Stewarding Our Physical Bodies – With Dr. Mark Sherwood:  Are spiritual fitness and physical fitness connected? Have you considered the responsibility–and rewards–of physical fitness? What did the pandemic numbers teach us about the effects of stress, and fear, or a disciplined life? Tune in to hear the important answers to these questions and more!

Air Date: 08/24/2022

Guest: Mark Sherwood

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

Faith and the Culture

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. Thanks for joining us today here on WallBuilders Live.

I’m Rick Green, America’s Constitution coach and a former Texas legislator; and thrilled to be hosting this program with David and Tim Barton; Tim Barton is a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders; David Barton, of course, America’s premier historian and our founder here at WallBuilders. All three of us, you can learn more at wallbuilderslive.com, that’s Wallbuilderslive.com. That’s our radio website with a list of the stations from across the country where you can hear the program. Or you could just get us on pretty much any podcast app out there.

And then if you want to dive deep into some of the archives that you cannot find anywhere else, then look at wallbuilderslive.com, that would be the place to get those, and that’s also the place you can make a one-time our monthly contribution. Thank you to everyone out there. There’s so many of you that give. Sometimes it’s $5 a month, sometimes it’s $500 a month. Whatever you can give, we’re so thankful for that, because what happens is we take those dollars and we reinvest those in the mission. 

So we take that and we can add a station, we can train more pastors and teachers and young people. I mean, all the different things we’re doing, I can spend the whole program today just talking about the impact WallBuilders is having throughout the culture; the Constitution coaches, I mean, you name it. And when you donate, it gives us a chance to reach more and more people.

And frankly, folks, we’ve got to be willing to do more and more of that. The Left, they donate to their causes. They put their money behind their values; whether they’re billionaires or not, they give, and it makes it possible for them to engage in the culture. We need to do a better job of that, I believe on our side of things. 

People of faith that don’t tithe, how can the church be the epicenter of the community if we’re not giving to the church? We’ve got to do a better job of that. If we want government to shrink, the church has to step up and do the job in the community that unfortunately government has taken over in too many areas.

So it’s on us, folks. It’s all up to us. We can complain about the government, complain about different people in government, but at the end of the day, the most important thing is what are we doing locally with our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.

Alright, fellas, a little later in the program, Dr. Mark Sherwood is going to be with us. We’re going to be talking about health and taking care of the temple. And I’m amazed at the parallels here with regard to our responsibility as citizens and actually fulfilling our responsibilities along with those rights and then in the same way, our responsibility to take care. And steward, another talent, we always talk about talent of freedom. We got another talent. It’s called the physical body and what God gave us. 

And man, if we’re going to perform well, work hard, David, one of the things you’ve been a mentor to me on as I’ve watched you over the years, just going 90 to nothing and working so hard and not just being lazy or not giving up but taking care of your body so that you can travel the nation and be like a George Whitfield and do all of the events that you do, that takes a concentrated effort to do that. And that’s what Mark’s going to be talking about today, is how we have a responsibility to take care of what God has given us.

David:

I think the Bible really speaks very clearly in some physical areas. Now, it does tell us that bodily exercise profits little, but Godly exercise profits more. But it does say that Godly exercise does bring profit there’s, profit there. That’s not the end goal. It’s to have a great body and being an Olympic athlete, although there’s nothing wrong with being that. But the objective is to have a spiritually fit body as well.

But what you’ll often find is it’s hard to have a spiritually fit body when you don’t have a physically fit body, because both of them indicate discipline. If you don’t have discipline in your physical life, it’s very hard to have discipline in your spiritual life. And so we are told, for example, in 1 Corinthians 6, that our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. 

Same in 2 Corinthians 3, that this is his temple, this is where he lives. I can’t imagine him wanting to live in something that’s run down and that’s in bad shape. I mean, that’s why they put so much time into God’s house, into the temple back in the day. It was to be the best thing around. And so that discipline is super important.

And this is why Jesus also talked about the fact, he said, look, he says, when I’m gone, my disciples will fast. They are going to fast. And so fasting was a spiritual discipline. I don’t know that many Christians have ever taken fasting seriously or do it on a regular basis. Go back to 1 Corinthians 9, it says, I beat my body, I bring it into subjection. 

The concept of getting discipline over your feelings, getting discipline over your desires, getting discipline over your hunger, your attitude, whatever it is, it’s super, super big. And if we’re sloppy and not very fit in our physical body, generally, we’re not very fit in our spiritual body as well.

