Book Recommendation: Holy Sweat

No.9

///// An IronMen Moment /////

(For passing along to those men and young men in your life.)

Book recommendation.

In a recent conversation with a buddy of mine, I was reminded of this excellent book from years ago. Tim Hansel's *Holy Sweat.* It can be purchased for cheap at places like Thrift Books or Amazon.

Hansel advanced the idea that the doing of various activities, particularly those that

*challenge us to perform at a higher level,*

to give more than what we're used to, when done as part of our living life for God, are sanctified, are rendered holy, and are transforming. Holy Sweat is an oxymoron, he would say, the joining of two seeming opposites to form a new idea.

At the time he published it, Holy Sweat caught people in the church off guard. His critique was that we had become overly influenced by a non-Biblical idea that our bodies are (1) anti-spiritual, and (2) incapable of use as tools of worship. He built a strong case that just the opposite is true. Our bodies are *part of* our responsibility and resource for worship of God. Not anti-spiritual, but entirely part of our wholeness, and therefore our holiness.

Further, our bodies ARE capable instruments of worship, and as we use them to serve, press ourselves toward higher levels of performance, we then demonstrate a holiness in them. Quite literally, then, our sweat becomes sanctified. Holy sweat. Thus, his title.

His book was on my shelf for years; must have read it three or four times; it was all marked-up with notations. (Loaned it out, and never saw it again, sadly. But that's another story!)

Tim Hansel was the founder and director of Summit Expedition, a Christian outdoor adventure program in California. It served people for some time, and developed a variety of off-shoot programs for different ages and abilities. I recall that there were programs designed to include people in wheelchairs -- imagine: wheelchairs in the wilderness. Pretty cool. I think Summit Expedition still runs, but was taken over by others.

Anyhow, the book is worth the read, and it reads easily.

Brought to by IronMen.

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