SPEAKER_00: 0:02

Hi, and welcome to our podcast, Revelation Within on the Go. I am Heidi Biotma Epperson, one of your hosts, and the owner and lead coach of the RevelationWithin.org ministry.

SPEAKER_01: 0:15

And I'm Christina Botley, your other host, also a Revelation Within coach, and Heidi's partner in all things Revelation Within. We are so happy to invite you to join us for this episode of Revelation Within.

SPEAKER_00: 0:40

Oh my goodness. Welcome back, friends. Welcome back. Yeah, today we're gonna talk about something really tender. Not that we've done that lately at all. Honestly, it's universal as well. And that is we're gonna talk about the body you are in today.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02

The body I'm in today, the body you're listening to, and everybody listening and the I'm in today. Okay. So not the future body, not the someday body, not the body after you finally get it together. Will that ever happen? Let's talk about that body. Let's not say we did. Okay, so we're talking about the body that we woke up with this morning, right?

SPEAKER_00: 1:32

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Because you really, for so many of us, the body has become a problem to solve instead of a place to live. And I'm not just my heart aches about that for so many of us. Yeah. When food struggles are involved, the body can feel like an enemy. And you know what I just have to say, because both Christina and I have had our bodies kind of go through some things lately. And well, for me, things, yeah, many things, many things. And sometimes it feels like they've betrayed us.

SPEAKER_01: 2:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 2:08

So if you can relate to that, you are in the right place.

SPEAKER_01: 2:12

In the right place, absolutely. So let's go to Psalm 139, which is my very favorite psalm in the in the whole Bible, in the whole book of Psalms. Um, verses 13 and 14. For you formed my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

SPEAKER_00: 2:38

You know what? I picture God leaning in and doing these little stitches.

SPEAKER_01: 2:43

Yes, I was just gonna say the same thing. I was gonna say, I was picturing my grandma knitting. She knitted, she crocheted, she did little stitches, embroidery, all the different things. And as soon as I read that, you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I had that same image. You and I had it at the same time. Um, so what is the truth here from this beautiful, beautiful passage? Before your body, my body, ever felt like a burden, it was a beloved creation. God took his time, you know, he took great care to make our bodies for us. And he made a Heidi body for you, and he made a Christina body for me. And for anyone who's listening, put your name there. And he made that body just for you. It was a beloved creation, it was a masterpiece. Yep, God's declaration over your body came before your opinions about it, my opinions about it, and his word still stands. How about that?

SPEAKER_00: 3:55

You know, it's so funny because I'm picturing him taking great care. When I was born, I came out of the womb with a huge head of bright orange hair. Bright orange hair. Oh, my gosh. So he's like, wait, one more finishing touch. Let's put a bunch of hair on her head and let's make it bright red.

SPEAKER_01: 4:19

Oh, I love that, Heidi. And I love imagining it, and I love him. I am I love imagining him thinking about that. You know, like, let's add one finishing touch, and this this is gonna be it. I love that. That was part of your Heidi body. Yes, it was. It still is. I was totally bald when I was born, and I'm totally bald now. Yeah, but chemo is the reason for that now. Yeah, right. Well, maybe not totally. I've got a little bit of peach buzz going on. Good job. Anyway, yeah, we'll see what comes of that.

SPEAKER_00: 5:00

We have a planner called Radiant Grace, and you can download it for free. Just go to revelationwithin.org forward slash planner. And um, yeah, you can see what we're talking about as we go through the next four podcast episodes. And we thought that we would bring this back into our private community, but Christina and I didn't want to leave anybody out, so we're bringing you four podcast episodes about it as well.

SPEAKER_01: 5:27

Yes, and the planner is beautiful, it is just beautiful. You definitely want to take advantage of this and download it. So, and this whole idea of gradient grace is just really hitting me in my heart. We had a community get-together devotion about it at the beginning of the week. And wow, I just I don't know, Heidi, how you do that. I guess it's God that does that. Yeah, he's like, okay, this is gonna hit Christina's heart and lots and lots of other people as well. But it it was beautiful. I love the message of radiant grace, which is God's message. So, radiant grace, it begins with a very radical idea. Actually, a lot of a lot of God's ideas are radical, aren't they? They're so radical. I love that about them. I love that. So here's the idea. What if your body, let's do a what if here. What if your body is not the obstacle to peace, but the place where peace is meant to be practiced? Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00: 6:38

Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, that isn't that a great question. Yeah, just think on that for a bit. Yeah, we'll see you next time. Bye.

SPEAKER_01: 6:50

Revelation within.

SPEAKER_00: 6:53

All right, let's look at another scripture, and this is like our main verse with our for our ministry, Romans 12.1, although 12.2 is the main main verse. The main main um, verse one of chapter 12 says, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. Wow, beautiful. You know, worship isn't performed by perfect bodies, it's not no, we don't need to have perfect bodies in worship. Oh, that's a relief. Okay, good. Yeah, it's offered through willing bodies. Your body right now is a place where worship can happen, through which worship can happen. God delights in the worship you offer him. He's not standing there with a clipboard saying, Nope, you haven't quite cut the muster. Whatever. Yeah, it's not like going out for a team in school and being cut from the team before you ever get going. So your body right now is a place where worship and through which worship can happen, and God rejoices in that. Grace meets us as we are. That's I mean, we may not appreciate that because we want to change all the time. But what if right where you are today, right as your body is today, grace meets you right there, not as we have promised to be, not once we fix ourselves up, but right now as we are. We want to really get that in our heads and hearts.

