The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast

Meredith Brock: Hi, friends. Thanks for tuning in to the Proverbs 31 Ministries podcast where we share biblical truth for any girl in any season. I'm your host, Meredith Brock, and I am here today with my co host, the lovely Kaley Olson.

Kaley Olson: Hey, Meredith. How are you doing?

Meredith Brock: I'm doing pretty great today. Yeah.

Kaley Olson: Yeah. I'm doing great too. We just heard a really, really great, I would say encouraging and challenging lesson from our friend Lisa Whittle on the topic of whole-body theology.

And before you go thinking, oh my goodness, they don't really talk about terms like this on the Proverbs podcast. I don't know if I'm ready to go there. Let me just say this to you. Chances are, if you're listening to this, you opened social media recently within the last week, and you saw somebody that might have put you in a bad spot. Like their outfit was cooler than yours was, or maybe you went to the gym and you saw somebody a lot younger and maybe in better shape than you are.

Or maybe you even passed by a picture at your house and you thought, Man, I was so young there. I'm different now. If any of those things have crossed your mind recently, this is a podcast episode that is going to minister to your heart in the best way, and I can't wait for you to listen to it. But before we let you listen to today's episode, I wanted to remind you to leave the Proverbs 31 Ministries podcast a rating and a written review. You can do that by clicking the link in our show notes.

When you do this, it just helps other people know that God is using this podcast in your life and helps us reach even more people. But Meredith, that's enough from us. Let's jump into today's teaching with Lisa Whittle.

Meredith Brock: We are excited to welcome none other than Lisa Whittle to the show today. Lisa is a longtime friend of Proverbs thirty-one Ministries, but she's new to the podcast.

So, allow me to introduce her to you just a little bit. So, first and foremost, she's the best-selling author of multiple books and Bible studies, including Jesus Over Everything. And her latest Bible study is titled Body and Soul, a Biblical Look at the Whole Person God Created You to Be. She's a sought-out Bible teacher, a seasoned book and ministry coach, and the host of the popular Jesus Over Everything podcast. She's a wife, a mom, a lover of laughter, good food, and the Bible, and a self-professed feisty work in progress.

That might be my favorite part.

Kaley Olson: Mine too.

Meredith Brock: Lisa, you're on the podcast today to talk with us about the idea of this whole-body theology. And to be honest, I really can't wait to learn from you today. So, I'm just handing the reins over, Lisa.

Take it away.

Lisa Whittle: Thank you so much for having me. About three years ago, I remember walking outside of my home and looking up at the sky and asking God this question. God, will I ever be free? It was a question that I had asked him hundreds of times probably in my life about my body, wanting all of my life to just be a certain weight, a certain size, thinner, smaller, fitter, and believing somewhere inside that when I became that weight and size, I would finally experience body freedom and peace.

I was exhausted from years of all of my own yo yo dieting and comparison to other women and wanting to believe the message that I kept hearing from the world just to love and accept myself no matter what. And yet, the consuming thoughts about my weight and pressure as I was getting older to work on this or that, do this, not that, even as my body wasn't like it used to be, it was exhausting me even more. I knew that body positivity hype culture was simply not enough to address the body wounds I had experienced in my life. It was almost insulting to even suggest that just by seeing inspirational memes on social media or a fitness professional telling me so, that I would be able to erase the years of struggle that I had been through body, mind, and soul. Maybe you relate.

The truth is every day, we're bombarded with messages about our bodies, fix this, change that. But what if we stop seeing our bodies as projects to perfect and instead understood and embraced them as God's incredible design? Now I know this might sound almost too good to be true for many of us. We have heard preachers preach that we were made in the image of God. The Latin phrase Imago Dei that comes from this verse from Genesis one twenty-seven.

So, God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. But hearing something, seeing it on a social media meme, even reading it here and there in a quiet time, and really knowing what that means, taking it into our heart, believing it, something completely different. Because the word imago means a copy, a likeness, a representation.

