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Faithful with Health • 11.15.25
Faithful with Health
1 Timothy 4:1-8 + 1 Corinthians 6:12-20
Submitting our view and pursuit of health to God's Word
Manuscript:
Good morning, church family! (Welcome guests + introduce self)
Dismiss 4th + 5th graders
Ushers + Bibles (1 Timothy 4; page _)
In our sermon series this November, we are focusing on A Faithful Life. I want to share with you again the four stewardship principles that drive what we’re discussing this month:
Over the past two weeks, we’ve studied how we are to be good stewards of our finances and our time. I trust that those studies were helpful for you in considering whether you are being wise or foolish in your stewardship of what God has entrusted to you in those areas. I know I spent a lot more time this past week reminding myself not to be unrighteous in my use of time.
Today, we are broaching a topic that is perhaps even more important than the previous two. This area of stewardship is foundational for carrying out our purpose both here on earth in this life and in heaven for all eternity. Today we are addressing Faithful with Health.
Now, when I say health, I mean both physical and spiritual health. The Bible is quite clear that God made us both body and soul. We are comprised of both material and immaterial substances. We’ve spoken about this in previous weeks as our outer and inner man. Wisely stewarding both our physical and spiritual health is necessary to live a godly life that pleases the Lord.
If you think back over the last two sermons, hopefully you recall Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5 about Christians being salt and light in the earth, as well as the plan of God from Genesis 1 that we would be visible representatives of the invisible God. These passages speak about the importance of our conduct in THE BODY as well as the importance of holiness in OUR SOUL to carry out God’s mission! If we neglect the health of either our body or soul, we risk compromising our ability to carry out the purpose for which God made us! We will struggle and perhaps even fail to live a faithful life.
My goal in our time together today is to convince you, from God’s Word, that God has given us clear direction on how we are to be wise stewards of both body and soul. I want you to be aware of the beauty of God’s design, that we are both body and soul, and that caring for each is necessary and important to fulfill our calling to glorify God. My aim is to get to the heart of these matters, answering questions like:
I’m not interested in solely addressing behavior, but at getting to the heart of who or what we’re worshiping in these matters.
The premise behind this sermon series is that God has made us to accurately represent and reflect his majesty as we live righteous and godly lives in this present age. I’ll remind you this morning… A faithful life is the expectation, not the exception.
You were created to live faithfully (to be a wise steward) and God, as the Creator and Designer of all things, has told you the way to a faithful life, in both body and soul. Let’s see what he has to say! Starting with Paul’s first letter to his disciple, Timothy.
1 Timothy 4:1–5 (ESV)
Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, 2 through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, 3 who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. 4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, 5 for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.
In this section of his letter, Paul is instructing Timothy in what God the Holy Spirit has warned about – that there will be people who abandon their once-professed faith because they have been deceived by lying spirits and demonic teachings. These falsehoods are promoted and perpetuated by false teachers who are insincere liars with seared consciences! Whoa, Paul has some blunt words from God about such people. And did you notice what such hard-hearted people teach? Look again at verse 3. “who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.” They are corrupting the truth about the physical creation that God had made and ordained – both marriage and food.
Throughout history, there have been false teachers who have sought to lie and mislead people about what God really says about both body and soul! This has taken the form of those who believe that the body is inherently bad and teach that extreme forms of self-denial or self-punishment must be practiced. Yet it has also taken the form of extreme indulgence, that the body is to be worshiped and that our appetites, whether for food or sex or comfort or power ought to be indulged at all costs. Both are false, yet they have led many astray!
And please do not think that these kinds of false teaching are limited to the past. There are still echoes of these lies in the present. Perhaps most obviously is the false teaching on indulging yourself – do whatever you want, no one gets to tell you how to live, you deserve it, and a myriad of other sayings or perspectives on having no restraints to indulging your desires. This is the view of the majority in our secular culture, but it still seeps into Christians and the church too. On the other end of the spectrum, are those who go beyond the teachings of Scripture to restrain the body, implying that the Bible requires no dancing, no drinking of alcohol, or that physical pleasure is always bad, even though the Bible clearly does not teach these things and even gives specific instructions on how to handle them. They have elevated their personal convictions to Biblical commands.
Here is my point. As people made in God’s image and living in God’s creation, we must submit our view and pursuit of health to God’s Word. He is our source of truth, and we are wise when we seek out his wisdom/ways and live according to them. As we’ve said in previous weeks, we are fools when we deviate from his wisdom/ways to live according to our own desires. So, once again, we are going to contrast the beauty of God’s way with the folly of any other way.
Submitting our view and pursuit of health to God's Word
Here is where it begins. We must…
This is our takeaway from 1 Timothy 4:1-5. As we’ve heard, there have been false teachers back in Paul and Timothy’s day, but they have persisted throughout history down into our day. This ought not to be surprising to anyone who knows their Bible, because, since Genesis 3, the enemy has been seeking to twist God’s Word to deceive as many as possible.
Genesis 3:1 (ESV)
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
False teachers throughout history have made a career out of asking “Did God actually say…?” followed by their take on how we ought to live. The Gnostics of the 2nd-3rd centuries taught that matter is evil, and the body is essentially a prison for the soul. This led them to reject marriage and to view physical pleasures as inherently corrupt. These ideas have continued to exist in some form or fashion throughout the ages. You may have heard of groups in the medieval period who would physically whip themselves to encourage putting off physical pleasure, believing this self-harm was a means of righteousness leading to salvation. Yikes! Or others who have removed themselves from society to live a monastic life that denies access to physical comforts. Even in our day, there are extreme fundamentalists who treat their rules as God’s commands. Or groups who deny modern medical care because “true faith” rejects earthly means. And these are only examples from groups that would call themselves Christian. I did not try to broaden my search to other worldviews but I’m sure we would find even more.
