In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will guide your paths. Proverbs 3: 6.

It is a bit of a misrepresentation to say my life is wholly given to Christ as I continue withholding part, if not all of it from Him.

I claim to be fully integrated, to be one in Christ Jesus, without beginning to grasp, let alone incorporate Him into my work or family or interests. As a garden needs a gardener, so I need the comforter, God’s own Spirit, to oversee my renovation into a sacred space for God. When I open my body to be a sanctuary for God’s Spirit, He can take this potholed, graveled life and transform my thoughts into branches of his word and my actions into the fruit of his love.

Wholly giving myself to God means that sometimes the gardener wants to dig deeper in my heart than I feel comfortable with, or He chooses to cultivate within me a type of fruit I am not especially keen on. Whatever the issue, several times each day I am tempted to retake part of myself. I conveniently assure myself I am the one who can best attend to the weeding, reseeding, watering, and general maintenance. Invariably, more and more of my life is taken over by my whims and predilections, and less of it is in the hands of the Holy Spirit. Soon what was once a vibrant garden decays into an array of desiccated plants--a desert.

Every day I make choices about who will be the gardener of the moments in my life. Holistic Spirituality is about choosing God’s Spirit, willfully integrating all that I am into the purpose of God’s love. If I live to show God’s glory through every particle of my being, then I need His gardener tending to my soul.

Or didn't you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don't you see that you can't live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20