Whether you totally love exercise and can’t get enough of it or you totally hate it and wish all those exercise equipment infomercials would just go away…this post’s for you.
DISCLAIMER: Besides chasing after my little kiddos and playing endless rounds of ‘Ring around the Rosie’ I’m not on my game in terms of exercise. But, I could use a swift Taebo kick to get me going again. So, this post’s for me, too!
When I first started seriously walking with the Lord, I had a real dilemma about exercise. I’d done it off and on with varying levels of obsessiveness in the years before. And the culture’s message to me about exercise just confused me to pieces. I felt one of several things about exercise:
- It was all about beauty-making myself look super fit and cosmo-esque
- If it wasn’t about beauty, it was about discipline-pride in knowing I wasn’t a lazy couch potato but I was up and doing something (even if it was running nowhere for 30 minutes in a sweat stink infested gym)
- It was a luxury. Exercise was like getting my nails done or getting a massage…it was something that should be done only after all other responsibilities were taken care of.
Then, a few years back, I did a great online study in regards to my obsessions with food and body image called ‘Setting Captives Free.’ (By the way, I highly recommend these online studies…they’re free, they’re Christ and Scripture centered, and they provide a much needed level of accountability for getting out of habitual sin patterns-all kinds). Anyway, the study talked a good bit about the importance of exercise and its redemptive qualities. As Paul says, ‘Physical training is of some value…’
The study pointed out that for the many thousands of years before us, exercise has been a requirement for living. For Adam and Eve, exercise was required just to have food to eat. God made it so. The ground was hard to work before anything edible came out. And for all the generations before us, exercise has just been built in. Chopping wood for fires, hunting goodies for dinner, taking a walk to pick berries. God placed physical movement and sweat naturally into life on earth.
I’m sure there are a lot of reasons why He may have done this. Here are a few that come to my mind:
- Humility. Let’s be honest-in most places, letting others see your side handles jiggle and turning red in the face can be humiliating. Exercise reminds us that we’re weak and out of shape. Exercise also reminds us that we are aging. These days, when I speed up to catch a bouncy ball rolling down the street, I realize that I’m not a teenager anymore.
- Perseverance. To get stronger, I have to work daily. One period of exercise per month is just not going to cut it for these muscles and bones. Daily or regular exercise reminds me of the call to push hard for something and to hang on when the going gets tough.
- Fitness for Service. Now this whole current idea of trying to live to be 150 is a bit ridonculous to me. But, when our bodies are strong and able, we are better qualified physically to help others. A little bit of time of stretching our own bodies should provide us a freedom to care for others as we grow older. God may have other plans. But, as far as we’re concerned, we should do our part to try and be as healthy and strong as we can so that we can be free to serve others who are not as able.
I need motivation to exercise these days. It’s hard to find time to do a knee bend, much less get my heart rate going. But, I need to remember that Adam and Eve (and every other Jack and Jill until just recently) didn’t have a choice regarding exercise. Their lives depended on it. God made it that way. No exercise…no dinner. So, I want to recommit myself to doing the hard work of exercise and re-joining the human race in a way that humbles me, teaches me perseverance, and makes me fit, Lord willing, to serve others.
Oh yeah, and all this talk about exercise is just about a simple 30 minute heart beat increasing activity. I’m not talking about:
- spending hours at the gym
- having humongous muscles
- looking like angelina jolie
- prioritizing exercise over relationships
How about you? Thoughts on exercise? Redemptive qualities that you’ve found? I’d love to hear your Nordic Track stories.
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Could you create a button that allows a person to e-mail a post to someone else?? Tried to figure it out through the “share” button, but it didn’t allow me to email it.
Just a thought. Want to email it! : )
Lora
Lora’s last blog post..Month Two: The Origin of Thoughts
I am thankful that my mindset re: exercise has switched from the goal of fitting into a certain size of jeans to the goal of being healthy and strong to care for those in my circle of influence and to simply being a good steward of the body & life God gave me. I’ve never loved sweat or exercise but get myself stretching or walking (outside or on treadmill) at least two and a half hours/week. Regular exercise makes me stronger and helps me maintain healthy stress levels…and even though I am not skinny, it does make a nice difference in my overall body shape which I feel good about.