But even more prominent in our western culture are worldly views and false teaching that celebrate excess and indulgence. We are told that your best life now consists of obtaining material wealth, health, and prosperity and that God functions as a genie to provide it. Underlying this teaching is the concept that physical prosperity is what really matters, more than all else, even holiness. This is a modern parallel to John Bunyan’s vanity fair in his historic book The Pilgrim’s Progress. Worldly showiness cloaked in religious language. We live in the day and age of the celebrity pastor or influencers and online personalities. Both our secular culture and churches that call themselves Christian are pushing a message of be true to yourself, do what is right in your own eyes, no one can challenge your truth. This is often linked together with a selfish approach to life, which twists the emphasis to be about YOU rather than God’s glory. This is the posture of vanity or self-indulgence, and it is also to be avoided as unbiblical.
So, when we think about the question, why do we struggle to be faithful with health? The answer must be, in part, that there are so many competing messages out there on this matter that it is easy to be deceived.
But what does God say? Does he speak to these issues?
Yes, he does. In fact, 1 Timothy 4:4-5 set us up to realize this:
1 Timothy 4:4–5 (ESV)
4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, 5 for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.
God is good and everything he created is good, which includes our bodies and their appetites for food, intimacy, and so forth. Let’s consider what God’s word says about these matters:
Genesis 1:26–31 (ESV)
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.
30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
What was God’s conclusion after reviewing all his creation, including humans? It was very good. This is why Paul could state as much to Timothy in refutation of the false teachers of their day. Everything created by God is good and to be received with thanksgiving.
Now consider King David’s words in Psalm 139:
Psalm 139:13–14 (ESV)
13 For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
What is David’s response upon reflecting on God’s work in creating him? He praises God! He recognizes that what God has done is wonderful. Not only is the human body good, but it is also a marvel! A work of divine art. If you were to spend time investigating the level of detail in God’s design of the individual components of your body, you would be amazed too. If you’ve never looked up the complexity of a single cell of your body or of one of your organs or perhaps the function of your hands/feet, take some time this week to do so. And prepare to be amazed at God’s design! He put a lot of intentionality and thought into our bodies.
All this to say, God quite clearly values the body. He created it. His Son came in bodily form to redeem us from the curse of sin. And he intends to exchange our currently lowly body with a glorious body in heaven one day. Listen to Paul’s teaching to the church at Philippi:
Philippians 3:20–21 (ESV)
20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.
God cares about our body and soul. And, as we’ve heard in 1 Timothy 4:5, our approach to these matters is made holy by the Word and prayer. We must be informed by what God says and then respond appropriately.
Let’s keep reading in 1 Timothy 4 about what God says:
1 Timothy 4:6–8 (ESV)
6 If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. 7 Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; 8 for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.
God, through Paul, tells us that both godliness - ongoing reverence and obedience to God - (aka your spiritual health) and bodily training (physical health) are of value! We’ll come back to this passage to look at it in more detail in a bit, but let me take you to verses from our other primary passage for today:
1 Corinthians 6:19–20 (ESV)
19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
This passage provides an answer to one of our other questions - why should this be an important matter of stewardship to Christians? Because your body is a temple of God and it is to be used for his glory! Contrary to false teaching, your body is not for your glory but God’s. Which means, for Christians, how you live in the body must be driven by the pursuit of God’s glory.
Now, if you consider what we’ve just heard from these two passages, God cares about both spiritual and physical health. Both are important! Both have value and are significant in the pursuit of God’s glory. However, as we heard in 1 Timothy 4:8 pursuit of spiritual health (aka godliness) must be our higher priority, for it holds promise for this life and the one to come. Spiritual health is what prepares us to enter into eternity and stand before our Just Judge with the hope of hearing, “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master!”
However, that does not mean we are free to neglect our physical health! Realize that when Paul says bodily training is of some value, that is a statement of its importance, not insignificance. His comparison between spiritual and physical health is not between greater and lesser value, but greater and lesser impact in light of eternity. Bodily training or physical health only has impact in this present age that is passing away, but godliness or spiritual health has impact both in this age and the one to come.
So, in this present age, which we all live in until the day we die or Jesus returns, bodily training is valuable! Yet, while we are on this earth, we must submit our view and pursuit of health to God's Word as we…
As pastor and author David Mathis says in his helpful book A Little Theology of Exercise, “Spiritual health is ultimate; physical health is not.” (32)
Recognizing both the immediate and eternal value of spiritual health, or training in godliness, as Paul puts it, we must make this a priority in our lives. How does one do so? Quite frankly, that has been what this whole series has been about! By investigating what the Word of God says about specific matters and then whole-heartedly pursuing obedience in them. Donald Whitney calls this being deliberately governed by God’s Word in his book Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health. He goes on to state, “to live in a way that pleases God requires the constant consultation of Scripture.” (30) Amen! I couldn’t have said it better myself. We must constantly turn to the Word and ask, “What does God say?” to combat the lies of the enemy (“Did God really say?”) and our own propensity to selfishness/apathy.
In 1 Timothy 4:7 God says – “train yourself for godliness.” This is a command. And the word translated train is the Greek word gymnazo from which we get the word gymnastics. It means to control oneself by thorough discipline. It communicates the idea of exercising self-control or self-discipline in how you live. In this case, you are exercising self-control and discipline in the pursuit of godliness (ongoing reverence and obedience to God).
If you were to consider the ultimate example of physical gymnazo in Greek culture, it would have been an Olympic athlete. Someone who has disciplined themselves for years, decades even, to be at the pinnacle of their sport and win the prize. They exerted intense effort day in and day out in pursuit of that which they valued most – the Olympic wreath. For those athletes, their years of training, thousands of hours in total, culminate in those final minutes of their competition. And yet, their prize is temporary. It fades away. But God says that training in godliness holds value for this life and the life to come. Consider how Paul uses this same analogy in his letter to the church in the Greek city of Corinth:
1 Corinthians 9:24–27 (ESV)
24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. 25 Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26 So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. 27 But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
Paul commends intense, intentional effort. He commends having a goal – which he elaborates upon before this passage as:
1 Corinthians 9:22–23 (ESV)
22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. 23 I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.
