Christianity Today: From Panic Attacks to Physical Discipline, by Justin Whitmel Earley (J.D. 2014, Georgetown; Author, The Body Teaches the Soul: Ten Essential Habits to Form a Healthy and Holy Life (2025)):

Ten years ago, I was at the unhealthiest moment of my life.

I was a former missionary who had become a corporate lawyer. I had a head filled with great theology, but my job in mergers and acquisitions at an international law firm [McGuireWoods]—combined with parenting two young sons—had driven my body into the ground. I suffered from constant panic attacks and insomnia, the kind that left me with suicidal thoughts and no sleep unless I took sleeping pills or had a few drinks.

I am no longer that person. I now run a law firm; I have four young boys; I write books. My life is certainly not less complicated, but panic attacks are a distant memory and I’m arguably in the best shape of my life.

Lest that sound boastful, let me be clear—God saved me. When I was spiraling out of control, I didn’t know what to do. But God used the grace of spiritual and physical disciplines to change everything about my life.

It started with a new year’s conversation I still remember to this day.

I sat down with two of my best friends and asked them to keep me accountable to a few daily and weekly rhythms in the new year.

A decade later, I’m still wrestling with why habits are so spiritual—including health-related ones. Here are four things that I’ve learned.

First, you are mostly your habits. From Aristotle to James Clear, most of humanity has been clear on what makes up a life: our habits. According to one study, about two-thirds of daily actions are not choices we consciously make; they are the product of habit. This is particularly important when it comes to our bad habits. …

Second, habits are worship drivers. We are living in a resurgence of liturgy. Liturgies are the things in a worship service we put on repeat because we want to be formed in the image of the God we worship. But notice the similarity of habits and liturgy: Both things we do over and over, both things form us. …

Third, your body is spiritual. It’s impossible to talk about habit without talking about embodiment, because we’re talking about a lower brain function. The impact of habit is very different from the impact of head knowledge. One does not automatically transfer to the other. You have to take knowledge and put it into practice. And that’s when whole-life transformation begins to happen. Jesus illustrated this very colorfully for us (Matt. 7:24–27). …

Fourth, physical disciplines are spiritual disciplines. This means that the ways we eat and exercise are as spiritual as the ways we fast and pray. I am a living testimony to this. I will attest that spiritual disciplines like morning kneeling prayer and putting Scripture before phone absolutely changed my life ten years ago. But I am a lawyer, and I would not be telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth if I did not say that respecting sleep, embracing a healthy diet, and practicing regular exercise changed my mental health as much as the spiritual disciplines. …

When you put all of the above together, you realize that your embodied habits have an enormous spiritual impact on what the Bible calls “the heart.” The way I like to put this is that the body teaches the soul. By that, I mean that God doesn’t just use our knowledge of him to shape our habits; he also uses our habits to shape our knowledge of him.

For example, moderate exercise is not only good for our health but also trains our heart to respect discipline of all kinds. For the sake of loving our families better and for the sake of self-control, Christians should see some form of exercise, however limited, as holy and useful to the Christian life. …

If I could go back ten years and meet myself in the midst of my anxiety crisis, I would want to encourage that version of myself: “Embrace the new year health habits! God made your body. Caring for it does not have to be vanity. Stewarding your mental health is necessary to loving God and neighbor. So do it for love.”

This new year, I want to encourage you to do the same. Our bodies bear the image of God, and God is love! We shouldn’t idolize our bodies, but we shouldn’t ignore them either. We should image God through them by stewarding them for the sake of loving God and loving others.

Habits won’t change God’s love for you. But God’s love for you should change your habits.

Justin Whitmel Earley, The Body Teaches the Soul: Ten Essential Habits to Form a Healthy and Holy Life (2025):

Your body is more spiritual than you think.

How can we preach a gospel of peace, yet still find our bodies wracked by anxiety? How do we call our bodies temples of the Holy Spirit, yet regard eating, exercise, or sleep as inherently “unspiritual” activities? How is it that modern Christians who claim God made their bodies have come to care so little about them?