I’m new here, but just had to say thank you for this post… I really needed to hear that perspective on exercise!
I really connect with your last point as to “why?”. I found that exercising to fit a image in my head only left me feeling even more discouraged in the first place. I’m finally starting to realize that it’s insanity to think that I can take care of everyone in my life while neglecting my own well-being (physically, mentally, spiritually). When I put weight & dress size out the window and commited to just being well and taking care of myself like I tell my mom & sister to, it was a lot less pressure and helped me to accept where I am and just do it, instead of agonizing over not seeing results. Of couse I still needed a kick in the pants so I’m registered to participate in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. Nothing says motivation like public commitment!
Thanks for the exercise post and the blog. I have enjoyed reading it. The exercise post especially resounded with me because for the past 2 1/2 years I have made a committment to a healthy lifestyle that includes healthy eating and regular exercise. Because my personality tends on the compulsive side, it can be a real struggle not to go too far in one direction (obsessive weight/exercise goals) or in the other direction (chuck it all and be a complete sloth…which can be an odd sort of obsession in its own right). So I read the article and post and thought, yeah, that was good. There was something about it that did not totally ring true in my mind though. Ironically, it was during my afternoon run that I think I stumble on what was troubling me.
You wrote that Adam and Eve were designed for the hard work of exercise…work for food, as in the “ground was hard to work before anything edible came out.” Although this is true, I feel like it is true only AFTER Adam and Eve sinned. With the fall came God’s curse on the ground. In Gen. 3:17-19 it reads (NIV) “To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistels for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
So although you are right, everyone since Adam and Eve have had to work really hard for food and we have sweated quite a bit and our bodies certainly have the capabilities for that, like everything else post fall I’m not sure that was exactly God’s intent. My big thought about the exercise is that it, like everything else in God’s creation has been twisted and corrupted due to the fall. I’m not convinced that it was God’s design for exercise to be strenuous, painful, difficult to maintain, require discipline etc. I think his original design probably more resembled the garden before the fall. That being said, there was a fall and because of that everything is tainted…but due to God’s specific curse on Adam, I think our toil and sweat is especially tainted.
Now, everything else you pointed out I felt like was right on. Exercise can be redemptive…but to somehow indicate that exercise in it’s present form is how God intended it from the beginning of Creation…well, to me that is just not quite accurate. Hopefully that all made sense and this was the kind of discussion and feedback you were looking for with the blog.
hi there. i’ve been a lurker on your blog for about a month now, but this post has officially pulled me out of lurkdom!!
first, i laughed out loud at the first norictrak pic… we just bought that exact skier from craigslist. i’ve used it, um, 5 times. i am pregnant w/ my 3rd baby and after having gestational diabetes w/ the previous 2, i’ve actually been diagnosed w/ type II diabetes, and it sucks. i hate it. i have not had a healthy relationship w/ food in the past, and all the thinking and math of carb/proteins has me feeling like food is controlling me, so i go into denial and eat crap and then feel guilty… the cycle is a vicious one. so this post speaks to me about my need (read NEED) to be a good steward of not only my own body but of the little one growing inside me. and a daily dose of exercise would do much for me, despite all the excuses i can come up with!
i love your blog, and this was a great post for where i am right now!
misty’s last blog post..Letters to Myself, Part 4
Rachel
Thanks for such a thoughtful reply. I’m so glad the post got you thinking, especially as you were running-wow!
The post was too short to go into to great detail, but you are definitely right. As far as we know, blood, sweat and tears were not a part of God’s original design. Exercise for food was definitely associated with the curse. Totally agreed. But, as you said too…’there was a fall and because of that everything is tainted.’ We do, unfortunately, live in the wake of the fall so that’s all I meant…as things stand now, it’s hurts to have babies and we’ve got to exercise. And hopefully, we won’t have to sweat like that when the kingdom is fully restored.
Your reply made me think that perhaps God’s design for man to exercise for food after the fall is a protection for us. You know, since we’re tending toward sin and all, maybe God required exercise to eat in order to protect us from sinful selves. Who knows? Anyway, love your thoughts and so thankful you wrote them out…helps clarify things for all of us. Keep running…in more ways than one!