Your Body: Taking Care of That Divine Gift

By Gail Newbold

Church Magazines

Our bodies are gifts from God and the temples for our spirits, but it takes self-mastery and discipline to nourish and care for them properly.

It’s easy to take our good health for granted—that is, until those 10 sodas a day, a sedentary lifestyle, and a lack of sleep catch up to us. Or maybe despite the healthy choices we make, genetics deal an unexpected blow and health challenges hit.

We’ve all been given different degrees of physical health that we can’t always control. But one thing is certain: God’s plan calls for us to improve upon what we’ve been given. Doing so requires the same self-discipline and dedication we need to nurture our spiritual health. That means mastering our natural tendency to sit instead of run, eat sweets instead of vegetables, and stay up late instead of sleeping.

As we seek inspiration to improve our physical health and as we develop the self-discipline to maintain it, we’ll discover a greater capacity to serve God and to find joy.

Your Body Is a Temple

Souls thrive when spirit and body are well tended. “The spirit and the body are the soul of man” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:15). Commenting on this verse, President Russell M. Nelson taught that both body and spirit “are of great importance. Your physical body is a magnificent creation of God. It is His temple as well as yours and must be treated with reverence.”

At age 99, President Nelson continues to perform his duties as President of the Church, while acknowledging that he sometimes uses a walker for balance and now prefers delivering his general conference addresses while seated. “From time to time, I’m having a small challenge with my balance,” he wrote on his social media page in May 2023. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when little issues arise as I near the century mark. Gratefully, my heart is good, my spirit is strong as are my legs, and my brain still works.”

President Nelson is known for his vigilant health practices and active lifestyle. Always a lean man, he worked hard to stay that way. He exercised regularly, preferring to be outdoors. Into his 90s, he shoveled snow from his own and the neighbors’ sidewalks, rolled garbage cans back to garages, and worked in his yard. Until he became President of the Church, he skied as often as his schedule allowed.

Developing Self-Discipline

We know the basics of good physical health:

Exercise regularly.
Get adequate sleep.
Eat a balanced diet.
Maintain a healthy weight.
Manage stress.

The trick is getting our body to do what our spirit knows it should. According to President Nelson, one of the tests of mortality is mastering the appetites of our body by the spirit that dwells within it:

“Satan knows the power of our appetites. So, he tempts us to eat things we should not eat, to drink things we should not drink. …

“When we truly know our divine nature, we will want to control such appetites. … In daily prayer, we will gratefully acknowledge [God] as our Creator and thank Him for the magnificence of our own physical temple. We will care for it and cherish it as our own personal gift from God.”

Nurturing Gratitude and Finding Joy in the Body God Gave Us

At age 27 and as the mother of three, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease that destroys the joints over time. My life careened out of control physically and mentally. I turned to God for help in regaining the mental stability and excellent health I had previously taken for granted.

I sought help from a psychologist for my anxiety. I worked with a rheumatologist on which medications to take and used natural solutions as well. I never gave up. After many years and much anguish, my health improved physically and mentally.

I remember one afternoon hiking past a sea of wildflowers to a mountain lake. With tears rolling down my face, I thanked God for the blessing of my physical body and my ability to engage in an activity I thought was lost to me. There’s no cure for my condition, and the disease has taken a visible toll on my body. But hiking and exercising have become my passions, and I never take my health for granted.

Despite my physical limitations, I recently served a senior mission with my husband in Washington, USA (which is a hiking mecca!). I’m thankful to have served throughout my life in almost every Church calling available.

As President Nelson said: “May we ever be grateful for the incredible blessing of a magnificent physical body, the supreme creation of our loving Heavenly Father. As great as our body is, it is not an end in itself. It is an essential part of God’s great plan of happiness for our eternal progression.”