In order for a treadmill to have its intended effect on your physical health, you have to bring your heart into “contact” with the treadmill. If your heart is to be positively affected, your body must engage with and be worked by the treadmill. No one else can do this for you.
In Luke 8, Jesus compared the word of God to seed. Some of the seed sown in his famous parable of the sower falls on the rock, and as it grows up, it withers away, because it has no moisture (8:6).
In order for the word of God to have its intended effect on your spiritual health, you have to bring your heart into “contact” with that life-giving seed. If you want to be spiritually alive and healthy, you must engage with and be worked by the word of God which is “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12). No one else can do this for you.
“The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away.” (Luke 8:13)
It’s one thing to get motivated by a treadmill sales pitch. It’s entirely another thing to engage with that treadmill day after day after day. If it comes to serve as nothing more than an additional clothes rack, it cannot, will not enhance the health of your heart.
Similarly, it’s one thing to hear and joyfully receive “good news” of grace, forgiveness, renewed purpose, and hope. It’s entirely another thing to engage with and be engaged by Jesus day after day after day. If your Bible stays in the back seat of your car, or sits in a songbook rack in an empty auditorium, or perpetually rests closed on your nightstand, it cannot, will not enhance the health of your soul. To expect otherwise is akin to wondering why the seed sitting on a rock never produced a piece of fruit.