Gary Wilkerson: Hi, welcome to the Gary Wilkerson Podcast and that would make me Gary Wilkerson, I'm thrilled to have you here with me today. We going to be talking about a very important subject. You know, if you've been listening to podcast before, it's one that's been on my heart. I've spoken with this many times and I know you won't get tired of hearing this because the motivation behind this can change the very fabric of your life, your ministry, your family and it is dealing with health. But it's going to deal with it in a way that I think is going to encourage you and help bring change. Because I think in this area the motive is there for us. We want to be healthier but sometimes the power behind us. So, we have in our studio with us today, a good friend of mine David Bush. David, welcome.

David Bush: Thanks Gary. It's great to be here with you.

Gary Wilkerson: Thank you. Glad to have you, you drove down from Des Moines, Iowa to be here with us today. And I'm really thrilled to have you with us. Now, you just recently wrote, The Body Gospel and before that it was Fit for The King. Is that right? Those are your two books?

David Bush: Yeah.

Gary Wilkerson: And you're also head of a ministry. The ministry is called…?

David Bush: Fit for The King.

Gary Wilkerson: Fit for The King.

David Bush: The public name, Point of Light Ministries is the 501c3 that undergirds it.

Gary Wilkerson: And so, you'll be sharing with us today. For those that are listening today, it's going to be important because the thing we're talking about today gets out of whack out of line, then everything else is going to be like dominoes falling as well. So, I'm really thrilled to have you here today. The reason you started this ministry, tell us about that. Because let's get right into the heart of this thing. You started this because you saw something happening in people's lives that concerns you?

David Bush: Yeah, fitness has been a part of my life growing up in Southern California. I was inspired by the '76 Olympics was that when Bruce Jenner was decathlete winning. I was in my bedroom with my plastic-coated cement Sears weight set that somebody had passed on to me. Trying to think of myself in terms like that. So, my wrestling experiences in high school taught me about what it's like to be in great shape. It also taught me about the self-discipline that comes with the dieting that goes on with that.

And so that is part of the early interest in it, I felt better. I thought I looked better quite candidly, and I knew what it was like to be in good shape. And when I fell away from that, I knew from what heights I had fallen, I guess. So, there was a standard that was set in my life that was a high standard, but it was a good standard and I aspired to that.

My dad did not aspire to that. He was a pastor and was a very successful pastor by all accounts had a nice sized congregation in Southern California. Winning people to the Lord, seeing them discipled in the faith, being very biblically directed and all of that. But frankly, the last 15 to 20 years of his ministry was not what he would've wanted nor what it could have been because of this Achilles heel in his life, which was his body stewardship.

Gary Wilkerson: Do you mind just taking ... unpacking that a little bit, what was his body stewardship? Or what was happening in his life? Was it like not eating well or? I mean can you-

David Bush: Yeah, he wasn't morbidly obese. He wasn't probably even obese, but the accumulated stress of ministry, which is not unusual for pastors, a lot of stress and anxiety. The way that he snacked on a lot of salty foods and sugary foods. The fact that he wasn't given to exercise, but he was given to decompressing and relaxing and not dealing with that in a mode of going out and getting in a brisk walk even so much.

His body just kind of atrophied. First it was the mild heart attack and then it was a bigger heart attack and then it was the bypasses and then it was the medications and then sympathetic knock on things to medications. And pretty soon-

Gary Wilkerson: This is when you're growing up. Or was this like?

David Bush: This was mostly as I started getting out of the house as he was getting into his late 50s and beyond. Frankly a time when exponential ministry impact can be felt with your accumulated wisdom and resources and freedom and all the things that we can bring to bear in those years. Instead, his world and ministry began shrinking because he just didn't have the ability to deal with the blows that came. And physiologically kind of was always looking for solutions, a better living through pharmacology. And what does the doctor say I should take? And by the time he died, he was on something like 20 different prescriptions.

Gary Wilkerson: No way. Wow.

