This is a long journey.

We tend to overestimate what can be done in the short run, and we underestimate what can be done

in the long run.

If you counted the minutes and walked three times a week for 30 minutes, you would begin

to make progress, and you learn along the journey.

And all along, I would say, live in light of God's Word and pray about it.

David Mathis serves as senior teacher and executive editor at Desiring God.org.

He's also a pastor at City's Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, and an adjunct professor at Bethlehem

College and Seminary. His new book with Crosswhite is called A Little Theology of Exercise,

enjoying Christ in body and soul. David, thanks so much for joining me today on the Crossway

podcast. Amen. So good to talk to you again, brother. I love talking with you.

So today we're going to talk a little bit about this topic of physical exercise,

of our bodies and our need to move and stay in shape and take care of these physical

bodies, exercise like running and biking and weightlifting and sit-ups and how all of that fits into our calling as

Christians, our lives as Christians. But to kick us off, I wonder if we could immediately, I want to

hear you respond to the person who's listening and maybe their first reaction to this is,

oh, come on, a theology of exercise. Like, is that, is there really a lot of

theology related to that, or is this just kind of common sense stuff? Or it's just in a different

category than theology. So what if you could speak to that? Talk about what is the connection to

theology in our exercise habits or maybe our lack thereof?

I would say to the person who has that initial response of, oh, is this really relevant to theology?

Is there really a theology of exercise?

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