And in our obsessed culture, our image obsessed culture, where everything is about how we look, how we feel, how we want others to view us, and so how we present ourselves to others, The true story is that God created us with the divine worth of being made in his image and the divine call to image him. And yet, we keep seeking that worth in weight and body ability and production and impossible beauty standards that we can never meet. We wonder why we aren't free in a culture barraging us with messages of diet plans, antiaging systems, and dueling expert advice. All the while, Jesus beckons us to look the one place that most of us have not looked to establish the foundation for the way we see our bodies and our whole selves, the word of God. While the world continues to simply preach us body topic messages like weight loss, fitness goals, better nutritional habits, and ways to get more rest, certainly some good body topics in there.

The word of God gives us a theological underpinning by showing us how our bodies were meant for more than short lived goals and hype speeches from Genesis and Imago Dei to Revelation promising us of a restored resurrected body. This whole-body theology changes the way we see ourselves. And in that, we begin to understand some things. We begin to understand, first of all, that our body deserves more than hype. Secular culture has watered down our view of our bodies, relegating our worth to sort of this pass fail, good bad system.

And the body positivity movement's answer has been to give us hype speeches and inspirational thoughts and quotes to help cure our body struggles and to give us body freedom. But there's a problem because it never has. Whole body theology is what we need to shift our minds and root our decision making. Genesis one thirty-one says this, God saw all that he had made and it was very good. That's not hype speech.

That means that in your very creation, there is nothing wrong with your body. God made your body good like him. And this is key because bodies that are not understood from their creator will cry out to constantly be changed. Thank you. See, loving our bodies isn't about body positivity or even self-acceptance.

It's about operating with a whole-body theology that drives the way we see every part of us from the inside out, from now to eternity. And that changes the way we see ourselves. Yes. Even with a chronic illness, even when we are aging, even when we suffer from infertility. That's the beauty of whole-body theology because it leaves no body out.

Body positivity culture cannot honor what we have been through in our bodies, but Imago Dei can. God's creation of us can. The look, I'm making all things new promise in Revelation can. This is something that only the Bible, not even the best fitness professional or nutritionist, can help us in a way the word of God can. When we develop a whole-body theology and it changes the way we see ourselves, we also begin to understand, number two, that our body deserves more than constant self improvement.

With our quest for acceptance, we're constantly looking for ways to improve ourselves to gain love and significance. We mistakenly think that a way to do this is to look better on the outside, and a secular culture has certainly supported that idea with all the messaging that's out there the result of fix yourself culture is not freedom for us but a cycle of insecurity, comparison, low self-worth, and exhaustion. Think about it. We're not free. We're tired.

And instead, God desires for us to live in abundance, living well in the bodies he created. John one fourteen says this, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. When Christ came, embodied himself, he did so to offer to us what I call a glorious exchange. His life for our life, his body for our body. This gift was not just an ultimate offer for also, catch this, it was an offer to us for rest and reprieve, for our striving to fix our perceived imperfections in the here and now.

Yes. It's a fact that we're limited in our bodies. We all are. We may, in fact, need to improve our health to live better to honor what god has given us, but he came to give us life more abundant according to John ten ten. And for so many of us who looks in the mirror every day seeing nothing but constant flaws, we need to know that our body was meant for so much more than constant self-improvement.

When we develop a whole-body theology and it changes the way we see ourselves, we begin to understand perhaps the most important thing, number three, that our body deserves more than shame. If we really get down to the core of it, for so many of us, our desire for body change is due to an issue far deeper than a lack of self-esteem. It's that of shame. So much of our past has developed deep shame that God wants to set us free from so we can truly live as a whole person. Biblical identity building is critical.

Understanding our function, design, and purpose in our bodies, in ourselves, in our souls, it breaks us from our shame and gives us a framework to then make better body decisions. Instead of learning more ways to work on our bodies, we develop a glory mentality where we start to understand what first Corinthians ten thirty-one really means when Paul writes, so whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God. Everything covers all of your life, all of your embodied life, your work life, your sex life, your eating life, your exercise size life. This teaches us, first Corinthians ten thirty-one, how to embrace our whole selves maybe for the first time in our lives. When I asked the Lord three years ago, God, will I ever be free?

