About 20 years ago, I realized that I was loosing my balance.  Most of my life, I’d hated exercise; and I could realistically be called a couch potato.  However, I had fallen and broken my leg.  As soon as I was out of my cast, I began a daily regimen of exercise.

I felt this was to be a daily discipline as a part of my growth in the kingdom of God.  I started working out with the “idiots on TV.”  For years, I’d ridiculed these men and woman.  However, I quickly learned that I was the idiot and these trainers were knowledgable folks who knew far more about my body than I did.

Another couch potato and friend, Diana, had once quoted the scripture where Paul had spoken to Timothy and said, “…for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.”  Her interpretation had been that we should never exercise.  I had taken the opposite tactic.  I felt that Paul was saying that we should not allow bodily training to become an obcession.  Of course, that didn’t get me off the couch.

Medical evidence shows that even a small amount of exercise of 15 minutes a day will prove significantly beneficial to everyone.  In the past, people worked in labor intensive jobs.  More and more of us sit at computers.

“Exercise is the single best thing you can do for your brain in terms of mood, memory, and learning,” says Harvard Medical School psychiatrist John Ratey, author of the book, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. ”Even 10 minutes of activity changes your brain.”  

Going to the gym can be expensive and time-consuming.  For more than ten years, I worked out with nationally known  trainers who came into my home on my time schedule.  They charged me nothing.  When I got bored with one trainer, I switched to another.  I needed two and five-pound weights that I got from Wal-Mart for less than $10.   The few other pieces of equipment I needed were minimal.  These men and women are also available to you, also.  They are on your TV and you can find them early in the morning, in the afternoon or at night.

Your stress level will zoom downward and so will your blood pressure.  Add a few cards with Scriptures that you can memorize and you will find great spiritual benefit to the minutes you spend building your body.