOTH.

So with that said, I invite you all to join us for the start of The Daniel Plan beginning this Sunday.  It promises to be a life-changing journey because we won’t just talk about diets and exercise and all the other stuff we’ve heard before and never been able to keep up with.  Instead, we’ll focus on God’s plan for our bodies and God’s power to make it happen.

And we’ll do all that in the context of community (through Life Groups) – because we know that there is a special power there we do it together.  Studies for this program show that overwhelmingly, people who do the Daniel Plan TOGETHER report remarkably higher results than those doing it alone.  That’s a FACT!

So if you're in the Arlington area, I invite you to join us this Sunday at The Well for the start of The Daniel Plan.  If you're not in this area, you can check out The Daniel Plan: 40 Days to a Healthier Lifeyourself and get a group together to do the program with wherever you live.

Either way, it’s time for a little fixing-up on God's house.

“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.”  (Romans 12:1)