I work out so I can play on the floor with my grandkids. I like to take walks to clear my head.
Gotta hit 10,000 steps. I really don't want to be rude or antisocial, but food is just everywhere. I'm busy, okay? It's hard to get to the gym. When am I supposed to do that? Like 4 a.m., 10 p.m.?
When? Well, maybe you can relate. Is pursuing a healthy lifestyle a chore, or is it something you enjoy, you plan for? Your overall well-being is what we're talking about today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller, and thanks for joining. Okay, John, here we go. It's the new year. We're going to kick this off, and it's time to get back to the gym. I sort of feel like we let go a bit, and this is the reckoning time, isn't it?
I think so. I'm just coming off rotator cuff surgery, so I was really diligent. I was going to the gym pretty regularly three times a week with Trent, and then this happened, and I haven't been as good about it. You have to eat extra during the holidays to help the arm recover, right? That's it.
That's the idea, and that's why we're here today, to talk about what we can do to honor the Lord by being mindful of our physical bodies and how to take care of them. Don't turn that off. I just felt like four people went, okay, I'm not listening to this. Ah, guilt trip.
No, it's not guilt trip. We've got to talk about this. I think it'll be very insightful. We want to talk about fitness spiritually, physically, and we're going to cover that with one of our great friends, Gary Thomas. Yeah, Gary is a prolific author and speaker, and he's been here in the studio with us a number of times and has written a number of books on parenting and marriage and the spiritual life.
Today, we're covering the content in his great book, Every Body Matters, Strengthening Your Body to Strengthen Your Soul. And you can learn more about Gary in this excellent book when you call 800-AFAMILY, that's 800-232-6459, or stop by the show notes for all the details. Gary, welcome back to Focus on the Family. Oh, thank you.
It's always great to be here. Now, I'm not sure if John said that exactly right. It's like every body matters. Oh, okay. The emphasis matters.
Yeah. It is interesting because we always think of God's core intentionality with us is about our spirit, our intellect, and who wants to talk about the body, right? Does he really care about our bodies? Well, as Christians, we tend to live from the chin up. That's not my line. It's a classical writer.
Okay, that's an ouch. So we've got to think the right things, and then we focus on the heart, but we don't focus on the body. But Scripture talks about offering our bodies is an essential part of worship. Romans 12, 1, offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual worship. So a part of our spiritual worship is offering our bodies to God.
And what I love about this, Jim, is that as soon as I do that, as soon as any of the listeners do that, our bodies become not just holy, but pleasing to God. They might not be pleasing to us. They might not be pleasing to the world.
Nobody is going to put me on the cover of a magazine. But when my body is offered to God to serve him, it's immediately pleasing to him, and his opinion matters more than anyone else's. You know, this can be a catch-22 or a double-edged sword, whatever metaphor you want to use, because so often in the Christian community, we're uncomfortable saying that God's mindful of our bodies, that we're mindful or should be mindful of our body, because the culture puts so much emphasis on the external, what we look like.
I mean, that is Hollywood's whole shtick. So how do we separate that worldly understanding of the body, airbrush, all that, versus a Christian or godly approach to the body? I think the best way to define it, Jim, is that we want to look at our bodies as instruments, not as ornaments.
Wow, that's good. Our culture looks at the body as an ornament. Look at me. It's beautiful.
I want to behold. But for Christians, it's offering our bodies to God as instruments. And you need to keep your instrument up if you're going to let God play the music through you. I was struck by a 19th-century preacher named Robert Murray McShane. Some of the older listeners will remember him. He was quite famous for the day. He's from Scotland and had a 1,000-member church back when, you know, they would have 60-member churches. Very young. He was 23 when he had a 1,000-member church, which was so unusual for that age. And he just worked himself literally to death.
And he died before he hit the age of 30. And here's what he said. God gave me a message to deliver and a horse to ride. Alas, I have killed the horse, and now I cannot deliver the message. And when you think about wanting to be engaged as parents, as grandparents, when we gain wisdom, if we don't take care of our bodies, we can't be as engaged. And so if we really see this body as an instrument for God that doesn't belong to us, and Scripture is very clear, your body is not your own.
