About Health and Healing

HOS 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
This is the core sentence in God's Word summarizing our dilemma. It is for sure, that if we would know HIS Word fully and put it into practice, our lives and our health would be much better. The following verses make this more clear.
^{Pr 3:7} Be not wise in your own eyes; reverently fear and worship the Lord and turn [entirely] away from evil.
^{Pr 3:8} It shall be health to your nerves and sinews, and marrow and moistening to your bones.
The bone marrow is the source of our immune system and therefore our body's defense against illnesses.
 

^{Ex 15:26b}There [the Lord] made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there He proved them, ^{Ex 15:26} Saying, If you will diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord your God and will do what is right in His sight, and will listen to and obey His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases upon you which I brought upon the Egyptians, for I am the Lord Who heals you.
Very early in the Old Testament God is already explaining to us the close connection between obeying HIM and our physical well being. Many of you might now say "But Job never did anything wrong". Well, lets take a closer look at this.

 Fear
Job himself tells us in Job 3:25: What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me. Job tells us, that he has always feared, that disaster might befall him. But God's Word tells us in numerous places not to fear: ^{Isa 41:10} So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. That means, that Job disobeyed God's Word in this matter and opened a door for the devil to harm him. Now this does not mean, that every time something bad happens to us, we disobeyed God. There are more possibilities as Jesus teaches us here: ^{Jn 9:2} His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” JN 9:3 Jesus answered, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him. We need to find a balance here in between beating ourselves up for not obeying God enough and not examining ourselves at all. At the same time, fear and worries is widespread among society and finally known to modern medicine to cause numerous diseases among us. This is why Paul is teaching us
2Ti 1:7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Our minds and our emotions are making up our souls. The state of our emotions and therefore our souls have great influence on the state of our body. The hypothalamus gland at the end of our brains translates emotions into hormones and through those control our whole body. God created us and our bodies and of course this connections. To teach us how to live in unison with our bodies he gave us lots of instructions in HIS Word. 
^{Pr 18:14} A man’s spirit sustains him in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear? Most of us already know, that happy and optimistic people recover quicker from an illness and stay healthy better than sad and negative minded people. God's Word bears further witness to this. I have tried this myself many times but just recently really paid attention to this, when I found out, that I can talk myself sick. I kept telling myself, that I was forced to work too much, needed a break an was getting more and more exhausted. I followed this way of negative thinking until I was laying in bed with a fever. Now this does not mean, that we never need a break from work. Surely we need rest. But we don't need to get sick over it. 

Immune system
PR 17:22 A joyful heart is good medicine, But a broken spirit dries up the bones.
The first part of this word continues, what I said above. The second part explains more. Our spirit is our connection to God and His Holy Spirit. The marrow in our bones is the base of our immune system as any physician will explain to you. When our bones dry up, our immune system weakens and allows viruses, germs etc to attack our body and make us sick.

But how is spirit and immune system connected.? 

When things go wrong in life, we feel bad. If it was from disobedience to God our spirit is broken because of the disobedience. If it was not from disobedience our spirit can still be broken, because we may slide into discouragement and negative thinking. The worse we feel and the more negative our thinking gets and the more it weakens our immune system through the mind body connection of the hypothalamus gland. A chronicle stage of discouragement, depression and negative thinking results in chronicle diseases like allergies, acne, cancer, migraine, etc. I know this from own experience, when my allergies developed at about the age of 10. With good intentions my parents demanded a lot from me in school and behavior etc. This high demand resulted in lots of criticism. I tried very hard to please my parents and seemingly could never get it done. This constant stress took a toll on my immune system. As a teenager I developed acne. Today I know, that it came from peer pressure, the stress of trying to fit in and be part of the crowd. As a child I had no knowledge to battle these things successfully. But today I know a lot more from God's word.

So how do we get out of this broken spirit stage?

If it came from disobedience, we can accept the forgiveness that Jesus is offering to us, since HE died on the cross for our sins. There is only one sin mentioned in Scripture, which can not be forgiven, which is blaspheming the Holy Spirit (Mt 12:31). So if there is a little voice in your head saying "I have blown it now, I have sinned too badly", it is from the devil. Satan, the father of lies (Jn 8:44) is constantly trying to accuse us (Rev12:10). But with forgiveness repentance has to come also. That means we have to turn from our wrong way 180 degrees towards God and HIS way.
If our broken spirit just comes from being discouraged, we can go to HIS Word and find strength there. We alter our mind by thinking of all the good things God has already done for us and has promised for the future. King David is teaching us this way. In his struggles of fleeing from Saul, David got discouraged often and we can read about it in his Psalms. He often starts by pouring out his heart before God just to turn into praise and worship towards our Creator and Sustainer. I have learned this way, too. I try to count up the many things God has already done for me and let a worship song come to my mind, which I can sing to myself. If I have the opportunity to turn on some worship music, that makes it even better. This always lifts me up again. Sometimes I have to do it several times a day. Sometimes it takes a while until I get better. Just like an athlete trains and works hard to achieve his goal so can we in encouraging ourselves in God.

Isa 6:9 So HE (God) said, “Go and speak to these people. Tell them, “‘You will hear but never understand. You will see but never know what you are seeing.’ Isa 6:10 Make the hearts of these people stubborn. Plug up their ears. Close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes. They might hear with their ears. They might understand with their hearts.
                     And they might turn to ME (God) and be healed.”

These verses received from God by the prophet Isaiah are quoted in the New Testament in Mt 13:15, Mk 4:12, Lk 8:10, Jn 12:40 by Jesus and in Acts 28:27 by the Apostle Paul.

To go deeper into all of this I strongly encourage to read the book "A more Excellent Way" by Pastor Henry W. Wright. He describes numerous illnesses and chronicle diseases from his medical back ground and his healing experiences as a pastor.