Everyday Radical
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Everyday Radical
David Mathis on Exercising for the Glory of God
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In this episode of Everyday Radical, we talk with David Mathis about exercise, competition, and honoring God with our bodies.
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Welcome to Everyday Radical, a podcast where we help the everyday Christian follow Jesus and make him known everywhere. We pray that today's episode encourages you to do just that. So let's dive right in.
SPEAKER_00David, we met. I think the first time we met was years ago. I mean, it would have been in a desiring God conference, I think. Uh I don't I don't know. It was many, many years ago.
SPEAKER_03I'm wondering if in in 2006, at the first together for the gospel, okay, because of our friend Rob Wilton, Robin introduced me to you years ago. Uh-huh. That's almost 20 20 years ago. It's crazy. Pretty nuts.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So, man, I mean, you have well, by God's grace. So I just think about that. Uh, yeah, it's good to be to table with you 20 years later. I I saw some people just the other night who I was like in seminary with 20 plus years ago or uh and so graduate school, and I didn't even know this person that well, but when I saw them, and they're still like going at it, serving in the church, I just gave them a big hug. Like, it's good to still be doing it. Uh, so anyway, I know you were like five years old when uh so I'm not trying to be like the old guys, but but I just uh man, I say that because I I'm thankful for your faithful leadership uh in in the church and serving the church, pastoring, uh, and serving the the broader church uh through desiring God. So grateful for me. Thanks, man. Me too.
SPEAKER_03It is one of the greatest of getting older. So I'm in my mid-40s, and in your mid-40s, you can have friendships that are 20, 25 years. That's one thing you don't get with the energy of youth. You don't get that kind of long-standing relationships, that appreciation for God's grace over the years. Yes. I guess that's something to look forward to as we get older.
SPEAKER_00Yes, that's a good word. Amidst uh yeah, the challenges that come with getting older and making sure we're healthy uh in whatever stage we're in, which obviously you've uh yeah, you tell us uh for somebody listening, uh the most recent book you wrote on exercise, why you wrote that and why that's important and even a theology behind it, why that is so important.
SPEAKER_03Oh man, it it is not something I dreamed about writing years ago or set out to write necessarily. I felt like kind of the need found me. And I was I was willing just a little step at a time to kind of chase after it. Eventually it came to this small book. It's a small book, just about a hundred pages. I don't have a lot to say about exercise. And it may not be good for me as a pastor to say a lot about exercise, but but just a little, a little theology of exercise. Uh, I was active growing up and played baseball, like you, David.
SPEAKER_00And so, and you were you were good, good enough to like have potential in college, just like college interest and and went to college thinking I would play.
SPEAKER_03I was a catcher.
SPEAKER_00Okay, all right.
SPEAKER_03Um, and so I've I found that that was my place of I was at a big high school in South Carolina, and uh that was my place of involvement. My identity was there in my baseball. That got me to Furman University. At Furman University, God met me in a way like never before. I I think I was born again at Furman University and had an active life there and in college ministry with campus outreach. I got married in 07. I started working for John Piper as his executive assistant, and my life became very sedentary for almost 10 years. So, first day on the job with Piper, they gave me a laptop and they gave me a BlackBerry phone. This is before the iPhone of 2006. And I thought, oh, this is so cool to get this nice electronic equipment. I didn't know those were symbols of my new sedentary life. Wow. And if I wasn't getting some physical activity outside of my job, I was not gonna get normal, healthy levels of physical activity. And it took me like eight to ten years to realize that. Wow. So flash forward 2015, I'm carrying probably about 40 pounds more than I needed to be carrying back in 2015. And I'm griping one day to my wife. We're walking around in Minnesota Lake, and she calls me on it. I said, Like, I've I just don't have enough energy to exercise when I get home after work. There's not there's not time in my life for it. She goes, You have time for all the non-negotiables, all the spiritual non-negotiables, all the human non- non-negotiables. You can make time for those things. You cut out other things after that. And and her comment was, You seem to have plenty of time in the morning for your nice leisurely devotions. What if you took some of that time and did a little bit of exercise? And so I took her up on it. This is okay. This was the summer of 2015. And what changed it for me was trying to get some exercise in first thing in the morning. I would do it every other day, a day to work, a day to rest. And uh that changed it for me in particular. But at that point, it wasn't necessarily Christian yet. So I was thinking about my future cholesterol numbers. I'm thinking about the number on the scale. I'm sure I'm thinking, oh, I'd I'd rather look better in the mirror than worse in the mirror. Uh so it wasn't Christian, it was just human. And so along the way, I started thinking, I'm I'm a pastor, I'm a theologian. I need to apply my theology to this. Like, what's my theology, my practical theology of this exercise? So the first time I wrote on it was in 2017. I thought it was just one article. Um, I had a buddy at Desiring God asked me to do a second, and then Justin Taylor at Crossway Books emailed me and said, Hey, do you think it's gonna be a short book? And and this was March 1st, 2019. And my first thought was maybe someday, not yet. Like I need to live in this longer. I was probably in it at that point about two years. I gotta live this longer than before putting the paper on it. And in the course of those years, some different invitations came. There was a conference in Des Moines, a Christian exercise conference, and they wanted a pastor to come talk about theology in a Christian exercise conference. There were some chapel messages, some other things along the way. And uh eventually, I think God kind of breadcrumbed it there. Uh and I emailed Justin back eventually and said, Let's do it and let's make it little. And uh so that's that's the journey. I would would not have planned that early on. And I I don't know that I'm I mean, I'm nowhere near world-class athlete or impressive. In fact, I got a guy at DG, a good friend of mine who's uh far more in shape than I am. And he said, you know, Mathis, you're a good person for this because essentially saying, you're not that impressive.
SPEAKER_00He's like, Wow, nobody's looking at you like, Whoa, that guy's like out of reach for me. Like, uh are you complimenting me? Are you encouraging me right now?