Paul wants to have a beautiful gospel witness to a lost and hurting world. That they may desire to hear about Jesus Christ and their need for a Savior. He also elaborates upon his ultimate goal in the following chapter:
1 Corinthians 10:31–33 (ESV)
31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. 32 Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, 33 just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved.
Paul exercised self-control and bodily discipline so that he might be an excellent witness and glorify God in all that he did. We can learn much from his example!
Prioritizing training in godliness means that you are intentionally exerting effort to achieve a specific goal – bringing glory to God and making his glory known to the world!
Is that the aim of your life? Is there evidence that you are prioritizing training in godliness for these reasons?
I would be remiss if I did not point out that this is only possible for those who have been convicted of their sin and need for a Savior and put their faith in Jesus Christ. Paul is speaking as a follower of Jesus. He is speaking to followers of Jesus. Those who have not been born again in salvation through God the Holy Spirit’s work will not desire to pursue godliness, nor will they value the glory of God or salvation of others. If you have no real desire for God’s glory or to make his glory known, that is a good indicator that you are not following Christ. If that is your situation, first, I’m glad you’re here today and, second, I want to call you to confess your sin and recognize your need for Jesus as your Savior. We have been created to live a faithful life, but that simply is not possible outside of Christ. Your first step towards fulfilling your purpose is trusting in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and salvation of your soul. Ask him to forgive you, to save you, and to give you this desire to prioritize training in godliness!
For those who are in Christ, I join Paul in commending this training in godliness to you. Exert effort in pursuing both knowledge of what God says in his word, but also obedience in carrying it out in your life. Going even deeper, seek to make it the aim of your inner man/woman, the ruling desire of your heart, to please Christ and glorify God. As we said in week 1 of this series:
Whatever desire rules your heart rules your life. It exercises inescapable influence over your thinking, speech, and behavior… We are not interested in changing only our behavior, speech, and thinking. Lasting or true change happens at the level of the heart. We must get to our desires!
A Christian who is faithful with spiritual health is going to have a regular practice of asking, “How can I please God today? In this situation?” They are constantly evaluating the ruling desire of their heart – “Do I want to please God or myself?” I cannot overstate how important this practice is in training yourself for godliness. If you are willing to put in the effort needed to evaluate your desires and practices throughout your day through the grid of pleasing Christ, you will experience significant spiritual growth over the course of your life! To apply this to the topics we’ve addressed already in this series:
Knowing the answer to these questions will require significant effort in knowing what God says in his word. There will be occasions where the answer is quite plain but there will be many other times where you must wisely apply biblical principles to arrive at your answer. You will not be able to do this without a regular habit of study of the Word!
However, as you study the Word in search of specific answers, you will find them, then the challenge is putting them into practice. Will you wrestle with the desires of your heart? Will you put off patterns of thinking/speaking/acting that do not please God? Will you replace them with patterns of thinking/speaking/acting that do please God? Changing in such fundamental ways requires the exertion of immense effort. Gymnazo… training unto godliness.
And, while prioritizing spiritual health is important, physical health is important too. Because God made us as both body and soul, these two areas of our lives are deeply connected. As we’ve already heard from Paul, bodily training is of some value, and he himself disciplined his own body to keep it under control so that he might not be disqualified by sinful living. What we find in 1 Corinthians 9 and 10 is that our body is instrumental in living a faithful life.
Put another way, physical health is an essential instrument to spiritual health. It helps accomplish the goal. Failure to steward our body will hinder our goal of glorifying God. That is why this should be an important matter of stewardship to you! It can either help or hinder the purpose for which God has made you!
So, as you seek to submit your view and pursuit of health to God's Word, you must also…
“You are not your own.” “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.” Your body is “fearfully and wonderfully made” by God. “You were bought with a price.” These are all true statements we have read today in God’s Word. God’s Word reveals a high value that he places on our bodies. And he designed our bodies that we might accurately represent and reflect his glory to this world.
Your approach to this whole topic of being faithful with health must be driven by a deep desire to glorify God. This cannot be about your own glory. It must not be about vanity. These motives misguided and sinful given what God says! So don’t be deceived about this by false teachers or the lies of our culture.
God cares about your body. He made it and he has a plan for it to be used to glorify him. Your job is to be a wise steward of what he has entrusted to you. We know from life in this sin-cursed world that not everyone has the same capacity or level of physical health. That is the reality of the nature of our bodies in this lifetime. But we need not compare. Comparison is the thief of joy, and it robs God of his glory.
Your calling is to be faithful with the physical health of YOUR body. And my calling is to be faithful with the physical health of MY body. So, with that in mind, let’s consider how we can glorify God in our body.
What we see from the very first pages of Scripture is that God created humans to work. In the passage from Genesis 1 that we read earlier, God said that he created us to have dominion over his world. He intended for humans to subdue the earth through creation and cultivation. In Genesis 2:15 God puts Adam in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. This is all pre-Fall before sin entered the world. From the beginning, we find that bodily exertion is the expectation, not the exception. This holds true throughout the Testaments. Just a month ago, we heard Pastor Jack preach on this passage:
2 Thessalonians 3:10–11 (ESV)
10 For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. 11 For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies.
The command is that we must be busy at work, exerting effort with our bodies to produce and provide. Idle, inactive lives are the opposite of God’s intent for us. And boy, do we live in a day and age that provides a lot of opportunities to be sedentary. Not to mention, we are on the cusp of the innovation of AI that will only further enable humans to sit at desks and do less and less physical activity/movement.
