Do you worry that your pursuit of physical fitness is feeding your pride instead of honoring God?

Today on Ask Pastor John.

Pastor John gives us three metrics to use to untangle our motivations when it comes to body image

and to ensure that our exercise exists to make God look strong

in our lives. But before we get to today's episode, a quick programming note on where we're

headed this year. We sat down and looked at Pastor John's full schedule for the year ahead

and carved out space for 88 brand new episodes with him in the studio in 2026. Very grateful

to get that precious time with him.

Pastor John just turned 80 and still has wonderful life and energy for ministry as his full

schedule testifies. And we pray that this is true for him for many years to come. So 88 episodes

with him. And if we meet here twice a week, that leaves 16 slots over the course of the year.

And with those, my plan is to take your excellent new questions coming into the inbox

and match them to fitting responses from our archive, curating some of our best episodes from the past.

And to be frank, this is one of the hopes that we have for the trajectory of this podcast going

forward is collectively making good use of what we already have. Mixing you. And to be frank, this is one of the hopes that we have for the trajectory of this podcast going forward,

is collectively making good use of what we already have, mixing in those episodes along the way in 2026.

So on Monday, Pastor John was in the studio with us to talk about motives in religious context.

And today we're talking about exercise, a fitting topic for the start of the year with its resolutions, weight goals, and gym memberships and all that.

And today we have a question in the inbox from a listener named Avery who lives in Austin, Texas. She writes this,

Dear Pastor John, I'm feeling conflicted of late, maybe convicted is the word. I spend a lot of time on fitness

planning and meal prep going to the gym five days a week. I follow several influencers on

Instagram for motivation. On the surface, it feels like I'm just stewarding the body God gave me,

...