SPEAKER_03Is it that I I do hope that the theology would speak to world-class athletes, but in particular, as a pastor, I'm coming to try to help the masses, folks who find themselves in an inactive sedentary life who want to move forward, move the needle just a little bit. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Well, I I've read the first chapter already and I loved it. I think that that is such a unique voice because it's either we were talking about this earlier in in the world of fitness, it's either you swing all the way over here and you're idolizing the body, you're idolizing working out, or you swing this way and it's like you're saying it's a sedentary life where you're not doing anything about it. Um why do you think it's so hard for Christians to attach our physical health with our spiritual health?
SPEAKER_03Good question. I mean, in some sense, it's just it's a human struggle. So, I mean, we have had, you know, you go back in history, Christians, historians love to talk about Gnosticism. Those who talked about the body is is not really mattering. It's the uh the ethereal that matters, it's the Platonic ideals that matter. But but that I think that's an expression of a pagan sinful influence in all humans. So I think when that happens in the church, I don't think it's distinct to Christianity. I don't think Christianity is producing that. I think it's a human struggle. And throughout time, C. S. Lewis talked about man having three views of the body. He talked about the pagans who discarded the body, the neo-pagans who made too much of it and made it an idol. And then he talked about Saint Francis. Saint Francis called the body brother ass. Brother Donkey. I don't want to get the explicit filter, man. Explicit filter going here on your podcast. But Brother Donkey. Okay. And he talks about the body being wonderful, beautiful, lovable, stubborn, infuriating beast. And then which really that keeps well with Christian theology. Because there are layers to the story of the human body for Christians. We have the layer of creation, layer of the fall, layer of God Himself, taking the human body, the ultimate dignifying of the human body in Jesus Christ to come accomplish our redemption in our own flesh. Then amazing, just as amazing. The Holy Spirit indwells these human bodies. Amazing for Christians. First Corinthians 6, 19 to 20. And then the Christian lives we live, we live in these bodies, and God promises we got this spectacular bodily upgrade coming. So because of the layers, because the human body isn't storied, it's complicated. We are prone to get it wrong in many directions. I in one sense, I understand why there has been a proclivity among Christians to get it wrong in the Gnostic direction because we as Christians do make much of the soul. We make much of heaven and hell and eternity. And so I understand why Christians would have errors in that direction, why their thinking would be immature in that direction. I don't want to bless that. I want to say that's still an error. And I want to bring a more mature thinking, but it's understandable why it would tend in that direction. And then the world around us, like we live in a society polarized about the body. So we have all these labor-saving devices. We have the richest food, I'm sure, in the history of the world. I mean, you get food pushed towards you and a habit of meals even when you're not hungry in our world. So if you're just drifting with our society, then you're going to find yourself overeating and underactive in our sedentary labor. Or there is the fitness culture, there's a reaction, the counterculture. And it's all about me, my PR, my visage in the mirror, my image. So we live in those polar society. We're being pulled at at the same time by both directions. I mean, here we are on our device in this sedentary setting, looking at these meticulously sculpted bodies that are projecting themselves at us.
SPEAKER_00We're like living in the tension. That's right. Yes. It's not sitting around for hours looking at other people talking about working out.
SPEAKER_03That's right. So we as Christians need some intentional thought and help in this so that we can say with the Apostle Paul, Philippians 1, I want Christ to be magnified in my body.
SPEAKER_00All right. So how do you do it, man? How do you glorify God with your body? Uh eating, exercise. Um, yeah. What what what are the practical handles you're like, okay, this is this is what this looks like in practice.
SPEAKER_03So uh try to do a little bit of the theological triage or sorting. Um, a danger would be for the Christian, just as we've said, to just think the body doesn't matter would be a danger. Another would be to think that exercise in and of itself is a kind of spiritual discipline. I mean, it it's not in and of itself. I mean, non-believers can experience the joys of exercise now. The joys of exercise are acquired pleasures. Uh huh. Yeah. Good exercise involves discomfort. And so as you experience that connected to the reward on the other side, it becomes enmeshed with uh the pleasure. So exercise can become pleasurable, but just because you enjoy it doesn't make it Christian.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03So we need to know as Christians, how do we how do we make that Christian?
SPEAKER_00And where are we gonna do that? So significant. I just want to like let that soak in for a minute. As I'm processing that, I'm like, I'm just thinking about in our CrossFit gym, which obviously, yeah, not everybody's a follower of Jesus in there. And so we can be doing the same exercises, the same workouts, but there's actually uh there's a variety of differences here with what I how I'm processing this, what my motivation is in this, uh what yeah, the yeah, not only the reasons why I'm doing this, but also how I'm doing this. That's right. Like it's gonna be there's a distinctly Christian way to work out uh yeah, that's that's different. That's right. And that's really helpful.