I admit I was a bit of a skeptic. It had been a lifelong struggle for me with my overwhelming body thoughts, bouts of disordered eating, and shame. What I'm sharing with you comes from my personal testimony of truly what a whole body theology, a biblical belief system of God's creation of us in our entire personhood, body and soul, what it does to transform a small view of how we see ourselves in terms of body topics into a full view of how we carry ourselves to live well in our bodies rather than work hard on our bodies our whole life. I testify to you today that although not perfect, a feisty work in progress, I am living with body freedom and peace for the first time in my life. It is truly possible.

I am a work in progress, but no longer do I look for quick. I look for lasting. I don't look for impressive. I look for free. I'm not interested in trying to achieve a body goal if it's just for a goal itself.

My goal is to live well in my body to bring glory to God and live with a glory mentality. This has altered how I rest, how I work, how I eat, how I move, every decision I make and why I make them, including even friendship. Do I wish I knew it before? Sure. But praise God, I don't have to not know it, not one day longer.

Friend, your body may have been through the ringer, years of yo yo dieting to immobilization, to thyroid issues, to trauma and abuse, but it was created for glory, and it was meant for resurrection. You have a new opportunity to start even today honoring your body differently, and that makes me so excited for you. It is never too late. Don't believe that you cannot overcome this through the power of Christ even if you never have before. Your body deserves more than hype, more than constant self-improvement, and owe so much more than shame.

Yes. You can be free.

Meredith Brock: Wow. Lisa, I am just sitting here reflecting for myself. And first, I hope for so many of our listeners and recognizing that this is a new message.

You know, this is a new, narrative for so many of us to try to embrace when the world, and I would even venture to say certain Christian establishments have communicated to us as women. Mhmm. You know, there has been this, standard that we were supposed to uphold in all that we do, right? And I chuckle a little bit, because the name of our ministry is the Proverbs 31, Proverbs 31 Ministries. And sometimes I think that scripture has been used in a way to hold a standard that one, is not biblically accurate.

Lisa Whittle: Yeah.

Meredith Brock: But also serves, establishments that I don't think God ever intended us to serve. Mhmm. You know? And so, I, I need to make myself a little vulnerable here.

I hate doing that. So Delatable. I love it.

Kaley Olson: Let's go. I hope that it helps somebody.

Meredith Brock: This is not something that I talk about very often, because it's still very real time for me. And I recognize that it could be very just specific to my life experience. But I'm gonna communicate some of this to you in hopes that maybe you can help me process where I am currently. But I will say that I probably, from the outside, Lisa, when people looked at me up until, you know, I would say even now, they would look at me and be like, oh, she is in great shape. Look at her just bebopping around her tiny little self.

Right? And I have been very fortunate, to be quite honest, to have those kind of genetics that kept me pretty small. I didn't have to work super hard to stay in shape. If I did, you know, like, okay, I'm gonna exercise, like and truly, this is genetics, guys. I did not earn this nor do I deserve this, but I'm like, I'm gonna work out for a week, and there she is right back, you know, at the size that she was before, you know?

And so, I have been that has been kind of my trajectory, so I've always been very quiet about my own internal struggles with my body. Mhmm. You know, because it felt like, I shouldn't talk about that because, you know, like, I have the genetics to this or that. So, I've been quiet out of respect for people that I think, have struggled in a different way than I have. Now, fast forward, it's always been like, there's no getting around it, first of all.

I just want to acknowledge whether you are a size zero or any other size, our culture shoves this down your throat no matter what. And so, to isolate body image struggles to people of a certain size, one, is just simply not fair. Yeah. Because I think it spans any size. And I loved during your message that it also spans those immobility challenges.

Yes. You know, infertility challenges, skin challenges, it doesn't matter what that, what the output of your internal struggle is, of your it's always there for every single woman I have ever spoken to. Mhmm. Yeah. I have never met somebody who this has not crossed their mind Yeah.

Their heart in some way, shape, or form. Mhmm. And so, where I was gonna go with this is kinda talk about what has looked like over the last few years for me. I'm 40 my late thirties, started having, I would say and at first, it was diagnosed as, like, some mental health, like, oh, you're, you know, you're crossing over into your forties. You're probably just depressed.