We were made to move! One observation that I found helpful from David Mathis in his study of 1 Timothy 4:8 is that Paul affirms that bodily training is of some value in a day and age that required a far greater degree of physical activity in the course of normal life and occupation and travel, than ours! If you consider the examples scattered throughout the Bible, you have regular bodily exertion repeatedly on display:
Both Jesus and his disciples and Paul and his friends would have walked everywhere! Travel days could have easily been 20-25 miles (a marathon). Non-travel days would still have easily been 5 miles or more. Making these observations is helpful for us in realizing that bodily exertion is the expectation, not the exception.
“But that is a culturally specific example. We live in a day and age with cars and remote jobs.” Fair point. Let’s talk about why pursuing bodily training (stewarding physical health) is still an issue of glorifying God in our modern day and age.
Do you realize it is an act of worship to model productive humanity? This is what God designed us for! To live sedentary, idle lives is in direct opposition to God’s design. When we are hard at work, whether in fulfilling the creation mandate by having dominion over our jobs or our bodies, we honor God.
It glorifies God when we are stewarding our physical health so that we can do the good works that he has prepared in advance for us to do!
Ephesians 2:10 (ESV)
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
If we choose to be poor stewards of our physical health, that hinders our ability to obey God by carrying out these good works. We have added unnecessary obstacles in our lives to loving others. Paul speaks of the dangers of this misuse of freedom in his letter to the Galatians:
Galatians 5:13–14 (ESV)
13 For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Since the days of Christ, there have been two paths in front of us. The path of fleshliness - pleasing self - or the path of pleasing Christ. God calls us to die to the flesh and instead exert ourselves in service to one another! We are to say no to selfishness and yes to sacrificial love, just as Christ loved us. When it comes back to the topic of physical health, the clear application of this ideal is that stewarding your physical health will put you in the best position to glorify God by loving others. You will be better able to worship God in this way!
I want to share with you some of the wisdom I have gleaned from David Mathis on this matter:
"Glorifying God in our bodies is not mainly about what we avoid and don't do with them. It is far more about what we do with them -- where we go with our feet, what we do with our hands to help others, and what we say with our mouths to give meaning to the acts of our bodies." (53)
"It's easy to focus on unrighteous acts from which we should abstain, but glorifying God in our bodies is first and foremost a positive pursuit and opportunity. As in the parable of the talents, our bodies are gifts from him to grow and develop, not bury and let languish." (55)
"Precisely because 'we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them' (Eph. 2:10), we want to adequately condition our bodies so that they are a help, rather than a hindrance, in the daily cause of love. We want our bodies to be an aid -- not an obstacle -- in readying us to sacrifice our own comforts and energy to do good for others at home and for the church and beyond." (84)
Can you see the value in pursuing physical health for the glory of God and good of others? You’ve got to have the right motive and heart attitude about this matter if you’re going to consistently obey God in it! That’s why prayer is so essential to this process. If you recall, Paul mentioned this in 1 Timothy 4:5 – “for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.”
God has given us the gift of prayer to help us align our will with his. He invites us to submit to his perfect plan and truth rather than operate by our own ideas. And so, we can apply this in two ways, both of which I am benefiting from Mathis’ work:
Lord, thank you for giving me the ability to move in this way, to accomplish this task, to pursue health for the sake of glorifying you and loving others.
He suggests praying before you go to bed, asking God to help you get good rest and to be disciplined to wake up on time and get out of bed to go exercise. To pray that this physical discipline would translate into other disciplines in fighting for holiness and against sin.
He suggests praying at the start of your workout, asking God to help you push yourself past your current comfort level to discipline your body and to be equipped for every good work. Or asking God to give you the energy to do the workout. To make it holy and that your focus would not be vanity or anything less than his glory. Ask God to use the workout to boost your brain, your joy, and your focus in service of God and others.
Or if you’re someone who is prone to vanity or valuing physical training over godliness, you can pray that God would protect you from that. Pray that this exercise would serve Christlikeness rather than compete with it. Pray that exercise would not ultimately be about you but about richer enjoyment of Jesus and readiness to love and serve others.
I don’t know about you, but I find these prayer emphases life-changing. What a help in reorienting the motive behind our approach to this area of life! Whether you’re prone to idleness or prone to vanity, these prayers can aid you in growing in holiness to the glory of God.
We’ve talked a lot about the why behind this matter, but what about the “how”? I have intentionally left this for last. It was not the priority in the sense that your motive and heart are far more important to get right. If you have the “why”, then you’ll do the work to figure out the “how”.
There are so many resources out there that address the how of stewarding your physical health. And, quite frankly, given how different we all are, there are going to be different methodologies that are effective or desirable to each of us.
So rather than get overly prescriptive, I’ll share just a few key areas you’ll need to address related to “how”:
The bottom line is that you need to move your body regularly and in ways that are causing you to exert yourself.
This means you’re going to have to sweat. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it is inevitable if you’re going to be physically healthy. Your heart rate is going to have to stay elevated for a period of time as your body does hard things.
For all of us, this means we’re going to have to be pushed out of our comfort zones. We are going to have to learn to be disciplined and do hard things for the good of our bodies and souls, for the glory of God, and in service of others. Will it be hard? Yes. Will it be worth it? Absolutely!
If you’re interested in learning more about this topic from a biblical perspective, please check out the latest Firm Faith podcast. Jordan and I recorded a 2-part series on this matter as we reflected on our own health journeys. I would also highly recommend David Mathis’ book that I referenced multiple times this morning. You can also hear a free audio version of his teaching that he gave long before it was published as a book. That can be found on our website, through the discipleship resources link, on the Stewardship of Health page.
Thank you for your patience in a slightly longer message than usual. This has been a personally impactful topic for my own family over the past couple of years. The older Micaela and I get, the more we are aware of our need to steward our health, both body and soul. I hope you have been blessed by this discussion and I’m always up for discussing further 1-on-1, if you’d like.