David Bush: Including some hardcore stuff. And that's not what he wanted.

Gary Wilkerson: Did it diminish his ministry, or did he lose his ministry because of his health? Or both?

David Bush: It's hard to say. But difficulty in ministry exacerbated the spiral downward, and he just didn't have the resiliency and the vigor to be able to come against that. And both emotionally, spiritually and physically, he began to retrench and drawback.

Gary Wilkerson: And it's so integrated. I would imagine his spiritual life was good. He's praying and seeking the Lord and writing sermons and reaching out with a heart for the lost. But when the body is not able to keep up the pace that the call of God is on your life, things start to fall apart. We talk a lot about… we call them eight cylinders here.

They all start with letter F and your faith is the key to all the other seven cylinders. But your friends, your family, having friends is important. Community and family, your finances. You're not stressed out about your finances; you're not overspending and in debt. And all these things are integrated. And two of them are ... the three of them actually are part of the reason I want you to be here today is faith and how that's integrated with our food and our fitness and how that impacts our family, how it impacts our friendships. If you don't have the energy to ... your friends are going ... I can go to, we're right across the street here from the Air Force Academy and they play on Saturdays and I say, "Hey, let's get a group together. Go to the Air Force and watch the game." They're like, "Oh, I'm so tired. It's Saturday I just want to watch it on TV with my bowl of popcorn."

David Bush: Sure.

Gary Wilkerson: And so, it affects that. And so, in your father's life, I'm sure you know, not that we want to look back and beat him up over it, but there no condemnation there. But the idea of wise choices that affected you then, did you feel like it changed your trajectory? Because sometimes we become like our fathers even when we don't want to be.

David Bush: Sure.

Gary Wilkerson: It's almost like somebody had an angry father and, "I'll never be angry." And they get angry at or that. But so, you obviously have pursued health, fitness, your faith being integrated as part of that is that-

David Bush: I would say that's an application of a common grace, biblical wisdom, the sowing and reaping principles that God gives everyone, whether they're a believer or not, to be able to look at what's going on around them and see consequences of behavior and arrive at conclusions where behavior leads. You don't have to be a Christian to use that kind of discernment. That's a common grace gift to each one of us can call this sowing and reaping.

I can see the seeds I've sowed, a seed my dad's sowed in many areas and say, "I want to emulate that. I want to be the kind of man that he was to his wife. I want to be engaged in my kids’ life. I want to be this and that." And that's good seed that produced a great harvest that in this area, I don't want to sow that kind of seed because I see where that leads.

I want to be maximally available in my late 50s through as long as God gives me to lead. I want to put the pedal to the metal at that time frame.

Gary Wilkerson: Amen.

David Bush: And so, my life has been a response in some ways to seeing what I don't want. And that's just exercising biblical wisdom of sowing and reaping and seeing I want a preferred future rather than what I see going on in people's lives. But he had a lot of very commendable things about his life that I would want to completely emulate. I don't want it to be shortened or hindered in any way by some of the things that I saw hinder it at the end of his life.

So, I grew up with a passion for those things. I saw something that was instructive to me about how I should order my life in the negative actually in that regard.

Gary Wilkerson: Right.

David Bush: And then God brought somebody into my life. That kind of put a final piece to this. You're asking why is it that I'm doing what I'm doing?

Gary Wilkerson: Right.

David Bush: I was a member of a health club. One of the owners of the Health Club was an unsaved, narcissistic, self-obsessed person that I got to know there.

Gary Wilkerson: There are people like that in the gym are there?

David Bush: Yeah. Believe it or not, which is one reason the church rightly rejects that, and we can get into that.

Gary Wilkerson: Right.

David Bush: But I engaged him and at a time of crisis in his life where the walls were falling in, I got a chance to present the gospel to him. And God had been doing a work in his life for many years actually leading up to that. And this guy who everybody thought had life all figured out and was the epitome of what they wanted to be was really falling apart.