And that was very strange for me because I do not have, depressive. I've never struggled with depression my whole life, you know? And when I went to my doctor, that was what she was like, oh, you're probably just depressed here. Some take some antidepressants. And it felt so strange, but I was like, okay.

You know? And just said, alright. I guess this will help. I was in such a desperate place. But my body, my physical body was going through changes as well.

And so fast forward a few years, I recognized that I was what was really happening is that I was entering into perimenopause, and nobody it was that was a very taboo thing to even talk about for so many years, and I am so grateful. Like, so, so grateful for this becoming a lot more of a common conversation, that women are talking about. But here I am. I'm 44. I feel like I've done all the things to address my hormonal needs, and I'm doing really, really well.

But here's in terms of, like, my hormones and my body. I started doing hormone replacement therapy, which has been a huge gift to me. I know for it has worked for me. It's not great for others, but I will say that has been a huge gift for me. I have started on some supplements to help there truly just to help me mentally and function well, you know?

But here's what I'm finding, Lisa, is, and this is I'm gonna drill down to a real moment for me that I think could be very specific for many women, and I need you to just preach at me. Okay? Help me Good. Know how to get through this moment that's very real. K?

So, this this would be an average day for me. K, guys? I get up with my little five-year-old, I get him out the door, we go to school, I drop him off, and I try really hard to go to the gym before I come to the office. Most of the time, I'm I can make that happen. I go to the gym, I work out, I shower at the gym, and then I come into the office.

So, I shower at the gym, I go into the change room, and I slide on my jeans, and the first thought that goes through my mind is like, oh, those are a little tight. A little tighter than they were last month, but it's alright. I'm probably just a little bit bloated. So, I put on my clothes and then I wander out into the dressing area where I'm gonna put on my makeup and I'm like getting ready to go. And I'm putting on my makeup and y'all know, you know the scene, we're at the gym.

There's all these cute little 20-year-olds bebopping around back there. And I'm putting on my makeup and I look in the mirror and I see my skin just is not the same. You know? And so, I'm working to try to, you know, like, we're doing the best we can here. But there's this ongoing internal, like, oh, the jeans were a little tight.

And, man, oh, my skin, those new age spots showing up and, like, should I should I put on a little bit more foundation or just, like, be okay with it? Like but also how can I be okay with it? You know? And it's this low rumble narrative that I think sits with us throughout the day that for some of us, we're really good at compartmentalizing and putting it in a little box and putting it on a shelf and saying, I'll deal with that later, you know, or I'll just ignore it. Like, I'm gonna pretend like that's not there and I'm gonna be super productive.

For some of us, we're not able to tie it up in a little bow and put it up on a shelf, and it sits there as this low-grade anxiety of, like, how do I stop this? How do I change this? You know, whether it be aging, for me, that's what it is. I'm 44. There's no stopping it, guys.

Yeah. You know, how do I, in that moment, Lisa, have, like, the idea of this whole-body theology? I'm like, yes, yes, yes. But what do I do when I'm in the gym locker room?

Lisa Whittle: You brought up so many important things.

I've I mean, I've just found myself wanting to talk about six different topics there, by the way. They were just so rich. First of all, just the fact that whole body theology leaves nobody out, which is so important because I found myself so dissatisfied with a million different things I was hearing because at some point, it breaks. Right? There's Mhmm.

There's something it doesn't address. Whole body theology is not like that. The reason why that's important even for what you're asking here is because what you're talking about is completely real. And I think the important thing to note, first of all, is that this is not something to pretend isn't happening. Mhmm.

I think one of our struggles as women is that pull to deny, fix, and quickly cover up anything we perceive as an imperfection or something we've never dealt with before. And perimenopause and menopause is one of those seasons of life that you don't experience until you're there. Mhmm. And you can hear about it. You can you can have heard the word or maybe even read a little bit about it, which most of us don't read a thing about it until we actually enter it because we don't wanna think about it.