Let’s pray.
Pray
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Faithful with Health
1 Timothy 4:1-8 + 1 Corinthians 6:12-20
Submitting our view and pursuit of health to God's Word
Manuscript:
Good morning, church family! (Welcome guests + introduce self)
Dismiss 4th + 5th graders
Ushers + Bibles (1 Timothy 4; page _)
In our sermon series this November, we are focusing on A Faithful Life. I want to share with you again the four stewardship principles that drive what we’re discussing this month:
Over the past two weeks, we’ve studied how we are to be good stewards of our finances and our time. I trust that those studies were helpful for you in considering whether you are being wise or foolish in your stewardship of what God has entrusted to you in those areas. I know I spent a lot more time this past week reminding myself not to be unrighteous in my use of time.
Today, we are broaching a topic that is perhaps even more important than the previous two. This area of stewardship is foundational for carrying out our purpose both here on earth in this life and in heaven for all eternity. Today we are addressing Faithful with Health.
Now, when I say health, I mean both physical and spiritual health. The Bible is quite clear that God made us both body and soul. We are comprised of both material and immaterial substances. We’ve spoken about this in previous weeks as our outer and inner man. Wisely stewarding both our physical and spiritual health is necessary to live a godly life that pleases the Lord.
If you think back over the last two sermons, hopefully you recall Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5 about Christians being salt and light in the earth, as well as the plan of God from Genesis 1 that we would be visible representatives of the invisible God. These passages speak about the importance of our conduct in THE BODY as well as the importance of holiness in OUR SOUL to carry out God’s mission! If we neglect the health of either our body or soul, we risk compromising our ability to carry out the purpose for which God made us! We will struggle and perhaps even fail to live a faithful life.
My goal in our time together today is to convince you, from God’s Word, that God has given us clear direction on how we are to be wise stewards of both body and soul. I want you to be aware of the beauty of God’s design, that we are both body and soul, and that caring for each is necessary and important to fulfill our calling to glorify God. My aim is to get to the heart of these matters, answering questions like:
I’m not interested in solely addressing behavior, but at getting to the heart of who or what we’re worshiping in these matters.
The premise behind this sermon series is that God has made us to accurately represent and reflect his majesty as we live righteous and godly lives in this present age. I’ll remind you this morning… A faithful life is the expectation, not the exception.
You were created to live faithfully (to be a wise steward) and God, as the Creator and Designer of all things, has told you the way to a faithful life, in both body and soul. Let’s see what he has to say! Starting with Paul’s first letter to his disciple, Timothy.
1 Timothy 4:1–5 (ESV)
Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, 2 through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, 3 who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. 4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, 5 for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.
In this section of his letter, Paul is instructing Timothy in what God the Holy Spirit has warned about – that there will be people who abandon their once-professed faith because they have been deceived by lying spirits and demonic teachings. These falsehoods are promoted and perpetuated by false teachers who are insincere liars with seared consciences! Whoa, Paul has some blunt words from God about such people. And did you notice what such hard-hearted people teach? Look again at verse 3. “who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.” They are corrupting the truth about the physical creation that God had made and ordained – both marriage and food.
Throughout history, there have been false teachers who have sought to lie and mislead people about what God really says about both body and soul! This has taken the form of those who believe that the body is inherently bad and teach that extreme forms of self-denial or self-punishment must be practiced. Yet it has also taken the form of extreme indulgence, that the body is to be worshiped and that our appetites, whether for food or sex or comfort or power ought to be indulged at all costs. Both are false, yet they have led many astray!
And please do not think that these kinds of false teaching are limited to the past. There are still echoes of these lies in the present. Perhaps most obviously is the false teaching on indulging yourself – do whatever you want, no one gets to tell you how to live, you deserve it, and a myriad of other sayings or perspectives on having no restraints to indulging your desires. This is the view of the majority in our secular culture, but it still seeps into Christians and the church too. On the other end of the spectrum, are those who go beyond the teachings of Scripture to restrain the body, implying that the Bible requires no dancing, no drinking of alcohol, or that physical pleasure is always bad, even though the Bible clearly does not teach these things and even gives specific instructions on how to handle them. They have elevated their personal convictions to Biblical commands.
Here is my point. As people made in God’s image and living in God’s creation, we must submit our view and pursuit of health to God’s Word. He is our source of truth, and we are wise when we seek out his wisdom/ways and live according to them. As we’ve said in previous weeks, we are fools when we deviate from his wisdom/ways to live according to our own desires. So, once again, we are going to contrast the beauty of God’s way with the folly of any other way.
Submitting our view and pursuit of health to God's Word
Here is where it begins. We must…
This is our takeaway from 1 Timothy 4:1-5. As we’ve heard, there have been false teachers back in Paul and Timothy’s day, but they have persisted throughout history down into our day. This ought not to be surprising to anyone who knows their Bible, because, since Genesis 3, the enemy has been seeking to twist God’s Word to deceive as many as possible.
Genesis 3:1 (ESV)
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
False teachers throughout history have made a career out of asking “Did God actually say…?” followed by their take on how we ought to live. The Gnostics of the 2nd-3rd centuries taught that matter is evil, and the body is essentially a prison for the soul. This led them to reject marriage and to view physical pleasures as inherently corrupt. These ideas have continued to exist in some form or fashion throughout the ages. You may have heard of groups in the medieval period who would physically whip themselves to encourage putting off physical pleasure, believing this self-harm was a means of righteousness leading to salvation. Yikes! Or others who have removed themselves from society to live a monastic life that denies access to physical comforts. Even in our day, there are extreme fundamentalists who treat their rules as God’s commands. Or groups who deny modern medical care because “true faith” rejects earthly means. And these are only examples from groups that would call themselves Christian. I did not try to broaden my search to other worldviews but I’m sure we would find even more.
