The true key to real success in our health, work, schooling, relationships– you name it– is nurturing our souls by giving them over to our Savior each and everyday. This key verse challenges us and reveals to us that a person who meditates in Jesus daily will have a life removed from shame, sadness, and fears. When we submit to God, we find true purpose, clarity, and ultimate joy. This is the challenge we wake up to each and every morning. The way we face this challenge we have in our souls influences every other part of our life.

What is the first thing you think when you walk into the gym? Is it “I’m incapable,” or “I’m not fit at all compared to all these other people?” Do you compare yourself to everyone else in the room or feed yourself unmotivating lies? The same exhaustion and self-deprecation that follow us around in life tends to follow us into the gym too, and most times, they tend to scream even louder. The enemy loves to get ahold of our insecurities and inflate them like a balloon as he sees us struggle, being afraid of the gym doors or the thought of even stepping on a treadmill. These are moments that the devil lives for, but also moments that do not have to be our reality.

Since Megan is in a body image series, I wanted to stay in the same vein this week: the body. Not just our body, but the body we are made in the image of– Jesus. If you skipped today's key verse, please go back and read it– no judgment, we all do it from time to time– and meditate on it. Really think about what it means; it’s multi-pointed.

One of my biggest struggles that God has grown me in over the years is learning to have a healthy outlook on my body. As a child, I was a bigger kid and I was very insecure about my weight. When I went to middle school I thinned out very quickly and my mindset from then on was “I have to stay this way”. Since then I have been pretty consistent in the gym all of high school and college. My main struggle has been having a healthy outlook about going to the gym and being healthy as well as controlling the number on the scale. It is a hard but vital struggle to learn to see your health as God sees it.

If I find in myself desires nothing in this world can satisfy, I can only conclude that I was not made for here. I first heard this incredibly personal lyric on an old Brooke Fraser (now Ligertwood) CD when I was 12 years old. I remember hearing the rest of the song and feeling understood in a way I never anticipated before. Suddenly, something deep inside me felt seen and spoken for as I hungrily listened. The statement behind the lyrics comes from C.S. Lewis, the man this song is named after. His version goes a little like this: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”