A Body I Had Started To Resent

"I hate it," she said.

Then she put her hand over her mouth, the way you would if you had sworn in church.

There were two of us at that table and a pot of tea going cold between us, and she looked at the door as though somebody might have heard. I told her to say it again. She would not, at first. Then she said it again, quieter, and then a third time with her whole chest, and the third one came out with fourteen years behind it.

Fourteen years. It has a name, the thing she has. The name arrived in a letter and it did not help as much as everybody promised it would. What she has instead of help is a routine: the tablets in the drawer by the sink, the appointment she does not cancel, the good fortnight, the bad fortnight, the wedding she left early, the swimming she stopped, the jar she cannot open and will not ask about.

And somewhere in year six, without ever deciding to, she started talking about herself in the third person.

Stupid hands. Useless legs. Come on, you. She says it going up the stairs. She says it at the sink at half past nine when the jar will not go. It is not really swearing and it is not really praying, it is the running commentary of a woman who has been let down so many times by the same house that she has begun to speak about it the way you speak about a bad neighbor.

She looked at me over that cold tea and said the thing underneath it, which is the reason I am writing this to you.

"I feel like it did this to me."

Now here is where I stop telling you about her, because I think you have said one of those sentences this week. Perhaps not out loud. Perhaps just in the car, or on the third stair, or in the moment the lid does not shift. There is a part of you that has quietly become the accused, and it has been standing in the dock for years with nobody to speak for it.

The one part of this that never chose any of it

Let me put something to you gently, and then I will show you where it comes from.

Your body did not do this to you. Your body is the part of you that has been carrying it.

Think about what it has actually done since this began. It got you up on the mornings you did not think it could. It got you to the appointment, and back from the appointment, and up the stairs afterwards. It has been running a fever of effort for years on a fraction of the fuel other people use, and it has kept your heart going through every single night you could not sleep, without being asked, without being thanked, and without one day off.

It has not been your opponent. It has been your co-worker, and it is the only one in this whole business that never gets to clock off.

So the war in your house is a case of mistaken identity, and I would like it called off today, because there is a Word underneath your body that most people never get told.

Or do you not know that your body is a dwelling of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought at a price. So bring glory to God in your body.1 Corinthians 6:19 and 20

Read what that says about the address you are living at.

Not a machine that is failing its warranty. Not a bad car you are stuck with. A dwelling. The word means a house that somebody actually lives in, and the somebody is the Holy Spirit of God, and He has not given notice, and He did not move out when the pain moved in.

That is the part I want you to sit with for a moment. He is at home in a house that hurts.

He was not driven off by the flare in March. He is not waiting outside on the step for the good fortnight so He can come back in. Wherever it is worst in you at this moment, that is not the part of the house He avoids. That is where He is sitting.

And you were bought at a price. Whatever your body has cost you, look what God was willing to pay for it. You are living in something He valued at the cost of His own Son, and no letter from any clinic has ever revalued it and none ever will.

Now here is what belongs to you, and it is not a technique.

You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the authority to speak to what is in your house has been handed to you, delegated the way keys are handed to somebody the owner trusts. Faith the size of a mustard seed, said the Lord, spoken to the mountain. Spoken to it, not felt about it. You do not have to work up a feeling first. A key does not care how the hand holding it feels, it turns because it fits a lock that God cut.

But hear which way the key points, because this is where people get hurt.

You speak to the pain. You do not speak against the body. The pain is the tenant that came in without a lease. The body is the house, and it belongs to God, and it is not on trial in this room.

Two more things, and I want them plainly said.

Keep your appointments. Keep taking what your doctor gives you, and ring them about anything new. This is bread for a hard morning, not a replacement for the care God has already put in human hands, and nothing in this message ever asks you to step back from it.

And if it hurts exactly the same tomorrow, hear me: that is not a verdict on you. Not on your faith, not on how well you said it, not on whether you meant it enough. We do not carry the burden of proof to you and then hand you the bill for the result. What is being asked of you here is one thing only, which is to stop fighting the wrong opponent.