Episode 1: The Dream of the Healthier Church

Shannan Painter: We hear so much about growing spiritually. Erin Davis reminds us that doesn’t mean we should ignore God’s good physical creation.

Erin Davis: We are embodied people. And what we do with our bodies—or don’t do with our bodies—impacts everything else!

Shannan: Welcome to The Deep Well with Erin Davis. I’m Shannan Painter. This season of The Deep Well is called “Embodied.”As you listen, I pray you’ll feel grateful all over again for God’s amazing creation! 

He created an incredible variety of bodies and an abundant variety of food! God cares about how we interact with physical things. Here’s Erin to get us going.

Erin: I want you to come with me on a visit to a Christian church in Anywhereville, USA. The first person we meet is on the steps, he’s the pastor of the church. We’ll call him Pastor Bob. He meets us at the door. He’s overweight, and that’s not really surprising, because 93 percent of our American pastors are overweight. And that’s significant, because only 30 percent of the general population is overweight . . . and that is the highest it’s ever been.

So Pastor Bob is among the 68 percent of pastors with high blood pressure. He’s among 50 percent of pastors with two or more chronic health conditions. He’s also among the 75 percent of pastors who report they are highly stressed. And that might be because 90 percent of American pastors work between fifty-five and seventy hours every week! 

So while we’re imagining this very committed but very unhealthy shepherd greeting us with a smile on the church steps, I want us to consider a little nugget of information.

Historically the clergy, those who shepherd God’s people, have been known to be healthier than the general population; in fact, they’ve been known to live longer than the general population. That’s not true today.

In fact, to the medical community, our clergy are considered an at-risk population. They have higher rates of obesity and higher rates of chronic health conditions than the rest of us. Well, why does that matter? Why am I talking about pastoral staff?

Well, because they’re leading the church, and because we’re following their example. Is it any wonder that pastor burnout has reached the level of a five-alarm fire? In fact, pastor burnout is up 400 percent in the past ten years! You probably know that’s true if you spend much time with your pastor.

So we make it past the pastor. We get inside the doors of the church, and there we meet Lisa. She’s so friendly! Her love for Jesus is evident! But she greets us from the back row of the church. Now, for years Lisa served her heart out in the name of Jesus!

She was a Sunday school teacher for a long a time. She started the AWANA program at their church. She led VBS year after year. She launched a ministry in their community to single moms. She has been a part of the team for several mission trips. But now, even though she’s only in her sixties, she is essentially benched from service because in her twenties and her thirties and her forties she did almost nothing to take care of her body. 

She didn’t pay attention to her nutrition. She never exercised. She didn’t learn to rest. Though she would love to keep doing all those things that she did when she was younger—she would love to keep serving her heart for the Lord—she doesn’t have the energy anymore!

I hope that Lisa has lots more years to live, but according to the CDC, she is at risk of becoming one of the hundreds of thousands of us who die every year from preventable diseases. Actually, 40 percent of our deaths here in America are preventable!

So then after you made it through Lisa’s smile, you’d meet me. And if this scenario was five years ago, you’d see me holding one baby with a toddler holding onto my ankles, with two elementary aged sons swirling around me like twin tornados. 

You would probably be able to see by looking at me that ten years of pregnancies and delivery and nursing those babies took a toll on my body . . . in the best possible way! I would have those babies again in a heartbeat.

But it would not just be my four boys keeping me tired. Up until recently, I saw rest as weakness. I saw stress as normal. I saw my body as inconsequential and food as my reward. And health I saw as just something I didn’t have time for because I was busy doing a lot of important stuff for the Lord.

And you might actually have been impressed by all that I was managing. You might say something to me like, “Erin, I just don’t know how you do it all!” 

And I might not say it, but my pride inside would affirm, “Yeah! I’m kind of super-human! I’m able to go and go and go, and I don’t really have any limits!”

And then 2021 came and I found myself in a series of doctor’s appointments, most at which I was crying, wondering, How did I get here?! My blood pressure was off the charts. If I told you, the number, your blood pressure would spike!