But even more prominent in our western culture are worldly views and false teaching that celebrate excess and indulgence. We are told that your best life now consists of obtaining material wealth, health, and prosperity and that God functions as a genie to provide it. Underlying this teaching is the concept that physical prosperity is what really matters, more than all else, even holiness. This is a modern parallel to John Bunyan’s vanity fair in his historic book The Pilgrim’s Progress. Worldly showiness cloaked in religious language. We live in the day and age of the celebrity pastor or influencers and online personalities. Both our secular culture and churches that call themselves Christian are pushing a message of be true to yourself, do what is right in your own eyes, no one can challenge your truth. This is often linked together with a selfish approach to life, which twists the emphasis to be about YOU rather than God’s glory. This is the posture of vanity or self-indulgence, and it is also to be avoided as unbiblical.
So, when we think about the question, why do we struggle to be faithful with health? The answer must be, in part, that there are so many competing messages out there on this matter that it is easy to be deceived.
But what does God say? Does he speak to these issues?
Yes, he does. In fact, 1 Timothy 4:4-5 set us up to realize this:
1 Timothy 4:4–5 (ESV)
4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, 5 for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.
God is good and everything he created is good, which includes our bodies and their appetites for food, intimacy, and so forth. Let’s consider what God’s word says about these matters:
Genesis 1:26–31 (ESV)
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.
30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
What was God’s conclusion after reviewing all his creation, including humans? It was very good. This is why Paul could state as much to Timothy in refutation of the false teachers of their day. Everything created by God is good and to be received with thanksgiving.
Now consider King David’s words in Psalm 139:
Psalm 139:13–14 (ESV)
13 For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
What is David’s response upon reflecting on God’s work in creating him? He praises God! He recognizes that what God has done is wonderful. Not only is the human body good, but it is also a marvel! A work of divine art. If you were to spend time investigating the level of detail in God’s design of the individual components of your body, you would be amazed too. If you’ve never looked up the complexity of a single cell of your body or of one of your organs or perhaps the function of your hands/feet, take some time this week to do so. And prepare to be amazed at God’s design! He put a lot of intentionality and thought into our bodies.
All this to say, God quite clearly values the body. He created it. His Son came in bodily form to redeem us from the curse of sin. And he intends to exchange our currently lowly body with a glorious body in heaven one day. Listen to Paul’s teaching to the church at Philippi:
Philippians 3:20–21 (ESV)
20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.
God cares about our body and soul. And, as we’ve heard in 1 Timothy 4:5, our approach to these matters is made holy by the Word and prayer. We must be informed by what God says and then respond appropriately.
Let’s keep reading in 1 Timothy 4 about what God says:
1 Timothy 4:6–8 (ESV)
6 If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. 7 Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; 8 for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.
God, through Paul, tells us that both godliness - ongoing reverence and obedience to God - (aka your spiritual health) and bodily training (physical health) are of value! We’ll come back to this passage to look at it in more detail in a bit, but let me take you to verses from our other primary passage for today:
1 Corinthians 6:19–20 (ESV)
19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
This passage provides an answer to one of our other questions - why should this be an important matter of stewardship to Christians? Because your body is a temple of God and it is to be used for his glory! Contrary to false teaching, your body is not for your glory but God’s. Which means, for Christians, how you live in the body must be driven by the pursuit of God’s glory.
Now, if you consider what we’ve just heard from these two passages, God cares about both spiritual and physical health. Both are important! Both have value and are significant in the pursuit of God’s glory. However, as we heard in 1 Timothy 4:8 pursuit of spiritual health (aka godliness) must be our higher priority, for it holds promise for this life and the one to come. Spiritual health is what prepares us to enter into eternity and stand before our Just Judge with the hope of hearing, “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master!”
However, that does not mean we are free to neglect our physical health! Realize that when Paul says bodily training is of some value, that is a statement of its importance, not insignificance. His comparison between spiritual and physical health is not between greater and lesser value, but greater and lesser impact in light of eternity. Bodily training or physical health only has impact in this present age that is passing away, but godliness or spiritual health has impact both in this age and the one to come.
So, in this present age, which we all live in until the day we die or Jesus returns, bodily training is valuable! Yet, while we are on this earth, we must submit our view and pursuit of health to God's Word as we…
As pastor and author David Mathis says in his helpful book A Little Theology of Exercise, “Spiritual health is ultimate; physical health is not.” (32)
Recognizing both the immediate and eternal value of spiritual health, or training in godliness, as Paul puts it, we must make this a priority in our lives. How does one do so? Quite frankly, that has been what this whole series has been about! By investigating what the Word of God says about specific matters and then whole-heartedly pursuing obedience in them. Donald Whitney calls this being deliberately governed by God’s Word in his book Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health. He goes on to state, “to live in a way that pleases God requires the constant consultation of Scripture.” (30) Amen! I couldn’t have said it better myself. We must constantly turn to the Word and ask, “What does God say?” to combat the lies of the enemy (“Did God really say?”) and our own propensity to selfishness/apathy.
In 1 Timothy 4:7 God says – “train yourself for godliness.” This is a command. And the word translated train is the Greek word gymnazo from which we get the word gymnastics. It means to control oneself by thorough discipline. It communicates the idea of exercising self-control or self-discipline in how you live. In this case, you are exercising self-control and discipline in the pursuit of godliness (ongoing reverence and obedience to God).
If you were to consider the ultimate example of physical gymnazo in Greek culture, it would have been an Olympic athlete. Someone who has disciplined themselves for years, decades even, to be at the pinnacle of their sport and win the prize. They exerted intense effort day in and day out in pursuit of that which they valued most – the Olympic wreath. For those athletes, their years of training, thousands of hours in total, culminate in those final minutes of their competition. And yet, their prize is temporary. It fades away. But God says that training in godliness holds value for this life and the life to come. Consider how Paul uses this same analogy in his letter to the church in the Greek city of Corinth:
1 Corinthians 9:24–27 (ESV)
24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. 25 Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26 So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. 27 But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
Paul commends intense, intentional effort. He commends having a goal – which he elaborates upon before this passage as:
1 Corinthians 9:22–23 (ESV)
22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. 23 I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.