SPEAKER_03If at any given moment you just take a snapshot of that gym, you may not be able to tell. I mean, you may say, well, that person's dressed in such a way that doesn't seem very Christian or whatever, but just in that snapshot, you may not know. But what goes into it, so in in terms of the preparation, I I don't think that the theology is insignificant. I mean, however maturely or immaturely somebody is thinking about the nature of their body. So uh a very practical text. I go to this again and again with exercise, with sleep, with any bodily activity, first Timothy chapter four, verses four and five. So the famous exercise verse is first Timothy four, eight. Maybe we can go there in a minute. Okay, but first go to verses four and five, where Paul talks about everything that God created is good and is not to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God in prayer. So I think this is really significant for us as Christians. Okay, because that's what we're talking about here is how do I make exercise holy? Like how do I sanctify it? How do I make it Christian? And in Paul's way of talking there about food and the marriage bed, which are bodily activities, I think this applies to sleep and exercise. I'm gonna apply 1 Timothy 4, 4 and 5 to sleep, exercise, the marriage bed, and the dinner table. And he's all these good gifts that's right that are created by God. Good gifts in the body, he says that's made holy by the word of God in prayer. So what does that mean? Word of God means what does God say about it? And you can you can take it in the conceptual way of what does God have to say? And our answer for that is, I mean, he says in this book. So to to be the kind of man or woman who is in the word, who's in scripture, who's saying, I want to think about my body the way God does, I want to see it as his gift, I want to know that it's marred, threatened by sin, that God Himself took a body in Jesus, that he indwells this body by his spirit, that I obey in this body by his spirit, and that this bodily upgrade is coming someday for me. So if I live in light of what God says about my body and activity, and then do that, he says, by the word of God in prayer. So it may seem like a small thing. I think prayer is a real linchpin for people in making exercise Christian in in a couple different sense senses. One of them is to pray ahead, to pray about your exercise. I think so many of us just think we see a number on a scale, we hear a report from a doctor about cholesterol, we look in the mirror and we just react and say, I want to exercise. I'm gonna do this. I'm a Christian, I think through other areas of my life Christianly, but this area of my life I just do. But we don't want Christians to be animals in their exercise. I want to be Christians. So to pray about or exercise, to genuinely seek God's face and say, God, what would you have for me? How can I steward this body? Do I know people in my life who could provide counsel for me? Who can I go alongside with? What kinds of exercise would glorify you? Sometimes we ask this question about what exercises are are Christian or not, or what's what's going too far, but to approach it from the very beginning of uh how might you direct me, Holy Spirit, God in heaven, in exercise? And then in the actual moment of the exercise, sanctify it by prayer. Yeah. So I I wish I would have done this as a college student doing college ministry in 2015 when I started exercising again. It took me years to learn this, but in the same way that I pray over meals, which I'm gonna connect back to First Timothy 4. Okay, I want to pray over my exercise. So part of my pre-job routine is not just stretching, but it's praying. Uh part of that prayer is a prayer of gratitude. Father, thank you. You can do this. Yes, yes, thank you. I'm on my two feet. Like it's it's a chance to rehearse the curse in the fall. I have dearly loved friends who are disabled who can't do this. I've had my own sprained ankles. I've got my own tennis elbow right now. I I know it's it's an amazing thing to be able to do. Totally. Thank God for that. And then to ask for that consecration, you know, father, these weights, this jog, this basketball with buddies, whatever the activity is. Uh would this be to your good purposes in my life? Would you, and we can talk more about this, would you clarify my thinking? Would it have its good effects in my brain? Would you make me the kind of person who can feel the right things about Jesus and about his word? I want to be emotionally alive. And exercise it helps me be emotionally alive. Yes. And so I ask for God's good purposes and then I go. Some people ask me, like, do you pray the whole time? No, I don't pray the whole time.
SPEAKER_00I I've tried like at different points, but when you're in like an intense moment, yeah, yeah. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does. But like, man, I love uh I just love all this. Um, because it's you mentioned emotionally thriving, spiritually. So obviously it's physical exercise. I think about them the mental thriving, just the uh Heather and I, so we usually do that's our morning routine, get up, spend time with the Lord on when I'm not traveling or something else, uh, spend time with the Lord on our own, and then we get in the car and we go do CrossFit together. And we talk all the time about the mental toughness of that. Yeah. And this is not, I should make sure to make clear, this is not me being like the CrossFit uh evangelist, but it is exercise, like mental toughness that comes with uh pressing through and working hard at this and and your body saying no, and you just kind of keeping keeping going in healthy ways, obviously. Um yeah, but all that to say there's just so many practical benefits, but I I'm gonna go ahead and just confess like when I'm stretching, I've not been praying. Like that is so good. Like that's this clear takeaway for me right now, just to make sure to uh yeah, soak that time when I'm able to mentally in prayer. That's really a good word.
SPEAKER_03One other habit then. So uh at the outset of prayer, sometimes uh I've got this stretch, it's about probably about 300 yards uphill in the last mile, coming back to my house. And uh over the years, just as I've gotten older, God help me get up the hill. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Help me. You know, then I get to the part of my exercise where I need to endure, like I need to have a little bit of resilience, some grit. Yes. I'll pray for help. I've got the Holy Spirit. We have the Holy Spirit. Why don't we why would we not? The Holy Spirit wants us to use these bodies to the Father's glory. He's ready to help in that moment. And then the last one is in stepping to the finish, enjoying the sometimes, not not always, sometimes the euphoria of being done. Yeah. Uh-huh. Whether that's endocannabinoids, dopamine, if there's endorphins involved, whatever's involved. I'm finished. Yeah. Like, I want to go to prayer in that moment. So good. Lord, thank you. Yeah. Thank you for that. Use this now.
SPEAKER_00That's the other thing I need to do. When I'm like, yes, on my back, like exhausted, legs threatening to explode, whatever. That to just in that moment, all the things, like, thank you, God, yeah, that I was able to do that. Thank you for getting me through it. You obviously did. Like, I that's uh, and uh yeah, use this for my yes, for my good. And yeah, that's so good.
SPEAKER_03David, you and I, as as pastors, doing in so much of our work being mental work, mind work, sermon preparation, meetings with people, that the mind benefits you mentioned there's a minute ago, I think are very significant. Um, I did not appreciate that when I just started back into exercising in 2015. I I started to realize that I think when I switched from trying to do late day workouts to early morning workouts, I would just feel various kind of mental help. So the the resilience part is one of them, just the fact that I had encountered something of difficulty and I didn't fold. Yeah. I mean, so much of modern life conditions us to fold at resistance. And exercise is a great way to get off your screen, get into the real world, you know, encounter some obstacle, persevere in it, and and train your soul. Teach yourself like soul, you can endure more than you think you can, with God's help, like not in a way that would rule out the Holy Spirit or divine help, but you can bear up under more than you probably think. In your 21st century Western conditioning. Yes. The other aspects are I just think clearly. Or at least I think I think clearly. And I'm not against having that effect. It's with it is a kind of mental energy and uh and a clarity of thought and uh an ability to focus and not be distracted. And so in our world of distraction, if I can have any help that I can get on focus and on attention, I'm taking it. And so on on the mental aspects alone of exercise, I'm gonna do that as a pastor. I think it's worth consideration for all for Christians. Just because Christians are people where the mind matters. We don't check out on the mind. We are our best when our minds are our best. And so exercise can help with that. That's beautiful.