You're bought with a price. Therefore, honor God with your bodies. And if I could give a story one time where that really hit me, before Sacred Marriage came out, I helped a lot of famous people write their books. Incredible minds. A man with such integrity was Senator John Ashcroft. He also was governor of Missouri.
Just an incredible, godly man. And we were working on his memoir, and he had this file that was just handwritten notes, a couple letters from his dad or whatnot. And he said, Gary, what we're talking about, you should take this.
You'll get a lot of information. And I said, no, please make copies. He goes, we can't. Here's his integrity. He was in the Senate office, and he wouldn't make 20 copies because it was a personal project. I mean, that's why he ended up becoming the attorney general.
I mean, he was a man beyond integrity. And he said, just take it. And the reason I was so terrified is I am terrible with paper. If you look at my office, it looks like an office supply store blew up. I can usually find it, but I'm uncovering. I used to feel terrible until I saw J.I.
Packer's desk when I went to seminary. And I said, OK, well, maybe. But the question is, can you find the M&M's under all that paperwork? I can always find the M&M's.
So I said, please, please no. And he goes, Gary, you're responsible young man. I was a younger man back then.
I'm sure it'll be fine. I can't tell you how many files I have lost in my lifetime. And I've had to reprint them or just do without them for the two weeks that I had that personal file in my possession. I knew where it was every second because it didn't belong to me. And at the time, he was rumored to be a presidential candidate. And I thought, man, what if somebody's writing his biography? And they say, what happened to this stage of his life? We don't know.
Some idiot writer lost the files. But because it didn't belong to me, I was able to hand it over because I said, this is yours. Well, when I really began to understand my body doesn't belong to me, which goes so against our culture. If we want to eat it, if we want to do with it whatever we want to do, I mean, isn't that what our culture says? If I want to do this with my body, who is to say I can't?
Well, if Jesus is our king, Jesus can. I created your body for certain things. And that's true sexually within marriage and creating children. It's true how we feed our bodies. It's true what we look, what we do with our minds.
And I think the lordship of Jesus should be the determining factor of how we treat our bodies, how active we are, and what we feed our bodies. I don't want to blow by what you said a moment ago about Lisa. You made a reference to her. And I want to develop that because, you know, so often when we get married, you're the expert in marriage, but we do marry opposites.
I never thought about it in the context of how we eat. But in your case, it was true, right? You had your, what'd you say, your nine-year-old sugar habit? Which I haven't lost. I mean, you know, you go into those classic candy stores.
Never been there. There's like 50 things I would like to buy if I could, but it's just sugar and the worst kind of sugar. And this is a good word for wise because when we talk about the discrepancy between our eating. Because look, when Lisa married me, I was the consummate junk food junkie. Captain Crunch, Big Macs, pizza, and ice cream. You were her project.
Yes. And she grew up in a family that made 100% whole wheat bread and they ate things that grow. Stuff like that is what they like to do. And so, wives will say, well, what do you do? What did she do? And I think where Lisa has done really well is one, she can make healthy food taste really delicious. And then we got married, I had a, it was a bad habit, I have a daily Pepsi.
I was pretty much addicted to it. She goes, Gary, that's just sugar water. And so then she got me on Tazo Chai, like from Starbucks. And after a couple of years, you know, it still has too much sugar. And now right here in this cup, I have bhakti chai, which has maybe a third of the sugar.
Yeah, the nickname for that is dirty water. But she's really good at just recognizing how small changes can make a big difference if it's a daily part of your life. And that's what I think we can look at. Most of us will give up huge major changes. If you haven't been working out at all, thinking that you're going to work out five times a week, will last for about a week.
Maybe half a week. But when we look at our daily habits, if we could say, if my body isn't my own, I want to offer it to God, then what are some small changes I can make on a regular basis? Yeah, it's funny because you and you, Jim, and I, we're all married to women who take health very seriously. One of the things that struck me in the book was your phrase, caloric therapy. Now, I think that's part of the culture, right? We talk about comfort food. I've got a coworker who can polish off a pint of ice cream, you know, just every day.
If it's chocolate, chocolate chip, you've got to have mercy. Okay, I was talking about a colleague. I really wasn't trying to out you. You've got to put it in a bowl.
