In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of discipline in various areas of our lives, particularly in relation to physical fitness. He draws from the analogy of athletes who exercise self-control to receive a perishable wreath, contrasting it with the imperishable reward we strive for as Christians. The lack of discipline in our bodies or any other area can lead to spiritual tragedy. The speaker also discusses the importance of balance and avoiding quick solutions or fads in areas such as nutrition and rest. He encourages listeners to understand their own energy cycles and prioritize proper rest. Ultimately, as stewards of our bodies and the gifts bestowed upon us by the Holy Spirit, we are accountable to God for how we care for ourselves.

The Navigators is an international, interdenominational, Christian organization whose objective is to help fulfill Christ's commission to make disciples of all nations. They individually teach the basics of the Christian life to new believers, who then teach others. They work on campuses, military bases, and among lay men and women on every continent. By the way, there is a good diet song in that book. Really, there is. It's number 91. It's called Feeding on the Living Bread. And if we did that, if that's all we fed on, I think we wouldn't have any problems. First of all, I want you to know that because of your conference here, I am the office joke this week. Gordon Adams. Gordon Adams is talking on the disciplined body. Now you say, what qualifies you to talk about the disciplined body? Well, I've lost enough weight in my life to make any two of you. My philosophy of weight control is hanging on the wall of my office. It's a series of cartoons. I don't know if you get the cartoon strip Hagar, the horrible, you know, the little Viking. And last year sometime, there was this really great cartoon strip that appeared. And some of my friends thought it was so appropriate to me that they cut out each square and decoupaged it. And I have six frames on my wall. And it starts off by saying, here's this little chubby wife. And she says, you ought to do something about that big, fat, ugly stomach of yours. And the next frame says, I think you ought to do something about that big, fat, ugly mouth of yours. He says, I don't think my stomach's so bad. He says, really, it's my best friend. It opens doors for me, helps me float, does all sort of things for me. It's really my best friend. And then the cartoon strip ends up by saying, come on, I'll get you something to eat. That's my lifelong philosophy of weight control. And to calm the rest of your fears, my philosophy on exercise is that whenever I get the urge to exercise, I lay down until the urge goes away. So I don't think you have any fears for me talking on this topic. You know, the old navigator joke or the adage is that they always assign you messages in areas you need to work on. That's probably why I got this one. Well, I accept it because I'm one of you. You know, I've fought this battle of weight control and exercise and bodily discipline all of my life. Somebody told me the other day they got down to 168 pounds. I said, down to 168? Last time I weighed 168 was when I was three years old. I should have that problem. As I understand, your time this week has been given to the topic of the disciplined life. And so we are down to the disciplined body today. As I say, I'm not speaking to you as an expert, but I'm speaking to you as a learner. I have done a great deal of reading in my lifetime on this topic since it has been a lifelong battle for me. And this morning I thought we'd take our time and break it into three parts. First of all, I think we can talk about some scriptural principles regarding the discipline of the body. Secondly, let's go into a few plans and suggestions on the idea of nutrition and rest and exercise and so on. And then third, the physiological and psychological benefits of a disciplined body. So let's start with the scriptural principles of bodily discipline. Why do we even bother to talk about a topic like this at a Navigator Conference? That's probably a good question. Is it really important to us as Christians? Now the answer may seem obvious to some of you, but perhaps to others not so obvious. So let's start in 1 Corinthians. I think 1 Corinthians probably has more to say about it than any other single book in the Word of God. 1 Corinthians chapter 6. You knew this was coming, didn't you? 6, 19, and 20. