Does it matter if your body is fit? Many years ago, I heard someone say that everyone would be on it if exercise were a drug. Further, what is the role of exercise and fitness in a pastor's life? Last year, I met with some young men reading Al Martins' book on pastoral theology, "The Man of God." Vol 1, where he has two chapters on the subject of the pastor's emotional and physical well-being. How necessary is physical fitness for a pastor or anyone else?   He tells us why it is essential for pastors to maintain a healthy body in these chapters.

Well, welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture. And so, hello Jason. Hi Scott. And we have Gary Powers with us as well.

Hey Gary. Hi Scott, hi Jason. Good to see you guys. Good to see you. So Gary is one of the pastors at Geneva Lakes Church in Geneva Lakes, Wisconsin.

And he's also the CEO of Ortho Molecular, which is a company that partners with healthcare professionals to provide nutritional solutions for their patients. It's a really, really neat company and I use their stuff all the time, like every day. So I really appreciate you coming and being with us. We're here to talk about exercise, particularly physical fitness, thinking in terms of pastors. Many years ago, I heard somebody say that if exercise was a drug, everybody would be on it.

And, you know, so last year I was reading a book with some Young Men in Our Church, a book on pastoral theology. It's this book by Al Martin, The Man of God, and he dedicates two chapters in this book to the subject of a pastor's emotional and physical well-being. I was really struck by the chapters, and I've thought about them quite a bit. And in these chapters, he explains why pastors should take really good care of their bodies. You know, it reminds me of my mother.

My mother right now, she's 94 years old, six days a week. She rides three miles a day on a rogue exercise bike. She does 16 deep knee bends every day, and she uses weights to give herself, you know, more strength in her arms. So she's pretty inspiring, but here, you know, Al Martin wants us to understand how important this is for pastors, And I think there's broader application for others as well, for all of us. But a while back, I bumped into an article that was published in the New York Times, and it was about members of the clergy and their physical condition overall.

And I'll just read a statement from this article about Christian ministers in the United States. The authors write, members of the clergy now suffer from obesity, hypertension, and depression at rates higher than most Americans. Interesting. Yeah. In the last decade, their use of antidepressants has risen while their life expectancy has fallen.

Many would change jobs if they could. Public health experts caution that there is no simple explanation of why so many members of a profession once associated with rosy-cheeked longevity have become so unhealthy and so unhappy." Isn't that amazing? Wow. Yeah. It's just very startling.

So Al Martin writes this book with two chapters on this subject, and I just want to open up our discussion with quoting him in the early part of this section in the book. He talks about the nature of our bodies as both body and soul. He says, first, we ought to seek and attain an understanding of our present physical and emotional constitution and the engagement in a regular and flexible discipline to maintain them in optimum health because the biblical doctrine of man demands it. And so he talks about that we are a psychosomatic entity, we are both body and soul. So what are the implications of that for the way that we take care of our bodies?

I thought one of the things he said was really interesting. He's talking about the coupling of the material part of a person and the immaterial part of the person, and how it's not like a knife in a sheath. Like, you put the knife into the sheath, But they're really not the same thing. They're not really closely coupled. Just one happens to be inside the other.

He said human beings aren't like that, and he actually used a number of scriptures to prove that. But they're really closely coupled together, the material and the immaterial. And what you do with the material impacts the immaterial and vice versa. So it isn't like a knife and sheath because they don't impact each other, but body and soul in human beings does. It's a great point.

I mean, think about bitterness. If you have that emotion, you're carrying bitterness in your heart, it's going to affect your bone strength, your bone health. Think about the emotions of gratefulness and joyfulness and its effect on the human body. You can't disassociate one from the other. The two of them are intricately involved.

And I think, you know, as pastors, it's our duty to glorify God with our bodies in your bodies, right? And I think it will also, will be far more productive with a far more energy, will be far more effective in the fields that God has placed us in. You know, that's so true. You know, I've, over the last few years, I've been taking better care of my body because my body is declining in strength at my age. But you know, why am I doing it?

Well, I'm doing it for several reasons. One of them is the reason you pointed out. It's for joy because I'm happier if I take good care of my body. And it really, it has a lot to do with my emotional strength. My physical strength helps my emotional strength.