I was in chronic pain. I had a headache that lasted more than a year. I was irritable all the time. Those four boys that I love with my whole heart, I was biting their heads off left and right . . . along with their daddy. I was asking the Lord, “Help me not be so cranky!” Every joint hurt, my skin looked awful. I was sick!

I started with my Christian obstetrician. I sat in her office. I have history with her; she delivered one of my sons. I know that she’s in medicine to help God’s people be well. I said, “You’re going to run some tests today, and you’re not going to find anything wrong with me . . . but something is wrong!”

I don’t know what I expected, but she said to me, “Erin, what did you have for breakfast?” I couldn’t remember. It had only been a couple hours prior, and I could not think what I had for breakfast. She said, “What did you have for dinner last night?” I couldn’t remember. She asked, “What do you normally have for dinner?” I couldn’t remember. I was totally out of touch with my body. 

And she said, “Here’s where we’re going to start. We’re going to start with drinking water.” And I was like, “Did you listen to me!? I am one sick woman! And you want me to drink more water!?” But we needed to start so-o basic! And . . . maybe you do, too.

Maybe you need to start—not with the basic habits of good health; I think most of us have a pretty good grasp of what those are—but with a basic understanding of what God’s Word really says about your body. The Deep Well exists to help you know and love your whole Bible. 

I love to take topics or passages that you think you know, you think you’ve heard them a thousand times! I put them under a microscope and ask the Holy Spirit to help us see with new eyes. And every time, He helps us see something that we missed before. So, I’ll go first.

The Bible actually has a lot to say about our bodies. I’ve been walking with the Lord, I think, twenty-five years. I’ve had a deep love for His Word for most of that. I’ve been a Bible teacher for probably fifteen years.

And as I think about those passages, I think probably what I’ve usually done is just skimmed them and tried to look for something “more spiritual.” I’m really indebted to my friends at the ministry Fit for a King. You’ll hear more from my friend Shannan in this series.

Here is a sobering quote from the manual of that ministry: 

A disproportionately high number of Christ followers are unable to engage in the ministry of the church due to compromised physical health. For too many in the church, the present and future maintenance and upkeep cost of our physical bodies have become an oversized burden that impacts our finances, our sense of confidence and self-worth, and most significantly, our ability to effectively love those we are called to serve.

Here’s the gut-punch: 

Our prayer lists are weighed down with entreaties for God to heal self-inflicted wounds instead of for the lost and hurting outside our walls. 

You have not accidentally pressed “play” on a health podcast. I will not be talking about macros or cardio vs. drink training, or which supplement can keep you twenty-five forever! Google can help you with that.

My obsession is: “What does God’s Word say?” Actually, my obsession is: “What does God’s Word really say?” And then Scripture gives us this really good question. Once we know what God’s Word says, the question is this: “How then shall we live?” 

I’ve waited too long to say my favorite words: open your Bible to the book of 1 Corinthians. The context here is that this is a epistle written by Paul, who wrote thirteen of the books of the New Testament. He knew his stuff!

If we wanted to give this book a title beyond 1 Corinthians or a subtitle, we could call it: The Body Book. I’m teaching out of the ESV for this series and in that translation the word “body” is found thirty-four times in sixteen chapters! So let’s do a fly-over, and then we’re going to land the plane in 1 Corinthians chapter 9.

Every text is part of a context, and I want you to know the context of this whole letter before we marinate in that single passage. The book of 1 Corinthians was written to followers of Jesus. This is an important distinction.

Sometimes we look at the world, and I’m fond of saying, “Lost people are going to act like lost people. We cannot expect the world to have an understanding of God’s truth that we ascribe to.” But this wasn’t written to the world, it wasn’t written to the lost. It was written to those who had already pledged their lives to Jesus.

And the Corinthians that Paul wrote to were living in a depraved culture. It’s all inspired; it’s all true; it’s all useful for our instruction. So let’s fly over. In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul’s focus was the body and sexual immorality. This is the chapter where we get these familiar verses:

“Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.” (1 Cor. 6:18)

Pick up that little nugget of gold and put it in your pocket. We’re going to come back to it in a minute.