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own. You were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. Now Paul had just written in chapter 4 of 1 Corinthians, verse 1, he had just said, This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God, that is, the uncovered truths of God. Now it's clear, I think, from the Word of God that a Christian doesn't belong to himself. He's not his own. He's bought with a price. That is, God's own son. And the Bible says in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, here, verse 20, that you are Christ's and Christ is God's. 1 Corinthians 3, 20. So we belong to God. In John 14, Jesus was talking to the disciples and he said, I am in my Father, you in me, and I in you. And so we are, therefore, responsible to the Lord for the total management of our lives. We're stewards. And this would include the area of physical fitness or how we care for our bodies. Romans 14. So each of us shall give an account of himself to God. And we are accountable for the use of our bodies, the gifts bestowed on us by the Holy Spirit, and for the truths that are appropriated from the Word of God. And being responsible for our bodies would include motivation, our thoughts, our words, our actions, deeds, etc. But this morning we'll confine our discussion to just the physical aspects of the discipline of the body. Over in Colossians, there are some good verses. 17, verse 23 in Colossians 3. These are also some verses that you're familiar with. Colossians chapter 3, starting with verse 17. Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Then on down in verse 23. Whatever your task, work heartily. I'm reading from the reversed standard if you're wondering here. Work heartily as serving the Lord and not men. Now there's a good verse that you hear around the Navigators a lot, but it took me several years to understand this verse. I think that at one point in my Christian experience, I interpreted this verse to read, Whatever your task, or whatever you do, work heartily as if you were serving the Lord. And I think there are a lot of people that still read that verse that way. In other words, whatever you're doing, do it as though or as if you were serving. Now to me, that's compartmentalizing the Christian experience. Let me explain that. We have the spiritual, we have the secular, we have the this, we have the that. And never the twain shall meet. I don't read that in the verse. Whatever you do, whatever your task, work heartily as serving the Lord. And as I look at my Vines New Testament of words, Greek words, it seems that this verse should be not as if, but as in fact you are serving the Lord. Do you get the difference of the thought? It's a very subtle distinction. Don't pretend as though whatever you're doing, you were doing it as though you would do the spiritual. You know, we all work hard on Bible study and all of these spiritual things, witnessing and quiet time. And so if you're sweeping the floor or if you're doing your exercises, do that and pretend you were doing something really important spiritual over here. Do you see the distinction? When in fact the verse says whatever you're doing, God is as interested in the way we take care of our bodies, the way we brush our teeth, the way we sweep the floor, the way we do our jobs, the way we take care of our children. He is as interested in all of those things as He is any of the so-called spiritual aspects of our lives. So whatever you do, do it as in fact serving the Lord. And whatever we're doing, we're serving Him. So our bodies are temples. And that's a good visual image to me. You know, my body is a temple. And I kind of blow up in my mind a fat temple, see. You know, some of us are fat temples. It's just kind of a good visual image to keep me on track. I don't know, maybe you don't have my problem. I'm assuming that some of you fight the same battles that I do this morning. And if I'm all wet, well, that's fine. I see an awful lot of nice, slender, good-looking people. Now, the classic passage of Scripture, I think, and the one that I really hate to read, is 1 Corinthians 9. You talk about hard doctrine. Now, this is hard doctrine. This is one that I wish I could cut out of my Bible, but I can't. 1 Corinthians 9, beginning with verse 24. Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. So run, huh? Okay. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it, that is the athletes do it, to receive a perishable wreath. But we, an imperishable. Well, I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air. But, in verse 27, I pummel my body and subdue it. Lest, after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified. Now, that verse has been used in a lot of ways, and I think there's a lot of applications of the truth from these verses of Scripture. But one thing I think that we can see here, in this classic passage, is that the lack of discipline in the body, or in any other area of our life for that matter, can lead to spiritual tragedy. We could be disqualified from the race. We could be put on the shelf. Now, I don't think that means that God is going to kick us out of His family, or anything like that. Or that we're going to lose our salvation. But I do think that it means we could be set aside from really being used by God in the ministry. And so, that's a hard verse. I pummel my body and subdue it. That's very strong language. Pummel and subdue your body. Lest, preaching to others, we could be disqualified. And, of course, the classic example of this is Samson, in Judges 16. We won't go into that, but