Self-improvement Necessary to Christian Growth
For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's. 1 Corinthians 6:20.
Our first duty toward God and our fellow beings is that of self-development. Every faculty with which the Creator has endowed us should be cultivated to the highest degree of perfection, that we may be able to do the greatest amount of good which we are capable. Hence that time is spent to good account which is directed to the establishment and preservation of sound physical and mental health.5Child Guidance, 395.
Man is God's workmanship, His masterpiece, created for a high and holy purpose; and on every part of the human tabernacle God desires to write His law.... Every nerve and muscle, every mental and physical endowment, is to be kept pure.
God designs that the body shall be as a temple for His Spirit. Solemn is the accountability resting upon every soul. Your individual influence is exercised for good or for evil. If you defile your body, you are not only doing harm to yourself, but to many others. Christians are under obligation to God to keep soul, body, and spirit free from all that will defile; for they have been bought with a price....
No man or woman has any right to form habits which lessen the healthful action of one organ of mind or body.... Those who give themselves up to the use of tobacco and liquor do not appreciate their intellect. They do not realize the value of the faculties God has given them, to be cultivated and improved. Thus men allow their powers to wither and decay. God desires all who believe in Him to feel the necessity of improvement. Every entrusted faculty is to be enlarged. Not one gift is to be laid aside. As God's husbandry and building, man is under His supervision in every sense of the word, and the better he becomes acquainted with his Maker, the more sacred will his life become in his estimation.6Manuscript 130, 1899.
From Sons and Daughters of God - Page 313
Sons and Daughters of God