That's my advice. It's not me. How did God deal with you with regard to that particular habit that so many of us have? Well, I excused it. In fact, when my first book came out, I was all excited. I was speaking at a benefit dinner for a pro-life center, which I now know, 30 years later, they're not there to hear you. They're not there to buy your book.
They're there to support the center. If you do your job right, they won't have any money left over. So I set up my book table with my one book, and I knew the talk hit because people were laughing, crying in the right places, big ovation. I didn't sell a single book. I so wanted to be a writer, and I was terrified.
If a talk does great and I don't sell a single book, how is this going to work? And so I get done. And by myself, I'm thinking, I know what will make me feel better. Dairy Queen will make me feel better. You know, the M&M Blizzard, the fries, a little bit of sugar and starch.
I worked as a Dairy Queen as a teenager. Really? Oh, my goodness. And so I went back to my room, and then the next morning I was just praying through it.
And I really felt convicted by the Holy Spirit. I'm trying to defend it. Well, God, at least I'm not looking at porn.
That's what a lot of guys do on the road, right? There's a comparison. You can't argue with God, right? It was like, why did you do that? And I was dealing with disappointment and fear and anxiety and uncertainty with sugar does make me feel better.
Immediately. But the long-term consequences, I felt God saying, that's not going to go well for you if that's how you respond. There are healthier ways to respond to that stuff than caloric therapy. That's a really good thing to listen to God's voice, especially after we've done something that we might regret. I appreciate that. Our guest today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly is Gary Thomas, and we're talking about his book, Everybody Matters. Strengthen Your Body to Strengthen Your Soul. And you can get that book at our website.
We've got the link in the show notes. We're hitting different themes out of the book, and Gary wanted to ask about volleyball therapy. This is a mom named Karen. You called her Karen in the book.
Kind of that idea between the spiritual soul and the physical body, but hit the volleyball therapy. Karen is a great friend. She's actually my agent's wife, and so I've known her through the years. And she's telling this story about they had two wonderful children. They decided to adopt a third, and this isn't why they adopted, but she said she's looking forward to having a child without gaining all the baby weight. And yet the stress of bringing a child from Ethiopia into their family and incorporating a third kid, she said she ended up gaining more weight with the adoption than she actually had with the two. And she found herself in this cycle where she would be with her three kids, and she would eat their snacks, and they're just kind of sedentary. And it just sort of got worse and worse and worse.
And these are her words, not mine. She said, My world felt very small. I felt trapped in my own house. I took care of everyone but felt invisible.
And I think we just pause here. I think so many of the women listeners were so grateful to you and we love this about you that you are taking care of everyone. You might be taking care of your parents and your husband and your kids. And so you hear this. And I just want to say what Karen found is there is a place where it's OK to take care of yourself. And that's what Karen found out. She said, I knew I was loved.
But as a young mother, you pour everything into your very needy young children. I wasn't taking care of myself. And Karen noticed that as she felt less and less physically fit, she felt less and less connected to God.
There was a one to one correlation between her spiritual devotions and how she was feeling physically. And she finally looked in the mirror one morning and said, I didn't think I looked very attractive. I didn't feel noticed, didn't feel very beautiful with Curtis. I was no longer his girlfriend. I was his frumpy wife and the mother of his kids. It's not that he made me feel that way.
I felt it all on my own. And a lot of pastors or spiritual directors might talk to Karen and say, well, maybe you need to practice fasting or double down on your devotions or a lot of spiritual solutions. And sometimes that might be helpful. But the change for Karen is she started playing volleyball again. She had been a college volleyball player. She was accomplished. And it felt a little bit embarrassing because she wasn't in the same shape. Her skills were a little restier.
But after a few weeks, it started to come back. And then it gave her energy to instead of sitting in front of the TV with her kids, she would go on walks with her kids. And then they had a stroller where she could do a few jogs and then she would go for full out runs and everything began to change. She felt happier, more energetic as a mom. And she said more disciplined in her spirits of devotions. It made her feel better sexually.
That's her words and more connected with her husband. And it was that physical activity that became the doorway to spiritual health. And what I love about this is that it wasn't just what it did for her. She went from feeling like she was going from worse to worse to worse to not only feeling better physically as a wife and as a mom. She became involved with an international adoption ministry. So now God is using her to reach others.
