Episode 4: A Better Body Theology

Erin Davis: “What happened to your blood pressure!?” Those are the words that my family doctor said as she literally burst through the door of the little exam room where I was waiting.

Carol Anne Beck: Welcome to The Deep Well with Erin Davis. I’m your host this season, Carol Anne Beck.

There’s a misconception that we’re going to live forever with Jesus while floating on clouds in some disembodied experience. But Erin is going to give us a different picture of flourishing in Christ. He wants our bodies to flourish, along with our spirits and minds.

This series on flourishing is called “Among The Sequoias.” Erin’s going to pick up with that moment in the doctor’s office.

Erin: Now, I didn't know anything had happened to my blood pressure before she said that—it certainly spiked when she said that! (laughter) I went to see her for what I thought was no big deal: I had a little bulge on my ankle.

But in that exam room I had to come face to face with the fact that I have not stewarded the body God gave me very well. My doctor used some words with me that day that she used many times with me in the weeks that followed.

She said, “Erin, you’re not safe!” I was in the stroke zone. I won’t tell you the numbers of my blood pressure because they will make your blood pressure go up if you know anything about the numbers. But she was right, I wasn’t safe.

I had been serving the Lord in full-time ministry for about twenty years at that point. I’m high capacity. I already told you I’m Type AA. I like to get things done. And so many of us who are effective in ministry are built that way.

I was raising my sons and caring for a terminally ill parent. I’d been hosting women’s Bible studies in my home and teaching a little girls’ Sunday school class. And in the midst of all of that, I was completely blinded by pride! I thought I was the one person on earth who didn’t have to take care of my body! I had no idea what it looked like to flourish in ministry.

Now, to be fair, I was getting things done. To be fair, God in His kindness was producing fruit in spite of me, not because of me. But He had a lot to teach me. We’re not done with this series, but in this episode I wanted to jump to the end and focus on the last two verses of Psalm 92, so grab your Bible and read along with me.

Psalm 92, verses 14–15: 

They still bear fruit in old age;
    they are ever full of sap and green,
to declare that the Lord is upright;
   he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him. 

Now, I know we just plopped down there in those verses, so I hope you’ve been listening to the whole series, because the “they” there is “the righteous.” The psalmist told us that the righteous can flourish like these huge beautiful trees! And then he says, “They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green, to declare that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.” That’s good news!

The good news is that the kind of flourishing the psalmist is describing here is not just for the young (that gets to be better and better news every year for me!). God’s people can flourish in ways that make them resemble giant healthy trees, and we can keep flourishing even into old age.

Now, I know that the Scripture doesn’t specifically mention the giant sequoias I keep bringing up, but they have been such an object lesson of this psalm to me. If you go to the sequoia grove, you’ll see that there are lots of little baby sequoias about (and by “baby" I mean they might be decades old).

But the real giants have been planted in the forest for a l-o-o-ng time, and they really are the standard for the kind of flourishing that the psalmist is describing. We can flourish for a long time! We, as we walk with the Lord a long time, can become a picture of flourishing that the other Christians coming behind us want to follow.

But like everything else in the Christian life it seems, that’s not going to just happen. So, what if the psalmist’s words here—about us flourishing and bearing fruit even in old age—what if they’re less descriptive and more prescriptive? What if the call here at the end of the psalm is to be intentional about bearing fruit in old age?

Why? Why would we do the work? And it will take work to be fruitful even in old age? Well, it’s right there in verse 15: “. . . to declare that the Lord is upright; [that] he is [your] rock, and [there’s] no unrighteousness in him.” That’s worth declaring until your last breath!”

And so, the way this psalm has really impacted my life has been in the way I think about and operate within my body. I know, that might feel like a reach here from verse 14. But what if the way we treat our bodies—or don’t treat our bodies—is the proof that we will bear fruit in old age?

What if we treat our bodies in such a way that this can’t be true of us? Consider the biblical principle of sowing and reaping. We find it in places like Job 4:8: “As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.”

In Galatians 6, Paul hit the same nail with a little more force. Listen to verses 6–8: 

Let the one who is taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches. Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. (vv. 6–8)

To be clear, this is a passage about salvation, and when I use Scripture out of context you should call me on it. But the principle also applies to how we live out our faith in Jesus, and it’s so obvious we might miss it: we reap what we sow.