SPEAKER_01: 8:34

So Isaiah 42, 3, a bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. Is this a verse you've read lately? It's not one that I've read lately. It's not one of those refrigerator magnet verses. But here's the idea, the truth behind it. God does not handle fragile things with force, right? I mean, he doesn't, he doesn't. We do, we do, we tend to. Um, if your relationship with your body feels bruised, his posture towards you is gentleness, not pressure. Wow, that is exactly what I'm feeling right now. I am feeling bruised. I'm feeling bruised in my body.

SPEAKER_00: 9:26

Well, yeah, you know, can we just share a little bit with, and I'll just share if that's okay with you, Christina. Other than the fact that her body has been fighting a battle against cancer, um, she has gone through incredible amounts of chemotherapy every week for a bazillion trillion nine hundred million weeks, it seems like this bestie in the wings and immunotherapy. And on top of that, she had what they call at the hospital. I'm sorry, this is just wrong, morally wrong, red devil chemotherapy. Oh man, and I'm not even gonna go there, but she had to have four of those. Four, yeah, and then that will be she had a surgery right after that. I'm not this just seems like wait, what? Um, this was all done to your body. I mean, this is what's been done to your body, and she's got she's not done yet, she's got some radiation ahead too, and more immunotherapy ahead. And is your body feeling a little fragile right now? Yeah, well, that makes total sense.

SPEAKER_01: 10:36

I'm having you know, things happen with my body that are an aftermath of the chemo.

SPEAKER_00: 10:42

Yeah, like no thyroid and and pneemia.

SPEAKER_01: 10:45

Yeah, I didn't know about the, you know, I didn't expect, I don't know what to expect next, you know, like what else is coming down the road? I don't know, but yeah, I mean that the idea of feeling bruised, and maybe that is, you know, something that some of you out there are feeling as well who are listening. And um, Heidi, maybe you're feeling that way too. And it doesn't have to be like bruises that show up on your arm, which I actually have quite a few of, um, but from that IV that they couldn't get in. Yeah, but it can also be kind of an inside and like an internal bruising, you know, where our hearts feel bruised about our body. When we think about radiant grace, let's get back to that, the truth of God's word. Radiant grace invites us to ask different questions rather than, oh my gosh, what's wrong with my body? What's wrong with me? I can't do this anymore. Well, that's not a question. Um, what is wrong? Maybe instead, we want to ask, what is my body trying to tell me? My body says, that's enough.

SPEAKER_00: 12:02

It's funny because when Christina and I got on today, one of the first things she said to me was, My body may be speaking, but I don't either I don't know what it's trying to say. And I remember feeling that way in 2014. I just okay, my body has either stopped talking to me or it's speaking a different language because I don't. But you know, if we invite God into that struggle, whether it's because of an illness, an injury, or something chronic, or just our own struggles with uh the things that we want to indulge in, we can invite God into that and ask him to show us what is my body needing, what is it trying to tell me? Because I'm listening, Lord, speak.

SPEAKER_01: 12:47

Yeah, and when we're used to our bodies kind of being a certain way for a long time, we just maybe expect that it's gonna be that way. And then when it isn't, it's like, oh, well, this is so strange and foreign. And it for me at least, it makes me feel out of sorts, insecure, kind of shaken at the core, really. You know, because we depend on our bodies. Um, and when we feel like, oh, well, that's never happened before, or oh, I've never quite felt this way, or well, I tried this and that was obviously the wrong thing. Um, you know, it's it's hard to be in that place. And Heidi and I get that. We get it. Yeah, absolutely. We get it.

SPEAKER_00: 13:32

So scripture speaks about our bodies uh in a number of places, and one of the verses that also speaks of our bodies is First Corinthians 6, 19 and 20. Um, your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, the Shekinah glory of God. Wow, what you are not even mean. Yeah, and we don't belong to ourselves, we belong to God. And you know what I think is so fascinating about this is that years ago, years and years and years ago, when when there were first instructions from God about the building of the tabernacle and then later the temple, everything was so ornate. In order for God's presence to be welcomed there, He required certain things to be very detailed. You're gonna have this uh carving here, you're gonna have this substance here, you're gonna have these tapestries, and they're gonna be these colors and so on and so forth. And now, instead of all of this gorgeous opulence that we might have imagined with the descriptions that we find in the old testament, he's he's not in there, he's in us, right? We are his chosen dwelling places that blows my mind, and it is my mind blowing. Yes, we are not our own to do with as we please. He wants you, he wants me, and the bodies we woke up with this morning. That's where he chooses to be. If you are in Christ, you have the Holy Spirit of God in you, that's amazing. So a temple isn't scrutinized, it's honored. So you don't sit there and criticize a temple of God. Yeah, but we do, we do, we do that. Yes, and he doesn't wait for you to fix yourself or to doll yourself up or to be a smaller size or to look better or look different, get rid of the wrinkles, or whatever it is that you kind of obsess about. I know what I obsess about, yeah, but he just wants to live in you because he chooses to.

