Yesterday we talked about how an upset mind affects the body physically. Today we continue with the following:

Pain: the Great Motivator

Pain is not only a powerful motivator, but is also a gift of God. Pain or sickness can be a type of “red danger light” to warn us that something is amiss and needs attention. One of the tragedies with the disease of leprosy is that it causes a loss of feeling and pain is not felt. This disease does not cause the loss of limbs. It destroys the feeling in those limbs, and when a limb gets hurt, the leper, because he feels no pain, fails to protect and take care of that member. Eventually, he loses it. So, if we are going to be healthy, we need to allow some of our pains and sicknesses to motivate us to deal with the real cause of our problems, and not merely the symptoms.

Finding a Cure

According to the greatest handbook ever written on principles for daily living, the Bible, the first law of health and healing is clean living—that is, physical hygiene, sanitation, and moral living.

Over three thousand years ago Israel was a young nation and had been held captive in Egypt where there was considerable disease. When God through Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, he promised them a health program yet to be equaled by modern science. God said, “If you listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, who heals you.”²

Ron Vince in Channels magazine quoted the eminent English doctor, Sir William Arbuthnot Lane, who said, “The law of Moses is largely a law of good health. Its practice has made the Jews the healthiest, the most industrious, the richest among the races of mankind.”³

Sir James Cantile, a famous London surgeon, once stated, “We have never yet upset one of Moses’ laws in regard to hygiene, sanitation, or medical teaching. All that the scientists of today with their microscopes and textbooks did was to prove the ancient lawgiver to be right.”⁴

And Dr. Paul Dudley White, the American heart specialist, said, “It is conceivable that a few years from now we medical men may repeat to the citizens of the United States the advice that Moses was asked by God to present to the children of Israel 3,000 years ago.”⁵ And that is, “If you listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in his eyes….”¹

To be continued ….

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please give me a listening heart so that I will carefully hear what your Word teaches, and give me the good sense and courage to always do what is right in your eyes. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Exodus 15:26 (NIV).
2. Exodus 15:26 (NIV).
3. Channels, August 1975.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

Some years ago when I was working in the summer as a CTA passenger bus driver in Chicago to help pay my way through college, an elderly lady, as she was about to alight from my bus, tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Young man, you’re a millionaire.” That was news to me, but then after a pause, she added, “You’ve got your health.”

How right she was. Good health is worth much more than a million dollars and is something many of us can have more of if we really want to. Not everybody, however, really wants to be well. As Dr. Parker points out, some people fashion “imaginary illnesses or disorders in an unconscious attempt to get attention or to escape responsibility.”

Another wise doctor said, “Peace doesn’t come in capsules.” In other words, while we are extremely grateful for modern medical science with all its help and alleviation of human suffering, the greatest source of health and healing still doesn’t come out of test tubes or the pill bottle.

Upset Mind—Upset Body

According to Dr. S. I. McMillen, author of the book, None of These Diseases, one of the major causes of sickness in our society is emotional stress. Dr. McMillen stated, “Medical science recognizes that emotions such as fear, sorrow, envy, resentment and hatred are responsible for the majority of our sicknesses. Estimates vary from 60 percent to nearly 100 percent.”²

“Fatal heart attacks can be triggered by ‘anger in all degrees, depression, and anxiety,’ according to Dr. Roy R. Grinker, [formerly] one of the medical directors of Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago. This doctor states that anxiety places more stress on the heart than any other stimulus, including physical exercise and fatigue.”³

Stress in small amounts is often necessary and helpful, but continued stress is damaging. If, for example, you were being chased by a tiger, your God-given emotion of fear would trigger your adrenal glands releasing sudden energy into your blood stream to help you escape. Your hurried escape would also burn up any excess adrenalin. If, however, the “tiger of stress” keeps on chasing you and you can’t get away, the chemical balance of your body is upset and trouble results. Too much adrenalin for too long can cause “high blood pressure, arthritis, kidney disease, and hardening of the arteries.”⁴

“Other glands are also affected. Simple nervousness in speaking before a public audience is sufficient to cause the salivary glands not to function properly and one’s mouth can become very dry.

“Emotional stress can influence the amount of blood that flows to an organ. Embarrassment can cause the blood vessels of the face and neck to open up to produce blushing, and the emotions of anxiety or hate can so increase the amount of blood within the rigid skull that headaches and vomiting result.”⁵

I have read, too, that emotional stress can also cause ulcers, rheumatic fever, coronary thrombosis, frigidity and impotence, alcoholism, epilepsy, diabetes, obesity, constipation, diarrhea, hives, hay fever, asthma, back trouble, rheumatic arthritis, polio, many infections, glaucoma, skin diseases, hemorrhoids and many other sicknesses. It also affects the tension of muscles, which can cause severe headaches and muscular pain.

To be continued ….

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, thank you for the wellness principles found in your Word, the Bible. Help me to live in harmony with these so that I can be a more peaceful and healthier person. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Proverbs 14:30 (NLT).
2. McMillen, S.I, None of These Diseases. (c) 1963. Fleming H. Revell, Co., Westwood, NJ. Used by permission. (Note: this book has since been updated), p 7.
3. Ibid, p 61.
4. Ibid, p 62.
5. Ibid, p 67.

A man who flew his own plane, or so the story goes, got tired of the long automobile trip from the airport to his country cottage which was situated on a lovely lake. So he equipped his plane with pontoons so he could land on the lake in front of his home. However, on his first trip with his newly equipped plane, he headed for the airport as he had always done. As he was going in for the landing his terrified wife yelled, “What are you doing? You can’t land on the runway … you don’t have any wheels!”