And so there’s just a whole lot there that I’ve seen America change. If anybody wants to be really challenged, go back and look at some of the YouTube footage or something else from the 1960s and 70s when President John F. Kennedy was urging people to have physical fitness and we had that as part of our public schools. And look at the exercises the schools did, look at the shape of the kids back then just as a general population, it is so different from where we are now.

And so I think that you can’t separate physical fitness from spiritual fitness. There’s plenty a Bible versus a point to that. And that is something that as I look around America, I think our lack of physical fitness is a perfect reflection of our lack of spiritual fitness. And we see that by polling, by so many other things. 

There really does have to be reemphasis and repointing of our attention on getting physically fit and that goes with being spiritually fit. One doesn’t substitute for the other. But if you don’t have discipline over your physical body, you don’t have discipline over your spiritual body generally.

Tim:

Well, guys, with this being said, this is a different topic than we normally get into, being physically fit. Although as people, all three of us, we love sports, we love athletics, but it is something too, that as a Christian, it’s important that we are a good steward of what God has given us. And God has certainly given us a physical body. And this is not to discount the fact that there are people that have physical disabilities and there are people that have medical issues and we’re not trying to downplay any of this.

But one of the things that the Bible actually does talk about, it used to be known as one of these seven deadly sins was gluttony. And yet today that’s not a topic that hardly any pastor talks about. I’ve never heard a Bible study on the sins or dangers of gluttony. 

But the reason all this matters is as we’ve just come out of what was believed to be this great medical pandemic, so to speak, with COVID, one of the things that we now know from some of the numbers in COVID is the highest mortality rates were not just among the elderly, but they also were among people who were not physically fit, who had underlying medical issues, generally speaking, from being overweight.

All of us have done some international travel and it’s very true America seems to be one of the most unhealthy, if not the most unhealthy nation when it comes to people just being physically fit. And really a lot of that is because we’ve just enjoyed blessing so much that we’ve become lazy in a lot of areas.

But we’re having a conversation today looking at some of the medical issues that dealt with COVID and what we now know from some of the numbers. But one of the things we now know is a lot of the issues we dealt with were related to some of the physical fitness or lack thereof of Americans. And this is something, dad, as you pointed out, this is not just a physical issue, there’s actually some spiritual implications to this on some level with some of the discipline involved. With that being said, Rick, I’m kind of excited to hear this interview coming up as you’re going to talk to a medical professional about some of this reality.

Rick:

Stay with us folks, we’ll be right back. Dr. Mark Sherwood, our special guest today here on WallBuilders Live.

THE AMERICAN STORY

Hey, guys, we want to let you know about our new resource we have here at WallBuilders called The American Story. For years, people have been asking us to do a history book and we finally done it. We start with Christopher Columbus and go roughly through Abraham Lincoln. And one of the things that so often we hear today are about the imperfections of America or how so many people in America that used to be celebrated or honored really aren’t good or honorable people.

One of the things we acknowledge quickly in the book is that the entire world is full of people who are sinful and need a savior because the Bible even tells us that all of sin and fallen short of the glory of God. And yet what we see through history and certainly is evident in America is how a perfect God uses imperfect people and does great things through them.

The story of America is not the story of perfect people, but you see time and time again how God got involved in the process and used these imperfect people to do great things that impacted the entire world from America. To find out more, go to wallbuilders.com and check out The American Story.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us today. We got Mark Sherwood with us, Dr. Mark Sherwood, I should say, and thrilled to be talking about some of the things we’re going to talk about today in terms of taking care of the temple. Always a pleasure to have an expert like you, Mark, that actually understands the science behind what’s been going on and you’ve been encouraging and teaching people to take care of themselves and have a good immune system to fight against COVID and all the right things. I’ve been watching and listening to you since really about August of 2020. So thanks for coming on today, man.

Mark:

Rick, thanks for having me. An honor to be back with you guys. I appreciate what you guys do so much.

Rick:

Well, you’ve been throwing a lot of common sense out there as well as the science behind it. And even back in 2020, early on, you were saying, look, this is going to be with us for a while, it’s going to end up like the flu and the best thing to do is take care of your body and there are things you can do to prevent it from happening in the first place. So thanks for doing that. I don’t know how many lives have been saved thanks to your common sense and science that you put out there. But there were so few people willing to do that.

I was shocked at how much. The medical industry just went along with the center for dementia, confusion, and the craziness and the things that we’ve never, ever done in our history. And so few voices like yourself willing to speak. So God bless you. Man, you got enough backbone to make a freight train take a dirt road.