As I read and reread Psalm 92, I was trying to get that blood pressure under control, and I was trying to wrap my brain around this premise that the righteous are supposed to be flourishing. And then the Lord put His finger on the fact that my body was anything but flourishing.

In my early forties I had sky-high blood pressure, chronic joint pain, constant headaches, chronic fatigue, brain fog. I had to in humility face the fact that my body wasn’t flourishing! I promise, again, you haven’t accidentally started listening to a “health and wealth” podcast. I know our bodies are wasting away day by day (see 2 Corinthians 4:16).

And please, do not send me your diet or supplement plan that really worked for you, because that’s not my point! My point is that a commitment to flourishing might mean that we stay as healthy as we can for as long as we can so that we can live like giant, thriving sequoias. And perhaps that’s one way that we practically live out Psalm 92. 

Here’s a fancy word, but it’s part of how I’ve been learning to apply this psalm. I was living out functional Gnosticism. If you know anything about Gnosticism, [proponents of it] think that it’s only the spiritual that matters, the body is inconsequential. Well, I kind of believed a version of that.

Paul writes in the epistles that physical exercise is of some value, but spiritual exercise is of greater value. And I read that passage and thought, “Erin, every day you have a choice. You can either take care of your body or you can take care of your spirit, and you’d better choose your spirit.” 

What I missed is that God created all of me—body, soul and spirit—and that every part of me is designed to give God glory. What I also missed is that everything God has assigned for me to do I must do from this body.

I’m supposed to love Jason Davis ‘til death do us part from a body. I’m supposed to raise Eli, Noble, Judah and Ezra from a body. I’m supposed to love God and love others with a body. I teach the Bible with a body!

You can’t see me, but let me assure you, I’m not just some spirit-blob up here with a Bible. I’m in a body! I met a woman recently who is a listener of The Deep Well, and she said, “I thought you were older and had dark hair.” 

I’m forty-three and I’m as blonde as I pay to be! (laughter) I have chubby cheeks and I am inside a body! And as I read and reread Psalm 92, and as I saw doctor after doctor and had to face the fact that I had not cared for my one precious body at any point in my life . . .

I kept reading, “The righteous flourish, the righteous flourish, the righteous flourish.” And there was undeniable evidence (though I did try denial, it just didn’t work) that my body was not flourishing. 

For four months I called my doctor on Friday and she would ask, “What’s your blood pressure today?” I would tell her, and she would say, “You have to go to the emergency room right now!” 

And I would say, “I’m not going to the emergency room! What’s the Plan B?” 

And she would say, “Go lay down . . . and call me next Friday.”

I’d call her the next Friday and she’d say, “Erin, what’s your blood pressure?” And I’d tell her, and she’d say, “You’ve got to go to the emergency room!” 

And I’d say, “I’m not going to the emergency room!” It’s not that I’m opposed to emergency rooms. I just didn’t think that was probably going to be good for me—with high blood pressure!

She’d say, “Go lay down and call me next Friday!” 

This was not a quick fix. There wasn’t an easy solution here, and I had to face that my body was not flourishing because I had not taken care of it. And my choices were, bottom-line, these: I could learn to take care of my body, or I could die in my forties.

And so, as I began to try and live out the flourishing life recorded in Scripture. I took practical steps to try and take care of the body God has given me so that I can live a life of delight, so that I can do the things that are on my to-do list, so that I can care for the people in my world.

It wasn’t going to help my children any if their mama couldn’t function anymore. And so, because I described wanting to be that tree that because I was flourishing the people around me were flourishing, I had to do some really hard work!

And now every single week I tear off a sheet from a legal pad on my desk and I write these three things, in this order: 

1. Be with Jesus. He’s your source. 
2. Love your family. Give them grace. 
3. Take care of your body. You only get one. 

It’s nothing surprising. I haven’t discovered anything you haven’t heard before. I do this thing that we need—that I tried not to do for about ten years—it’s called “sleep!” I exercise, not because I have visions of a beach body (I have no such visions!) but because I need a healthy heart that I can love people with.

I drink water! I eat veggies. All of us know to do those things. How come so few of us are doing them? Here’s an interesting tidbit that I discovered during this journey: the health statistics of those of us in church are, in some areas, significantly worse than those outside of the church. 

What’s going on there? I think we’ve bought into this idea that the spirit matters and the body doesn’t! And we should read our Bibles—of course we should! We should pray—of course we should! We should gather with other believers, of course we should! But it’s not mutually exclusive from stewarding the body that God has given you. 