And I got a chance to lead him to Christ and begin discipling him. And in that discipleship relationship, as he was beginning to ... yeah, one foot was still in the gym culture, but one foot was solidly in the church culture. And as he began moving into the church culture, his questions to me in these discipleship breakfasts were, "Dave, I got to ask you, I love these people that I'm getting to know and their spirits are strong and I like the direction and they got so much wisdom, but why does nobody care about their health in the church? I don't get it. Doesn't the Bible say something about this? I mean, don't you want healthy people in the church because of the mission of the church? Why does nobody care?"

And I had to ask myself that and say, "Well, I've never heard a sermon about this. I've never been taught a theology of the body. What does the Bible say about it?" I've just done things maybe because I didn't want what happened to my dad to happen to me, or I valued it because I saw its benefits in the early part of my life. But if I'm going to keep forward on this, I'm going to have an intrinsic reason for in a motivation for pursuing this for a lifetime. Because there's too many ways, too many exit ramps to this in our culture to get off in a ditch. What's going to sustain me in a lifelong pursuit of good health?

And so I started digging into the Bible and specifically thinking about it through a lens of our physiology and found that the Bible has an awful lot to say about how we should steward our physical bodies and that the gospel has a lot of important applications to that area of our life.

And so, through that relationship God used that as a third way for me to start thinking deeply about this. And that is what gave birth to this specific ministry and focus of trying to let people know, what does the Bible say about our physical bodies and how does the gospel apply to the issues that we have with our health?

Gary Wilkerson: That's brilliant. That's what's your ministry's birthed around. That's why I'm so attracted to it. And I want to dig into that, the biblical concept of how to live your life. Before we do though, sometimes it's good to face and confront the real issue with, what's happening in our faith family in the church today, you've got interesting example as you bring up, you bring up your dad who had some of these, I call them the cylinders, his faith, his family, his friendships. They were all there, but maybe the food and fitness wasn't healthy there.

And then you've got your friend in the gym who's got his food and fitness is down, but he has no faith. There's no ... he's probably not real true friendships, real community and stuff. And so, you're bringing a holistic, the 1 Thessalonians 5:23. That you might be whole, W-H-O-L-E and holy, H-O-L-Y, spirit, soul and body. You're bringing these things together in your ministry, which is really rare, I mean, I've been to 73 different countries and met with probably 50, taught in front of 50 to a hundred thousand pastors. And I can tell you it's-

David Bush: It's lonely out there Gary.

Gary Wilkerson: Yeah. Well, voice in the wilderness. And it's lonely because you're speaking to a condition that is probably not God honoring, is not exactly the way it should be. Right? Can you tell us a little bit about the condition of those of us, our brothers and sisters in ourselves sometimes?

David Bush: Yeah. And I want to say this from a perspective of compassion and love and grace, there's no judgment here. I'm fully aware that I could, and you could be sitting here maybe the picture of health, and we could have debilitating sin in our life, grave sin that nobody can see. And then somebody who's struggling in this area, maybe that's very visible to everybody.

Gary Wilkerson: Exactly that's what I was going to say.

David Bush: But they've got their egoless and they've haven't struggled with pride and their giving is commendable. I understand all that.

Gary Wilkerson: It's so hard to talk ... I'm sorry to interrupt you with this. I have to say this. So that's why it's so hard to talk about this in church, because if you're talking about lust, everybody could sit there with a Bible open and go like, "Amen, brother." But if you're talking about obesity and somebody weighs 350 pounds, everything going, "Yeah, he needs to hear that." It's just not right.

David Bush: No, it's uncomfortable.

Gary Wilkerson: I most feel bad for people that are overweight because it is such a visible situation that whereas we can hide our other things.

David Bush: Sure.

Gary Wilkerson: And so again, going back to these eight cylinders, maybe I'm in better health than I used to be, but maybe my lust is getting increased in my life and so.