So, Gary didn't give us chapter and verse, but he was actually quoting scripture there, and it is 1 Corinthians 6 verse 20, where Paul writes, for you were bought at a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. And I think Paul is kind of contradicting the prevailing view that the glorifying of God is something that is simply a spiritual exercise, but we glorify God in our body. The body that you have is the body that is used to glorify God in different activities and the places that you go, and so these things are interrelated. Yeah, and he makes the point that this really is a biblical anthropology, that the body and the soul are connected. We're not disembodied souls.

We are both. And think about Caleb, you know, going into the promised land. He reminded, you know, Joshua that Hebron was his. And he said, I'm 85 and I have the same strength and vigor as when I was 40. And he was, you know, and sometimes I wonder about that.

Was it his, he had a vision, he had a purpose. He knew what God had called him to do. And he was chomping at the bit waiting for that. And I think even things as simple as that really can impact our health and the things that we do. You know what you say reminds me of what he said in chapter 24.

He gathers everybody together and he says, as for me in my house we will serve the Lord. I mean that was his compelling vision that he had for his life and for his descendants. He had a sense of calling, and I think what you're saying is that calling buoyed him up even in his old age. So here's another text that's sort of at the center of what we're talking about, and it is 1 Timothy 4, 7 and 8, where Paul writes, exercise yourself towards godliness. For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness profits for all things, having promise for the life that now is and of that which is to come." So it's easy to take that and say Paul is saying that the body, exercising the body doesn't matter at all.

No, no, no, it's relative importance. He's acknowledging that exercising towards godliness is the more important thing, but he actually says that bodily exercise does profit a little. So there is profit in it. And so Paul would have us know that we never want to find ourselves in a position where we're great at exercise but terrible in the prayer closet. But it doesn't mean that no one should exercise.

There is benefit and profit from it. Yeah, I think about, you know, Paul says that the elder man is perishing, yet inwardly we're being renewed day by day. And if you think about anti-aging medicine, or you think the fact that, you know, since Adam sinned, our bodies were dying. Right. So we're dying really from the point that once we're born, our physical body is dying.

It's ebbing away. And we have this whole science now of anti-aging medicine. And what we found is that the signals that we send to our genes, determine how those genes express themselves. And so when we send good signals through the food that we eat, if it's nutritionally dense, if it's the right foods, the right macro mix of proteins and fats and carbohydrates, and we're exercising and we're sending all of these signals and good emotional health and all of these things that L. Martin talks about, if we send those signals, our genes are going to express themselves a certain way.

And think about also the profit of godliness. And I think I always tell people the greatest anti-aging medicine, You want to live a long life? Honor your father and mother, because there's a promise. Or how about, you know, keep your tongue from deceitfulness. If you want a life that is a good life and a long life is, I think, what the writer there is saying.

And so it's a combination of all of these things that may have an impact on our health in very, very positive ways. That doesn't mean that somebody can't do everything right. And in the providence of God, they have a disease and affliction that's going to really impair them for His glory or whatever it may be. But there are many things that we can do. In Galatians chapter 6 verse 7, Paul says, we reap what we sow.

And that's not just for one category, that really is across categories, and this is one of those that it applies. And I've actually seen this with my own two eyes. My mom and dad were very careful over their health over the course of their lifetime, and now they're in their early 80s. And they still have a lot of vigor and the ability to live life at a really enjoyable level where a lot of their friends who didn't take care of themselves are living very different lives. And it comes from reaping what you sow.

We're sowing things, and we're going to reap how we're treating our bodies later. That's really come home hard in the last two years when COVID has revealed what we call comorbidities, a word that I had never heard before, all this. But the danger of being overweight and having other maladies has really come to all of our minds. And my guess is people are taking better care of their bodies as a result. One of the things Al Martin says in his chapter, he clarifies at a couple of different points that he's not endorsing body idolatry.

So he's not calling us to prioritize this over the other things in life, but he's making a plea that this actually improves other categories of life. He's exhorting preachers. This will impact your preaching. How you take care of your body impacts your studies, impacts your preaching, impacts your ability to do this over a long period of time. He says that our bodies are a purchased property.