SPEAKER_01David, I'm curious if in your book you touched on communal aspects of exercise, like community based uh I don't know. Working out, I think for me, uh my wife and I started a Christian run club in Austin, Texas. And I've just found that Austin is a like a it's a hub for run clubs, but there's something different about ours. And I don't think it's the you know, the preparation that we do. I don't think it's all the fancy gadgets that we bring, but it's truly the the prayers that we pray, the the fellowship of the saints at a run club of anything. Uh is there anything like special about community gatherings when it comes to working out, Christians coming together? Is there something special about that? I I think there's added benefit.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So I I don't talk much or maybe any about that in the book, and it's a great idea. Like you the what you're saying it right now, and it totally resonates. I mean, this uh my journey over the last 10 years has corresponded with having children in diapers. So the few moments I've had early in the morning before the kids get up, like I'm just jetting, I'm getting out, I'm getting back. But now I'm in a season of life now, my youngest is eight, and so there's a little more, a little more elbow room, there's there's more flex. And when I can run with a brother, the run feels like it takes a third of the time. We get going in conversation. I don't care if we're going a nine-minute pace, like just to have a Christian brother, we're multiplying the good effects. So I'm working the body, I'm getting those good effects for clarity of thought, work on the heart, so many other aspects. And then with that brother to share Christian fellowship. So if you can multiply that with a running team, a Christian running club, I love it. Um, God hasn't yet provided that in my life. But hearing you talk about it makes me want to seek it.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's good. I think about guys like who, yeah, uh, they'll kind of they've got a garage that they work out in together, and it's like discipleship. Like they're just and it is like it's all these benefits apply to hey, we kind of do this together. We press through the hard together. And the the more you bond like that, that's uh so that that can have really positive benefits. And so to to put a plug in for the other side of things because it really does. So um it's not gonna be the same going to say, for example, a CrossFit gym where you've got all kinds of people, and you got sometimes music that's blurring that's not awesome, uh, and not spiritually edifying, or uh things being said that are not always uh edifying. But okay, this is part of what it means to like be in the world in in I think healthy ways to be uh I hope salt and light and uh and but you're also that's where I mean some of our when I think relationships with people who may not be followers of Jesus, and again, this goes back to partly having a job where I'm around followers of Jesus a lot. Like this is uh sports in general, whether coaching uh kids, uh in uh sports leagues, which uh yeah, I've just done ever since my kids have been young, to exercising these ways, it allows you to really develop really good relationships with people who may not be followers of Jesus and in the process hopefully show some of the distinct things that uh we've been talking about. So it's kind of a win-win in my mind. Like I think, yeah, that can be super valuable either way. Does that make sense? Yeah. Uh but we do have to also, yeah, as with anything in the world, be careful not to um yeah, I think not just like music or whatever, but uh I think about if you're not careful, the motivations of the people around you become your motivations, so to really be more vigilant, just like we always have to be in every facet of our lives in this world, not to be conform to the pattern of this world. So if everything is around you is look better for yourself or uh yeah, do this or that, compete so that you can win. Yeah, like I mean, I'm I'm pretty competitive. I'm guessing you're pretty competitive, David. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Hame up on strength finders.
SPEAKER_00Let's just kind of dive into that. Can we dive into that for a second? Like, uh, how do you compete for the glory of God? Like, how do you try to defeat someone for the glory of God?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's right. Well, several different layers. I've been working on this. This is probably the question I'm getting most frequently with a thoughtful audience when I'm talking about the Christian exercise. Like, well, what about competition? So I'm I'm working on this. I'll give you several fresh thoughts. Okay. On the one hand, like the backdrop is uh we serve a God, we worship a God who wins in the end. That's good. And he is defeating Satan. And in in in choosing to run out redemptive history like he does, in the kind of patience he exercises in the world, uh, there's some enjoyment in that defeat. There's glory for him in the way that he is defeating Satan. So with his patience. So there's there's a background. Love that. Love that we have a God who you may say, in certain terms, is competitive. Like there's no chance of him losing. Yes. But he's gonna win.
SPEAKER_00And we're on his team.
SPEAKER_03That's right. But there's some background for competitiveness. Now, I I think it's helpful for Christians to understand the different spheres in which they are and in which they're living out the commands of Christ. So on the street corner, showing compassion to someone is a different context than being in a game. If you show Christian compassion in the game such that you let a guy have a free basket, like you're letting down your team, you're letting down your opponent. Yeah, yeah. Because the terms of the game, like as a Christian, I really think part of being a godly player, being a Christian player of the game, is you honor the terms of the game. And if the terms of the game are the team with the most points wins, then you want to give that some genuine effort with your team. Now, we all know you can go overboard too far. Yes. And an amazing thing about sports, which is a reason why I've been willing to invest so much time in coaching my kids, probably the same for you, David, is it becomes a microcosm of life within the bounds of the field and the time on the clock or the innings, uh, our hearts are pressed and things come out that wouldn't come out, but it's in there. So it's not that the competition caused the sin. The competition was a lens that revealed the sin that was there. So the game gives you an opportunity as a friend, as evaluating yourself, as a dad, to say, Hey buddy, you know, when you yelled like that, when you threw the bat, they're just making these up.
SPEAKER_00These are not of course, of course. You had a friend who's kids did this. Oh, you had Al Rand who was coaching and said something.
SPEAKER_03Yes, of course. What was going on in your heart? So it's been golden for me as a dad. Like sports, man, I I I guess not right now, but there was a time I was doing an interview a few weeks ago. I came to tears just thinking about how God had used sports in my fatherhood, in the opportunity to connect with my sons and then to be a Christian father, to talk about conduct, talk about the Christian life, talk about character through the avenue of sports. So I think that that's important for us Christians. Honor the terms of the game and see how the game can be a sanctifier when you're fully engaged, not sinfully engaged, either in not caring, the apathy. There can be a sinful apathy as well as losing sight of what really matters, caring too much, losing yourself in it.