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own [that’s a good one to underline], for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (6:19–20)

Now to be clear, Paul did write these words to address sexual immorality within the church. And if you want to take them time to read the whole chapter, there was some pretty salacious sexual sin happening, again, among Christians—not outside the walls of the church, but within the walls of the church.

But the bottom line behind the sexual sin was that the Corinthians had embraced the lie that what they did with their bodies didn’t matter. After all, our bodies are just kindling, right? It’s our inner man, it’s our spirit, that counts. Except . . . that’s not at all what God teaches!

Many Corinthian believers were, as many current believers are, functional gnostics. I would sum that ideology down this way: “Spirit good, body bad. It is our inner man, our spirit that counts.” And the way that showed up in their lives was in their sex lives. But that’s not the only place that ideology shows up.

Listen again to the words Paul wrote to combat this in 1 Corinthians 6:18: “Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.”

One observation from this verse is, it is possible for us to sin against our own body. Now ultimately, when we sin, we sin against God. But Paul is saying this kind of sin, sexual sin in particular, has specific consequences in your body. You are harming your body by partaking in this kind of sin, and that matters because when we pledge our allegiance to Jesus, the Holy Spirit indwells us. 

It’s a mystery. I can’t say that I fully understand it, but I believe God’s Word, and God’s Word says it’s true. Now, the Holy Spirit is not located under your left rib. He has not moved into your spleen. But again by some mystery, He does live within you.

And if the Holy Spirit lives within you, how you treat your body matters! Why? Paul told us in verse 19, “You are not your own.” That’s another part of coming to Jesus. We die and we become united with Christ.

And that’s why Paul is laying out this logic. That’s why you don’t want to participate in sexual sin. He’s calling us to a higher view: “Think about the gospel. Think about what’s true. Think about who you belong to. Think about the Holy Spirit who dwells within you. Remember, you don’t belong to you anymore. You belong to Jesus.”

And then in verse 20 he said, “You were bought with a price.” The price he’s talking about there is the price that Jesus paid with His body.

It was Jesus’ body that was beaten for you; it was Jesus’ body that had thorns jammed into it. It was Jesus’ body that hung naked and disgraced in front of those jeering crowds. It was Jesus’ body—His actual body-—that was nailed to the cross. Why? 

Why did He pay that price? He paid it for you; He paid it for me so that we would not be our own anymore. Because when we run life on our own, we run it into the ditch. He paid it for us so that we could be united with Him.

And with all of this in mind, the grand thinking of all Jesus did for us and the fact that because He paid that sacrifice we don’t belong to ourselves anymore, Paul gives us the bottom line. (And I like that; I’m a bottom-line-girl myself.) Verse 20, “So glorify God in your body.”

Again, this certainly applies to our sex lives. This is a good place to take our teenagers when we’re trying to teach them what God’s Word says about purity. It’s a good place to take ourselves as we want to live pure lives.

But it also applies to all of the parts of our lives that are impacted by our bodies, which, by the way, are all of the parts of our lives! So Paul moved from 1 Corinthians 6 to 1 Corinthians chapter 7. In 1 Corinthians chapter 7, this is where Paul teaches about husbands and wives and the way that our bodies belong to each other.

I don’t want to spend a lot of time here, but part of doing my husband good and not harm all the days of my life (which is a principle we learn in Proverbs 31:12 and Paul affirms here in chapter 7) is realizing that the way that I care—or don’t care—for my body impacts the man that I’ve committed my life to and the children that we’ve brought into the world.

Here’s a really recent example. I’ve got some chronic health conditions for which I’m on a fair amount of medication . . . and I don’t like that at all! I’m always trying to get off of my medications! I’m always trying to meet with doctors and convince them, “I’m better now! You can take me off of them!”

I had a doctor recently say, “Okay, you can try it.” I think I just wore her down. So I came home and I said to my husband, “I get to go off of my medicine!” My husband is steady, he is godly, and he is not nit-picky. So when he says something, I listen.

