To be used for good works

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (NKJV)

19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.

The Apostle Paul reminds the Church of Corinth that their bodies are now the temple in which the Holy Spirit resides. God use to be only present in the inner most part of the temple, but now His Holy spirit resides in the bodies of those who have placed their faith in Christ. Therefore they should treat themselves with respect just as they would for the temple.

To those of us in the West, he is known only as "The Traveler." He is one of the persons who helps distribute goods inside North Korea. Despite the ever-present danger of exposure, The Traveler remains an unpretentious and simple man. He looks more like a blue-collar factory worker than the Korean James Bond, but that's one of the keys to his success. He's adept at blending in, remaining both vigilant and decisive.

It's a matter of survival.

He has served Open Doors for years, and yet we don't even know his real name. We never will. The fewer people who know it, the better, for if his secret work on behalf of God's people were ever to be discovered, it would mean a brutal death sentence for him.

When [our] leaders spoke to him, we asked him what the church in North Korea prays for. This ostensibly emotionless man who puts his life on the line every day—often for people he's never even met living in cities he's never visited—began to weep.

He told of a church movement that has remained underground ever since the fifties. In order to wipe Christianity from the face of the land, Kim II-sung's soldiers herded entire congregations into the streets and ran them over with bulldozers. Thousands of men, women, and children—nearly all of them North Korean citizens—were literally crushed to death, their remains … used to line roadbeds throughout the surrounding cities.

Today, under Kim's son Kim Jon-il, there are [around] 240,000 believers, direct descendants of those who were left behind …. [These] North Korean believers are prayerfully focused on one purpose: to be in place and fulfill God's will for their lives. Their prayer is a prayer for liberation, for lifting of the darkness, for a possibility to reopen the churches of their ancestors, and for reconciliation ….

So despite the dangers, The Traveler continues to [risk his life in order to] equip believers with commentaries, Bibles, radio resources, training, and encouragement to keep them focused on the Lord.

[Carl Moeller and David Hegg, The Privilege of Persecution (Moody Publishers, 2011), pp. 67-68, 70]

We can put our bodies to use to do good works or works of evil; it is our choice to make. But we are reminded that our bodies are where the Holy Spirit resides; for we are the temples of Christ. Therefore we should use our bodies for good works and not that of sin.