When Your Body Starts Preaching

Romans 12:1-2 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is. His good, pleasing and perfect will.

Proverbs 4:23 Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

I remember a pastor describing a Sunday that scared him.The sermon went fine. People were kind in the lobby. Numbers were solid.

But when he walked back to his office, he had to sit in the dark. His hands shook while he tried to answer one more text. His jaw hurt from how hard he had been clenching it. His heart was racing, and nothing in the room was actually wrong.

“I realized my body believed something my mouth would not admit,” he said. “I was in trouble, and I kept calling it faithfulness.”

These verses above already assume what this story shows. Your life is not divided into spiritual on one side and physical on the other. Your body, mind, heart, and behavior are always talking to each other. Romans speaks of offering your body as a living sacrifice and of a renewed mind. Proverbs speaks of a guarded heart. Together they describe the inner stream that shapes how you live and lead.

Psychologists use a model called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to describe that inner stream. CBT teaches that when something happens in our environment, our body reacts, we interpret those reactions with thoughts and beliefs, those thoughts stir our moods, and all of that leads to our behavior. One system. Many parts.

Researchers also use a method called Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to listen carefully to people’s “lived experiences” and to the meaning they make of those experiences. IPA slows everything down. It pays attention to how a person tells their story from the inside. It treats what you feel in your chest and what you say with your mouth as data that matters.

Lead From Wholeness says you are called to lead as an integrated person. Not a brain dragging a body behind it. Not a title hiding a tired soul. Whole. Present to God, present to yourself, present to others.

Put all of this together and the pastor’s moment in the dark office becomes holy ground. His body was preaching before his mouth did. Tight hands. A locked jaw. A racing heart. These were not signs of weakness. They were early warnings that something in his life and leadership needed attention. Before he changed his calendar, he had to admit the truth of what his body was saying. He finally stopped, named what he was feeling, and let that become the first honest step toward wholeness.

How about you? What will it take for you to stop and listen?

Practices for today

1. Name one situation this week that made your body react. Complete this sentence in a journal. “When ____ happened, my body felt ____.”

2. Bring that sentence into prayer. Ask the Spirit, “What are You showing me through this response?” Sit quietly for a few minutes and notice what comes to mind.

3. Share one of those sentences with a trusted person. A spouse, friend, mentor, counselor, or coach. Let someone else witness what your body has been preaching so you do not carry it alone.

   
   

Prayer

Lord Jesus, You took on a real body with real nerves, real fatigue, and real limits. You know what it is to be tired and pressed. Teach me to listen to my body instead of despising it. Help me see my physical reactions as part of the story You are telling, not as proof that I am failing. Begin renewing my mind by first helping me notice what is actually happening in me. I want to lead from wholeness, not from denial. Amen.

Reminder: your body is not betraying you. It is inviting you to pay attention.