Josh Thomas

July 2025
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Exercise is a good thing. The consensus of human experience and wisdom is that maintaining a healthy body involves at least some amount of repeated physical activity. Even God’s Word acknowledges there is some benefit in it, albeit a limited one.¹ Without exercise, our bodies tend to atrophy. If your goal is to run a marathon, physical exercise is required. If your goal is to keep up with your growing and active kids, exercise can help. If we want to excel in school or in most jobs, it will require some mental exercise as well. For example, studying for a test is a form of mental exercise. Our muscles and our brains need to be worked out if we want to perform well physically and mentally.

Eating is a good thing, too. We all know that our bodies need food to survive and to thrive. When we go without food for an extended period of time, our bodies crave it more and more. When we have the food we need, we feel satisfied and have the fuel we require for the day.

If we aren’t idolizing or abusing them, both exercise and eating are good for us. There is, however, at least one difference that sticks out.

To illustrate what I am thinking, let me ask which of these do you like doing more? Studying hard for a test or going out to dinner? Going to the gym for an hour or sitting down to a Thanksgiving feast? Running three miles or partaking of your favorite dinner and a tasty dessert afterwards? Going to physical therapy, or leaving physical therapy and stopping by the smoothie shop or your favorite hamburger dive (wink, wink) on the way home?

I think most people are probably just like me and would answer “#2 please!”

If anyone answered #1 to any of the questions above, I would retort with a smile that it’s not so much that you look forward to exercising but that you look forward to having exercised. (Or, maybe you just don’t like turkey with cranberry sauce as much as I do.)

I trust you get my point and would agree. Yes, we do both but, when it comes down to it, the in-the-moment experience of one is more enjoyable than that of the other. And it’s clear which one we’d prefer. That burning sensation in my leg muscles after the 10^th squat hurts! It does fade away pretty quickly and I am satisfied having finished the set, but if I only had 10 minutes to live and was forced to choose, I’d much rather have a bite of baklava!

Exercise often is uncomfortable, especially if we are pushing ourselves. Eating a good meal or a sweet dessert, on the other hand, is something to enjoy — a satisfying experience in the moment.

We’ve now established two things. Assuming we are doing them both with balance and wisdom:

• eating and exercise are both good for us.
• in the moment, eating is more enjoyable than exercise.

I hope you are wondering where all this is headed in an article about what the Scriptures have to say!

Well, just like physical eating and exercise are both good and needed as a part of a healthy and thriving physical existence, spiritual eating and exercise are part of a healthy and thriving spiritual life.

Our spiritual food is not bread and our spiritual exercise is not at the gym or at school. Nonetheless, God declares that for God’s people there is a necessary “food” and “exercise” if we would grow and prosper in our lives in Christ.

Instead of including a full or even a partial exposition of the many sections on these two topics, I’d like to offer you the opportunity, and challenge you, to consider the context and meaning of each of these references on your own. It really is quite amazing how consistently these topics are grouped together. I’d also challenge you as you do this study to think of the points about physical eating and exercise that we’ve established previously. God has a reason for consistently grouping these activities into the same two analogies.

Here are some verses that compare the act of applying and living out God’s Word to that of physical exercise or exertion: 1 Timothy 4:7–9, Hebrews 12:11, 1 Corinthians 9:25, Colossians 1:29, Colossians 4:12, 1 Timothy 6:12, and 2 Timothy 4:7.

Here are some verses that compare the act of reading and hearing God’s Word to that of physical eating: Psalm 119:103, Psalm 19:9–10, Matthew 4:4, Jeremiah 15:16, Ezekiel 2:8–3:3, Revelation 10:9–11, Job 23:12, and 1 Peter 2:2.