 Mark:

Well, I appreciate that. I figured the necessity for a backbone to anatomically stand up is a good thing these days, right? So I began to wonder if maybe our anatomical structure has been altered in the human body because a lot of people don’t anymore. But you’re right, Rick. We needed do the right thing.

And I was telling somebody recently that the greatest things that have destroyed America are the pandemics of fear and the Western lifestyle. Those two things will crush the humanity that we have. And we can’t think of we’re sick, we can’t think when we’re not feeling well, and we can’t think when we’re running in fear. And that will sort of just castrate the ability of our body to produce an effective immune system response.

And so we tackle that head on way back when, because as you mentioned, it is not just commonsensical. It is absolutely 100% godly and 100% right. And we did not back down to fear nor will we ever again. And hopefully it inspires people to keep going. I think at last count, we had over 10,000 people that were able to help that had either had some form of a virus or what you want to call it and have been exposed to it and nobody had died. So we feel very good about that. That’s one of those brave Lord moments.

Rick:

Amen. Sherwood.tv for folks that want to go and learn more and have a good source, because that’s been one of the challenges, Mark, is just finding good information, finding people that you can trust that are giving you good information, basing it on science, not on politics. And so Sherwood.tv, I want to encourage people to check that out today.

The way you described that just how you can’t make good decisions, your logic is not there. I remember reading a study or survey or I can’t remember what it was, but my takeaway from it was that when you’re in fear, the logic part of your brain shuts down. When that fear takes over, it’s like those two parts of the brain can’t work at the same time. 

And it almost explains and you added the physical element too when you’re just not in good health why so many people fell for this craziness for the last two years and just lost logic. I mean, it’s the only way to explain it, is that fear overrode their logic. When you see people driving alone in a car wearing a mask or jogging outside wearing a mask, you got to be thinking, what is wrong with our society today?

Mark:

Well, yeah, for our listeners to understand kind of what is happening from a physiological standpoint, when the body perceives either fear being real or it’s not real or we think it’s real. The mind is what perceives that. So we interpret outside stimulus that affects inward structure and inward chemistry, which means that we get this cortisol push, cortisol as well. Everybody knows the stress hormone.

Fascinatingly enough with that, by very design, when that happens on a perpetual basis, blood pressure goes up, heart rate goes up, tension goes up, your vessels, they sort of dilate and you’re focused in, locked in for that fight. You don’t have time to respond. All you have time to do is react. Your digestion goes down and even libido goes down. 

You think about living like that all the time, pretty much every waking hour for months and months and months. We become so channeled into that; it’s so normal for us. We don’t even know how to get out of it. And that’s a damaging place to be because you’re not able to even think and be rational. You don’t even know what time it is, what day it is.

I tell people sometimes, man, just look at your watch and speak out loud what time it is, where you are, who you’re speaking with, to bring yourself back to the awareness of the present, which is like a great gift, the gift of life today, right. And so people need to understand that when you do that, live like that, your immune system, by very design, is not focused at all or concerned on fighting disease processes or viruses, bacteria, parasites; it’s totally locked in to the survival at the moment by design your life at that moment. So it’s just not going to work.

And this is why you’ve seen life expectancy go backwards two and a half years over the last two years. First time in many decades that’s happening. This stuff is not talked about enough unfortunately. It hasn’t been talked about the beginning. Yeah, people are talking about it more now, but it should be mainstream, Rick. I really believe that.

Rick:

Yeah. And it seems like everything we did during the COVID crackdowns exacerbated that, right. I mean, we were already in pretty bad health as a country. And the virus definitely attacked those who had the underlying conditions that some of which were from our own choices that we make, and others maybe not so much. But we shut down the gym, we told everybody to stay home, don’t go outside, no vitamin D. 

It was almost like we made it worse based on the government decisions and sometimes not suggestions, but mandates on people. And it multiplied bad health in our country instead of saying, hey, go work out, go start taking the right supplements, get them stop eating the bad stuff. I mean, we just did the opposite of what we needed to do to save lives.

Mark:

We did. And you look at the history of I call it the “Centers of Disease out of control and lack of prevention”, right, they don’t know what they’re doing…

Rick:

I’m stealing that. I’ll borrow it the first time and give you credit, but then I’m stealing it.

Mark:

I love that. No, I mean, they don’t know what they’re doing, right. They’ve failed us for 50 years. Our health has got considerably worse and worse, and now we’re growing diseases faster than we’re growing people. America is the birthplace of obesity, which we’re exporting around the world through the standard American Western lifestyle. I mean, we should be ashamed of ourselves and hit our knees with repentance every day. But no, we’re so blinded by money and by funding that we lose track of loving people.