SPEAKER_00That's so good. I another uh layer I would maybe add on to it too that I've thought about is it in this uh yeah, 1 Corinthians 4 is definitely it's not talking about athletic competition, but this picture of Jesus is my judge, and I'm I am a steward of his grace, ultimately the gospel. Um a servant of Christ, steward of the mysteries of God, is what he said, what Paul says in the beginning of 1 Corinthians 4. But then he he talks about basically I'm accountable before the Lord for what I do with what he's entrusted to me. And so when I think about, and as I've spent time with athletes in some different uh like professional athletes in some different contexts, I've encouraged like you've been entrusted with a unique elite gift. Yeah, so steward that and yet I I think Christianly there is a way to steward that to the full and if someone else is better, then to actually rejoice in God's grace in this person over here, which feels very countercultural. And I realize, I mean, I've played enough. I like I remember we we had talked through this uh with with some professional baseball players, and one of them texted me the next morning and was like, Okay, so you just making sure I get this right. So I'm pitching in a really important game, I throw the ball, I make the pitch, and dude hits a grand slam. I'm supposed to rejoice as he's run-running the bound me because I did my best and he did his best, and it's a grand slam that's the result. And I'm like, in a sense, yes. And it's like I I totally get just like with anything that uh you're you're like bummed, you're down about this, but you to to compete in a way you know you were faithful with what was entrusted to you, and uh and God gave more grace and his sovereignty to another person at that time. Like I do think there's some rest that can be found in that. And that doesn't, but I I said I don't I really don't think that minimizes the the desire to win and strike that guy out. Yeah, it's um because you gave your all. And that's what every player wants to do, right? That's right. We want to walk off the field like I I gave him my all. I did all that I could.
SPEAKER_03I do think that that's it, that you you give your all through the play, through the pitch, and then there's there's a kind of composure that both honors the opponent and your own team. Yeah, you know, I mean it if you run over a little too zealously to the other the guy who hit the winning home run and give him high fives, I don't think your team's gonna be happy. Or that's right, your friends are gonna be happy with that. I think there's a way to live that out. It's a complicated moment, which is amazing, then opportunity for sanctification. None of us gets it right every time. Many of us get it wrong often. And if you get it wrong in a big moment, that's not the end of your story, too. That's a chance to trust the Holy Spirit for grace to grow and improve. I do think there can be a composure there that honors that moment. And maybe there's a later time, there's a text to him, hey, that was great. There's I think you're right. There's a kind of maturity in saying, I played my best, he played his best, yeah, I wanted to win. And because I've got something more in my life than this game. That's right. That's right. This was not ultimately I can look at that performance and go, touche.
SPEAKER_00Yep, yeah, yeah. Because I'm not my contentment was is not ultimately found in how that game ended. That's right. My contentment is so much deeper. Again, this is a a Christian way to approach competition. Uh the this is why the theology matters, right? Because man, that affects your heart. That I mean, that's where, yes, sports, working out, whatever, uh, can be an idol for sure, where you're looking to this thing for your joy, where you're looking to this thing for your peace. Yes, not just to enjoy the good thing, but to realize, okay, you're the giver of all good gifts. My contentment, my joy, my peace is in you. And I want to be faithful and work hard with all you're given to me. And I can trust you with how it plays out.
SPEAKER_03Maybe a quick word. If we have some athletes listening, uh, there can be pressure in that moment to put on a kind of show as a Christian. Like I gotta be a certain thing as a Christian for my teammates, I gotta carry myself in a certain way. And I would say that is a great opportunity. It's something to think about. But first and foremost, it is where your heart is. And know that any given moment is not the only moment of your life. You mess up a moment, you mess up a moment. Like Jesus came and died on the cross for sins. Like Christians can handle a bad moment. So I would say, first and foremost, in those hard moments that are created by sport, like where is your heart at? And as you train your heart to have a Christian composure in those moments, I think you really serve your teammates because a lot of them are going to be emotionally out of whack. They're not gonna know how to handle a defeat at the end of the fourth quarter or in the bottom of the ninth inning. And so for you to kind of handle yourself in a way that says, this game was important.
SPEAKER_00And they're like, I'm really upset. That's more important. Yeah, it's so encouraging. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's encouraging. I mean, I just think back as you're speaking about that. Uh to my days in middle school and high school, I played basketball and I loved it. But it was always this thing if we if I was doing bad or if my team wasn't winning, it was this like heart-wrenching feeling within me that just felt like and my whole identity is wrapped in this. So if that's not going well, then my life is not going well. And so I I trust that that would be an encouraging word for a lot of even young athletes and professional athletes alike.
SPEAKER_00Um, yeah. You mentioned uh, so this is like total left turn, but I want to come back to something you mentioned earlier. Is that all right? Yeah, let's do it. Uh you mentioned the this applies to the table too, food, how we eat healthily, uh, because we've been talking a lot about exercise. Yeah, what's yeah, just practical encouragement. It's it's so interesting. I had uh one of uh yeah, one of my uh kids recently who is yeah, been very disciplined when it comes to physical exercise. And uh, and I've if I could just you know, just thank God for his grace in him, even the way he is going to the gym and sharing the gospel with other guys who's helped to him. It's great. Um, but he was asking the other day, he said, uh, Dad, is it a sin to eat unhealthily? And uh so uh yeah, how how do we think through eating on on this level?
SPEAKER_03So I uh have done more thought in the in the area of exercise, a little bit on eating. So I'll I'll say a few things. I'll try to stay in my pastor lane and not get into the lane of nutritionist rather, but uh I I take some cues from the way Jesus handles food that I find helpful. It's simple, but it's helpful. So on the one hand, we find Jesus fasting. We all know about Jesus' fasting 40 days in the wilderness. He fasts, he stays up all night. I'm sure he's fasting before he uh picks his disciples. He's part of the life of Israel, it has fast. So we know that he says, When you fast, my disciples will fast. Also, though, this is the surprising part. Jesus does say, When you feast, invite the lame, the blind, the cripple who can't pay you back. So he also assumes his disciples will feast. And Jesus was part of the life of the first century Jews. They had their big three annual feasts. So I mean, part there is this something that's different in modern life and first century is the fasts and the feasts had a balancing effect in everyday life. That's interesting. We just feast. Oh, yeah. That's there is now I know there are some who are doing uh the fast mainly for health reasons, but we're not in a day where I hear too much about Christian fasting for a spiritual purpose. We're in a day of a lot of feasting. So back to Jesus' life. There's fast, there's feast, and then he tells us in the Lord's Prayer to pray for daily bread. So those categories of fasting, feasting, and then the main thing, the main prayer is daily bread. Now I know that's not a specific category. That's not gonna tell you whether it's okay to have a second or have a third slider or you stop at two sliders, or you have one drink or two drinks. Like that's not gonna do that. Daily bread just provides a category of there's a normal human fare. And there are times to fast for spiritual purposes, and God does mean He gave us the capacity, He means for us to enjoy feasts, holidays, times together with friends. So finding I I have found in my own life it's helpful to have those categories. It's good. Yeah, that I not let feasting become daily, uh, that I have I seek to have a daily bread pattern, and that I'm able to enjoy some feast and know that feasts aren't meant to be balanced by fasts for spiritual purposes.