That sounds really dark and horrible. And then we get there and we're like, oh, this must have been that thing that everyone talked about forever, but we were too young to worry about it. And so I think the reality is once we get there, we get in, like, this panic mode, and we just wanna quickly fix what we find as, you know, not pleasing to others or embarrassing or whatever. So, the first thing I would say is being very honest about what it is we're experiencing and that we don't love it. Like, I think that's really important.

I don't love age spots. Sorry. I don't. I don't love not being able to fit into my genes. And I think the hyper spiritual, this part that we're drawn to is a hyper spirituality to be like, glory to God.

It's, you know, if I don't fit into my genes, you know, I count I count it all as lost. You know, it's okay. And I listen. I don't I don't think that's helpful. Right?

Because we are we are people that, change is hard for us in general. Yeah. And when we're used to a certain body and we're used to a certain way of looking ourselves in the mirror, aging is a little jarring. So, the first thing I think I would say to us is breathe and realize that these are these are things that are difficult for us to face. But it is important for us to look at it and say, okay, here's where I am.

So, I'm very big on being realistic. I know you are too, Meredith. The second thing I would say is to not immediately go to this place of I'm a bad person because I wanna fit in my genes. They're the reason why we immediately go to what I call body topics, which are weight loss and, you know, I just wanna lose weight or I just wanna look good in for this wedding and fit into this dress or, you know, I just it's all about the gym or supplements or whatever. By the way, I'm big on supplements too.

At menopause, they're your body just doesn't produce the same things it used to produce, so you need some supplements. Mhmm. You need to have built up muscle that you're losing. So, all those things are very real. But the reason why we go to those and why they're ultimately unfulfilling or why we feel the need for continued more and more information and why we are exhausted by that because, by the way, information is changing all the time and experts don't even agree.

Yeah. And why we are overwhelmed by that is because we don't have a foundation. We don't have a I wanna I want you to think of it this way, Meredith. It's like building a house without the foundational piece, which honestly sounds a little ridiculous, but, I mean, that's what we've tried to do. We've, you know, put the walls up.

We've put curtains on the windows. We've put, you know, put up beautiful pictures on the walls. No foundation at all. So, eventually, it crumbles, and that's what's happened with the body. You know, the other day, I was literally praying.

I was like, God, after all this time, I just wanna just praise you for, you know, setting me free in this way. But why did it take me so long? And literally, the Lord was like, well, you actually just never went to the Bible and went to that source and built this foundation. Wow. And it was such an irony.

It was an ironic moment for me that should have been, like, a no brainer. But I've been to seminary. I'm a pastor's daughter. I've heard hundreds of thousands of messages and given almost that many myself. And yet, I knew verses here and there, but every transformative thing that has happened in my life, whether it been has been forgiveness or learning about money or whatever, has all come from a scriptural process Mhmm.

And yet not for my body. Mhmm. I just went immediately to, like, well, just let me just go into a diet plan. Yeah. And so that's what a lot of us have done.

So, I say that to say, I really go back to what I've been talking about but not for the purposes of selling Bible study. To tell you the truth, Meredith, which is the reason why a lot of us struggle with, you know, I'm in menopause now. What do I do? Or I'm struggling with PCOS or, you know, whatever it is, my chronic illness, is because we are trying to do it with not having the proper foundation by which to have our brains wrapped around what's happening with us as a person. Okay.

And that makes all the difference. Not saying it's perfect, not saying some days I don't wish I could fit into my jeans that I used to, or that I look at my skin and wish I didn't have an extra spot that I see come up. Yeah. We are real people that until we get to heaven, we will still have issues that we struggle with, that we have to give over to the Lord, and I am still a work in progress. But I will tell you that I do not live with the consuming body thoughts that I had for the majority of my life, and that is my testimony.

And so that's what I will tell you, and it's real and it's true.

Kaley Olson: Man. Lisa, as you were talking, you mentioned body struggles, like, you know, the struggles that I might have with body image, but then you lumped in the chronic illness and infertility and things like that together. And I don't think I've really put two and two together. Sometimes I think about how I might view my body, but then infertility is a body struggle as well.

Chronic illness is a body struggle, and you don't see that. And if our listeners have been listening for probably around three years and they probably will know that my story does include infertility and miscarriage. But that was like a very personal thing. And I think I've been able to walk people through what it was like after a miscarriage because that's like that was hard and there was grief there. But if I'm honest, Lisa, I recently had a conversation with somebody who said, I'm in the thick of infertility.

