Dec
28
2011
Here are my thoughts from my reading of Health Care You Can Live With by Dr. Scott Morris, founder of the Church Health Center in Memphis, Tennessee. The excerpts below are directly from the referenced chapters.
Excerpts From Chapters 21 and 22
Real love provides the strength to deal with the adversities of life.
“And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” Colossians 3:4
Love doesn’t come from Hollywood, it comes from God. God loved Jesus, and Jesus revealed God to us. Out of love, God sent Jesus. Out of love, Jesus sacrificed himself so that we could be connected to God without any barrier in between. And out of experience of God’s love, we love others. Love is a profound dedication and sense of commitment to another human being. Love will do what it take to help that person experience more wholeness – health – as a body and spirit created and loved by God.
Love is the engine of life. It is the essence of who we are as human beings. We miss the truth that God does not love us because we deserve it but because God chooses to.
God loves you.
Loving yourself is instrumental to your health. It is essential to caring for yourself.
Are you so stressed by the demands of your life that treating yourself with love doesn’t even make the list of what you will attempt? Treat yourself with love. It will be good for your health.
Practice matters. Without practice, few play the game (of life) well under stress. Without practiced patterns, we lack a meaningful context for important decisions. Without practiced patterns, sudden stress knocks us off our feet. Without practiced patterns, suffering throws us into a tailspin.
Decision moments come at unexpected times. If you have not examined what’s important to you in times of calm, you won’t know how to respond in times of stress. You can develop a way of living that gives you joy akin to winning the lottery. You can take steps toward health care or you can live with.
Know yourself. Many people come to us with illnesses or physical diseases but the more substantial question is this: What causes the behaviors that lead to the physical distress? So often patients don’t make the connection. They may understand, for instance that eating too much causes them to carry an unhealthy weight. But why do they eat the way they do? That they may not know. They haven’t ‘connected the dots‘ between the stress factors in their lives and their eating habits. And it’s not unlikely their eating habits will change until they do connect the dots. It’s difficult to change behaviors if the core reason behind the behavior doesn’t change.
It comes down to personal choice to change, and change starts in identifying what’s wrong in the first place. If virtues are not a part of your life – guiding your choices, values, and relationships – then making choices that lead to a fuller, or whole life won’t matter to you. If you don’t feel good about your ability to be a whole person for yourself and others, you will have a terrible time navigating the kinds of change that will make you healthier physically and spiritually.
You’re in charge. You are the expert in your own health care, and you can be in charge of this process.
Individual choices to practice healthy behaviors come down to caring for the body God gave us because we understand we are whole beings created and loved by God, body-and-spirit.
Exploring the whole meaning of wellness for body-and-spirit allows you to decide on your own health care because you were actively caring for the whole you, rather than waiting for a doctor to fix you after you break. You can take the turn and decide to practice good health behaviors and truly love the body God gave you.
My Comments:
I agree wholeheartedly with Morris that unless you are able to “connect the dots” between your sickness or condition and what is at the root of the behaviors that likely caused the problem, you’re not likely to change the behavior. Often, their is a root issue that is driving the unhealthy behavior.
Each of us have the capacity to choose our lifestyles. Our day to day choices determine our habits, which in turn largely determine our health status. And, I believe that we must make a choice deep in our will that we are going to make healthy choices as this is a big factor in being successful at healthy living.
When is the last time that you got alone with God and made a commitment with him – deep in your will – to care for your body as God’s temple?
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Connecting the Dots
Read about our Faith and Health Ambassador training course that teaches you how to “Connect the Dots.”
Apr
23
2011
Jesus made the greatest payment so you can have life – He gave his life.
You and I can be whole if we receive all that Jesus died to give us. Strength, power, grace, forgiveness, love, patience, self control and so much more are available to us. The question is, will we open our spirits, minds and hearts to receive what Jesus desires us to have?
During these very significant and special days of the year, as you remember that Jesus died … and was raised again … so that you can have life, be encouraged and then be recommitted to living the full life that he offers you. John 10:10
Have a blessed Easter…. and live a full life…. so you can give it away to others… for the glory of God.
Read my Easter blog post of three years ago which best captures how and why Jesus Died for Your Life.
Listen to Jim Nabors sing The Old Rugged Cross on YouTube.
Apr
07
2011
Here’s more insight and thoughts captured from my reading of Health Care You Can Live With by Dr. Scott Morris, founder of the Church Health Center in Memphis, Tennessee.
Excerpts From Chapter 3 – “Health Care Rides the Technology Wave:”
We no longer see the huge forward leaps of medical technology we saw 50 or 100 years ago… Yet we continue to pour vast amounts of money into a system that is not making people healthier.… A system that leads to improved health of Americans would impact the pocketbooks of almost everyone working in healthcare. A healthier population means fewer pills, fewer tests, and ultimately, fewer dollars spent on technology and pharmaceuticals. In the process of creating an industry based on technology, we lose sight of the fact that healthcare is supposed to be about health.
So what system would make people healthier? Understanding what it means to be well–body and spirit. And developing behaviors and lifestyles that focus on what works, not on what is broken. That’s the essence of prevention.
Technology absorbs the time, talent, and resources we need for keeping us healthy – it generally isn’t needed until we break. Read more of this article »
Dec
09
2009
Lately, I have found that I’m frequently using the word wholeness, and since the byline of this ministry is “teaching spiritual truths for health and wholeness,” I thought it would be a good idea to explore what wholeness means.