In other words, they belong to God. And you're bringing up this matter of idolatry. There's a lot of fitness that's really driven by idolatry. You know, how do you discern that matter? You know, when it's idolatry or when it's actually just good care of the the vessel that God gave you.

This is the only vessel, the only means that God gave you to communicate the gospel and to do the work of God in the world, so take good care of it. But how do we talk about that line of the idolatry of the body? We just do it for sexualization or in order to for pride, as opposed to taking good care of ourselves? I think part of the answer was revealed in the chapters, and it really sort of surprised me. Al Martin gave us in one of the chapters a prayer.

He said, when I work out, I'll start the workout by praying something like this. God, I wanna serve you with vigor for a period of time, that's why I'm doing this. And I thought, I have never once in my life prayed something like that before a workout. And I think that helps temper our inclination to go overboard and end up serving it instead of it serving us. I often pray that as well, just as I'm about to jump into a workout, it's, Lord, give me strength.

And he does. And I think to that point on El Martin's point, I think that we've been bought with a price and our bodies are not our own. And in a sense, we are stewards. And so our body belongs in the example in marriage, right? My body doesn't belong to me, it belongs to my wife.

But here also, God ultimately is the owner of that. He purchased our body and our soul, and we're stewards of that. And think about, you know, we're to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice in Romans 12. And how are we doing that? Are we bringing a lame sacrifice?

You know, like the minor prophets would say, try offering that to your king. Is that the best you can do? And so, I think we ought to do what we can to glorify God in this area of our life. So, my favorite book on pastoral ministry is Charles Spurgeon's Lectures to My Students. It's a compilation of the lectures that he would give on Friday afternoons at the end of a long week of pastors' training.

He would come in with sort of a light-hearted lecture on a topic. They're very funny to read, actually. His humor comes through. He has one called the minister's fainting fits. So, he's not talking about sort of epileptic episodes or anything like that.

He's talking about times of discouragement and times of depression that can be associated with long stretches of pastoral work. And he says this, and he's talking about a minister who just holds up and studies all the time, and here's what he says. He will make his study a prison and his books the wardens of a jail. The day's breathing of fresh air upon the hills or a few hours ramble in the beach woods, umbrage would sweep the cobwebs out of the brain of scores of our toiling ministers who are now but half alive." And so Spurgeon actually struggled with this himself, times of discouragement and depression. He recognized the need to get outdoors, take a walk, be in nature, get your body moving and your blood pumping, and it gives you the ability to continue in the work.

You know, Al Martin tells the story of John Owen, who abused his body in the earlier years of his ministry, and he became very ill, And he did turn it around, but he attributed a lot of his maladies to, you know, 15 hours of study and then back again, you know, in the middle of the night and just pushing, pushing, pushing, and not having opportunity to clear his mind, to get outside. And he talks about how he changed and he's out riding horses and he's doing the things that people did back then. Right now we have such a sedentary lifestyle that almost everybody's living. Whereas, in the time that he was alive, people were cutting wood, they were farming, they didn't need to exercise like we do now. We don't live in that kind of a culture.

And so why do people exercise? Well, because we live in a sedentary culture. It wasn't necessary 200 years ago. Yeah, sedentary lifestyle is equivalent to smoking as far as a risk factor. That's not dangerous it is to our overall health and our heart health in particular.

You've got to keep moving. And you can accomplish a lot of things at one time. You can walk and pray. I like to do that. You can accomplish a couple of things at once, get outside, do that.

It's good to sweat. It's good to really break a sweat. It's good to to breathe hard, not be able to catch your breath. That's good. You want to work that hard.

And these are things that are very, very helpful. You know, I remember when I was the men that laid hands on me the first time I was ordained in a church. And one of the older men said to me, brother, watch the fatigue, you know, watch the fatigue because you're vulnerable and our emotional health. We're very vulnerable when we're tired. And if we can increase our vigor, and part of it is proper rest.