David Bush: So, as a caveat, I offer that to say, "Hey, I know that, and I know what it's like to carry a name. It wasn't fatty okay. But I was given a name in my life at a time. That hurt. And in some ways, it metastasized to my identity negatively. And so, I understand." So, I'm not coming in a way of, you should do this and why can't you that maybe this is easy for me and this is your struggle in life. Okay? I have other struggles. You have other struggles. These are our burdens. So that said-

Gary Wilkerson: Thanks for saying that. It is really important.

David Bush: The church survey says, and there's not a lot of data here, but survey says that in the midst of an unhealthy culture, and by that one where chronic disease is the hockey stick graph going up, 67% overweight and obese, which is not just an aesthetic. It is, means there's chronic disease going on because of that. The church is 10% worse than that.

Gary Wilkerson: That's incredible.

David Bush: So, you think about any kind of behavior, be it profanity, downloading porn, materialism, wife beating, whatever it might be. If the church was 10% worse than the culture in that, there would be an all-out offensive to combat and come against that, 10% more divorces in the church and then go, "Well, let's get marital coun..." You go get people in there to talk about, "Oh wait, we have that." 10% more materialism in the church. Let's get Dave Ramsey in there though. "Oh wait, we have that."

Maybe that's why these things are not 10% worse than the culture. But this is an area where the nature abhors a vacuum that nobody talks about it. And so the church is, its drug of choice is food and so it is been allowed to under the guise of fellowship and under the guise of hospitality, under the guise in some misunderstandings of theology is allowed to become what it is without perhaps recognizing that we can't silo our lives off and say our body can be going to pieces and yet everything else is just hitting on all these cylinders as you mentioned, that's fiction.

Gary Wilkerson: Right.

David Bush: That doesn't exist. You don't have a body that's a repository for chronic disease and then have something that's just marriage relationships and relationships with others and a great productivity at work and a great stewardship of money and great prayer life and devotional life over here while this is happening over here. That isn't and yet we had that dichotomy is kind of given a nod in the church that, this is really kind of superficial stuff that is really a little secular and worldly to consider too much, there's too much on this. But you should be really concentrating over here. And that's just not true. They all work together.

Gary Wilkerson: It is. That really is the environment of the church. And I'm so thrilled to grow up in the home I did, and absolutely honor and loved my dad. There's so much about him. I would love to emulate, like you mentioned too, one of the things I noticed in his trajectory, in his relationship with me is, so I love sports and I was on a basketball team, football team, baseball team, and he never came to any of my events. When I was 16 years old, I preached my first sermon, he was sitting there in front row and took me out to dinner afterwards and just gloated.

David Bush: Celebrating.

Gary Wilkerson: What a great ... and it’s kind of like, it was an unspoken message, the physical is not important. You being involved in team sports, you having comradery in that. You staying in good health for that is not important. But if you're going to preach a sermon, that's important. And then that's kind of the-

David Bush: One is kingdom work. The other is somehow secular.

Gary Wilkerson: Yeah, it is. And it could almost be careful. It could get you and it can. It can become an idol, but so can preaching. And so, bringing things into ... I don't call it balance because balance is too hard for me. Like to look at my life and go like, "Okay, I need 20% from my family, 20% for my friends, 20% for my physical health." And I just can't, it's just too much math in my head. So, I use the word harmony because my wife's a piano player and I just love when she hits a chord that resonates. Now you've got several notes at the same time and then there's a little shift to the next chord. And I think that that flow of life and it can be really healthy for us when ... but you're talking about the church may be missing a note, missing a chord or missing a cylinder and that affects everything else. You can't play a symphony with the ... not having the C note.

David Bush: Sure. And What are the notes we're supposed to be playing as the church? You've undoubtedly got people from all different denominational perspectives here, but I think we can all agree that loving God with our heart, soul, mind and strength and loving our neighbor as our self, would be something we could all, sing kumbaya about. Okay? You don't do that well when you're not healthy. You don't have the vitality. You don't have the endurance. You don't have the gusto to be able to engage in those things the way you should when your physical body isn't cooperating.

Gary Wilkerson: That's so important.