For further enlightenment, examine Hebrews 5:11–14 that speaks of both spiritual food and spiritual exercise!²

These aren’t all the verses that could be examined on this topic. But I can confirm that I didn’t find any that would break this pattern. While the Scriptures speak often about how applying God’s Word is like exercise, they have no example that I could find that ever compares the reading, the hearing, or even the meditating on the Word of God to exercise. Instead, the receiving of God’s Word is invariably, across Old and New Testaments, compared to eating and many times compared to eating something particularly sweet and delicious.

Is that your experience with the reading and hearing of the Word of God? Or, does it feel more like exercise? For the people who wrote about (or longed for) the experience of partaking of God’s Word (e.g. Jeremiah, David, Job, and Jesus) it was an enjoyable experience in-the-moment — even for the “hard to hear” parts. If our hearts are in the right place, we can expect a sweetness to the act of hearing any word from God — even if afterwards the feeling is bitter in the stomach because of the reproof or woe it declares. If the act of reading or hearing or meditating on God’s Word feels like an uncomfortable chore or strenuous exercise to me, then I am doing it differently than David, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel did. It would be a “me” problem.

If I am at all speaking to your experience, know you are not alone. I can relate. I have had times and seasons in my life where the receiving of God’s Word has felt more like strenuous exercise than the partaking of a meal. But, since God is no respecter of persons, there is hope for our spiritual taste buds to acquire (or reacquire) the taste. Proverbs 2:1–9 speaks of the prayerful pursuit of truth in the fear of the LORD. The section ends with a promise:

Proverbs 2:10 (New International Version 2011) For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.

God says “knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.” That’s a promise not a command!³ If we’d pursue it, God says we’ll find the knowledge that He gives to be pleasing to our soul. Glory, Hallelujah! What a promise!

Yes, our Christian lives consistently involve the exercise (with associated discomfort) of putting off and putting on, of applying the reproof of God’s Word to our lives, of striving to keep the faith, etc. Because it can often be difficult, there is a temptation to grow weary. So, God reminds us that it is because He loves us that he trains us up. As we remember His love for us, we will not grow weary. While we can successfully resist growing weary of it, nonetheless we can expect that being trained by God will never be fun in the moment – the reward comes only after the initial irksomeness passes away.

All that being true, how great to know there is this uniquely sweet aspect to my Christian life, that of eating God’s Word, which ought never (and need never) feel like drudgery. I can grow to have it be a satisfying and sweet experience. Every time. Whatever portion of it I am hearing. It can be something I enjoy doing. Something I look forward to – even crave.

We all have things that we don’t like doing, but we do them anyway. We do them because they need to get done. Not doing them simply isn’t an option. Let’s never let the acts of reading or hearing God’s Word become that to us. It doesn’t need to when we remember the incredible blessing it is to have God, the Creator of the heavens and earth, speak to us.

But what about 2 Timothy 2:15? It clearly says we are to put forth a special effort as workmen of God’s Word in the way we rightly-divide the word of truth. That sounds like hard work. Yes, there is a disciplined and careful working of God’s Word to make sure we don’t misinterpret the meaning. But this ought not be EVERY interaction we have with God’s Word! Consider the context and original addressee of this verse. Timothy as a leader, in fact, a leader of leaders, was especially accountable to make sure he rightly-divided the truth. But, Paul’s point was not that this encouragement would describe every encounter Timothy would have with the Scriptures. Maybe the study we’ve already done in this article has helped you see more of the scope of what is said in all of the Scriptures on the topic. It should be clear that the special exertion encouraged in 2 Timothy 2:15, while absolutely vital, shouldn’t describe every time we read the Scriptures or even be most of the time we spend in the Scriptures. What about just sitting down simply to feed on the Scriptures rather than work the Scriptures? Yes, put in the work of studying Romans to make sure you understand it rightly for faith and practice. But don’t stop there! Let that diligent study be a means to the end that you can then sit down and confidently have the clear and accurate truth of Romans to feed on.

Once the chef has finished the hard work of preparing the meal, it’s time to put the cutting boards and butcher knives in the sink, turn the oven off, sit down and…

Dig in!