I've been trying for three years. What's wrong with me? Like, what am I doing? And as somebody who's experienced that herself, I'm like, I don't know what to say. Like, how what does she does she need validating?

Does she need encouraging? I don't even know how to tell her why God would be allowing this to happen whenever his good design was for us to be perfect and now it's not, but why is she having to pay the price? And so, I'm asking this of you as someone who is on the front lines in terms of you have a podcast, you're an author, you're a speaker, you probably have people come up to you and just dump on you. So, I'm gonna dump on you right now on behalf of all the people who are listening, who are saying, why? Like, what do I do with this specific struggle?

So, can you speak to them in this in their season right now?

Lisa Whittle: Yeah. Why is, I think it's the universal question of all of us who are living in human skin, and, until the end of time, we will want to know why. Mhmm. I wish that I was qualified to answer that question.

Right now, I am praying for some friends who have an expected to have a completely healthy child, and he was born with a heart condition and for twenty days has suffered in the hospital. And the question that we keep texting back and forth is why, and I can't answer the question. What I what I wanna say is this. This is the reason why, in many ways, I've I have studied the Bible, I would say in the better part of the last ten years because injustice and unanswered questions have tried to get the best of me, is the only way I know how to say it. That's the kind of stuff that really can eat me up in many ways.

I have a strong faith in God. I've loved God since I was six, honestly. But the hard places in life have also really tested my faith. And I think the thing that I would say is this is why that the messages of the world that tell you to pick up the pom poms and just love your body and your body is good are never gonna be enough. They're never going to satisfy.

They're going to be somewhat insulting. It's the reason why I actually, began talking about the body, not because I particularly want to open up that vulnerable space in my life. In fact, I'd rather talk about anything else, honestly, but because it's just not enough and there has to be more and there is more. And that's the beauty of Yeah. Going into the scripture and saying, I can't answer the question why.

Because in order to answer that question, we would have to be able to know the mind of God. And if I were to try to even attempt that, it would be arrogance because or ignorant ignorance, because I don't know the mind of God. It's far above mine. His ways are not my ways. And so I would say this, the things that I know to be true are the things that looking at the embodied Christ has solidified for me in the most profound way, which is that because of his great love for us and what he created us in our bodies to be able to rely upon him for, the rest, the, the reliance piece the future glory, and the daily glory even in compromised bodies it has it has given me the reprieve and the peace even in the midst of my why that I've needed.

And so, I would tell the person that is asking why that is a very reasonable question. Okay. And I can't answer it, but I will tell you that God loves you and that does not change. And, that I would draw upon the fact that your intrinsic worth in being created in His image is the highest that can be, can be ascribed to any person. You have it.

That doesn't change no matter what you feel, how you feel your body is or isn't producing, or is or isn't doing what you want it to do. And so, those are the things that this this side of heaven, we just will never know. Yeah. But we know that he loves us and we know that he values us, and yeah. Those things are hugely important.

Kaley Olson: Yeah. Yeah. Well, Lisa, that that speaks to the foundation that you were talking about, all of us having to build upon in our own way. You know, like, our parents' foundation can't be our foundation, and we have to do it ourselves. And so, I wanna thank you for coming on the podcast today.

It was such a joy getting to hear from you. And friends, if you're listening and you're like, I need more, I need help in building this foundation, then I wanna encourage you to grab a copy of Lisa's Bible study called Body and Soul by clicking on the link in the show notes. Also, Lisa's got some great content on her Instagram account and YouTube channel that we've linked in the show notes below for you to check out.

Meredith Brock: Now, if God is using the Proverbs 31 Ministries podcast in your life, we wanna know about it guys. Click the link in our show notes to leave us a rating and written view on Apple podcasts.

I promise you; Kayley and I read them.

Kayley Olson: We do.

Meredith Brock: So, we would love to hear from you. Alright, friends. That's all for today at Proverbs thirty-one Ministries.

We believe when you know the truth and live the truth, it really does change everything.