As he suggests, it's resting one day in seven. It's taking vacations and unwinding and disconnecting for a bit and allowing ourselves to be refreshed. I thought it was interesting he talked about sleep in these chapters. You know, there's that popular dictum, you know, I'll sleep when I'm dead. Well, I've turned away from that principle.

Getting a good sleep is really important for my own emotional health. If I cheat myself of sleep, I get discouraged. And so I'm not doing it anymore, not for any long period of time anyway, I might from time to time, but it's very rare. The whole argument being made isn't to prioritize these things. The whole argument being made is this is part of prioritizing vigor and longevity in these other more important categories because our bodies are so related to the immaterial part of us.

You know, I've been thinking about my own physical condition in terms of the things that I want to be doing when I am 80 or 90. And like, I want to be able to play duck, duck, goose with my great grandchildren when I'm 90. You know, I want to be able to throw my 65 pound great grandson or granddaughter in the lake or in the ocean, you know. I do this, I race them now. I want to be able to race them when I'm 90.

So I need to maintain muscle mass. So I don't know if I'll be able to do that when I'm 90, but I'm going to try to have enough muscle mass so I'm not falling down all over the place. And he addresses excessive weight. And I'm just going to read what he said about that. He says, Does excessive weight accumulation ordinarily erode ministerial usefulness?" And he says, yes, and he gives three reasons that over that too much weight erodes effectiveness as a minister.

And I thought that was very interesting. And the first was that it produces sluggishness because it puts a strain on your heart and your wheezing. And he says some funny things about that. But he gives three reasons why carrying extra weight is harmful to your work, your spiritual work as a minister. Yeah, I remember him saying the second reason is that overweight ministers that he's known, their consciences smite them.

And so it impacts their spiritual vigor because they know they should be taking better care of their bodies, and they know they aren't, and it bothers them. And they take that into the pulpit with them. Yeah. He said, I've never known an overweight minister who wasn't burdened by that fact. It's interesting.

One of the statistics on those that live to be a hundred or greater, they were never heavy in midlife. And you know, I think most people fail in this area because they try, they stop and start, and they try this plan or that plan or some new diet. And I think We have to determine how are we going to eat the rest of our lives, and how are we going to move the rest of our lives, and how are we going to sleep. Get clear on what that looks like and make that decision one time, and then spend the rest of your life managing that decision. You know if you choose to eat a Mediterranean diet, which I happen to think is the best, lots of vegetables, very few carbs, and whatever your exercise program is and just eat less and be committed to taking it off slowly, but staying there, don't stop, don't start.

I get very clear and just keep moving towards that target. And I think that will serve you very, very well. And I agree with Al Martin. I think anybody knows that. I mean, you just have to look at your belly and you go, you know, you're smitten by your own conscience.

And how can you preach on self-control or, you know, keeping the commandments with the grace of God? How can you do that with knowing, you know, you're not able to do it yourself? So it's a great point that he makes. You know, I was complaining about my belly a while back to my wife and she said, look Scott, nobody's jamming this food down your throat. You're picking up your own spoon.

You're doing this to yourself. So don't complain about it. You can call it exercise. You can call it exercise. That's the sixth commandment.

We commit suicide, right, with a fork. Yeah. We just do it slow suicide. Slow suicide. You know he also brings up the fact that not only you know does it cause a bad conscience and make you more sluggish but he says that that people will look on you unfavorably.

If you're obese, they'll wonder why you don't have self-control. So he gives those reasons why being overweight is very unprofitable for a minister. Pete Because you're calling for self-control in other categories, and they can see with their own two eyes that you have no self-control in this one. John Yeah, yeah, that's it. Well, okay, so, brothers, thanks so much.

I mean, there's a lot more to say about this, but I hope we can be an encouragement to one another and to men to maintain our bodies and sanctification and honor and to to keep the only vessel that we've been given to live this life, to keep it in good shape. So thank you, brothers. Any last parting shots for me and you guys? Eat for strength, not for drunkenness. Those are the words of Solomon.

Thanks for having me guys, this is tremendous. Amen, thank you, thanks for joining us. And thanks for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast, and we'll see you next time. To churchandfamilylife.com. See you next Monday for our next broadcast of the Church and Family Life podcast.