Paul wants to have a beautiful gospel witness to a lost and hurting world. That they may desire to hear about Jesus Christ and their need for a Savior. He also elaborates upon his ultimate goal in the following chapter:
1 Corinthians 10:31–33 (ESV)
31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. 32 Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, 33 just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved.
Paul exercised self-control and bodily discipline so that he might be an excellent witness and glorify God in all that he did. We can learn much from his example!
Prioritizing training in godliness means that you are intentionally exerting effort to achieve a specific goal – bringing glory to God and making his glory known to the world!
Is that the aim of your life? Is there evidence that you are prioritizing training in godliness for these reasons?
I would be remiss if I did not point out that this is only possible for those who have been convicted of their sin and need for a Savior and put their faith in Jesus Christ. Paul is speaking as a follower of Jesus. He is speaking to followers of Jesus. Those who have not been born again in salvation through God the Holy Spirit’s work will not desire to pursue godliness, nor will they value the glory of God or salvation of others. If you have no real desire for God’s glory or to make his glory known, that is a good indicator that you are not following Christ. If that is your situation, first, I’m glad you’re here today and, second, I want to call you to confess your sin and recognize your need for Jesus as your Savior. We have been created to live a faithful life, but that simply is not possible outside of Christ. Your first step towards fulfilling your purpose is trusting in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and salvation of your soul. Ask him to forgive you, to save you, and to give you this desire to prioritize training in godliness!
For those who are in Christ, I join Paul in commending this training in godliness to you. Exert effort in pursuing both knowledge of what God says in his word, but also obedience in carrying it out in your life. Going even deeper, seek to make it the aim of your inner man/woman, the ruling desire of your heart, to please Christ and glorify God. As we said in week 1 of this series:
Whatever desire rules your heart rules your life. It exercises inescapable influence over your thinking, speech, and behavior… We are not interested in changing only our behavior, speech, and thinking. Lasting or true change happens at the level of the heart. We must get to our desires!
A Christian who is faithful with spiritual health is going to have a regular practice of asking, “How can I please God today? In this situation?” They are constantly evaluating the ruling desire of their heart – “Do I want to please God or myself?” I cannot overstate how important this practice is in training yourself for godliness. If you are willing to put in the effort needed to evaluate your desires and practices throughout your day through the grid of pleasing Christ, you will experience significant spiritual growth over the course of your life! To apply this to the topics we’ve addressed already in this series:
Knowing the answer to these questions will require significant effort in knowing what God says in his word. There will be occasions where the answer is quite plain but there will be many other times where you must wisely apply biblical principles to arrive at your answer. You will not be able to do this without a regular habit of study of the Word!
However, as you study the Word in search of specific answers, you will find them, then the challenge is putting them into practice. Will you wrestle with the desires of your heart? Will you put off patterns of thinking/speaking/acting that do not please God? Will you replace them with patterns of thinking/speaking/acting that do please God? Changing in such fundamental ways requires the exertion of immense effort. Gymnazo… training unto godliness.
And, while prioritizing spiritual health is important, physical health is important too. Because God made us as both body and soul, these two areas of our lives are deeply connected. As we’ve already heard from Paul, bodily training is of some value, and he himself disciplined his own body to keep it under control so that he might not be disqualified by sinful living. What we find in 1 Corinthians 9 and 10 is that our body is instrumental in living a faithful life.
Put another way, physical health is an essential instrument to spiritual health. It helps accomplish the goal. Failure to steward our body will hinder our goal of glorifying God. That is why this should be an important matter of stewardship to you! It can either help or hinder the purpose for which God has made you!
So, as you seek to submit your view and pursuit of health to God's Word, you must also…
“You are not your own.” “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.” Your body is “fearfully and wonderfully made” by God. “You were bought with a price.” These are all true statements we have read today in God’s Word. God’s Word reveals a high value that he places on our bodies. And he designed our bodies that we might accurately represent and reflect his glory to this world.
Your approach to this whole topic of being faithful with health must be driven by a deep desire to glorify God. This cannot be about your own glory. It must not be about vanity. These motives misguided and sinful given what God says! So don’t be deceived about this by false teachers or the lies of our culture.
God cares about your body. He made it and he has a plan for it to be used to glorify him. Your job is to be a wise steward of what he has entrusted to you. We know from life in this sin-cursed world that not everyone has the same capacity or level of physical health. That is the reality of the nature of our bodies in this lifetime. But we need not compare. Comparison is the thief of joy, and it robs God of his glory.
Your calling is to be faithful with the physical health of YOUR body. And my calling is to be faithful with the physical health of MY body. So, with that in mind, let’s consider how we can glorify God in our body.
What we see from the very first pages of Scripture is that God created humans to work. In the passage from Genesis 1 that we read earlier, God said that he created us to have dominion over his world. He intended for humans to subdue the earth through creation and cultivation. In Genesis 2:15 God puts Adam in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. This is all pre-Fall before sin entered the world. From the beginning, we find that bodily exertion is the expectation, not the exception. This holds true throughout the Testaments. Just a month ago, we heard Pastor Jack preach on this passage:
2 Thessalonians 3:10–11 (ESV)
10 For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. 11 For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies.
The command is that we must be busy at work, exerting effort with our bodies to produce and provide. Idle, inactive lives are the opposite of God’s intent for us. And boy, do we live in a day and age that provides a lot of opportunities to be sedentary. Not to mention, we are on the cusp of the innovation of AI that will only further enable humans to sit at desks and do less and less physical activity/movement.
