For those of you who can do 50 push-ups, please raise you hand. How about 30? How about 10? How about 5? Come on now! Have you never heard that Paul preached to Timothy in the New Testament on push up profits?
We’ll have to do a survey of the Body of Christ at some point and see what percentage of time and effort is put towards building the spirit, building the soul, and building the body. We would be willing to guess the figures would come out something like this: spirit – 20%, soul – 70%, and body – 10%. And the scary part about that is the 70% effort for our souls is probably a lot of entertainment and pity parties. Ouch!
Sorry, let’s back to Paul and Timothy. Paul doesn’t mention push-ups exactly, so you don’t have send us a warning calling us heretics, but he does say in 1Tim. 4:8 “Bodily exercise profits a little…” Paul is acknowledging that there is some profit in physical exercise because he is comparing it to the profit that comes from the pursuit of godliness or being like God.
That can’t be right because Yeshua never mentioned the value of bodily exercise. Ever heard that kind of reasoning before? Christ never mentioned it because exercise like walking and lifting and farming was a part of your everyday lives back then. Getting somewhere involved either walking or riding a horse, and if you have ever rode a horse, you know it’s exercise. Even having and working a small backyard garden takes a lot of bodily effort.
Let’s not ignore putting some effort into keeping our bodies fit. There are so any benefits to doing this. Keep it simple to something like walking in your neighborhood or doing popcorn stretches in your living room – take it easy on the butter though.
A healthy body is able to fight off illness better and that means less down time and more time to devote to those things you love and are called to.