there's an excellent illustration of that truth. The lack of discipline in what happened to Samson, in Judges 16, if you want to read that over some time. Now, there are some other verses, I think, that we can get some light on the subject from. For example, in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, we all know verse 17. I hope we do. I have all memorized that one. But this is a whole good passage, from verse 16 to the end of the chapter, that verse 17 is contained in. We often quote 17, but this is picked right out of the middle of a whole passage that's full of truth. And we know that if anyone's in Christ, He's a new creature, or creation. The old has passed away, behold the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us, us, the ministry of reconciliation. That is, God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Now, that's important. It says here, in verse 20, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We beseech other people, or you, on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. Now, we're ambassadors. We're ambassadors. And this is a beautiful illustration, if you stop to carry that out, and all that's involved in what an ambassador is, and what his functions are, what his job is. But it points up, I think, the importance of how we look, and the impressions that we create as Christians. And I think this is the central truth to this whole idea of physical fitness, appearance, health, nutrition, rest, exercise, the whole ball of wax. And the idea here, in this passage, is that our testimonies for Christ are sometimes affected because we're so big, nobody can hear what we're saying. That's true in my case. I think there are many people who want to win people to Christ, genuinely, but their appearance seems to convince onlookers that the gospel has nothing to do with discipline, health, or personal attractiveness. I think that's tragic, how many people we may keep out of the kingdom simply because we're fat temples. I'm preaching to myself. I mean, I keep looking at myself. The excuse that some people sometimes give is, well, man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. Well, that's just exactly the point. Man looks on the outward appearance. That's what it says, isn't it? God looks on the heart. We know that that's essential. The truth is that God is interested in what we are inside. But the fact is that how people see us from the outside, man looks on the outward appearance. We're epistles, Paul said, to be read of all men. And so that's the point. Man does look on our outward appearance. And I feel that the Bible doesn't teach this explicitly, but implicitly it teaches that we're responsible not only for our actions, but for the impressions that we create. Now, there are other verses in the Bible. Philippians 2.15 is one you can jot down. And a lot of these we won't go into detail. You can just go back and look them over and meditate on them and see what the Lord gives you out of the verses. But in verse 15 of chapter 2 in Philippians, it says that we're to do all things without grumbling or questioning in 14, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God, without blemish, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom you shine as lights in the world. And I think our fitness, the way we appear to people, could tarnish or obscure the light that we shine, that shines forth from us. And then back to 1 Corinthians for a moment. In chapter 3, it's similar to the thought in chapter 6 about the temple, but there's an interesting thought added in chapter 3, verses 16 to 18. It says again, do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? And then in 17 it says, if anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. God's temple is holy and that temple you are. So I think that, as I thought about that, that the implication of this verse is that we ought not to destroy God's temple, and we could. If you do enough reading, you know that what you eat and how you care for your body and how you exercise and so on definitely affects your life span, your effectiveness, everything that you are. And so let's be careful that we don't destroy God's temple. And then a good old verse that I like to think of often and review is Proverbs chapter 12. The hand of the diligent will rule while the slothful will be put to forced labor. That's a good verse. 