“Fortunately, he was able to swing his plane around and head for the lake. After he landed safely, he heaved a big sigh of relief and turned to his wife and said, ‘That’s about the dumbest thing I’ve ever done!’ Then he opened the door, stepped out of his plane—and fell directly into the lake!”²

I doubt very much the validity of this story but it does illustrate how easily and foolishly we forget.

How quickly the ancient Israelites forgot how God miraculously delivered them from slavery in Egypt, how he parted the Red Sea for them to cross safely, and how the pursuing Egyptian army was drowned … and as soon as things got tough en route to the Promised Land, they grumbled, they doubted God, and they criticized and blamed Moses.

And how quickly so many who live in the U.S. forget—forget the basis of our incredible blessings of freedom, liberty, and opportunities; how our nation was founded on biblical principles; how Western law is based on the Judeo-Christian ethic and the Ten Commandments; and the reason “In God we trust” is engraved on our money!

Furthermore, when we get too comfortable, we easily forget that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. We criticize and blame even good leaders when things don’t go the way we want. And to our peril we are seeking to throw out the Bible, the Ten Commandments, and anything that resembles God and Christianity. And how quickly we forget that “blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.”³

And how quickly I forget the blessings of God when things go wrong in my life—and even when things go well.

Suggested prayer “Dear God, in the words of the hymn-writer Robert Robinson: ‘O to grace how greater a debtor daily I’m constrained to be! Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee: Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love; Here’s my heart, O take and seal it; Seal it for thy courts above.’ Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Jude 1:17-18;20-21 (NIV).
2. From Illustrations Unlimited. Cited in Encounter magazine (Australian edition). www.actsweb.org/au.
3. Psalm 33:12.

Have you ever noticed that, when someone works real hard to build a group, a class, or an organization from scratch, and when it is up and running successfully, how someone wants to take it over and run it—and sometimes ends up killing it?

I’ve seen it happen in churches more than once. I’ve had it happen to a support group I had started. When I returned after a six-week summer mission trip, it had been taken over by one of the members . . . and soon died.

“An admirer once asked Leonard Bernstein, celebrated orchestra conductor, what was the hardest instrument to play. He replied without hesitation: ‘Second fiddle. I can always get plenty of first violinists, but to find one who plays second violin with as much enthusiasm, now that’s a problem. And yet if no one plays second, we have no harmony.’”²

In King David’s day some of those who went to battle wanted to keep for themselves all the spoils of that which was conquered. They didn’t want to share the glory or the spoils with those who stayed behind the front lines and took care of the “stuff” (supplies and equipment).

In God’s economy, Christians will not be rewarded on the basis of his/her rank or position. Whether one is a church leader, Sunday school teacher, or janitor; the president of a company or the new kid working in the mail room—each will be rewarded on the basis of their being a faithful steward of the gifts and abilities with which he/she has been entrusted. What God is looking for to do his work on earth are second, third, and fourth fiddlers who are not seeking to glorify themselves but to serve God by serving others and thereby bring glory to God.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, whether I am a fifth or a first fiddler, I thank you for gift/s and the abilities you have entrusted to me, knowing that all have been given by you. Help me to be a faithful steward and use me to help extend your Kingdom and bring glory to your name. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. 1 Samuel 30:24 (KJV).
2. “Chapel Talk” by Adrian Dieleman www.trinitycrc.org/sermons/jn03v30a.html

A Daily Encounter reader asks, “How can you tell if a preacher is a fake-healer, or if a Christian is not for real?

Les Nixon shares how “at one time there was a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest being held and, always the practical joker, the real Chaplin decided he would enter. After deliberating long and hard, the judges unwittingly awarded Chaplin the third prize behind two impostors.” So you often can’t tell the fake from the real by outward appearances.

Pharisees were the religious elite of Jesus’ day. They knew the Bible cover to cover; that is, the Law and the Prophets (the Old Testament) as the New Testament hadn’t been written then. They knew their doctrinal teachings by heart. They had all the outward trappings of religiosity . . . but for many of them it was an outward show. Furthermore, they loved their doctrines more than they loved people and used them to control people. Jesus not only knew the same Scriptures, but he was real and saw through these religious play-actors—and didn’t mince words with them regarding their phoniness.

Sad to say, there is no shortage today of play-acting teachers, phony religious leaders, counterfeit Christians, and those who love their religion more than they love people—and use their religion to control people. In some countries some even use their religion to force people to convert to their religion and torture or kill those who fail to convert.

So how can we tell the false from the real?

Mary Jackson-Medrek, another Daily Encounter reader, said, “I work in a bank and one time I was reading about counterfeit bills (notes). The story said that FBI agents don’t study counterfeit bills to learn how to spot one. They study real bills and know them so well that they can spot a phony a mile away. That’s what we should do as Christians. Study God’s word so that if we hear something that isn’t right we can spot it immediately!”

Like Jesus, we also need to be real ourselves, know the Scriptures, and know what a real Christian is so well that we will also be able to spot a phony a mile away.

“Beware of false prophets,’ Jesus warned, “who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.”²

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please give me a love for and an understanding of your Word so that I will learn and always know your Truth. Also, please help me to be real and so like Jesus that I will be able to ‘spot a phony a mile away’—and never become one. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. 1 John 4:1 (NIV).
2. Matthew 7:15 (NKJV).