We need a better “why,” Church. Our “why” is not to look good in a bathing suit. (That ship has sailed for me.) We need a “why” that will motivate us to steward our bodies well, and I believe the psalmist gives it to us.

Listen to verses 14–15 again through this grid: 

“They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green.” Why? Here’s the mission, verse 15: “to declare that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.”

This is rhetorical, but also I want you to actually wrestle with it: how many saints are sidelined in their sixties and seventies, not because they want to be, not because their love for Jesus or the church has faded, but because they ignored the warning light on the dash of their body for too long and they cannot be ever full of sap and green.

This has nothing to do with salvation. They are still fully loved, God is still fully faithful and He can use us in every state. But Paul called the Christian life a race, and we’re supposed to run hard toward that finish line, not crawl across it.

I have long prayed that God would “wring me out like a washcloth.” I want Him to squeeze everything He can out of me that can give Him glory, and then I want Him to take me home. And the spirit may be willing, and the body will always be weak, but too many of us have been cut down in our prime.

That image is of that grove of thriving trees, and some get taken out—cut down—because, like me, we don’t steward the body God has given us well. And so, we cannot flourish in old age. There are no term limits in the Kingdom, that’s good news! You can and should serve Jesus until your dying breath!

But let’s look at Psalm 92 verses 12–13 again:

The righteous flourish like the palm tree
   and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
They are planted in the house of the Lord;
   they flourish in the courts of our God.

I don’t want us to get so caught up in finding ways to flourish in the here and now that we miss that what the psalmist is ultimately describing here is a future flourishing. Where are our lives ultimately planted? It’s there in verse 13, “[we] are planted in the house of the Lord; [we] flourish in the courts of our God.”

A day is coming—it won’t be long now—when we will dwell with God! And David wrote about his longing to be in the presence of God in this way in Psalm 84:1–2, 

How lovely is your dwelling place,
   O Lord of hosts!
My soul longs, yes, faints
   for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and flesh sing for joy
    to the living God.

And so he was longing for that moment when he would flourish in God’s presence. I do think that, ultimately, that’s what this psalm is describing. And so, I want to balance what I’ve already said: yes, I’m learning to steward my body well so that I can be ever full of sap and green.

But ultimately, no matter how well I seek to steward my body—how many vitamins I take, how much I exercise, how many veggies I eat—ultimately this body will fail. I cannot fend off that consequence of the curse forever, nor is that the goal.

When the cells of my body finally give out, I will be in the presence of the Lord, and I will know real flourishing! I will flourish in the courts of our God, all praise be to Him! But He has chosen to leave me here for now. He has chosen to leave you here for now. 

Maybe He’s left us here for another day, maybe He’s left us here for another decade, maybe He’s going to leave me here until I am nearly as old as that Giant Grizzly sequoia tree that I described! I don't know, He knows!

I would love to do a whole series of The Deep Well on body theology. I feel like I’m learning so much here, or relearning or unlearning, and this is a flyover of that.

But I did want to be honest that one of the ways Psalm 92 has most impacted the way I think and operate is through a commitment to steward my one precious body for as long as God gives me breath. Why? So that I can continue to serve others in Jesus’ name.

And though I don’t ever want you to feel squashed by this podcast, I do pray that you would listen and feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit. I do have hope that God’s people would stop living as if our bodies don’t matter—they do—and that we would begin to steward what God has given us so that we can embody, perhaps literally, the call of Psalm 92, verses 14 and 15: 

They still bear fruit in old age;
   they are ever full of sap and green,
[they] declare that the Lord is upright;
   he is [our] rock, there is no unrighteousness in him.” 

Let’s pray.

Erin: Lord, I thank You that You have given us bodies as part of Your good plan for us. And Lord, those bodies break down. It’s inevitable. We certainly cannot stay young and healthy forever. But like so many other things, you’ve given us bodies to steward. As I look around at my Christian brothers and sisters and at my own life, we’re missing it here! So because of a desire to serve You even in old age, for as long as You leave us earthside, Lord, show us—show me—what it means to steward my body well. It’s in Your name I pray, amen. 

Carol Anne: I have a feeling a lot of us are going to get out and take a walk after hearing this episode of The Deep Well with Erin Davis! She’s in a series about flourishing in Christ from Psalm 92. This series is called “Among the Sequoias.”