1224. So there's a dichotomy between the diligent and the slothful. And God uses that to remind me quite often. You say, well, is it really a value? I mean, I'm nice and slender and I don't really have that many problems. Well, you know, praise God that that's true for you, but some of us don't have that, aren't put together like that. 1 Timothy 4.8 says that bodily training is of some value. Now, I think what's taught in 1 Timothy chapter 4 is that spiritual values are ultimately more important to the Lord, what we are spiritually. But it does say that bodily training is of some value and then goes on to tell us that spiritual values are ultimately most important to the Lord. And then the last verse that I have down here for you to consider, right down to 2 Corinthians 5.10. And that's another TMS verse. And the idea that I've extracted from this verse is that we'll have to answer for the deeds done in our bodies. And not just what we do, our actions outside of the body. But I think the deeds done in the body or to the body or with the body are implicit in the teaching of 2 Corinthians 5.10. So the scriptures have numerous things to say, I think, on the subject of keeping fit. Let's talk secondly about some plans and some suggestions for physical fitness. It's a tough area and I think that we all realize that there are many conflicting viewpoints. There's a lot of literature on this subject, how to keep fit. And I couldn't possibly in just, you know, a short 30 or 40 minutes go into much detail. But we can review some of it in general. I think I've tried just about every fad diet that's been on the market before I've come to some startling conclusions in my own life. You know, when I think of health and fitness, I think of three things put together. I don't think of exercise separately and I don't think of other things separately. I think of three areas of our lives that are all tied together. And I think what I'm going to say to you is backed by many recognized medical authorities. And here's my point. Health and physical fitness is maintained through a balanced program of nutrition, rest and exercise. You know, you have to put the three things together. We hear a lot about fitness, you know, in the aerobic book and the 5BX plan, the Royal Canadian Air Force and this and the other and the other. And then you hear a whole another discussion on the area of nutrition. Adele Davis and all this crowd writes on the subject of nutrition. Well, I'm inclined to think in my reading that the three go together. That health and physical fitness is maintained through a balanced program of nutrition, rest and exercise. In other words, the idea of balance, the word that seems to apply to so much of our Christian experience, is applicable in this instance as well. And so I want to take all three of these areas. I think that the latest writing in this field seems to be pointing away from the fad type of items, the quick solutions to problem areas. You know, the spot reducing for the ladies around the waist and us men too. And the fad diets and all of these quick overnight solutions to problems. Let's talk about each one of these things for a moment. Number one, let's take nutrition first. The illustration that I've read often is that these areas go together somewhat like a bank. That is, the food we eat is sort of a deposit. The rest that we get is sort of like the money laying there in the bank. Or then the bank eventually puts it to work, of course. And our exercise is the withdrawal. Eating the right foods is important, and there's lots of literature around on the subject of eating right. Though controversial, I think that Adele Davis has some good things to say. My wife reads her quite extensively. My wife is a registered nurse, and she tries to extract the things that really seem to be practical. She doesn't go overboard. I mean, she's got so many books, Adele Davis, and there are so many things in her writing that are controversial. Medical authorities take issue with a lot of it. But there are some good ideas in there. Let's eat right to keep fit. Let's have healthy children. All sorts of books by Adele Davis on this subject. And I think that it's been helpful in our home for my wife to have applied some of those principles. I come from a family where the diet, my father works in a factory. And so when I was at home, the kind of foods that we always ate, and his brothers and so on, were farm people. My mother's brothers were all farm people and so on. And so they were given to eat large quantities. Of course, they worked it off. So, you know, in my home, the kind of thing we ate were fried everything. We had fried meat and fried potatoes and fried this and fried that. And lots of bread and lots of gravy and lots of homemade pies and lots of homemade cakes. I got it all honestly. I really did. I inherited myself one dilly of a metabolism. And when I went into the Marine Corps, believe it or not, I was in the Marine Corps for four of the longest years of my life were spent in the Marine Corps. And when I went in there to boot camp in 1960 and they took one look at me and they said, Good grief, what have we got here? At 218 pounds. They let me out six months later at 168. I went home and knocked on the door. My mother said, Yes, can I help you? I said, It's me. And what was I going to say about the Marine Corps? Oh, well, they changed my eating habits. They changed my eating patterns. The drill instructor would go through the line with us as we were affectionately known the fat boys platoon. And they would go through with us and they say he'll take none of those. None of those. Half of that. None of that. One of those. Half of that. And