But the key is I call it volleyball therapy. Sometimes it is the case that we need to get more into God's word. We might need to practice some of the spiritual disciplines. But for Karen, it was getting physical again. And that awakened her as a mom, as a wife, as for herself, and then as a minister of God's gospel. That's a beautiful illustration of how it all comes together.
What do you think? You know, I think we all realize if we can do some of that, like what Karen did, we will feel better. Other areas of our life will become more positive.
But then the big question is, why don't we do it? I mean, that motivating factor. Everybody, I think, can rationalize, yeah, if I get in the gym a little bit more, that makes me feel better, certainly look a little better, and that's okay. But getting that motivation is so hard. And that's really what Every Body Matters is all about, is the spiritual motivation.
Most of us know what to do and what not to do to be healthier. It's just motivation, I would say, is 80 percent of the battle. And when I recognize that my body isn't my own, that I want to be an instrument instead of an ornament, it gives me at least a leg up on the motivation part where I can do that.
Yeah, a little more commitment. But here's the spiritual challenge, but this is where I think it builds us as people all the way around. The problem with physical fitness is that a lack of physical fitness has immediate rewards and delayed consequences. If I eat my M&M Blizzard and medium fries, there's an immediate reward. I get that rush, and the consequences are delayed. My pants don't fit tighter the next day, but if I keep doing that, eventually they will, and I'll feel a little more sluggish and a little slower. Physical discipline, here's the challenge, it's immediate consequences and delayed rewards. Because if I don't have that, or if I go for a run instead of having the Blizzard, I don't notice the difference immediately.
I don't drop half a pound or a pound. It takes time for the benefit of that to take place. And so you really have to get into this place where, am I going to be driven by the immediate reward, or am I going to have a delayed reward and face the immediate consequences of doing something I don't want to do? And that's hard, but look, this is the same thing for finances.
Instead of making the immediate purchase that's fun, you're saving away for financial health in the future and getting out of debt. It's often the same thing for sharing our faith. You share your faith with someone, it's not immediate consequences. Sometimes you're meeting with them several times before they give their heart to the Lord. Or others are, after you. And certainly with kids. I mean, look, when people say they have babies, to have somebody that loves them, I'm like, have you ever met a baby? Because they're going to be – and you've got to get through adolescence before they even know how to say thank you.
So there are a lot of things in life where I think that principle holds true, that we accept difficulty immediately knowing that the consequences are delayed and reject the immediate reward because the consequences are negative but way off in the future. Gary, I appreciate that and I think for some people, and I might be kind of like you, I can do some things by myself, but in the culture it seems that we need kind of a tribe around us. It's a social thing, staying fit.
I was recently in a college town and there were groups of college kids running out there. And then we go to church where food is part of fellowship. I know where you're going. Potluck, potluck.
And I mean, it even happens here at Focus. We're a Christian ministry and we have food to celebrate. And I grew up with food as a celebration.
I passed it on to my kids. Let's celebrate with food. So how does a church community create a healthier, want to be healthier environment instead of saying it's a potluck and the fried chicken always goes first?
Well, who's going to show up at the carrot stick celebration? Well, my wife has helped me on this somewhat. She's pointed out the Bible mentions feasting more than it mentions fasting. She's a foodie. I'm married to a foodie. I don't enjoy food. Food is utilitarian for me. I don't like being hungry.
But she thinks the preparing of it and the tasting of it is good. But you're right with the church community. A Baptist pastor friend of mine says in typical Baptist conferences, 50 souls saved, 2,000 people overfed.
And it's fascinating. The New England Journal of Medicine published a study they called Socially Contagious Obesity. And what they determined is that whether you're gaining or losing weight is directly impacted by a circle of the certain closest social constructs around you. Now, I experienced this back in my marathon days. I was speaking at a pro athletes outreach conference to NFL players. And what hit me, these guys are giants. When you see them on television, it's giants next to giants.
You don't see how big they are. When you're walking around them, I mean, their arms are bigger than my legs. And I was in my marathon days and I was still trying to lose a little bit because if you're trying to run a fast marathon, you really, every pound matters. And Lisa said to me, Gary, please don't tell these guys you're trying to lose weight.