SPEAKER_00So good. And man, if I would just double click on a couple of things there. One, that I think the discipline of fasting is so helpful in this to guard us from the idolatry of food, from the idolatry of feasting to have. Uh, yeah, I mean, we encourage the brothers and sisters in our church family regularly, like have some regular pattern of fasting uh in your life and then periodic fasts for I mean to the extent to which you're physically able to make sure like you're guarding against just, I mean, there's so much good in fasting uh um that God has designed for us, Christian fasting. In addition to that, just the physical benefits. Um, but they just wean us off of addiction to feasting. Um, and then the other thing I would I would double click on there is just like the the relationship between these two, even exercising and eating, can I mean I know for me, once I got serious about exercising, I realized, whoa, I need to get serious about what I'm eating because how I eat the night before I'm working out has a you like you don't you don't feast every night and then go for a run every morning and it feels awesome. Like it's just it's like, whoa, these actually go together. What I realized in my own life when I had kind of the a turning point moment on all this, I just had a lack of. I mean, you mentioned in your life, uh, you had spiritual disciplines in the morning, and your wife was like, Well, you could add some other disciplines to this. I had no discipline. I didn't have spiritual discipline. This was as a pastor years ago. I've shared this in different different settings, but uh my lack of, I just had a lack of discipline, self-control, uh spiritually, physically. I mean, no exercise, no healthy eating, no sleeping patterns, all that together. It was just a lack of self-control in all my life. So I guess the double click there. So this is the third thing, but is whatever we're eating, however we're exercising, that there is the fruit of the spirit of self-control in us, and that's that it's not food controlling us, but it's us controlling what we eat by the power of the Holy Spirit, like supernatural. This is Christian self-control that we are wisely eating and we're intentional about our eating, not just uh continually, yeah, without self-control feeding our bodies. That's right. And and and then that certainly leads to not uh I mean, these are all a lot of wisdom issues. We don't have in the Bible eat pizza or don't eat pizza for the record. I love pizza. Um but uh so we uh so these are wisdom issues, but to be intentional about what am I putting into this temple of the Holy Spirit is is it's so it's a wise thing to be asking and to be self-controlled and disciplined in what we're doing.
SPEAKER_03One little interesting flashpoint biblically is you know, in the Bible, there's honey. And so you can trace out what the Bible has to say about honey. And there are some good lessons to be learned in honey. God didn't make honey by accident, he meant for us to taste that sweetness. Oh, that is sweet, that is good. And God's sweeter than honey. There's something for the soul in the tasting of honey, and it is not good that you have much honey properly. So it it's very, it's very easy to overdo the good thing. And so which I mean, and sugar is a huge part of the American diet these days, and I'm sure that's the case across the world. And so to have that little those little theological helps, sometimes it's not giving us the answer. These are wisdom, yeah, wisdom issues, but we're we're given by the life of Jesus, by the Bible theology, some help help here. So to say that you should always avoid sugar, never have it, like that's not coming from the Bible. The Bible's got a category for honey, and at the same time, that you can overdo it is manifestly clear. And that's something we should especially monitor in our life. I think the only thing I say about diet and food in the book is just a general warning not to drink sugar.
SPEAKER_00Well, there's something there. It's funny, uh what when as you say that, I think the other the other day I pulled over, I was traveling, I pulled over to a gas station, I get something to drink, and I I got one of these uh I thought it was like a healthy drink. I'm not gonna mention what it was. I don't want to get us in trouble on this podcast. For but I I go up, I'm checking out this uh this woman behind the checkout counter at the gas station. She said, she turns it around, she looks at the ingredients and she starts reading a couple things, and she was like, Do you know what that is? And I was like, No. And she was like, and you're gonna put it in your body? Wow. And I was like, what state were you in? You weren't in Minnesota. I don't know. Well, I can't remember the name. But I was like, Well, I guess. And she was like, Okay. She sends about. And so, but it really made me think, uh, okay, I need to be intentional about uh at least knowing what I'm putting in my body. Like uh that's that feels like a wise way to steward God's gift. Uh you're gonna borrow that move in disciple making, like you know what this is or Luray. Okay, just curious. Like, I mean, it was like That's convicted. I can't even remember if I drank it when I walked away because uh just throw it away. Yes, yeah. But that's what I love. That's what I love about this. Um, one of the things, many things I love about this whole conversation is just a we need to think Christianly about exercise, about eating, about sleep. Anything about sleep that you that would be helpful to talk about, just kind of real quickly too.
SPEAKER_03Yes, a quick caveat here is yeah uh this has been a journey for me. It sounds like it's been a journey for you. I think for so many of us in the 21st century, it's been a kind of journey of discovery. Like what's in our food and what's how sedentary has my life become, and how did they used to live just 150 years ago? So there's some of these things, these lights come on one at a time slowly. And sometimes one light coming on eventually leads to a next light coming on. A danger is that once a few lights have come on for us, we just assume that they should be on for everybody else, then we not give them space. So that's so in disciple making, if I can have a question where I can uh in a moment like bring something up and ask a question, as opposed to like laying down the law for somebody, and then how we handle this as pastors is tricky. Like I'm walking that very slowly. I I don't know all the answers. I haven't done all that. I mean, writing a book on it is one way that I've sought to do this in my own church because getting up and preaching in the face is different than it's in this book. And if you'd like to avail yourself of this information and thought, you can do so. And so a book is a less direct approach than me in your face behind a pulpit. And so I'm learning how to walk this in the local church, and some of my conversations with pastors have been how do we do this well? How do we help people make some of these realizations from a Christian standpoint without playing nutritionists? Like we got to stay in our lane pastorally.
