124: Functional Exercise in The Bible
Walking is often overlooked and under-appreciated as effective exercise but it's one of the most impactful forms of fitness and one of the primary ways our ancestors stayed healthy.
As a society we sit way too much and it’s putting us at a significantly increased risk for illness and disease. In fact, sitting has been called “the new smoking” but, as we are unlikely to get warning labels on chairs, we’d better be our own advocates and remind ourselves to get up and move often.
Make 10,000 daily steps your minimum baseline and not your top-end goal. The more steps you take, the more strength you build, the more you fortify your Holy Temple to do the Kingdom work you are called to do. Our highest health goal is to be an excellent vessel for the Holy Spirit. Walk with Christ and bring more people back to HIm.
Listen to this week’s podcast for more of God’s Word and straight talk on Functional Fitness.
EPISODE 124: Functional Exercise in The Bible
SHOW NOTES
(0:00) Intro
Hello my friend! Welcome back to the club. How are you today?
I want to take you back to a time - when people didn’t have gyms or peloton bikes or dumbbells or group classes or workout apps or pre and post workout and drinks for that matter.
How did people stay fit in ye olden days?
We could talk about this from many angles but today we’re focusing on exercise, because it’s our last and final goal of the Genesis Prescription.
You will be hard pressed to find much reference to exercise in the Bible.
Their physical activity was naturally built into their everyday lives.
They didn’t need to “go work out” because their lives were a workout. Daily chores and getting from one place to another (on foot) kept them moving all day long.
This topic absolutely fascinates me in light of the fact of how we approach exercise today.
Story of how my perspective shifted when I moved to the ranch.
Ancient exercise was functional exercise
It was a byproduct of people living their everyday lives.
(6:35) Exercise benefits every aspect of our health:
It lowers blood pressure and improves heart function
It regulates blood sugar and increases insulin sensitivity
It strengthens bones and builds muscle; it improves memory and overall brain function
It reduces stress, anxiety and depression
It releases endorphins and improves mood
It boosts quality sleep at night.
(7:25) God did not create these bodies to sit idle:
We don’t HAVE to have expensive equipment or drive across town to a gym.
We certainly can, but we can also walk out the front door and around the neighborhood or rake leaves or work in the garden.
The beautiful thing is, we do have choices and so many interesting ways to engage in exercise.
It doesn’t matter how we choose to move as long as we do. If we look at His Word, in the beginning, in Genesis where we always start for our Genesis Prescription goals it says,
The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. Genesis 2:15
From the beginning God tasks Adam and Eve to work in the Garden.
From the beginning God establishes integrity in work and value in movement.
One of the most important ways we care for our body, our Holy Temple is by moving it.
That’s why our GP goal this week is to get 10,000 steps a day.
(9:00) Walking was the primary way our ancestors stayed healthy and active.
Walking is often overlooked and under appreciated as effective exercise but it's one of the most impactful forms of fitness.
We often associate exercise with something that has to be harsh and punishing and unenjoyable and so we either avoid it or procrastinate until we “do something official” like join a gym.
Walking is always available to you, it’s free and it’s effective.
It is estimated that Jesus walked 21,525 miles in his earthly lifetime!
Arthur Blessit, he’s now 80 years old, and he holds a guinness world record for the world’s longest walk.
He has been walking across the world carrying a 12ft cross which he has been doing for 54 years (since 1968) and to date he has walked 43,340 miles.
He concludes that:
Mary the Mother of Jesus ‘Walked at least’ Half the distance around the world at the equator!
Jesus ‘Walked almost’ the distance around the world at the equator!
The distance around the world at the equator is 24,901.55 miles (40,074 km).
He calculates and shows how Mary Walked 12,187 Miles by the time she was about 50 years old and how Jesus walked over 21,000 miles during HIs life.
(14:55) Here are some examples to give you perspective on foot travel in biblical times:
The walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus when Jesus joined two of His followers who did not recognize Him was 7 miles. (Luke 24:13)
The 12-mile hilly walk Jesus and the disciples made between Jericho and Jerusalem. (Mark 10:46)
The 90-mile walk a newly pregnant Mary made from Nazareth to the Judean Hill Country to see her cousin Elizabeth. (Luke 1:39-40). Remember Elizabeth was pregnant with John the Baptist and he leaped in her belly when he heard Mary.
The 90-mile journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem that a very pregnant Mary and Joseph had to travel to register for the census (Mary may have ridden a donkey part of the way even though there is no record that she did). (Luke 2:2-5)
(17:18) We need a good dose of perspective sometimes to inform our common sense about health.
As a society we sit way too much and it’s putting us at a significantly increased risk for illness, poor health conditions and disease.
In fact, sitting has been called “the new smoking” but, as we are unlikely to get warning labels on chairs, we’d better be our own advocates and remind ourselves to get up and move often.
Even if you get your 10,000 steps done in one fell swoop, you still need to move intermittently throughout the day to maintain good health.