They'll lose all respect for you. And I felt just tiny and thin. Well, I was trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon at the time, so I went to Duluth, Minnesota to run the Grandma's Marathon. Grandma's is the name of a restaurant. It's not Grandma's that run the marathon.
And they pay the winners, so they get some of the fast Ethiopians and Kenyans and whatnot. I stayed at the hotel with these guys and one couple of them got in the elevator with me. And these guys are heads with lungs. I mean, there's no body fat at all.
And I looked down, I said, Gary, you got to start eating a salad. I mean, I felt gigantic next to these guys. The same body, this was within six weeks, the same body, I felt so tiny with the football players and overweight with the elite marathoners. And that's what socially contagious obesity is all about. If you're in a church and a family and friends where you're all gaining two or three pounds a year, you're just gradually going to grow heavier and heavier and heavier. But if you have a family member or a church that says, we want to take this seriously and you start getting a little fitter and losing a little weight. Now, for some of us, gaining weight is more important than losing weight. But that social construct is very important, which is why I do think it's good for churches to address this, not just individuals, because we're in a culture where we're all getting heavier. Statistics now show between 70 and 75 percent of us are obese or overweight. And some of that, it's not our fault. It's just it's what we face. The whole force of our culture is going against that.
And I think the third biggest thing I say as a pastor to our church members is that people are literally being preyed upon. I'm not anti-capitalist. I think it's the best form of government.
I think it's lifted so many nations out of poverty. But the dirty side to it is that food manufacturers get profit by getting us to eat more and more of their product, whether or not it's healthy for us. And they hire food engineers who study how to get us to eat more and more of what we need.
The four things that they're really going for. They want the perfect combination of taste. Obviously, we're not going to eat it if it doesn't taste good. The ease of eating.
Apparently, we're lazy. We want something just to melt in your mouth. We don't want it to be hard to chew it.
And you think about the game. Jim, I know you're a big hunter and whatnot. A lot of that, it's not easy to eat. I mean, you've got to kind of work. I mean, a well-cooked steak isn't so difficult. But you talk about some of the game that you hunt and whatnot.
You've got to do it. The third thing is the meltdown of the food. And the fourth thing is the early hit. And they've studied, how do we create this neurological hit that they put this in my mouth and I want more and more of it? And the famous potato chip commercial, I Bet You Can't Eat Just One, is an engineering success.
That is true. They make it so that if you have one potato chip, you want two. If you want two, you want two bags until you're done. In fact, I was telling Jim just before the show here that a Krispy Kreme donut, the hot and ready ones, just the basic glazed ones. I don't have a clue what you're talking about.
Well, there's this store that sells donuts. One hundred and ninety calories. And if I eat two of them, I can't remember last time I ate one, but if I eat two of them, I'm hungrier after I eat two than before. There is engineering science behind that, the way our body works. And so I don't want to come off as angry or shaming or guilting because it doesn't work.
I really approach this as a pastor as it's going to be really hard for all of us to address it because everything around us and in our culture is making it really hard to maintain a healthy body. Well, I mean, this is some information. I'm sitting here absorbing it and thinking about, okay, all the way back to the Lord just saying, you know, your body is the vessel, right? And that's what he's going to use in part along with our mind, our speech, our actions to communicate the gospel. So it does put it in a different perspective. What a great read.
Every body matters. And let's come back next time and uncover some more of the themes that you've highlighted. And I'm starting to get a little hungry, Gary, but I don't know what to do with that now. I don't know if I can go eat or what, but it's been great to have you. Thanks for being with us.
And what a terrific conversation and book. Get a copy of this book when you make a generous donation of any amount to focus on the family. If you can make that a monthly pledge, we'd appreciate that. Or a one-time gift of any amount. Regardless of the size of the gift, call today. Donate generously. We'll send you the book, Every Body Matters, strengthening your body to strengthen your soul. Details are in the show notes or give us a call.
800, the letter A in the word family. And on behalf of the team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller, inviting you back next time as we continue the conversation with Gary Thomas. And once again, help you and your family thrive in Christ. We'll talk with you, pray with you, and help you find out which program will work best. Call us at 1-866-875-2915.