SPEAKER_00That's good. Hey, before you start talking about sleep, because there are just a couple things there that I think are worth just kind of letting soak in. One, that's such a good principle, just in disciple making and helping others grow in Christ, uh, just as the Lord is patient with us, to be patient with others to uh and to walk the journey together. And and yeah, just because in so many different, not just this area, so many different areas, once you are growing in your faith to realize others are growing their faith too. And praise God, He's been patient with you. So be patient and walk the journey with them. That is just so applicable in so many different ways that I think is uh yeah, just a helpful nugget that applies to so much. Oh, there was something else, but uh now I'm forgetting it because I'm thinking about sleep. So maybe I'll come back to you. I do sleep. Uh yeah, go yeah, talk about sleep for a minute.
SPEAKER_03I'm working on sleep. I got uh I got my whoop here.
SPEAKER_00There you go.
SPEAKER_03This is year number two on the whoop for me. My wife got me a whoop a year ago, and for a while on a Fitbit, I I was looking at some really rudimentary stuff and beginning to learn. So as I got into my 40s, I I began to learn some of how, or at least feel the effects of a decent night's sleep versus versus burning the candle at both ends, especially when I go back to back nights. I I do here's a more general principle. Um Modern life tells us that we're a little more hardwired than I think we typically are. God has made the human body pretty amazingly flexible and plastic. There's a kind of metabolic plasticity and flexibility. God made us for fasting and for feasting. There's some there's some plasticity there that I think, or flexibility at least, that we often don't tend to think about. Same with sleep. I I do think he has uh given us the ability to miss sleep when love calls. So Jesus stayed up all night to pray when he was going to pick his disciples. Yeah, and the night before he died, we don't hear anything about Jesus sleeping. And so I I do think there is a time. Sleep should not be God. Sleep is a gift from him. And if you're a young dad and mom with little kids in the house, if there's a need to be met, God can God can fill in whatever gap is in that sleep. So now if I start going because of my own failures in planning, I'm going multiple nights in a row with little sleep, then I'm reaping what I'm sowing there. And as I got older, I started to feel the effects of that. And I'll I'd hear more, learn more, start realizing I need to make sure that I'm exercising Christian faith in getting to the new day and saying, I don't rule the world. Yes, God rules the world. I need to lie down and sleep. I read in Psalm 4 this morning. I'd read this Lie down and sleep. Are you on the navigators reading? I'm on a different reading plan, but I mean it's yes. Today's four. Yeah, it's so good. So Psalm 3 and 4 about lying down and sleeping. And there are times where you lie down and you don't sleep. Sometimes you lie down and you sleep. And part of that in peace, trusting that that you'll dwell in safety because God rules the world. You don't. A real practical thing from the people I talk to is uh having the discipline to stop the digital device, like stop the Netflix, stop the ESPN, stop the news, whatever it is that you're helping to kind of slow down in the evening, to hit that stop, to look ahead to the morning. I want to tell, I'm I'm a Christian hedonist. I believe God is most glorified in us and we're most satisfied in Him. I am pursuing joy in Jesus. And so one way I get myself to sleep, I get the light off, I get the screen off, is I want to enjoy Jesus tomorrow morning. If I get a better night's sleep tonight, I want to be awake in the morning for the word. So my commitment to have God's voice be the first voice I hear in the morning with the Bible open, over time, as that becomes a greater joy, that can, if I'll leverage it, that can help me try to do better by sleep in the evening. Yeah. And there is, there's young man's life, there's a middle-aged man's life that I'm living right now. And I just know that that I need to be more disciplined about that. But but I do want to say, uh, when love calls, when that need comes, the Holy Spirit can make up for that.
SPEAKER_00So yeah.
SPEAKER_03Don't be ruled by your need for whatever amount of hours.
SPEAKER_00That's really good. And the man, how much uh yeah, just uh demands discernment in a good way to make sure it's love that's calling, make sure it's God that's calling, not it's not your just insatiable desire for work or your overworking or your any number of other strengths. That's so good. As you were talking, it made me think of actually multiple things you said that made me think of the second thing that I had forgotten earlier. And that's praise God for his common grace in medicine. In nutritionists. I love how you've said multiple times. I want to stay in my lane. Like I'm not, yeah, I'm not an exercise therapist, I'm not a uh nutritionist. But praise God that he's given common grace gifts to a variety of people to help us uh understand these things, uh, and even just the the common grace benefits God's given to all of our bodies, whether it's in fasting or exercise or eating healthily or uh sleeping. Um, but and again, it's what I think is one of the biggest takeaways from this conversation, is to make sure that all of that, even our processing, what's out there in common grace, we're doing so through a Christian lens, through a biblical lens, through a uh, yeah, just a Christ-centered perspective that doesn't because there's yeah, there's a lot of good exercise stuff, fasting stuff that is totally godless, that is totally um even yeah, uh anti-God that is atheistic at its core or or is promoting some other kind of new age spirituality. I mean, there's so many different examples of and so to take some of that good and make sure that we're not just okay, scrolling through the latest new thing that this new new nutritionist is saying instead of just or new exercise person is saying instead of processing through, okay, Lord help me to yeah, that's first Timothy 4 is again so helpful, just the picture of sanctified, uh being these things made being made holy by the word of God in prayer. Yes, yeah, so good.