We were made to move! One observation that I found helpful from David Mathis in his study of 1 Timothy 4:8 is that Paul affirms that bodily training is of some value in a day and age that required a far greater degree of physical activity in the course of normal life and occupation and travel, than ours! If you consider the examples scattered throughout the Bible, you have regular bodily exertion repeatedly on display:
Both Jesus and his disciples and Paul and his friends would have walked everywhere! Travel days could have easily been 20-25 miles (a marathon). Non-travel days would still have easily been 5 miles or more. Making these observations is helpful for us in realizing that bodily exertion is the expectation, not the exception.
“But that is a culturally specific example. We live in a day and age with cars and remote jobs.” Fair point. Let’s talk about why pursuing bodily training (stewarding physical health) is still an issue of glorifying God in our modern day and age.
Do you realize it is an act of worship to model productive humanity? This is what God designed us for! To live sedentary, idle lives is in direct opposition to God’s design. When we are hard at work, whether in fulfilling the creation mandate by having dominion over our jobs or our bodies, we honor God.
It glorifies God when we are stewarding our physical health so that we can do the good works that he has prepared in advance for us to do!
Ephesians 2:10 (ESV)
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
If we choose to be poor stewards of our physical health, that hinders our ability to obey God by carrying out these good works. We have added unnecessary obstacles in our lives to loving others. Paul speaks of the dangers of this misuse of freedom in his letter to the Galatians:
Galatians 5:13–14 (ESV)
13 For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Since the days of Christ, there have been two paths in front of us. The path of fleshliness - pleasing self - or the path of pleasing Christ. God calls us to die to the flesh and instead exert ourselves in service to one another! We are to say no to selfishness and yes to sacrificial love, just as Christ loved us. When it comes back to the topic of physical health, the clear application of this ideal is that stewarding your physical health will put you in the best position to glorify God by loving others. You will be better able to worship God in this way!
I want to share with you some of the wisdom I have gleaned from David Mathis on this matter:
"Glorifying God in our bodies is not mainly about what we avoid and don't do with them. It is far more about what we do with them -- where we go with our feet, what we do with our hands to help others, and what we say with our mouths to give meaning to the acts of our bodies." (53)
"It's easy to focus on unrighteous acts from which we should abstain, but glorifying God in our bodies is first and foremost a positive pursuit and opportunity. As in the parable of the talents, our bodies are gifts from him to grow and develop, not bury and let languish." (55)
"Precisely because 'we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them' (Eph. 2:10), we want to adequately condition our bodies so that they are a help, rather than a hindrance, in the daily cause of love. We want our bodies to be an aid -- not an obstacle -- in readying us to sacrifice our own comforts and energy to do good for others at home and for the church and beyond." (84)
Can you see the value in pursuing physical health for the glory of God and good of others? You’ve got to have the right motive and heart attitude about this matter if you’re going to consistently obey God in it! That’s why prayer is so essential to this process. If you recall, Paul mentioned this in 1 Timothy 4:5 – “for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.”
God has given us the gift of prayer to help us align our will with his. He invites us to submit to his perfect plan and truth rather than operate by our own ideas. And so, we can apply this in two ways, both of which I am benefiting from Mathis’ work:
Lord, thank you for giving me the ability to move in this way, to accomplish this task, to pursue health for the sake of glorifying you and loving others.
He suggests praying before you go to bed, asking God to help you get good rest and to be disciplined to wake up on time and get out of bed to go exercise. To pray that this physical discipline would translate into other disciplines in fighting for holiness and against sin.
He suggests praying at the start of your workout, asking God to help you push yourself past your current comfort level to discipline your body and to be equipped for every good work. Or asking God to give you the energy to do the workout. To make it holy and that your focus would not be vanity or anything less than his glory. Ask God to use the workout to boost your brain, your joy, and your focus in service of God and others.
Or if you’re someone who is prone to vanity or valuing physical training over godliness, you can pray that God would protect you from that. Pray that this exercise would serve Christlikeness rather than compete with it. Pray that exercise would not ultimately be about you but about richer enjoyment of Jesus and readiness to love and serve others.
I don’t know about you, but I find these prayer emphases life-changing. What a help in reorienting the motive behind our approach to this area of life! Whether you’re prone to idleness or prone to vanity, these prayers can aid you in growing in holiness to the glory of God.
We’ve talked a lot about the why behind this matter, but what about the “how”? I have intentionally left this for last. It was not the priority in the sense that your motive and heart are far more important to get right. If you have the “why”, then you’ll do the work to figure out the “how”.
There are so many resources out there that address the how of stewarding your physical health. And, quite frankly, given how different we all are, there are going to be different methodologies that are effective or desirable to each of us.
So rather than get overly prescriptive, I’ll share just a few key areas you’ll need to address related to “how”:
The bottom line is that you need to move your body regularly and in ways that are causing you to exert yourself.
This means you’re going to have to sweat. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it is inevitable if you’re going to be physically healthy. Your heart rate is going to have to stay elevated for a period of time as your body does hard things.
For all of us, this means we’re going to have to be pushed out of our comfort zones. We are going to have to learn to be disciplined and do hard things for the good of our bodies and souls, for the glory of God, and in service of others. Will it be hard? Yes. Will it be worth it? Absolutely!
If you’re interested in learning more about this topic from a biblical perspective, please check out the latest Firm Faith podcast. Jordan and I recorded a 2-part series on this matter as we reflected on our own health journeys. I would also highly recommend David Mathis’ book that I referenced multiple times this morning. You can also hear a free audio version of his teaching that he gave long before it was published as a book. That can be found on our website, through the discipleship resources link, on the Stewardship of Health page.
Thank you for your patience in a slightly longer message than usual. This has been a personally impactful topic for my own family over the past couple of years. The older Micaela and I get, the more we are aware of our need to steward our health, both body and soul. I hope you have been blessed by this discussion and I’m always up for discussing further 1-on-1, if you’d like.
Let’s pray.
Pray