Why Would a Christian Exercise?

At this conference, we focus on the biggest realities in the universe: God, sin, Christ, his cross, and his gospel going to all nations. In light of such massive global and spiritual realities, isn’t something as physical and temporal as exercise insignificant?

Maybe you know the name Adoniram Judson. If you don’t, let me introduce you. I suspect that, in God’s reckoning, Judson is one of the greatest Americans in the short 250-year life of this nation.

He was born in Massachusetts in 1788. At age 25, he and his wife Ann left America for India. Ripples from the War of 1812 soon forced them to Burma, and there Judson stayed essentially the rest of his life, for almost forty years. He returned to the United States only once, in 1845. He went back and died in 1850 at the age of 61.

Judson was America’s first commissioned foreign missionary. And he was a “Particular Baptist,” which means a baptist Calvinist or a Reformed baptist. (So this is a good man in my book.)

So what about physical exercise? One surprising fact about Judson, highlighted by historian Thomas Kidd, is that Judson

maintained an impressive fitness regimen, one that was steady and probably life-sustaining in an environment where many missionaries died early from disease. Day after day for years, Judson took brisk walks in the mornings and some evenings. He did this despite his incredible productivity and prodigious learning in the Burmese language and biblical scholarship, not to mention his family and pastoring duties. . . .

Judson said that he had kept up this routine for thirty-five years. To it, “under God, I ascribe the good health and the long life I have enjoyed in this unpropitious [unfavorable] climate.”

Kidd then comments:

When you consider how phenomenally productive Judson was, you might wonder, how was he able also to maintain this fitness regimen too? I suspect Judson would tell us that the physical regimen helped enable his scholarly productivity. . . .

For scholars, pastors, and creatives, fitness is especially urgent, since we don’t typically have physical work built into our vocational responsibilities. . . .

Judson spent enormous time in his study, poring over works of biblical scholarship and agonizing over the best way to translate a Greek or Hebrew term into Burmese. But day after day he also maintained that enlivening exercise routine, because he saw it essential to his bodily health, just as prayer and devotional reading was essential to his spiritual health.

Get that: an “enlivening exercise routine.” And the reason I would come to Cross to talk about physical exercise is that I know it can serve your spiritual health and Christian ministry.

My Twenty-Year Journey

My own story is that I was pretty active at your age. But at age 25, I received my first full-time commission, which was a desk job. And I did not realize for years that I needed to supplement my sedentary job with voluntary physical activity — that is, exercise.

Eight years later, at age 34, I realized something was off in my life. And I slowly got back into it: walking and some jogging, that led to more running, and over time a new appreciation, rather than aversion, to physical activity. Eventually, I learned to appreciate some hiking, and bike riding, and modest weight lifting, and practicing baseball with my twin sons, and playing men’s basketball one morning a week.

So here I am, a little more than ten years later, living a more active life than I did at age 35, and the main thing: a more manifestly joyful and energetic Christian life, happier in Jesus and more productive in his work. It’s one thing to ask, “Why would a twenty-first-century human exercise?” It’s another thing to ask, “Why would a Christian exercise? And why would a missionary, like Adoniram Judson, exercise?”

I know the first and easy answer could be, “For the glory of God.” God gave us these bodies; he designed them; and he designed them to move, unless hindered by injury, sickness, or disability. And 1 Corinthians 10:31 says, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” Great. But that’s so big and vague. I think we need to say more.

“Make physical exertion a means, among others, to spiritual health and joy.”

(On the negative side, to disregard our bodies is sin. For our Westminster friends, the Larger Catechism takes the sixth commandment to require “all careful studies, and lawful endeavours, to preserve the life of ourselves and others by resisting all thoughts and purposes, subduing all passions, and avoiding all occasions, temptations, and practices, which tend to the unjust taking away the life of any”; and to forbid “the neglecting or withdrawing the lawful and necessary means of preservation of life.”)

Four Benefits

So let me give you briefly four reasons why, as a Christian, I seek to glorify God through some modest patterns of physical exercise. I do this as a Christian, and as a pastor, and I’d do it as a missionary.

1. For My Joy

I want to be happy in Jesus, and I’ve found that exercise can help. I’ve learned that I am a happier man after exercising, and happier in general when I have a pattern of exercise in my life. And I want to leverage that in the pursuit of joy in Jesus — which glorifies him.