And he said, “Baby, you’ve worked really hard, and I’m so proud of you, but I don’t want you to go off of that medication.” 

And I said, “I want to be off of it! I worked hard!” You know, like my flesh rose up. 

And he said, “Baby, you don’t remember what you were like before you were on medication for that chronic pain condition, but I do.”

He was so gentle to me. He said, “You were in so much pain, you were really hard to live with. You were sharp, and I don’t want you to go off of it.” 

I didn’t like it a bit! But according to Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 7, my body belongs to my man . . .and so, I took that pill this morning.

So Paul is giving us these important principles about the spiritual life, and we over-spiritualize them. But what if he just meant what he said!? What if he just meant that our bodies have impacts on each other and that we need to be attentive to that?

Well, keep cruising through the book of 1 Corinthians. In chapter 10 Paul wrote about food and he gave us another body principle. Listen to 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 31: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

Now if you need to, you could get out your concordances, you could compare the Greek language if you want to, you can ask some really smart theologians what Paul meant here. But I think what Paul meant here is, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” 

I think this is another passage that we really over spiritualize. .One good principle of Bible study is start with the obvious explanation, start with what it might literally mean. And if you know Paul, you know most of the time he’s quite literal! So this wasn’t figurative language.

He was saying what you literally eat and what you literally drink, you should consider how that gives God maximum glory. For a lot of us that thought should probably change what we literally eat and what we literally drink, because it doesn’t become anymore about what I crave. It becomes more about, “How do I give God glory?”

Isn’t that amazing!? The God of the universe, the God who set the stars and sun into the heavens, the God who made you and made me is giving us an opportunity to glorify Him in even the most mundane things that we have to do every day: eating and drinking.

We get to chapter 11 of 1 Corinthians; here Paul wrote about the Lord’s Supper, and again he helps us rethink our approach to food. And the reminder here is that when Jesus gave us the Lord’s supper, He told us that the bread is symbolic of His broken body, and the cup is symbolic of His blood poured out.

And so even that habit—which in my church is weekly—can start to feel a little routine, “This is just a little cup; this is just a little stale cracker” (at my church). And Paul is saying, “No, no! No, it’s not!” It’s not just a little cup; it’s not just a little cracker. It is telling the story of Jesus’ body broken for you, Jesus’ blood poured out for you!

Remember that followed the chapter where he just said whatever you eat or drink, do all for the glory of God. He’s building a case. In chapter 15, Paul wrote about the kinds of bodies we will be resurrected with. We’re going to do an entire episode on that in this series, and I’m like bouncing to tell you about it! But you’ll have to sit tight.

So there is a crash course in 1 Corinthians, see it is a body book!? We need a body book as much as the Corinthians did. So with the time we have left in this episode, I want to park in 1 Corinthians chapter 9.

Let me read you 1 Corinthians chapter 9, verses 24–27: 

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. 

I’ve heard this passage taught many times from many gifted teachers, and the things that they say are true.

But what we tend to do is pull these verses out from the rest of the book, and we tend to assume that when Paul says, “I discipline my body,” we think he’s talking about something other than his body. I think he is talking about his actual body because he has spent the entire book communicating about why our bodies matter and how they point to the greater supernatural about Jesus and who He is and the gospel. 

What is Paul ultimately writing about here? He’s talking about the legacy of his ministry, and he’s recognizing the servant’s dilemma. This is what got me into trouble.

The servant’s dilemma is that in our zeal to serve the Lord we push so hard for so long, and we deny the very real limits that God has put on us by giving us bodies. As a result, rather than crossing the finish line with our heads high and our bodies strong and shoulders back having run the race of faith all the way to the end; what more often happens is we crash and burn, or we crawl across the finish line. Yes, we ran the race. Yes, we were Christians ’til the end, but we just barely made it. 

Haven’t we seen this over and over? This is why I wanted to spend a few minutes thinking about our pastors at the top of this episode.

Haven’t we seen Christian leader after Christian leader that starts running with such devotion, such giftedness, such good intentions, such passion to build the kingdom, such a love for God and others, and then they fall on the track in some colossal moral failure!?