SPEAKER_01I I feel like we could just keep going. This is a fascinating conversation, but kind of to land the plane, I would love, David, if you could just share for the listener who feels discouraged, maybe they feel stuck in their unhealthy habits, uh, maybe they have injuries or chronic illness, or just like not really motivated at all to go and exercise, eat well, get good sleep. What encouragement would you give them to see exercise as a way to enjoy Christ in body and soul? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Can I can I like uh just elaborate on that question? And maybe two different people. One, the person who uh is is struggling with motivation but can exercise and uh and and then the other the person who may have physical limitations that keep them from doing a lot of the things that we've just talked about. That have yeah, anyway.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so let me do that first one first, disability. And I think when we talk about the body, its ability, and then how the body can be leveraged, how physical exercise can be leveraged for spiritual good, we really need to dignify disability. I mean, disability is dignified not by ignoring it or pretending that it isn't difficult, it's painful. I mean, it can be devastating for people. And I have dear friends uh that I continue to think about as I work on this book, as I talk about exercise. I I do think uh I would be happy to say that the help that exercise brings for the Christian is a kind of boost. Uh a mind that works more clearly, a heart that's that's more ready, but it's a kind of boost. It it's not a it's not a means of grace in of itself. It is useful, it's helpful. If you can pursue it, I would encourage and counsel people too. But I think for those who cannot, God has a thousand ways to make up for that. It is not essential. It's not even essential in humanity, much more not essential in Christianity. So you may be missing a kind of boost or help that you would avail yourself of if you weren't disabled. And that's part of the pain and then dignity of disability. But I I God's not holding out on you. In fact, some of the greatest saints, I mean, I I dare to say, like the perhaps the greatest saint alive, Johnny Ericsson Tada, quadruple in her wheelchair, amazing joy in Jesus. And apparently that inability to go for a jog has not held her back from manifesting something I've seen in my life. Yes, for sure. So be encouraged in your disability. The Holy Spirit just makes up for something like that, no problem. Just washes over it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. For those who can't. Well, real quick before I forget, uh, I'm trying to remember the name of it. But if you just search uh Johnny Erickson Tata, uh, she has uh I I did an endorsement for this book that came out not long ago. But it's like songs she sings in the night when her body is just on pain and she can't even sleep, much less exercise. She can't even sleep. And it's just songs she and it's like devotions that go with it. So I would just encourage Devouring Anything from uh That Sister in Christ. She's amazing.
SPEAKER_03So I'm her recent book, Practicing the Presence of Jesus. Uh Piper taught a a class on 2nd Corinthians for our seminary students at Bethlehem, and he assigned them the Greek text of 2nd Corinthians and Johnny's book called Practicing the Presence of Jesus. Oh good. Yeah. Avail yourself on that sister's ministry. For those who could exercise, for those who have the ability and don't. And maybe you find yourself probably the hardest position you'd find yourself in is you're carrying a bunch of extra weight and you're thinking, I wish that I wish that was gone tomorrow. Um I know what that feels like, at least a little bit. And what I would say on this side of it is we tend to overestimate what we can do in the short run and we underestimate what can be done in the long run. So I I would I would encourage somebody, think in terms of months and years, not days and weeks. So we it's not about in that first workout shedding pounds, even in that first week. Like think, think what God would be calling to you to for spiritual purposes five years from now, ten years from now. Set a doable, enjoyable trajectory for years ahead. And and and trust the Lord along this process. So many they get hyped up in a moment, they overdo it, they're trying to shed that weight immediately. It's not good for the body, and the soul's not going to be able to hold that up. The will will not be able to hold that up. You need to have your inner person, your mind and heart reconditioned. That's the more fundamental thing is the reconditioning of the soul. So work that over time. Exercise is the chance to keep working on that. Have a long trajectory on it.
SPEAKER_00Yes. That's gold. There's so much gold here. Brother, thank you for stepping in uh to this. Well, one, just in your own life out of personal conviction, the prompting of the Holy Spirit in your life, but then for serving uh us, the broader church and in an accessible way. So I just yes, would just commend David Mathis' book on this, like and and and for all of us to continue growing in this to how to glorify God with our bodies. Thank you really. So yeah. Can you can you pray over every single person who's listened to this with all the different circumstances that obviously only the Lord knows? But yeah, just however the Holy Spirit leads you based on the conversation.
SPEAKER_03And do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who you have within you from God? You are not your own, for you are bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. So, Father in heaven, that's a an amazing calling to glorify you in these bodies that we don't have to ex escape them or ignore them, and we definitely don't make them God and put them in your place. You mean to be glorified in these bodies. And remarkably, you've not only sent your son in these human bodies, but for those who are in Christ, you dwell in us. Amazingly. Well, how amazing to have the Holy Spirit in us, indwelling our bodies. So that means we're not on our own wherever we are in this journey, whatever you're calling us to, from the most sedentary to the most sinfully active, and the ones who overdo exercise as an idol. Uh Father, we're not our own if we're in Jesus and we have the Holy Spirit. So I pray for his help. For those who've listened here, who felt any measure of conviction, of inspiration, I pray now that the Holy Spirit would go to work in helping them, working on the mind, working on the will, giving them the taste of spiritual joys. I pray that Christians would be motivated to exercise not by normal joys, not just by the physical, that this the physical would bolster and help, they'd supplement. But I pray that a spiritual joy, a tasting of the goodness of Christ and of the powers of the kingdom in the age to come, and of you, Father, in your grace and sovereignty, in the nearness of the Holy Spirit, in the goodness of the fellowship of the church, I pray that spiritual joys would pull us on, strange as it is, would pull us into the proper human exertion of our bodies that would serve your great purposes in our life. We ask this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00Amen. Amen. And man, as you were praying, one thing that came to my mind that I just want to mention, because uh we've kind of assumed that most people who are listening to this are followers of Jesus. We've talked about how to think Christianly. And some of you may, somebody may pass this on to you, or you uh maybe saw like what Christians talking about exercise, a Christian way to exercise. But how I just want to encourage you, uh, I hope that you've heard in this conversation uh maybe a new dimension of the depth of God's love for you and God's good design for your life, your body in this world. And I just want to encourage you to seek out uh Christians who believe the gospel and which is the good news that though we are separated from the God who made us by our sin against God, God has made a way for us to be reconciled to relationship with Him through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. And there's a hope and a joy and a peace and a totally transforming power for every facet of your life, not just in this world, but in the next, that uh is found in Jesus. So I hope that maybe this will be kind of a catapult for you in your own spiritual journey to think through. Okay, how can what I've what I'm passionate about with physical exercise, how can I actually lead me to a relationship with God who cares about my physical exercise? So follow up, look at more resources on Radical. We would love to help point you to Jesus and his good design for your life in all of its totality.
SPEAKER_01Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Everyday Radical. We pray that it encouraged you in many ways. We do this every single week. So be sure to subscribe or follow to not miss the next episode. We'll see you then.