Godly exercise

Hope you're enjoying these Scriptures on godliness, or if not I hope they are at least provoking a thought or two and stirring something inside...

This one is a double Scripture, as are some of the others that follow, which i think is good - a bit more meat out of the Word :).

1 Timothy 4:7 "But refuse profane and old wives' fables, and exercise thyself [rather] unto godliness."

Life is full of "old wives' tales" as I am more familiar to calling them. It is interesting that many little anecdotes, fairy tales and cliches are passed onto us in our youth with such little value in the Kingdom of God. One that springs immediately to mind is "if you eat sandwich crusts, your hair will go curly". Such a myth has no real value to us in our spiritual growth and much like the man in the man, easter bunny & tooth fairy, can in fact cause us to doubt things we were taught from a young age (including God if you had a Christian upbringing). These things are profane - not necessarily foul or vile - but common, worldy things that really don't belong in our speech or thinking. For this reason we are told to exercise ourselves to godliness, the purpose of which being shared with us in the following verse.

1 Timothy 4:8 "For bodily exercise profits little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come."

I think it was Ray Comfort who said "Eat right, stay fit, die anyway". While this is obviously fatalistic, it is intended as a humorous critique of fitness-obsessed people with no regard for spiritual welfare & perhaps has the above verse in mind when doing so. There is profit in physical exercise, but in comparison to godliness it is most insignificant.
Then we see why godliness is so essential to Christian life - it is profitable to all things! In other words, anything worth having or aspiring to will be benefited by a godly life. That's a promise worth holding onto! Furthermore, eusebeia has promise or blessing of our present life and more for the eternal life we shall receive shortly.

All around, godliness pays far greater dividends as we glorify God rather than the body through exercise or human wisdom through old fables.