Is it possible that that began with forgetting what Paul wrote two chapters earlier: “You were bought with a price. So glorify God [with] your body” (1 Cor. 6:20). We are embodied people. And what we do with our bodies—or don’t do with our bodies—impacts everything else.

Paul recognized this and he told his friends in Corinth: “I discipline my body . . .” (1 Cor. 9:27). For example: “I’m working to be healthy, and I’m not working to be healthy for health’s sake.” Paul was ever aware that he wasn’t going to live forever. He was always talking about his death; in fact, he wanted it. He longed to be with the Lord.

So it’s not like Paul was trying to be superhuman and muscular and strong. No, Paul didn’t discipline his body for health’s sake. Paul disciplined his body for the sake of the gospel, that he might continue in his calling. 

And here he is shepherding the church. He’s saying, “Church, your bodies matter! Glorify God with your body, because you were bought with a price—a price that Jesus paid for with His body!” Listen to verse 27 again: “But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.”

My husband, Jason, is my first coach. He always wants me to talk through these podcast series with him before we do it. Last night we were doing that. He said, “I don’t think Paul was talking about his actual body.” 

I said, “Okay, I’m going to read you the verse again: ‘But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.’” He said, “Well, that’s what it says.” That is what it says! 

Again, I don’t think Paul is using figurative language here like he does later when he talks about the body of Christ. That’s figurative language. We’re not actually one giant physical body--that would be weird! But here he’s talking literally. 

And think about what you know about Paul: Paul, post-conversion to Jesus, was involved in traveling ministry. He was all over the place! And if there’s anything that makes it hard to take care of your body, I can attest, it’s traveling! But Paul was a traveling pastor.

In fact, if you know when he wrote 1 Corinthians, he wrote it on his third missionary journey. So Paul had been traveling and teaching and shepherding and pouring into others and building churches for a long time by the time he wrote these words. He had also been in and out of jail many times, and he was not a young man anymore.

So Paul had every excuse not to take care of himself, but he said, “I discipline my body.” I can picture him doing push-ups in the jail cell, can’t you? Why did he do that? He told us why he did that, because he didn’t want to be disqualified from ministry prematurely. He could see it. He could see the race God had set for him.

He knew what God had called him to do. He knew who Jesus was. He knew the gospel; he’d been transformed by it. And as much as he longed to be in glory, and as much as I long to be in glory—I would go today, in an instant if I had the choice—God hasn’t made that choice for me yet.

I’m here, and I’m supposed to be running a race. I don’t want to be disqualified before God calls me home because I didn’t take care of my body! I certainly hope that the Pastor Bobs of the world understand what Paul is teaching here and that they turn things around—not for the sake of their waistlines, but for the sake of the body of Christ, so that they could run that race all the way to the finish. I hope that the Lisas of the church realize that as long as they have breath, God can use them. I hope they get back in the game. 

I hope I can say, like Paul, “I discipline my body, [I] keep it under control, lest after [teaching God’s Word] to others I myself should be disqualified.” If you’re just listening to me, you might not tell in the sound of my voice that that put a lump in my throat, because that is very nearly what I did. I was so close to taking myself out at forty.

And unless the Lord tarries, and unless He chooses to take me prematurely, forty was barely the halfway mark! Imagine if I had folded, if I had become a benchwarmer in the church because I just didn’t take care of myself. I hope you see that what the Bible says about your body matters! I hope you see it with fresh eyes. 

But the Bible also gives us this principle: “Don’t just be hearers; you’re supposed to also be do-ers” (see James 1:22). So we're not just supposed to go, “Yeah, the Bible says a lot about the body, and yeah, it’s really important. Pass the donuts!” 

We’re supposed to say, “Wait a minute! I was bought with a price, a price Jesus carried in His own body. And because He carried a price in His own body, I’m supposed to glorify Him with my body . . . and not just when I’m young.”

Psalm 92:14 describes the people of God as being, “ever full of sap and green,” even in old age. That’s God’s plan for us, that though our bodies will fail, we will be able to serve God with everything we’ve got for as long as we’ve got it. We cannot do that if we disqualify ourselves. 