The Deep Well is part of the Revive Our Hearts podcast family. And when this season of The Deep Well is over, I hope you’ll check out the other podcasts, like Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Nancy will help you flourish by connecting you with God’s Word each weekday. Seeking Him will remind you of truths from God’s Word when you have a minute in your day. Seeking Him is literally a minute long each weekday.

True Girl will help tween girls and their moms flourish together! Those are just a few examples. Get to know all the members of the Revive Our Hearts podcast family by visitingReviveOurHearts.com.

Erin Unscripted

It’s time for Erin Unscripted, when I get to surprise Erin with the questions! 

Erin: And I never know what you’re going to ask. It is truly unscripted which is exciting, a little bit nerve wracking, but good. 

Carol Anne: So, I’m so thankful that you “went there” with this episode of the podcast. I truly needed this! It was an encouragement, and it was a tremendous rebuke to me.

Erin: Well, let me just take those listening behind the scenes, because before we recorded this episode I was like, “I don’t think this is worth saying; I’m not sure we’re going to actually keep this in the series. You guys can tell me if it’s terrible!”

And then we did it, and this episode is the one that most of the women in the room wanted to talk about. Go figure!

Carol Anne: Alright, I’ve got lots of questions! I have so many questions, but what I’m going to start with, Scripture says that we look out for ourselves, we love ourselves. I love myself greatly! And there is much of Scripture devoted to how we should love our neighbors as ourselves because we’re really good lovers of ourselves!

Erin: Right, based on the assumption that we do love ourselves.

Carol Anne: Right, so under this topic of the health of believers, why do you think that self-sabotage, particularly I’m just going to talk about food . . . You talked about a sweet tooth, right? 

Erin: Yes. 

Carol Anne: I like sweets, I do . . .

Erin: I also have a salty tooth . . . and a snacky tooth . . .

Carol Anne: Me, too. . .I think I just have teeth! Why do you think that self-sabotage is so common? Because if we love ourselves, to me it seems logical that I would want to take care of my body, but . . . I like those M&Ms.

Erin (sighs deeply): There’s so much there! In the midst of my health journey that I described very briefly in this episode, God brought a woman into my life. She said, “I would just love to coach you on this. I would love to be your partner in helping you to get healthy.” And I said, “Okay! I’ll take all the help I can get!”

And so we talked about food and exercise and all the things everybody knows. And she said to me at some point, “I can’t figure out why you’re not making more strides. I see what you’re eating. I see how much you’re exercising. I see how much you drink water. I don’t really know why we’re not seeing the needle move, in terms of your health.”

Well, I thought about it for a few days, and then I texted her and said exactly what you just said, “I self-sabotage. I eat healthy all day, and then the kids go to bed and I eat a whole bag of chips! Or, I eat healthy all week and the weekend comes, and for whatever reason I just blow it!”

And she said, “Ye-e-ah. I thought that was probably going on. That’s really, really common!” And I think this is just an area of flesh that, for me, I never even wanted or really considered how to put this under the authority of the Lord in my life. It’s tough!

I’ve talked about it as a tiger in a box before. It’s like, if you have a tiger, and three times in a day you have to take him out of the box and feed him and get him back in the box, at some point the tiger is going to bite back!

And food, by nature of it being something that we have to engage in so often, it’s really easy for it to bite us back. So the “whys” and the “hows” I don’t know, except for we are people of flesh and it affects us on every level.

I think many of us take for granted that this is an area that the Lord really does have a lot to say about. He does care about it, and He does want to show us how to steward and live wisely. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t spent a lot of time praying about food or eating habits or any of that.

But I think that when we do, this is an area where I think the Lord can infuse a lot more hope and wisdom than any of us may give Him credit for. Plus, I don’t think it’s a sin to eat the M&Ms! I think we can get really mixed up about what is good and what is bad. We have a tremendous amount of marketing messages coming at us all . . . the . . . time about this. 

It can be hard to sift through it. I was teaching at a church several years ago. I had the women write down their two greatest areas of sin (not struggle, sin!). And by and large the two things they wrote about were being disorganized at home and their eating habits. And I thought, I’m not sure either of those is sin.

But that just goes to show how conflated our messages get about all of this. What is sin and what isn’t? What is healthy and what isn’t? What is wise and what isn’t? I think that could be really hard for us to sift through. 