And to that point, they tell people to go ahead and isolate and be alone. And we know that isolation yields an idle mind, right, an idle mind yields many times fear of the what-if scenario. And in reality, these mandates, as you mentioned in the previous segment before I came on, man, they were not lawful. And all we had to do specifically, even for Christians, don’t close the churches. 

The government never had authority. We should have stayed and kept businesses open. They could not have done anything because by our sheer numbers and by our sheer will, they would have backed down. But no, we believe them once again. If it happens again, shame on you the first time, shame on me this time. We have got to pay attention and never do it again.

Rick:

So good, man, you’re spot on. And we have to know the truth of what happened so that we will be willing to say no. And it seems like we were in such a minority for so long there with the rational voices speaking, but now that tide seems to be turning as people look at what happened.

I want to somewhat shift gears, but point out one of the things that you’re kind of like the health version of what we do on the Constitution. In other words, our course is called Biblical Citizenship in Modern America and we say, look, there’s a biblical approach to how to be a good citizen. You do the same thing with health care. You say, look, the Bible’s got answers for everything in life. 

And in your case, you’re saying, look, the Bible’s got answers for how to take care of our bodies and get more out of what God gave us. He gave us the instruction manual, if we want to be able to perform well and have our bodies performing well so that we can do Colossians 3:2, actually do the best that we can as unto God, not unto men, we need to follow the biblical instruction on that.

Have people started waking up to that? And are they looking for those answers? And are they willing to listen to biblical instruction on even healthcare instead of government instruction on health care?

Mark:

Yeah, more so now. Unfortunately, in the mainstream, I call it the institutionalized kind of Babylonian church, there’s been a shift that because of the 501(C)3 process, they kind of own you, we’re afraid to make those hard stances or hard calls. But we’re seeing a shift towards the right and righteous directions. And from a biblical perspective, I believe the BIBLE, Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth that you can use that one if you want to too, right, But that is key to understanding what we’re supposed to do.

And you look at 1 Corinthians chapter 3, and 1 Corinthians chapter 6 where the temple is mentioned, the temple being our physical body where God resides, and those of us who understand that know that we are the temple of God. And in both of those passages I just cited, there’s a question that’s asked in both of those, don’t you know that you are the temple of God? 

This physical body, we’ve got no right to destroy it. It’s not ours to destroy. And because of that, God put everything in this earth for us to be able to use to make the body not just survive but to thrive through earth.

And we have to understand there’s nothing here on this earth that God put in it to harm us, but other than help us. And we’ve got to care for this temple. I look around like my physical earth suit that I’m walking around in is my business card to broadcast from the kingdom from which I came. 

I want people to see me, not in Mark Sherwood and say, hey man, we don’t know what it is about you, but there’s something in you that’s different and that someone in me is different, is the Lord. And so that’s our mission, that’s our purpose, and that brings healing back into people’s lives.

One more biblical quote that I want to put in there. In Matthew, chapter 21, Jesus goes into the temple his last week of life and he turns over the tables, right? But we forget what happened immediately after he drove out the money changers, the lame and the blind were healed in the temple. 

How does that apply today? If we’re the mind of Christ and the temple is our physical body, we’re going to have the backbone of Christ to be able to drive out the things that are destroying the body’s ability to bring healing into and through our lives.

So therefore the presence of God in our lives in the temple is healing in itself. And that’s why the standard American diet is nothing more than the money changers that we have to drive out every day and keep out every day so that God’s best can become synonymous with who we are.

Rick:

I want to go back to where you started. There’s so much good application there that you’ve given us. But you started with something that some people may not receive very well, and that is this is a duty, this is not just God’s given us these gifts in the Bible, but it’s a duty to do those things. This is the temple of God. He’s got work for us to do here on earth. If we don’t take care of ourselves, it’s much harder for us to do that work. You’re saying, hey, listen, if you want it, it’s there and we’re supposed to do this. This is actually a responsibility, sort of like our constitutional rights, our rights, but they come with responsibilities. You’re saying this ability to take care of the body the way God told us to is not just a right, that’s a duty in order to fulfill his will in our lives.

Mark:

Totally. When you talk about tyranny being when the government is over people and people fear of the government and freedom is when the government fears the people. Freedom in us is knowing the truth, the truth set you free. And what you just spoke and what I just spoke is the truth.

And frankly, when I look at God’s greatest creation, mankind in His own image, look, that is good. Do I have a duty to honor that? Yes, I do. Do I have any excuse to dishonor that? No, I don’t.

 And that’s how I live my life. And that’s how we teach our patients to do. And that’s why we have this massive thousands of people we deal with, praise the Lord, that are representative and different and they’re peculiar on this earth. And we need more peculiarity.