Justin Whitmel Earley—bestselling author of The Common Rule and Habits of the Household—is intimately familiar with the consequences of ignoring the body. As a young lawyer, Earley collapsed into anxiety and insomnia that nearly ruined his life. In his journey back to mental and spiritual health, he realized that the healthy and unhealthy habits shaping his life weren’t physical or spiritual; they were physical and spiritual.

The Body Teaches the Soul is a practical guide to the union of body and spirit in our overall health. With his characteristic vulnerability and story-driven approach, Earley shares personal failures, fascinating research, and biblical wisdom to reveal ten simple habits that will improve your health and deepen your relationship with God. In these pages, you will:

• Connect deeply and positively with your body as the image of God while avoiding the mistakes of ignoring or idolizing the body
• Explore how daily patterns of healthy eating can be as spiritual as fasting and how rhythms of feasting can become guilt-free celebrations of the world God made
• Recover your mental health through upper-brain spiritual truths that work together with lower-brain physical practices to reshape thought patterns
• Develop a sleep routine that honors your body’s need for rest and your soul’s need for sabbath
• Discover how to lament sickness and injury while still praying with hope for the miracle of healing
• Learn how exercise can create a humble lifestyle of loving others with your body instead of becoming a vain search for body image

Connect deeply and positively with your body as the image of God while avoiding the mistakes of ignoring or idolizing the body

Explore how daily patterns of healthy eating can be as spiritual as fasting and how rhythms of feasting can become guilt-free celebrations of the world God made

Recover your mental health through upper-brain spiritual truths that work together with lower-brain physical practices to reshape thought patterns

Develop a sleep routine that honors your body’s need for rest and your soul’s need for sabbath

Discover how to lament sickness and injury while still praying with hope for the miracle of healing

Learn how exercise can create a humble lifestyle of loving others with your body instead of becoming a vain search for body image

Earley is not a health guru telling you how to get in shape; he is the ordinary Christian’s guide to rediscovering the extraordinary gift of the body and the spiritual life that flows from it. Join this journey of wonder and well-being to reconnect with your whole self and repattern your whole life in the image of the God who made you and loves you as you are—body and soul.

REVIEWS

Justin Whitmel Earley has written the book many of us didn’t know we needed—until our hearts raced, our minds spiraled, or our screens numbed us into disconnection. This book shows how healing begins not in our heads alone but in our habits, our breath, our bodies too. — Russell Moore, editor-in-chief, Christianity Today

As Christians, we too often pit divine grace against human agency, and the result is that we misunderstand both. Justin avoids this by framing the goodness of habits in a way that ensures they are cultivated in light of God’s favor rather than trying to make them the source of it. And now, in this wonderfully practical volume, he focuses on helping God’s people remember that our bodies are a gift from God. As such, he suggests ten practices that affirm our embodied existence in a way meant to cultivate love for God, neighbor, and even self. I’m delighted his practical wisdom can continue to help many of us put our theology into practice. — Kelly M. Kapic, professor of theology, Covenant College; author, Embodied Hope and You’re Only Human

We need to be regularly, repetitively reminded of what is good and beautiful in the world, not least of how we are to live. And with The Body Teaches the Soul, Justin Whitmel Earley reminds us what the ancient biblical writers informed us of so long ago: that our bodies together with our breath make us human, and we ignore or idolize the body to our peril. I invite you to read this book with hope and confidence that the God who made us, bodies and souls, is in the business of honoring and redeeming all of who we are for joy and glory. — Curt Thompson, MD, psychiatrist; author, The Soul of Desire and The Deepest Place

This book shook me–in the best way. Justin reminds us that discipleship isn’t just something we think about or talk about, it’s something we live with our whole selves. God is forming us not just in our minds and souls but in our very bodies, through breath, rest, meals, even our pain. If you’re hungry for a faith that sinks deeper than words, read this book. — Brook Mosser, president, Intentional; host, The Intentional Parents Podcast; author, Sowing a Hidden Seed

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