none of those. And then for the real skinny guys, they'd say, Give him three of those, four of those, two of those. And he'd come out with a platter just stacked like this. They'd sit on one side and the skinny guys would sit on one side with their like this. And we'd sit over there with nothing and drool at each other. And then the drill instructor would walk on the table and tell those poor guys to eat. And they'd come out of there with it coming out their ears. I think they were more miserable than I was having to eat all that food. But it seems to work. Now on the subject of dieting, that's my specialty. I've been on more diets in my life than you probably realized existed. There's the doctor's quick weight loss diet. There's the exchange diet. There's Dr. Atkins diet revolution. And on and on and on. I've tried them all. Now they all have good points and bad points. And this latest one, Dr. Atkins diet revolution, revolution is right. I mean there are more doctors suing this poor guy. I read the whole book and he really had a lot of things good to say in his book. But nevertheless it is sort of a fad. I went on that thing and I lost 25 pounds in six weeks. What can you say? It works. If your objective is just to get off a few pounds, it works. But I felt terrible. It's just like anything will work if you go on it. One time I wanted to lose some weight so I lost 30 pounds in two and a half months drinking nothing but two cans of, like Metrocal, the other one. Seago. Seago. Oh my goodness. I felt like a can of Seago after two months of drinking that stuff. The first time I ate a solid meal, my body just rejected it. But it worked. But I crawled out of bed every morning. I crawled to the office. I sat there and I drug myself up the stairs for coffee break. Black coffee of course with no sugar at 10 o'clock. And I fell back down the stairs to the office. And I was a wreck for two months. But I lost the weight. But the funny thing was that in two more months I put back about 15 pounds of it. In all these diets I've been on, I keep coming back to the same conclusion that my body says that the extremes one way or the other aren't right. Now I have a friend who's in medical school right now and he was here a couple of weeks ago and I said, Morgan, what are they saying about nutrition and dieting these days? He said, well, we had a fellow came in and lectured to our class just last week. He said, the latest thing that they're talking about is that people seem to have a built-in right weight level. Something that turns on and turns off. And if you try to go beyond this boundary, your body will just do something to stabilize. So if you lose too much weight, you'll put it back on pretty fast. You can maintain it if you starve. But likewise, if you put on too much weight, your body keeps telling you that something is wrong and you want to go back down. And that level is different for every person. It's different. And so what they seem to be saying in the latest periodicals is that we may not fit the chart. And believe me, I don't fit any of those charts. I haven't found one yet that would support my prejudice. We may not fit the chart, but your body seems to have its own sort of trigger, a built-in mechanism. Now, you can stretch that one a little bit, but my conclusion is that weight control really is just a matter of... is not just a matter of crash-reducing for a brief period of time. Really, it's a lifetime matter. And agonizing, if you have my kind of metabolism, but it's lifetime. And the foods that we reduce or maintain by should be the kind that we can live on for life. I've concluded that I just have to go through this agony of changing my whole pattern of eating, which marrying a registered nurse came pretty naturally to her. My mother used to serve fried potatoes and corn and all this together. My wife would never think of putting together potatoes and corn. My goodness, two starches. It would always be no potatoes and green vegetables. And so I've had to learn to eat such things as broccoli and asparagus instead of those good gooey kind of foods that I ate when I was a kid. Fattest diets seem to extol one or two foods or classes of foods, allegedly bursting with miracles. Now, this can result in the omission or insufficiency of other classes of foods which provide essential nutrients. And I think that after all is said and done, it's really a matter of simple arithmetic. If your intake exceeds your output, the upkeep could be your downfall. It's simply a matter of deposits and withdrawals. And if you really want to get a hold of that, it's simply a matter, if you want to lose weight or maintain weight, you've got to do one of two things, decrease the input or increase the output, or both. Now, there also is the idea of the metabolism involved in this. Now, when I went in the Marine Corps, they tested my metabolism and they told me that I have an extremely low metabolism. Now, the only good thing I can say about that is if you and I were stranded on a desert island, I'll