Book Review: Every Body Matters by Gary Thomas

Gary Thomas' latest book, Every Body Matters connects spiritual fitness with physical fitness with a subtitle that says, "Strengthening Your Body to Strengthen Your Soul." I think many of us know that we need to eat healthy and exercise but this book helps us see some of the spiritual reasons that is important. Thomas shares his own story as well as the stories of other people as to how physical fitness, or the lack of fitness before getting fit, affected their spiritual lives as well as living out their lives for God.

This topic is one I am especially interested in so I was thrilled to get to review this book.  I thoroughly appreciated Thomas' approach as he shared both a grace side and a sort of  gentle"tough love" side to this issue in each chapter. My copy is all marked up and underlined. I plan to refer back to it often.

One story he shared about especially encouraged me in my own walk with faith and fitness: While training to run a marathon, Thomas trained hard and got plantar fasciatis (excruciating heel pain). It took 2 years for him to recover well and get the doctor's clearance to get back to running marathons. But eventually he did run in more marathons, including his dream marathon. I was injured 2 years ago and it set me back in my fitness goals so I was greatly encouraged by this story. Sometimes setbacks do happen, but yet we persevere and run this race called life towards the end with Christ (Hebrews 12:1-3). That is my life verse. Thomas' book helped me give it even more meaning. I think it is a book everyone could benefit from reading although I think someone that is already interested in being healthy will be more inclined to pick it up.

I received a copy of this book free from Zondervan. I was not required to write a positive review.