Also, if you haven’t heard - walking has been called the new running.
Mostly because it’s less stressful to the body.
People who are struggling with over taxed adrenals due to high stress would be better to walk instead of run it is gentler, it doesn’t signal the body that anything is wrong.
Historically if someone was running it was because of a dangerous situation, not by choice and those kinds of instinctive signals live in our cells.
Running can trigger those primal danger signals within us which puts the body in fight or flight mode.
(18:55) Let’s look at some more functional exercise we see women doing in the Bible
Rebekah came out with her jar on her shoulder. She went down to the spring, filled her jar and came up again. Genesis 24:15-16
In Biblical times, women had the daily task of fetching water from the local well or spring.
Rebecca with her jug on her shoulder and she very graciously gets water not only for the servant but also for the camels.
I love this story because Rebecca was just going about her every day chores and her life changed in an instant. The servant gives her all kinds of jewelry and they go back and talk to her family and before you know it she is off to marry Isaac. I think of this story often when I need to remember that God can change our circumstances in an instant.
(20:20) Let’s talk about this “lifting heavy” chore that the women had to do.
Can you imagine carrying a heavy Earthenware jug full of water on your shoulder or head (as commonly done) every morning or evening?
Sometimes, in addition to the jug, women also had to carry their own hard leather bucket and rope in order to draw out the water because there wasn’t anything at the well to get the water out with. Remember when the Samaritan woman at the well said to Jesus:
“Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep.”
He did not have His own bucket to draw the water but what He did have was the promise of Living Water and revealed to her that ultimately, it was He, the Messiah, that would be the source of eternal life.
These women basically had weight lifting built into their day.
You know, one of the most fit times of my life was when my kids were babies and I had to haul them up and down the stairs all day long.
It is so incredibly good for health to incorporate strength training, whether it’s using external weights or the weight of our bodies.
We build muscle and strengthen bones by adding in that kind of exercise at least a few times a week or maybe in some kind of functional way throughout the day.
The more muscle we build through strength training, the more energy our bodies burn at rest - like when we’re doing nothing.
This is not the case when we solely do cardiovascular exercise. But, after lifting, our muscles keep working even when we are not. That is some serious bang for your buck! It is also magical for changing body composition. If you want to lean out and tone up, incorporating weight training is the way to get there.
Other tasks women did that helped keep them strong and physically fit included grinding grain and making bread.
It could take up to half a day for the women to grind grain into flour.
Freshly ground flour didn’t keep very long - it would spoil - and so it had to be ground often.
Bread was a staple in the Israelite diet and had to be made almost every, if not every, day. Grinding, Kneading and making the bread would have been quite an arm workout. It makes me think of the Proverbs woman.
She sets about her work vigorously;
her arms are strong for her tasks.
Proverbs 31:17
These three chores alone would have taken up a lot of the day and, yet, there was so much more to do: children to tend, cloth to weave, things to wash and cooking to do. Much of it is similar to our tasks today, except that we have modern conveniences to do all of these things easier and faster.
There was not much down time for ancestral women nor room for an I-don’t-feel-like-it-today attitude.
If they wanted their families to eat, drink and be clothed, they had to work, and with that work came movement and with that movement came health.
(26:28) Bible women made fresh food and stayed busy.
They ate a lot of bread.
They didn’t count calories or macros, use sophisticated equipment or worry about pre or post workout food.
We tend to overthink and over complicate things when the bottom line is that we need to eat high quality food and we need to move.
The Proverbs 31 woman, who is one many of us aspire to be.
She is the quintessential TCB (taking care of business) kind of woman. She gets her work done and cares well for her household. She is smart and kind and has a good relationship with her family.
What we have in common with our Biblical sisters is a love of the Lord and the desire to use our body to His good service. As long as we keep moving - physically and spiritually - toward that goal, our pursuits will be blessed.
Psalm 37:23 A person’s steps are made secure by the Lord when they delight in His way.
I hope you take delight and gratitude in the way God designed our incredible bodies and the way He made them to move.
The more steps you take, the more strength you build, the more you fortify your Holy Temple to do the Kingdom work you are called to do in this world.
Never forget that our highest health goal is to be an excellent vessel of the Holy Spirit.
“How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” Romans 10:15
Walk with Christ and bring more people back to HIm.
Your body will always need plenty of water and sunshine and connection with the earth and plant foods and animal foods and Kingdom breaths and sleep and movement.
Everything we need to be healthy is revealed right there in Genesis, in the beginning, with our bodies working in relation to Creation just as God designed.
Do me a favor - take a minute and leave a review in Apple Podcasts and tell me which GP week or goal was your favorite or stood out to you. That would bless me SO much to know how it blessed you and it will draw others to the podcast to more God and better health and I would be so grateful to hear from you and you be a part of the way this message spreads.
(29:42) Outro & Disclaimer
Thanks for listening! Have a healthy and blessed week!