Discipleship is Stewardship
DISCIPLESHIP is, ultimately, STEWARDSHIP. That is stewarding all (including our bodies) that God has given us as sons and daughters. From this relationship of sons and daughters, we have been called to the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:18-19) as servants and stewards of the Kingdom as we join the Father in the family business of reconciling the world to the Father in and through Christ. In all this, we see the Jesus commandments and co-mission to love God with all that we are, to love others with all that He is and as we live life, make disciples, sharing the healing and saving love of Christ.
Historically, the church has ignored the physical body as a place of holy activity. We either live so spiritually that the body doesn't matter (gnostic), allowing for a more rapid decay of our health, numerous physical ailments and a minimized capacity to love and serve or we live as if the body and this life are all that matter.
Scripture makes it quite clear that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit as Paul so clearly articulates: "do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body." (I Cor 6:19-20, ESV)
To help us, I'll highlight a research study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. In this study, researchers from Cambridge and an international team gathered data from 94 prospective cohorts covering more than 30 million people. In this study, they mapped the relationship between physical activity and the risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, using data that added up to over 163 million person-years—that's a lot of data. I note that the numbers are observational, so causation can't be confirmed, but the consistency across dozens of independent studies makes it hard to dismiss a correlation between activity and health or non-health.
To summarize, participants who engaged in 150 minutes of moderate activity per week, compared to those who were mostly inactive, had a:
- 31% lower risk of dying early
- 29% lower risk of cardiovascular death
- 15% lower risk of cancer mortality
Now 150 minutes might sound like a lot, until you do the math and break it down into bite size pieces. When we do it, that adds up to about 21 minutes a day: a walk before work, a lunch loop around the block, a weekend bike ride, a walk with your spouse, etc. You know, something simple that gets you moving.
If discipleship is stewardship then maybe we need to take better care of our bodies. After all, the spiritual life and the battle we face against hell and its minions is hard enough without handing him a club to beat us up with. There are many things regarding our physical state that we cannot control but what we can control is how much we move or don't move and what we put in our mouths.
I leave you with this thought: "So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." (I Cor 10:31, ESV).
Physical health is one of the dimensions of NewBreed's free SHALOM assessment. To find out how balanced your life is, take the assessment here.
Mike Chong Perkinson is the lead pastor of The Lamb’s Fellowship in Lake Elsinore, California, and the president and dean of church and ministry at the Trivium Institute for Leader Development. He was born in Busan, South Korea, and was raised with an alcoholic father and a mother who was a devout Buddhist. After spending the first seven years of his life in South Korea, his family moved to the United States. He radically converted to Christ at age 13 and was called to the ministry shortly thereafter. He graduated from Bushnell University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in pastoral ministries and from Fuller Theological Seminary with a Master of Arts degree in historical theology.