David Bush: So you loving God with your heart, soul, mind and strength there's a physical capacity issue there of loving God, enjoying him more because your physical body is letting you not have brain fog and pray more and hear more clearly and have the Holy Spirit speaking from Scripture to you more clearly.

These are things that become deadened and calloused as our life becomes more unhealthy. We just don't hear the same. We don't see with the same kind of perspective. We begin to think of ourselves in ways that aren't even biblical. It’s a further down we go this way. So loving God that way has a physiological component to it. And I can tell you and your ministry certainly bears out that the Great Commission and loving our neighbor as our self absolutely has a physiological component to it. You don't love your neighbor as yourself very well if pulling into the car port and going and disappearing into a bowl of fiddle-faddle watching Netflix every night. This is not how we engage our culture.

Gary Wilkerson: Is there is actually a thing called fiddle-faddle? Are you making that up, or is there actually-?

David Bush: I think caramel... Caramel coated almond and popcorn clusters.

Gary Wilkerson: You're making me hungry now.

David Bush: So, we need to have the resiliency to be able to say at the end of a hard day of work, I still have time to engage my wife. I still have time to engage my kids and grandkids. I still have time to go to the widow lady across the street and blow the snow off her driveway. I still have a time this weekend and the energy to go move the single mom who can only afford two men and a truck or can only afford to U-Haul. And I need to be engaged in their life that way. Prayer takes energy. Fasting takes energy. All manner of spiritual disciplines take energy. And if our bodies aren't cooperating, we're missing out on all those things that can be a part of our spiritual growth in Christ.

Gary Wilkerson: That's so good. Yes. Because it gives the power of the why, why I do something. What's the deep motive for it? If our motive is shallow, I want to look good in the swimsuit that doesn't drive us in the right direction. You're talking about a much deeper motive that my physical health, the way I eat, the way I exercise, the way I go for a brisk walk daily impacts the way I can love my spouse or the way I can take care. For me it was a real turning point for me and my health. Because I was healthy at young and middle age. I got sort of out of shape and overweight and also exhausted by the brain fog you're talking about.

And for me it hit me one day I was just laying on the floor with a couple of my grandsons and we were doing that wrestling thing like, see if you can pin me down. And after about three minutes I was just like [gasp] out of breath. And then when I went to get up and I was just like, it took me so long. I was like "Ugh" as I was saying, I realized, okay, I'm in just like in my early 50s at the time and just I'm losing it. And if I can't do that just a few minutes playing with the grandkids, how can I get on an airplane and travel to Africa and how can I come to the office?

David Bush: Takes a physical toll.

Gary Wilkerson: Yeah. And so you're really talking about something so important there though. The why of it, in your book, you talked about that, it does relate, like, let me just give you, I'll read this one. This is day seven, because you're ... you talked about this is the 30 days, right?

David Bush: Yes. It's a Daily Devotional for 30 Days.

Gary Wilkerson: I love this because you can ... especially if somebody's starting new, they can have a devotional element to the refrigerator and the gym or the walk. But in day seven it says, "My bodily discipline." And by that you would mean, can you-

David Bush: Our habits of nourishing our bodies through good eating and movement and exercise.

Gary Wilkerson: Good. So those two things and maybe more will have a direct impact on my ability to fulfill the great commandment, to love God with all my heart, soul and strength. That's really what you're talking about, isn't it?

David Bush: Yeah.

Gary Wilkerson: It's a bigger reason.

David Bush: Yeah. The motivation piece is critical for people. I think you even shared at the conference you spoke at was that, the motive for you was, “Doggone it, if I put on another couple pounds, I'm going to have to go and buy a new belt.”

Gary Wilkerson: Right.

David Bush: That wasn't a compelling motive because that didn't cost much and it was just too easy to just go buy a new belt, besides people then won't be able to see all the wear marks on every sequential notch as you expand it. Better to start with a clean slate. We need to have not extrinsic motives, things coming from the outside, things that sound like they're starting a wellness program at work. I just had a physical and the doctor raised his eyebrows that some of my numbers, my wife's been badgering me to get on the treadmill. I don't want to have to buy a new belt, or bikini season's right around the corner, lose 15 pounds and show your ex what they're missing.