SPEAKER_01: 15:39

That's why he wants you to be his, and just to be sure, you are talking about the bodies that we woke up in, right?

SPEAKER_00: 15:49

I am just to be sure, yeah. No, yeah. I mean, like, what are the implications of that for you, Christina? That that God wants to be in the body, and he is in the body you woke up in this morning. What does that mean to you?

SPEAKER_01: 16:05

Well, it means that I need to accept the body that I have right now. That's hard, that's a hard one for me, and especially in this season when I don't know what my body is speaking to me, my rhythms are all different, my patterns are different, everything feels like it has changed. Um, I can't seem to depend on the way things were before at all. And so, in some ways, maybe that's freeing. I kind of feel like I'm starting all over again with the Lord in terms of my body, but in some ways it's a little bit scary because it's like, Lord, what are you asking of me? But when you say that, Heidi, when you say you are free to worship with the body that you woke up with this morning, that is freeing to me. I feel like that's actually a beautiful statement of truth that I need to renew my mind about. I need to make peace with kind of my new body, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00: 17:07

Yeah, yeah. Your body has been fighting a battle, and it's really easy to say, oh, shape up, body, or quit griping body, or you know, I mean, the red blood cells grow faster, replicate faster. Can I have a new thyroid God, please?

SPEAKER_01: 17:25

No, and and then there's a lot of waiting involved in this season for me. A lot of waiting. It's gonna be slow. Recovery is slow, and the more I read about this, the more I talk to my doctors about it, the more I realize we're talking like snail's pace. It's gonna be really slow before my body really rebounds. And things are gonna be different for always. I'm not gonna go back to having the same body working the same way before all of this happened. It's just not gonna be that way. No, there's gonna be different challenges, there's gonna be, you know, different blessings as well. There's gonna be new things. I don't know what they are, but God does, and He is still the one that made this temple. My body is still fearfully and wonderfully made.

SPEAKER_00: 18:19

It is still fearfully and wonderfully made.

SPEAKER_01: 18:21

And yours is too, Heidi.

SPEAKER_00: 18:24

Yes, it is.

SPEAKER_01: 18:25

Yes, it is, but it's hard to wrap my brain around that. It's something that God and I need to sit down and talk about often, I think.

SPEAKER_00: 18:34

Yeah, well, you and me both for sure. So we want to invite you into something today. Uh, you know, sit with the Lord a little bit, invite him into a moment and try to soften your shoulders because so many of us hold our shoulders up by our ears and we don't even realize it. That's true, it is true, yeah. So invite him into a moment where you're softening your shoulders, notice the position or the tightness in your jaw and try to relax that. Take some deep breaths, maybe do a breath prayer, and then tell your body and ask God again to help you with this. I'm listening, I'm listening. I want to know what you need, body, or God, I want to know what my body needs, what it is saying to me. Does it need rest? Does it need to move, maybe? Ask God into that. If you can do that, that is an example of radiant grace. It really is. The kindness, the tenderness, the gentleness that we can show our own bodies who do so much for us. They do so much for us. I mean, think about it. If you stop and think about how does my body serve me and serve others and serve God, we could go on and on with a really long list. Yeah, and that might be a good idea for some of us. But anyway, just listen to what your body is saying today. Ask God to show you uh how to listen in the language your body is speaking in.

SPEAKER_01: 20:10

Yeah, absolutely. You know, something just came to mind, Heidi, that you shared with me years ago, and you shared, I think, with all of the ladies that you've coached, but that when you are looking in the mirror and you're unhappy or unsettled about what you see, to change your thoughts out for what has my body done? How does God use my body? How has God used my body? And changing out those thoughts. So, for example, if you're thinking, oh, you know, you're focused on how you look, or like you said, the wrinkles, or whatever it is that we can be so critical of our bodies, right? But then replace those thoughts, which is what mind renewal is. Replace those thoughts with these are the arms that hug my kids every time I see them. You know, these are the legs that are walking around and going here and there and and going where God is asking me to go.

SPEAKER_00: 21:06

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 21:06

Exactly. This is the mind that God is using to speak to me about his own thoughts and about what he's calling me to. And so focusing on that instead of how you look or what's external. And it really is a game changer because God gave us our bodies to use for his special purposes.

SPEAKER_00: 21:33

Yes. In fact, uh, one of my favorite verses is Ephesians 2 10. You are God's masterpiece, his poetry in motion, his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for you to do. It'll be awesome.

SPEAKER_01: 21:58

We are so glad that you've been here. Today with us, and we would love love love to invite you to join us for our next episode of Revelation Within On the Go. See you next time. See you next time. Bye bye. Bye.