outlive you. But I'm not planning on being stranded on any desert islands. So mostly my low metabolism is a curse, not a blessing. There was a good article in Reader's Digest called The One Sensible Way to Diet. And this was condensed from Look Magazine and written by Dr. Roland Berg. This fellow says that low-calorie foods are not necessarily good for reducing. He says, Filling your stomach with low-calorie foods won't satisfy your hunger. Only sufficient calories can do that. And he advocates a balance of all the types of food, fats, carbohydrates. By the way, Dr. Atkins' diet is a low-carbohydrate diet, very low, less than 50 grams of carbohydrate per day. I've been on the Weight Watcher program, and that's also low-carbohydrate, but it's about 60 to 80 grams of carbohydrate per day. And there are people like myself whose metabolism can't even stand that much carbohydrate, that much sugar and starch. And Atkins has some good points. He says that we eat more sugar in a month in our lives as modern human beings than our predecessors back even a century ago did in a year. We eat more sugar in a month than people used to eat in a year. Sugar and starch, carbohydrate. I mean, Cokes and all of the soft drinks that we drink and potato chips. And did you ever notice on the television that all of the foods that are advertised, they're all that kind of food, potato chips and the new Pringles, the new potato chip and all of this. They all seem to be that kind of food. And we just eat far too much of that food, Atkins says. Now, he has a point. He has some bad things in that diet, but he does have a point. Now, this guy says that we have a... Let me get the word here. His program is called Energetics. And he says that we have a built-in... Yeah, apostat. It turns on and off. It tells us when we're hungry. I was looking for it in here. I didn't underline it. Apostat. Yeah. He says, the big unknown is why some people's apostats turn on more frequently than others. That's the big unknown. He says, obviously, a fat man's apostat must switch on and off at a higher setting than a thin man's. Well, that's comforting. Why, we don't know. And we don't know how to change the setting. Now, this seems to fit in with my conversation with my friend who's a medical student, that there seems to be a setting, a built-in. Now, what does that mean? Well, I'm not sure, but I'll speculate with you here in just a minute. But I just have to read you a couple of items from an article that I clipped out the other day. It's just great. And the title of the article is, I love diets. I've eaten my way through thousands. People frequently ask me about dieting because you may not believe this, but I'm something of a fatty myself. I realized it one year ago in Las Vegas when I was on a nightclub chorus line. I was the last four girls. I knew it was time to go on a diet when the prudential man offered me group insurance. Another sure sign was when I wore all white to a party and the hostess showed movies on me. If you're at this point, by all means, consider a diet. You know what a diet is. It's doing without the foods your doctor doesn't like. Dieting is a system of starving yourself to death so that you can live a little longer. Of course, some people resist dieting and try to look thinner by such devious means as moving to the Grand Canyon. Anyone looks thinner standing against a vast background. Others eat only garlic and Limburger cheese. They don't lose weight, but they look thinner at a distance. Some people have the impression that I hate to diet. That's not true. I love to diet. In fact, I'll diet on any kind of food I can get my hands on. I usually finish all the food on my four-day diet in only three days. I've tried all kinds of diets. Dr. Stillman's water diet is a great one if you're a camel. The inventor claims that if you drink eight glasses of water a day and eat all the protein you can, you'll lose 30 pounds in four weeks. And you will. Your bladder will fall out. This thing goes on and on like that. My husband, Georgie, and I went on the water diet. He lost 10 pounds. I gained 70 gallons. She goes on to tell about going to the fat farm. She says, at a fat farm you get up at 6 a.m. for breakfast, half a cup of coffee with no cream, sugar, or spoon, a poached egg, and a tangerine pit. Then you exercise for three hours in 110-degree heat. It's like Fort Dix for women. And you spend $800 to go on a bivouac. She says, in conclusion, I can only assure you, dieters, that I know what you're going through. Well, I've weighed myself so often I have the letters DETECTO imprinted on the balls of my feet. But remember, dieting has its rewards. I always have the satisfaction of knowing, for example, that I have the same measurements as Ali McGraw. It's true. I checked it out. Her living room is exactly 18 by 12. And so is mine. Well, on to the point of rest. This part of health and fitness often is omitted, but I think it's important. I don't think it's particularly spiritual to try to get by on four or five