 My wife and I looked at weirdos, but frankly, we need more weirdos right now, we really do, to stick out and be different. But I have to protect this temple, man. If I shorten my life one fork at a time, did I shorten the intent, the opportunity for God to use in this earth? Man, how selfish can I be?

My life is not my own. It’s for God’s purpose. And so, yes, it’s the first assessment and we should be passionate about that. So much so like Daniel, he was resolved not to defile his body with the king’s raw food and wine and all that was he was resolved not to be indoctrinated in this world. That’s what it meant.

Rick:

Yes. I think what you’re doing for our bodies and our temple is similar to what we’re doing on the Constitution thing in that it’s not an overnight thing. And we need to be willing to say, hey, this takes time: we shouldn’t not be willing to start the task of taking better care of our body, of getting in shape of being healthy because it’s going to take time to get there. 

Same with saving our country and restoring liberty and restoring the Constitution, having that long term view is important to do this well. Would that apply to what you’re teaching as well?

Mark:

Yeah. One day at a time, one moment at a time, one word at a time, one act at a time. Be intentional about it. Have hope and become a hope dealer.

Rick:

So good! Dr. Sherwood, I appreciate you coming on today, man. Thanks for just biblical wisdom in this area. I look forward to having you back soon.

Mark:

You bet. Take care, Rick.

Rick:

That was Dr. Mark Sherwood. We are back with David and Tim Barton. Again, guys, it’s all about responsibility, it’s all about being good stewards of what he’s given us and being faithful and responsible, but it also makes us more effective for the other things we’re doing for the kingdom.

Tim:

Well, and you know too, one of the things he said, almost as a side note, I think it’s kind of important to identify, obviously, he spoke medical things and physical fitness and health. But one of the things he said even about churches, is so many churches neglected to speak up or they haven’t done what probably they should. 

And he pointed out is because they’re held hostage by a 501(C)3 and we’ve talked about this a lot. It’s worth pointing out again, churches should not feel, pastors should not feel like they are held hostage because of having a 501(C)3. The 501(C)3 does not limit their ability to be able to speak and communicate truth on what are considered to be political issues. Pastors can speak up and should speak up about these issues.

I mean, dad, we’ve worked for years with some of these religious liberty law firms and groups trying to encourage pastors that you need to engage the culture. And certainly when there’s a pandemic happening and pastors told you can’t speak up, can’t stand out, we need the pastors now more than ever. But pastors should not be afraid to speak up because they’re worried about losing their tax exempt status.

David:

Well, this is where very clearly the Bible talks about you need to fear God more than your fear men. And if you fear the IRS more than your fear, stand before God and He said, wait a minute, I told you really clearly in my Word, here’s the position I told you and you didn’t say that because you thought you might get in trouble with Caesar, that’s not acceptable.

And so when we love our life more than we love the truth and we love our comfort and our convenience and our lack of conflict more than we love doing what he wants us to do and teaching others about what he said, that’s a real problem. So this is a priority check as well; not only is it physical, but it’s also spiritual.

But this is where pastors, if you let that 501(C)3 alter what you say and do, you’re compromising truth most times, and God’s not going to be pleased with that, even though the IRS might be, God’s not going to be, and I’d be more concerned about what God thinks than what the IRS thinks.

Stewarding Our Physical Bodies – With Dr. Mark Sherwood

Rick:

Well, thanks for joining us today, folks. We’re out of time for this particular WallBuilders Live program, but there’s a lot more at our website if you go visit wallbuilderslive.com. Maybe you need a little pick me up today. If you do, go listen to one of our Good News Friday programs, it will encourage you, you’ll hear about victories across the country.

Esta relajación permite aumentar la saturación de oxígeno de levitra blood o llena de medicamentos, que consiste en échale un vistazo de contener otros inhibidores.

And maybe you’re ready to take some action. If you are, then sign up to be one of our Constitution coaches. Start hosting a Biblical citizenship class at your church or in your living room. There is so much you can do, and we love to equip you. That’s really our calling, is to equip and inspire and educate. 

So, we love to come alongside you and put that intellectual ammunition in your hands so that you can engage in what’s going on out there, you can help to educate and inspire and equip other people. Whether it’s in your own family or people at your church or in your community, there’s so much you can do.

So please consider getting involved in taking action, not just listening to the program, but taking action on the things that we teach during the daily program and on the things that we teach in the various materials you can get at wallbuilderslive.com. Sure appreciate you joining us today. Thanks so much for listening to WallBuilders Live!