2. For My Mind

Exercise sharpens brain function. As I’ve aged, this may have been my biggest discovery, not just in my experience but in the literature I’ve read. As Harvard psychiatrist John Ratey writes,

We all know that exercise makes us feel better, but most of us have no idea why. We assume it’s because we’re burning off stress or reducing muscle tension or boosting endorphins, and we leave it at that. But the real reason we feel so good when we get our blood pumping is that it makes the brain function at its best, and in my view, this benefit of physical activity is far more important — and fascinating — than what it does for the body. Building muscles and conditioning the heart and lungs are essentially side effects. I often tell my patients that the point of exercise is to build and condition the brain. (Spark, 3, emphasis added)

Exercise boosts alertness and clarity of thought and richness and depth of feeling. While it doesn’t produce spiritual joy, exercise sure helps in the pursuit of spiritual joy by honing our minds and tuning our hearts.

3. For My Will

Pushing the body conditions the will. Straining and enduring in the discomfort of exercise trains your will to not give in so quickly when you experience resistance. The hills that matter most in life are typically the hardest ones to climb, and pushing your body to climb or run hills can condition your will to engage and endure the relational and emotional hills we encounter in life and work and Christian mission. This is why someone like Judson would exercise and be so productive — which leads to reason 4.

4. For My Love

That is, for others’ good. To meet needs in the name of Jesus. To perform acts of love — in, through, and with the body — that flow from a heart of Christian love.

In this sense, fitness is a term Christians can appreciate. The question to ask is, “Fit for what?” Twice, Paul gives us a useful phrase: “ready for every good work” (2 Timothy 2:21; Titus 3:1). Are you ready, in body and soul, to do good for others as needs arise? Are you fit for good works?

So, Christian fitness orients not mainly to looking good but to doing good. In Matthew 5:16, Jesus says to “let your light shine before others, so that they may see” — see what? Your washboard abs? Your beach bod? No — “so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” You do good works with such effectiveness and humility that others see you but give glory to your Father in heaven.

My charge to you is to make physical exertion a means, among others, to spiritual health and joy. Many of us have found that regular bodily movement and exertion puts us in a better position to clearly see and deeply savor God in Christ, and then to do others good to show them Christ.

Three Counsels

How, then, would a Christian exercise? I’ve given some whys. Let me close with three hows — three practical counsels, truths that I hope will help you persist in the discomforts of exercise.

1. Give it time.

Exercise is an acquired taste.

This lesson comes not only from personal experience, echoed in the testimonies of others, but also from common sense. The joy of movement grows over time. As your legs and lungs become conditioned, putting them to work is less uncomfortable and more enjoyable. Let this be an encouragement if you’ve tried exercise and it felt terrible. Give it some time.

God made our bodies to increase in energy through the discipline of expending energy. You increase your capacity by expending what energy you have, then resting, recovering, and doing it all over again. The first week or two will be the worst. But it typically gets better with time as you stick with it. For many, the payoffs become so enmeshed with the activity that exercise itself becomes enjoyable.

2. Embrace sustainable habits.

We tend to overestimate what can be done in the short run and underestimate what can be done in the long run.

This principle is true with training the body — and perhaps all the more with conditioning the inner person. The body is very conditionable. You just can’t do it all at once. If you’re out of shape, you can’t get yourself ready for a marathon by next week. But it’s amazing how you can reshape and condition and change your body over six months. Imagine what you can do in six years.

The power of habit is unleashed by small, doable daily actions and modest upkeep over time — not crash diets and unsustainable resolutions.

3. Pray over your exercise.

God means for us to pray to him about and for our exercise.

God intends that we make our bodily life holy through hearing what God says in his word and responding to him in prayer. Paul writes in 1 Timothy 4:4–5,

Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.

We make bodily life holy by hearing what God says in his word about our bodies and their movement and then by responding back to him in prayer. And two kinds of prayer are mentioned: (1) receiving his gift of bodily life and movement with thanksgiving and (2) asking him, in response to his word, to make our bodily activities holy, to consecrate them to his use and honor in our lives.

Praying over meals is a good habit. God also would have us pray over the rest of our bodily lives as well, including exercise.

Whether your life is utterly sedentary or you’re a world-class athlete, perhaps prayer is your next step. Would you begin with prayer about your body and its exercise? And as God leads you forward, consider how you might make holy your bodily life for your joy in God and the good of others.