Faith Embodied
Glorifying God with Our Physical and Spiritual Health
- Christian Living
- Publisher: Zondervan Reflective (Zondervan)
- Published: 2024
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Publisher's Description
Scientist, physician, and pastor Stephen Ko explains how to live and worship incarnationally and glorify God with our bodies. Many of us don't see much connection between spiritual and physical health. We say grace before digging into greasy, fatty meals we know are bad for us. We read Scripture on our phones before switching to social media feeds that hijack the neural circuitry in our brains. Or we take our physical health too seriously, distancing ourselves from the sick and the needy whom Jesus embraced. On his journey from pediatrician to public health officer for the CDC to senior pastor of the largest New York Chinese Alliance Church, Stephen Ko has seen that these divisions between physical and spiritual health are artificial. In Faith Embodied, he reminds us that our "bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit" (1 Corinthians 6:19). Christ incarnate is deity in flesh, and His spirit is incarnate in us. Living and worshiping incarnationally is consciously embracing what the Creator has designed in His image, from the finest, microscopic details to vital organs within our body, enabling the Holy Spirit to work in us. Faith Embodied will teach you to: Understand subconscious ways that thwart the design of the Creator. Embrace choices that invite incarnational health, living, and worship. Experience God in every aspect of your life, from flesh and bone to heart and soul. View the five senses (sight, smell, hearing, touch, taste) in a different light Reflect the image of God in the way you breathe, move, create, love, and rest. Weaving together insights from faith, science, and medicine, Ko reveals the marvelous ways in which our physical and spiritual health can prepare us to become instruments of God's healing in the world. A companion streaming video study is also available.
Endorsements (16)
“Faith Embodied leads us to reflect on how the way God made us impacts our souls and spirits. It is an eye-opening look at things we often take for granted about the way we are made and function. Read it to learn much about who we are and how we can flourish.”
“practical so that you can understand how much physical and spiritual healing are linked. Understanding this is integral to disciple-making in our time.”
“Read Stephen Ko’s new book, which links physical and spiritual wellness in a way you have never thought about before. You will look at things differently once you read his insights into both health and Scripture.”
“This is a beautiful book filled with anecdotes drawn from Rev. Ko’s unique combination of medical and pastoral experience. Rev. Ko fills the reader with appreciation for our bodiliness as part of God’s purpose and incentivizes us to make the most of our senses and faculties by offering them in love and worship. A life-changing resource for individuals and churches.”
“As a medical doctor and a health practitioner, Dr. Stephen Ko acquaints us afresh with the glories of our human bodies. As a pastor and a theologian, he helps us marvel at how the imago Dei incarnated in each magnificent human body is wonderfully matched by the “exact image of the Godhead” manifested in the unique, incarnate Son of God. He reminds us that worship of the creator and sharing of his redemptive love are beautifully experienced and expressed, as God intended, in flesh.”
“Drawing on his rich background as pediatrician, epidemiologist, public health officer, professor, and pastor, Stephen Ko has made a significant contribution to a Christian understanding of the human body. Faith Embodied lucidly applies a biblical and theological understanding to spiritual development, worship, and everyday life. I highly recommend this readable, engaging book.”
“It’s not often one encounters a book that is a perfect blend of Scripture, theology, stories, and medical expertise. But Dr. Stephen Ko has provided readers with just such a book in Faith Embodied. You will learn so much as you read it, not just about the wonders of the physical body but also about the spiritual implications of what it means to be created in God’s image. This is a deeply encouraging and insightful book with a holistic depiction of faith that will feed your mind, body, and soul.”
“We need doctors for our bodies. We need them increasingly for our minds as well. With Stephen Ko, we have a doctor for body, mind, and spirit, someone who can gently probe various ways we are broken by sin and guide us to Jesus, who redeems. Read this book and discover more fully what it means to be fearfully and wonderfully made by God.”
Dr. Walter Kim
“our physical health. Because he usually works through what he has already created, however, he invites us to be good stewards of the health resources he has already provided.”
“After reading this book, you will be inspired to echo the gratitude and wonder of the psalmist: “Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex. Your workmanship is marvelous; how well I know it!” (Ps. 139:14 NLT). Dr. Stephen Ko, physician, epidemiologist, and theologian, writes as the Paul Brand of our day to integrate amazing insights into human anatomy, physiology, and pathology with biblical truth about our creator and the Christian faith. Faith Embodied will likely produce in readers a faith emboldened as they gain a greater understanding of how our bodies tell God’s loving and redemptive story.”
Dr. Michael Chupp
“Drawing upon his theological training and his medical expertise, Rev. Dr. Ko eloquently reflects on the integration of physical function with worship and Christian service. This book emphatically offers a remedy to the divorce of the physical and the spiritual.”
“and proclaim as a global common need.”
“As a seminary dean and professor for twenty-five years, I have taught a course on divine healing many times. This book, Faith Embodied, by my dear friend Dr. Stephen Ko, is a gift from God. It brilliantly bridges the gap between the physical and the spiritual. I will be using it as a text in my next course.”
Dr. Ronald Walborn
“This book is an educational, informational, and motivating read. It has challenged me to look more closely at much of what I take for granted regarding regarding our senses, creativity, rest, and worship. By grounding his descriptions and prescriptions solidly on the Word of God and his revelation in the incarnation of our Lord (looking to Jesus), Ko ensures this book’s timeless value.”
“Faith Embodied offers a fresh call to love the Lord with heart, soul, mind, and strength. Dr. Ko combines a biological analysis of our five senses and movements with a call to a fully embodied life of worship. He invites us to embrace an integrated vision of health and spirituality flowing out of the divine intent for human beings created in the image of God.”
“In earlier times, pastors understood their work to be the cure of souls, in the same way that today’s physicians understand their work to be the cure of bodies. Stephen Ko embraces both responsibilities. As a physician and a pastor, he delights in the intricate beauty and mystery our bodies and souls reveal. He discerns how our embodiment shapes our spiritual lives. He diagnoses where we ail. And he knows what healthy means. In Faith Embodied, Ko turns a doctor’s eye and a pastor’s heart to our lives—our gloriously and mysteriously embodied lives—and prescribes a way that leads to a life that glorifies God.”
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