Jesus, Help Me Exercise: 5 Considerations When Making Resolutions

How to Work Out as a Christian

Far and away, most New Year’s resolutions have to do with our bodies. We see them in the mirror and wish to improve them. Or we feel them holding us back in everyday life and want to move them more effortlessly, tirelessly, and enjoyably.

It need not be vain or shallow for Christians to make fresh resolves about our bodies. And we shouldn’t assume that such resolutions are only for the body. God made us, soul and body, and designed our bodies and souls to flourish in profound relation. We all know how going without sleep affects our inner selves. So too spiritual highs (and lows) affect our bodies.

Christian theology does not separate the soul and body and pretend that only the soul matters. We believe the body counts. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” Your body, now the dwelling place of God himself in his Spirit, really matters. “So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19–20).

So, for Christians resolved to cultivate new exercise and “bodily training” habits, how might we seek to glorify our God not apart from these bodies but in these bodies? I offer five inputs to form and feed your journey.

1. Do something.

So many twenty-first century jobs are sedentary. We peck away at computers, rather than lifting, moving, pulling, and hoisting. If your day job keeps you active, you likely don’t need to carve out extra time for “exercise.” But the rest of us sedentary workers are left needing to supplement our work-life with some modest physical movement to get us to normal human levels of activity.

Loads of us desire to find the right patterns and avenues for exercise, but many are stalled by trying to find the perfect plan. Mostly, it’s an excuse. My exhortation: Don’t let uncertainty or perfectionism paralyze you. Don’t wait until you have the perfect plan. Start something. Walking counts. Could you walk at a moderate pace for fifteen minutes per day? That might be a great start and a good holding pattern until you have clarity about what’s next.

Perhaps it’s at this very point where Nike’s slogan makes the most sense—when you have someone living a sedentary life, wondering, Should I try some exercise? The answer is so obvious that one might be tempted to say, Just do it! However . . .

2. Don’t “just do it.”

As tempting as it is to impatiently tell someone who is voluntarily inactive to “just do it,” it’s not most helpful (or Christian!) to leave it at that. I’m a pastor, and here you are reading this article from a Christian publisher. We need to acknowledge that “just do it” doesn’t make it Christian.

When it comes to meals, many of us don’t “just do it” but pause to pray, thanking God for the food and asking him to use its nourishment for his good purposes in and through us. That’s a good habit, and hopefully we don’t just go through the motions of mealtime prayer but the pause becomes a chance to truly feel gratitude to God and ask for his blessing.

So too with exerting our bodies with the fuel we get from that food. As a Christian, don’t “just do it” when it comes to exercise. Pray about your body and its exercise. Ask God for wisdom as to how often you might exercise and for how long and in what ways. The act of Godward, Christ-conscious, Spirit-aided prayer will help to sanctify your desires and resolve related to exercise.

And, as with mealtime prayer, make prayer a part of your exercise routine. Pray when you begin, pray when it gets tough and you want to just quit, and pray to thank God when you’re done. Punctuate your habits of exercise with habits of prayer.

3. Expect the effects of the curse.

Because of human sin, our world and our bodies are under God’s curse. But “the fall” does not have the final word. God cursed his created world in hope; things won’t always be this way. One day the creation will be set free from this “bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God,” which includes “the redemption of our bodies.” But in the meantime, we groan (Rom. 8:20–23).

Many in this life groan with painful and severely limiting disabilities, not the result of their own sin but part of the curse that reminds us of all human sin. Those who are able to exercise experience a mercy that cannot be presumed in our fallen world.

And all who set out to exercise soon encounter some physical setback, whether broken bones, sprains, tendonitis, or aches and pains. None of us have perfect bodies yet, and some experience more devastating hindrances to exercise than others. Part of glorifying our God in our bodies for now includes navigating the many effects of the curse, being faithful to God in the body he has given us, and resisting the temptation to sinfully compare ourselves to others.

God made us, soul and body, and designed our bodies and souls to flourish in profound relation.

4. Seek to assist the ‘means of grace.’

Exercise and sleep and music and the glories of nature are no replacement for God’s appointed “means of grace” in the Christian life. Yet these natural, bodily experiences can be helpful assistants in pursuing God’s special channels.

My summary of God’s “means of grace” is threefold: word, prayer, and fellowship.¹ Hear God’s voice in his Word. Have his ear in prayer. And belong to his body in the covenant fellowship of the local church. His Word, prayer, and his people are the primary channels of his ongoing grace for the Christian life. Nature and food and the good effects of exercise cannot replace them.

However, our bodies do really matter in how we engage God’s special means of grace. How we treat and care for our bodies affects how clearly we think, how responsive we are emotionally to truth, how deeply we feel, and how energetic and alert we are in relating to others. Our bodies count in feeding our souls.

Many of us have found that some modest care for and upkeep of our bodies can provide significant assistance in engaging God’s appointed “means of grace.”

5. Be ready to do good for others.

In resolving to improve your body through exercise and cultivating habits that will recondition you over time, check yourself regularly to ensure that your new habits are making you a more loving person, rather than more selfish.

It’s a tragic failure of Christian love to excuse your way out of an opportunity to help someone with your body because “I gotta go work out.” I say that to my own shame. We need to ask ourselves: Why am I working out to begin with? Is it not at least in part to be ready and able to help others? From a Christian standpoint, something is getting out of balance if we go out for a run or head off to the gym to work out our bodies when we could be using these very bodies to help a neighbor or friend or church member with some real-life physical need.

The apostle Paul doesn’t often repeat multi-word phrases in his letters, but he has a charge in 2 Timothy 2:21 and Titus 3:1 that could fly as a banner over our efforts to train our bodies: “ready for every good work.” This is what Christians want, at least in part, in exercising and conditioning our bodies. We want to be ready to put these bodies to use in serving other people’s needs in the name of Jesus.

As your heart and lungs, and muscles get stronger, let that make you all the more eager to get up off the couch and climb stairs and carry boxes and leverage your improved body to bless and help others. As you challenge your body in exercise and push through the friction of beginning to move and continuing to move when you’re getting tired, you’re also conditioning your will to choose to help others in tiring ways and at inconvenient times.

As your exercise program continues and succeeds, check yourself to make sure that training your body is enabling you to be a more loving person, rather than becoming an excuse to be more selfish.

And as you do, may God be pleased to bless your exercise resolutions, for his glory and your joy in him, so that, as Paul prays, God “may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power” (2 Thess. 1:11). I believe that includes exercise.

David Mathis is the author of A Little Theology of Exercise: Enjoying Christ in Body and Soul.

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