Like I just said in the previous episode, at Cousin Camp sometimes we eat ice cream for dinner! 

Carol Anne: I want to come to Cousin Camp!

Erin: You should come! It is so-o fun! There’s a day every time we go on vacation that it’s ice-cream-for-breakfast, lunch, and dinner day. It’s everybody’s favorite day! Is that a sin? I don’t think it is.

Would it be a sin if we had ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day? I don’t know that I want to even call that a sin, but definitely that would be a poor stewardship decision, and that would start to show up in our bodies.

For me, it’s a different kind of stewardship in those moments when I can take off the rules. I don’t have to be the mom that is saying, “Eat your veggies!” Sometimes it is a choice to delight. So, like so much of the Christian life, we want a checklist.

What are the “cans,” what are the “can’ts”? When are the “cans,” when are the “can’ts”? And as New Testament followers of Jesus, we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us and we’re called to walk by the Spirit.

That doesn’t come with a checklist. It comes with abiding and listening to the Lord. I keep using the word “stewardship,” but I think it’s the right word—stewarding what God’s given us. So, I don’t know.

I’m swirling ’round and ’round in my answer because I don’t have a straight answer. But I think it is, at a minimum, really good to wrestle with all of these things and at least take to the Lord, “What do You have to say about my eating? What do You have to say about my body movements? What do You have to say about my rhythms of rest? You created my body. Show me how to operate according to Your good design!”

Carol Anne: Erin, I love that you mentioned in this episode that everything God has called me to do, I do from my body. And God has created all of me—body, soul, and spirit—but it is all done from within these physical limits of what my body can do. 

And so, God will give me the ability to do what He has called me to do, but giving my body the best physical fighting chance to accomplish that! You nailed it for me when you mentioned a checklist. I am a checklist person!

I like knowing if you expect A, B, C from me. I can fulfill A, B, C, and you will be happy with me! Life will be fine! I like knowing if I accomplished 1, 2, 3 in a day. I am a successful mother and wife and teacher. 

And so, I think when it comes to these “muddy areas,” that’s why it is so hard for me, because I do want a target. I want you to give me a specific answer, because I know that I’m pleasing the Lord if I do A, B, C . . . 1, 2, 3.

God has been working in me the desire for discernment. I think that is something in my personality, in my character, that has been weak and that I watch God grow me in. I don’t want to have discernment. I don’t like gray areas! 

Erin: Right, it’s uncomfortable!

Carol Anne: I want you to give me a checklist. I want to do it. So these areas of . . .

Erin: Well, you keep saying, “I.” Maybe part of the reason we want that is because, “Okay, in my own sufficiency, once I know the rules, I can do that!”

Carol Anne: Yes, that’s true.

Erin: And when we have to abide, then we are not self-sufficient. We’re dependent.

Carol Anne: Ye-e-eah. 

Erin: It’s making me uncomfortable just thinking about it that way!

Carol Anne: It’s true. Discernment means that I have to pray for wisdom and submit my will to a righteous and holy God who does, like you said, have something to say about my health. So discernment means submitting daily with, “What does the Lord want for my health, for my movement?”

So thank you so much for going there with this, I know that my heart needed this. It was an encouragement to remind myself to daily submit the smallest things. “Whether therefore ye eat or ye drink . . . do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31 KJV).

Erin: Yeah, I don’t think that’s accidental, that those are the examples. Of course, it’s not accidental! It’s in the inspired, timeless, eternal Word of God! And He didn’t say, “Whether you pray or fast, do all to the glory of God.” Though, are we called to pray and fast? Of course we are!

“Whether you teach or disciple, do all to the glory of God.” Are we supposed to teach and disciple? Of course we are. But whether you eat or drink—in the most seemingly mundane things that we think are unimportant parts of our life—all of it is supposed to glorify God.

I have a friend who started praying before she ate (which we all sometimes will say rote prayers). But she would intentionally pray, and the Lord radically changed her approach to food, It was because she was asking Him, “God, what would best fuel my body here? What will you have me to eat? What’s the right choice here?”

And that sounds so strange for me to even say it, but I do think He created your cells—down to the nucleus! He created your tastebuds. He created all of you, and all of it is meant to glorify Him! So it’s a mindset shift that then we’ll change behaviors and habits. But first it’s the realization that He cares about my body!

Carol Anne: The Deep Well with Erin Davis is part of the Revive Our Hearts podcast family calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ!

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