Here’s what I hope you hear: the body, the body of Christ, needs strong bodies. And the body, the body of Christ, needs endurance runners! We don’t need any more sprinters. We don’t need any more of us who come to Christ with a tremendous amount of passion but in a very short burst serve God for a little while and then sit on the sidelines and nurse our injuries.

We need marathon runners! I sign up. Every day I re-up for the marathon of the Kingdom. I want to run all the way to the end! On my twentieth spiritual birthday, I decided to celebrate that by walking twenty miles—which is a long way—and giving money away to some ministries that have impacted my life.

It was a beautiful moment. I wanted to celebrate all God had done in my life in those twenty years! One of my favorite parts of the moment was that my husband and sons made a finish line for me with a roll of toilet paper, and my church friends and my parents were at the finish line cheering for me!

And by the time I walked those twenty miles (I did it all in one day, in July . . . like a fool!), my feet were covered in blisters. I was dripping in sweat, and I was exhausted! But I hope I never forget that picture of my own “great cloud of witnesses” (see Heb. 12:1) watching me cross the finish line—not in my own strength. It’s always in the empowerment of the Holy Spirit always, always, always! 

I am never going to be your “try harder, do better” Bible teacher. If I am, find another podcast. I do want to take responsibility in partnering with the Holy Spirit to run the race to which God has called me . . . all the way across the ticker tape!

So I would encourage you to re-up as a marathon runner in the marathon of the kingdom! Let me pray for you to do just that!

Lord, we love You! Jesus, thank You that You paid such a tremendous price with Your body! Thank you that You even took on a body so that You could pay that price. Help us to realize the implications of that. Help us to live like that matters, because it does. I pray for every ear listening to me teach now (and that will ever hear me teach). God. I pray for our spiritual leaders who have not taken care of their own bodies and are at risk for crashing and burning on the track. Lord, speak to them, convict them.

I pray for us who have served and served and served and then have quit. Convict us! I pray that You would give us new imaginations for the race set before us! Give us new passion for the finish line and help us to see what it will look like to cross with our head high, having finished the race! We love You. It’s in Your name that we pray and for Your glory that we serve! Amen.

Shannan: That’s Erin Davis beginning a series called Embodied. I hope you’ll explore all four episodes in this series. As you listen, would you ask the Lord, “What do You want to teach me about glorifying You with my physical body?”

In this series, Erin’s going to help us find a balance. How do we embrace health, and at the same time, how do we avoid making our health and appearance an idol? Erin gives us a similar balance in her book Fasting and Feasting.

Sometimes God calls His people to fasting, to set aside His good gifts to concentrate on God Himself. And sometimes, God calls His people to feast, to enjoy His good gifts as a way of worshiping Him. Erin walks through biblical examples of fasting and feasting in this book.

As you read it, you’ll be challenged to glorify God when you have a lot and when you have a little. You can get a copy of Erin’s books by visiting ReviveOurHearts.com.

Okay, it’s time for Erin Unscripted.

Erin Unscripted

Erin: My favorite part! Before we launch into those questions, Shannan, thanks for serving as our co-host this season. It’s my joy to introduce you to The Deep Well family. Shannan is really my friend we’ve really been walking out this health journey together.

You’ve served at the ministry of Fit for a KIng and I wanted you to join us, because you’ve really helped me understand, “What is an embodied theology? What does God’s Word really say?” And you and I meet pretty regularly and try to figure this out for our own lives, so I knew you’d be the perfect person for this season!

Shannan: Thanks so much for having me; I’m so thrilled to be here! So, Erin, there’s a woman in our audience who asked this question: She has a regular habit of exercising, has an awareness that she needs to take care of her body. She has a house full of boys, so she really wants to model that, but it doesn’t sound like maybe her husband is on the same page. Erin, what advice would you give her on how to talk to her husband about this topic?

