57: Deny Yourself: What Wellness Culture Gets Wrong About Your Body

That being said, not to start on a very rough note, I do wanna say that in the Christian faith, Jesus is speaking to His disciples in Scripture, and one of the things He says is, "Deny yourself and take up your cross." Now, I heard an amazing Philip Anthony Mitchell sermon not too long ago, and I keep listening to it over and over, 'cause it's just so encouraging and really speaks to a lot of things that I've experienced in my own life.

And, you know, sometimes you just need an influx of encouragement in your life, and I'm so grateful that he is standing firm in his belief in doing what God has called him to do, because in turn, he is encouraging other people to do what God has called them to do.

That being said, deny yourself, take up your cross.

In simplistic, most basic meaning, what that is saying is basically to deny your own desires and go after what God's desires are for your life.

Now, scripturally, Jesus is speaking about our calling and what we're doing in life and those kinda things, because He was existing in an era where Pharisees, Sadducees, the religious leaders of the land, had all these things going on, and they made it look like they were puffed up in doing all the good things of the law, keeping the law.

And Jesus was basically saying, like, "They're hypocrites.

Their heart is not where they need to be." And so we can be doing all these things that we believe in our mind that God is calling us to do, but in our heart of hearts, we know that we are out of alignment.

So how does this relate to listening to your body? Because this is not a theological podcast, it actually sits right next to everything that I teach around listening to your body.

So denying yourself, taking up your cross.

Denying yourself, listening to your body.

We live in a wellness culture that will tell us to deny ourselves.

Like, we do hear that.

Uh, maybe you don't hear it as forthright in those actual two words being said, "Deny yourself," but think about if you've ever worked with a weight loss coach or a trainer at the gym or a nutritionist.

Deny yourself these things and do these things.

Do this and don't do that, right? We're, we're constantly inundated with a lot of different information coming at us that's telling us these kinda things.

Essentially, what it is saying is, "Deny yourself.

Listen to me." What are we supposed to do? Are we denying the body, or are we supposed to listen to it? Well, you know from everything I talk about, I'm gonna tell you that we have to listen to it, but we need to settle the tension of all of this for good.

And we're gonna spend some real time in Scripture doing this, because the question actually deserves more than just a quick answer.

As I mentioned in the beginning, this is the first episode of this four-part series of Body Theology.

What we're gonna be doing over the course of these next episodes is building a full biblical foundation for why the way you treat your body actually matters to God.

Why the way you actually treat your body matters to God.

I needed to say that again.

And today we're gonna start at the very beginning to understand if our body was even a problem to begin with in the first place.