hours of sleep, as some of my friends feel. A Christian, I think, has to realize that we have a giant task still before us, and that is getting the gospel, a very important message to the rest of the world. But let's not beat our horse to death trying to deliver the message and knock ourselves out of the battle. I think that's the point. And I think one of the suggestions I would make to you is to learn your cycle, what your own particular cycle is. Ride your energy peaks. Experiment. Find out what you really need, as far as rest is concerned, to stay on top. Discover whether you're a night person or a morning person. I am a night person. Some of the best work I did in college was writing term papers between 10 o'clock at night and 3 in the morning. Some people said I'd never be able to hold my eyes open. But see, I'm a night person. At the office, I'll sometimes come back down here at 10 o'clock at night after my wife has gone to bed and worked till 1. Of course, I don't come in till the next morning, till 9.30 or 10. But I'm a night person. I'm not a morning person. The only time I'm up at 5.30 like I was this morning is if I stayed awake all night. I got up before breakfast. So I think you need to discover what it is, what your cycle is, how you operate most efficiently. If you're a morning person, go to bed at night. Get up early in the morning. You have time to do what you need. You can get exercise in. You can get a good long quiet time in or whatever. I often have my quiet time at night when the house is quiet and my little daughter is in bed and everything is nice and quiet and I can think and read and pray. So I often have my quiet time at night. So find out what your cycle is. When I was representing the Navigators in Texas, I only required about six and a half hours of sleep. Of course, that was also between the ages of I was 25 to 30 during my five years in Texas. I've discovered, I'm 32 now, I've discovered that I require a little bit more sleep. And in this altitude, I can't get by on less than seven hours of sleep. So I usually get seven to eight hours. My wife requires eight to nine hours. And so you just have to kind of discover what it is you need for maximum efficiency. And you say, how does that work out when your wife is a morning person and goes to bed early in the evening and you go, well, fine, I just say good night and she goes to bed. And I see her the next morning whenever I get up. But we've just had to work that out in our marriage. So find out how many hours you need and do definitely get enough rest to keep you sharp. And take brief naps if you need them. Now the last thing is this dirty word called exercise. I'm not going to suggest that you go out this afternoon and start running three miles, but let me give you a few ideas. First of all, realize that exercise can be fun. The key seems to be to find something that you can and will do. That's the key. Find something that you can and you will do, not a program that you start, really have to grind it out every day and then get defeated at because you stop and you feel guilty because you haven't continued this extremely difficult regimen that you put yourself on. For example, your exercise could be obtained through sports. This is what I do. I play handball and racquetball. I go to the YMCA twice a week, more often if I can get down there. And I find that that's something that I like to do. I like to play racquetball and so I'll do it. And I have a great time doing it and I get a fantastic workout doing that. So find something that you can do and that you will do, something that will fit in with your lifestyle and your particular set of circumstances. Now another point, number two, some exercise can be worked into your daily routine. For example, we fat Americans could walk instead of driving two blocks down the street to go to the 7-Eleven. We could use the stairs instead of the elevators, maybe two at a time. We could ride a bicycle to work. Some of the guys here do that. It doesn't look too sharp in a suit, if you wear a suit, but some people could ride a bicycle. But just think in that line, that you can work some exercise into your daily routine. Another point, three, remember that there are two kinds of exercise. There are exercises that deal with the cardiovascular system, the heart, the lungs, the aerobic type of exercises. Then there are the kind of exercises that deal with the musculatory, skeletal muscles. And we need a little bit of both. Aerobic exercises, good ones. Walking, bicycling, swimming, jogging. Chiropractors say swimming is the best. I just read another article the other day that said swimming is one of the best exercises that we could do because your body is suspended by the water and you're completely relaxed. And yet you get good exercise, you get your heart rate built up, and you really have to work to swim, if you're swimming hard. Bicycling is a good exercise, even the kind that you ride at home and don't go anywhere on. And walking, if you can't run, walk. We could