Erin: I’m so glad she asked that question because I think there are going to be a lot of women who think that exact same thing. Maybe they’ve listened to this podcast series, and they’re ready! They’re ready to put themselves and their families on a path to better body stewardship, but they know he’s not ready, so I thought that was a really vulnerable and important question. 

I would always just redirect us to the Word of God. It gives us principles that apply to all kinds of situations. Ephesians 5 comes to mind, which is really an outline—a grid—for how husbands and wives are to relate to each other when we are in Christ. The word there is to “respect.”

So, there are definitely some ways you or I or any woman listening could talk to their husbands about this and be really disrespectful, to be accusatory or even to make fun, to roll our eyes. We have all kinds of tools, unfortunately, in our manipulation tool belt, where we could express our frustration but in a way that’s not respectful.

And even if the heartbeat of, “I want to see us honor God with our bodies,” is right, if we communicate about it in a way that’s not respectful, he’s not probably going to latch onto it in the way that we hope him to. 

But I think just expressing the reason you want him to prioritize health in a way that’s respectful and loving is going to go a long way. Which is, “I love you, and I want what’s best for you! I need you to be around for me and the kids. I know that we’re not going to live forever, but I need you to be as healthy as you can.”

My mantra has become, “Be as healthy as I can for as long as I can.” This is not to say I’m always going to be healthy. I would want the same thing for the members of my family.

I should have said this first (but that’s actually probably pretty indicative of how I actually operate), you should “pray before you say.” I tend to rush into action and that so rarely goes well.

But what you’re really wanting in your husband is transformation. You’re wanting what only God can do, which is to agree with God that he needs to align his life with God’s priorities. So before you speak a word in love and in respect, I would ask the Lord to do the work in your husband’s heart. I’ve seen Him do it over and over. How about you?

Shannan: Yep. Absolutely. For me, I’ve been a fitness instructor my entire marriage. There have been seasons of our marriage where I could see something in my husband that I would hope might be different or improve. 

I’m so grateful that he has a relationship with the Lord, and he’s sensitive to the Holy Spirit, and I’ve seen so much growth in this area of his life. But it has come by praying for him and having that heart of wanting what’s best for him and at times just keeping quiet because it can be perceived as criticism when you approach wrongly. I know I have done that in the past. And so, I think coming at it from that heart of encouragement and walking alongside can make all the difference.

Erin: Shannan, I was thinking as you were talking about the woman who’s going, “Yeah, that’s great that you’re both married to Christian men and that they want to please the Lord, but I’m not married to that guy. I’m married to a man who doesn’t acknowledge Jesus as King and doesn’t want to serve Him with his life.

I want to acknowledge that that’s a different situation and it probably requires a different approach. The passage that came to mind for me was 1 Peter 3:1–2. Now admittedly, this is not a passage about getting your husband to eat less cheeseburgers, but I think there’s some application here.

Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct.”= 

I’ve often said and kind of marveled that Scripture gives wives strategies, and they can feel a little wimpy. They are your own life lived before the Lord,and the ways you pray for your man. 

And so first and foremost, you don’t need him to be physically healthy if he doesn’t know the Lord. First and foremost he needs to surrender his life to Jesus. But you’re not left without any way to reach his heart. Scripture’s saying, “Yeah, there are some husbands who don’t know or follow the Lord.”

So, our influence in our own homes is pretty profound, and we can use that for the good of others or for the good of ourselves, but I wouldn’t discount that as just something really powerful. You don’t have to wait for him to want to exercise for you to get up and walk. You don’t have to wait for him to want to make healthier food choices for you to make healthier food choices.

I wouldn’t shove it in his face; that’s not honoring or respectful or loving or servant-oriented, but you can do it. You can walk this out, and I think you’ll be amazed at the impact that has on him.

Shannan: And in either situation, we can keep praying! There’s always more prayer we can do!

Erin: Amen! Another good reason to walk more! Man, you can just walk and pray and walk and pray and walk and pray!

Shannan: On the next episode Erin has a simple but important message: Bodies are good. She’ll open the Bible and show you why your body puts the glory of God on display! That’s next time on The Deep Well.

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

All Scripture is taken from the ESV.

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