These are cultural, extrinsic motives that are short term and they don't last. They're not wired to our faith or our heart. We need to move up that pyramid of motivations to get to intrinsic motives that speak to our walk of sanctification that says, "I want to be able to enjoy more of God," and I can do that when I'm eating right and exercising and I'm at a healthy weight. I want to be able to love my neighbor, starting with my spouse, my kids, my grandkids, and then moving out to the world. I want to be able to engage them at their point of need. And I do that better when my physical body is under control.

Gary Wilkerson: There are realities, I'll use preaching as an example of, so I preach if my motive for preaching is I want to be a famous preacher, I want to have 10,000 likes on every sermon I preach, the Holy Spirit's not going to bless that motive. And so, I think the same thing that our physical health as well, if my motive is to-

David Bush: To impress people.

Gary Wilkerson: To impress people. Yeah. And so, I'd gotten up to like 230 pounds and then when I really got into this, I started with the right motives. I was like, "I want a body that can ... and a mind clear and serve God." And then I started, I got down to 180 and I looked in the mirror one day and I had something I hadn't seen since high school. I had these like little lines right here and I thought, that's ... it's a two pack, not a six pack, but I haven't seen, I've got a one pack for the 20 years and all of a sudden, my motive changed. I went like, "Oh man, if I could lose like maybe eight more pounds, I might actually have a six pack, that'd be really cool." I'd go up to my wife, "Look I got six pack."

David Bush: Right. And what a disappointment when she really didn't care.

Gary Wilkerson: She didn't care. That's right. She was like, "I want to go get some donuts with you." But I lost it. Instead of going from ... if I could have lost 10 more pounds, I could have a six pack. With that, when that motive shifted, I went from 180 back up to 200, which I'm struggling with now, and I'm trying to get, and it's not the number, but it's the vision of why I'm doing this.

And so, I'm so glad you're talking about the motive here because I think that can really help people move beyond to have a really big reason for this and once somebody has a big reason. And then you get the anointing or the blessing of God's Holy Spirit empowering the reason why. So, he's not going to bless me for wanting to be a famous preacher or have a six pack. He's not going to be behind that energy, but he's going behind the energy. If I want to serve Him well, and I want to love God well through this and I want to be able to do all that he's called me to, the motive of this.

David Bush: Two of the chapters in the devotional that touched to that are, Satan doesn't care what you're obsessing over as long as it isn't Jesus. And he's happy to take somebody who needs some help in the physiological area and take them right through a healthy pursuit of that for good reasons. And to move them or right on through to obsession because he doesn't care what you're obsessed with. Our hearts are an idol factory.

Gary Wilkerson: That's what I did.

David Bush: And if we can make an idol out of our next meal out of a blender or our new personal record or workout regimen and we're not engaging with the Lord and the way we should, He's just as happy as long as the Lord isn't at the center. And a corollary to that is that God cares more about our motives than He does about our intentions or our results.

Gary Wilkerson: Wow.

David Bush: So those are a couple of chapters that deal with some of those.

Gary Wilkerson: Those are like really good, but they're also an ouch. I mean, I didn't think you were going to bring conviction on me here today when you came to... but you are right, because I see how easy it is to kind of just lose your way either on kind of backsliding, just going to, I don't care. I'm going to go back to the-

David Bush: Right. I intended to do something. Makes us look better than we really are. And it's really a foil. Intentions are weak and they make us look better than we are. Results, at what cost? God wasn't all just about results like the ends justify the means. No, He wants a better heart that is rightly motivated with intrinsic gospel-centered motives. We'll be able to avoid the excesses as well as to realize the fulfillment of the intentions. So, God cares more about our motives than our intentions or our results.

Gary Wilkerson: Beautiful.