walk two or three miles, four miles, five miles maybe. It just takes a lot more time. Jogging is still probably the bestest for the leastest or the mostest for the leastest or whatever you want to call it. It's the exercise that seems to pay the greatest dividends for the least amount of time exerted. Some people like me, I ran myself to death in the Marine Corps, I'm sick of running. And every time I think of a jogging program, that's when I go lay down until the idea goes away. Now, the muscular type of exercises, there are the portable gym. I travel a great deal. I don't have one of these, but I've been thinking about getting one of these little portable gyms, you know, the exergenie type things, you know, that you can do the exercises and all of this. Or a simple little 10-minute conditioning programs. I've read several articles, I've got a couple in my briefcase, you know, that you just a little 10-minute regimen of certain exercises, bending and pulling the muscles and stretching and all of that that we can do. The human body is the only machine that breaks down when not used. Moreover, it's also the only mechanism that functions better and more healthily the more it's put to use. Remember that. That's Dr. Thomas Curtin, who's the director of the Physical Fitness Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois. And the last thing on exercise that I would suggest to you is to take precautions. And here the thing is to remember is to train, don't strain. Train, don't strain. If you're over 40, remember that you should have a physical exam. If you don't have a regular program, get an AEKG and all of that business. Take care of your heart. I think that we also should remember that we should have adequate warm-up and tapering off. Exercise should be at least two hours after a meal, and it should be regular. If you can get in three times a week, that's the best. Three times a week. And remember that if you're just starting, that it may take 12 weeks to really condition yourself. So don't expect miracles overnight. It may take up to 12 weeks to get yourself going. All right, last, and I'm over time. The physiological and psychological benefits. I've discovered that there's a definite connection between the physical and the rest of our being. That is the spiritual, the mental, and so on. Soggy body, saggy body, saggy mind. The idea is to put together the nutritional, rest, exercise aspects so that you really feel sharp. Now, that's also in the latest writings that I've read. What you want to do is find something that makes you feel good. Your weight is at a level that's not difficult to maintain, that you can maintain fairly adequately. For the last, oh, four years, I've stayed between 2 and 210, right around there. Now, the charts say I'm supposed to weigh around 190, but, boy, I tell you, that's a job for me to try to do that. But I can seem to stay between 2 and 210, and so that's what I do. It takes the least amount of effort to keep my body there, and it's not a huge battle all the time. And I feel pretty good at that weight. And this is the idea, to do something so that you'll feel sharp, so that you'll be alert, your mind is functioning, you're competent, you can do your job. The better equipped you are in the area of your physical condition, we're going to be able to do our jobs better, we're going to be able to enjoy our families, and we'll be able to contribute better to the ministry of the gospel. In closing, my prayer for you would be a little verse over in that little-known book of 3 John. Verse 2, it says, Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you, and that you may be in health. I know that it's well with your soul. That's a good prayer. Oh. You're always supposed to close with a poem, and so I have one. It says this, I am only one, but I am one. I can't do everything, but I can do something. And what I can do, that I ought to do. And what I ought to do, by the grace of God, I shall do. That's by Edward Hale, a former chaplain of the United States Senate. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you this morning for this time to consider your word and to think about our physical condition. We know that you teach us in your word that we are responsible for our bodies and the care of our bodies. Lord, for some of us, it's a real battle to maintain our weight and to look good. And I pray that you would give us victory by your spirit. That you would convict us if we're deceiving ourselves as to our condition. And that you, by your spirit, would also give us the will and the willpower and the means by which to improve our condition. Lord, give us creativity, we pray. Help us to come up with some sort of a program that we can work into our lives, something that we can and we will do. And I thank you for this time with this gang here. Thank you for this conference this week and for their presence and for what you are doing by your spirit in the lives of all of us. We pray your continued blessing on this conference. In Jesus' name, Amen.