Wholeness
Used as an adjective, the word whole comes from the Greek words of holos and holokleros meaning all, entire and complete. These two words come from the noun holokleria meaning completeness.
In the biblical context of health and wellness, wholeness might mean being well in spirit, mind and body. In Paul’s letter of encouragement to the Christians living in Thessalonica, he addresses an aspect of their wholeness when he prays for them:
“Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again. God will make this happen, for he who calls you is faithful.” 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
Spirit, Soul and Body
Paul refers to the three major aspects of man’s being – his spirit, soul and body. We are not beings of separate and distinctively different components, but a whole person. We are a spirit who has a soul that lives in a body. All of these aspects of man are inextricably interwoven. To be whole, to be complete, each aspect of a person must be well. When any aspect of our being is not well, the other aspects are adversely affected.
Medicine today focuses on the care for a person’s body. Physical health is important so that we can function and do the things God would want us to do with our body. Being physically active, eating well, getting enough sleep and being addiction free are some of the more important things we ought to do to care for our bodies.
It’s also important to care for our soul – to manage our emotions the best we can, to monitor our thinking patterns and to make healthy choices. Our soul-life is impacted by our spirit and the ‘gateway’ through which this primarily happens is in our mind. I think this is why Paul reminds us that we can be transformed by the renewing of our minds. (Romans 12:2) Our mindset and our thinking patterns can truly and radically transform us. For the good or for the worse. For life or for death. The only way we can understand the key truths of life is to be exposed to what God’s guidelines for living are as found in the Bible. The Bible holds the keys to being whole and living well. We must not only understand God’s principles, we must live them to be whole.
Finally, since we are first and foremost a spirit, our spirit must be well because this aspect of us is our core. When God breathed into Adam the breath of life, he became a living being. (Genesis 2:7) It is the spirit of man that gives him real life. We live out this life and interact with the physical realm with the five senses of our body. And it is deep in our soul that our emotions and our minds impact our our choices and subsequent physical behavior.
We are sinful by nature. We inherit a spirit of death and this sinful nature as it is passed down by Adam’s original sin. (1 Corinthians 15:22) Before salvation, our ingrained habits and lifestyle choices give us certain natural tendencies. Our life experiences contribute to our personalities. After salvation and we are born again spiritually, our challenge is to allow the Spirit of God to transform us into being the kind of person he calls us to be. We must consciously choose to have an attitude of submission to God and a dependence on him to become whole, starting with our spirit.
Being Transformed and Becoming Whole
When we accept Jesus as our Savior, God’s Spirit, his Holy Spirit, begins to live inside us. As we willfully allow, our spirit is affected by the Holy Spirit. Our spirit begins to take on the attributes of the Holy Spirit. This new nature will begin to affect our soul. Our entire mindset about God, our self, others and life can be transformed. Our thought patterns can become different. In turn, we can radically change many of our emotions and how we react to life circumstances. As we are guided by God’s principles as found in the Holy Bible, our resulting choices and behaviors will become more and more in line with how God wants us to live. This is how we become sanctified and holy. This is how we become a complete or whole person in spirit, soul and body.
So often, we try to make major changes in our life on our own strength. We leave God out of the picture. You can not achieve a good degree of wholeness in your own strength and abilities. The type of transformation that brings a sense of wholeness can only be done by the one who created you – by God himself. If we are to be whole, we must invite God into the deepest part of who we are – into our spirit and into our soul – so that from the inside out, we can be transformed into the type of person God wants us to be.
Our spirit, soul and body are constantly interacting together, as a whole, as a complete person. That’s the way God designed us. And Paul, inspired by God’s Spirit, shares the secret to being whole. It’s God himself who can change us through and through, in our entire being, if we desire this and ask him to. Paul tells us that “the one who calls us is faithful to do this.”
Questions to Reflect On:
To what degree are you whole in spirit, soul and body?
What behavior changes might you be attempting to make in your life? Are you trying to change from the outside in, or from the inside out?
Are you asking God to make a transformation first in your spirit, by the power of his Spirit?
Resources on Wholeness
Web Page – How God Designed Us – A Three-Part Whole
Article – God Wants You Whole
Wellness Coaching - Faith-based one-on-one coaching to assist with behavior changes
Mar
19
2008
God loves you so much that He sent His son, Jesus, as a man, to die so you can be whole and have life now and eternally. Read about how much God loves you in this Message translation of the Bible.
Who believes what we’ve heard and seen? Who would have thought God’s saving power would look like this?
The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling,
a scrubby plant in a parched field.
There was nothing attractive about him,
nothing to cause us to take a second look.
He was looked down on and passed over,
a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand.
One look at him and people turned away.
We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—
our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
We thought he brought it on himself,
that God was punishing him for his own failures.
But it was our sins that did that to him,
that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
Through his bruises we get healed.
We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost.
We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way.
And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong,
on him, on him.
He was beaten, he was tortured,
but he didn’t say a word.
Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered
and like a sheep being sheared,
he took it all in silence.
Justice miscarried, and he was led off—
and did anyone really know what was happening?
He died without a thought for his own welfare,
beaten bloody for the sins of my people.
They buried him with the wicked,
threw him in a grave with a rich man,
Even though he’d never hurt a soul
or said one word that wasn’t true.
Still, it’s what God had in mind all along,
to crush him with pain.
The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin
so that he’d see life come from it—life, life, and more life.
And God’s plan will deeply prosper through him.
Out of that terrible travail of soul,
he’ll see that it’s worth it and be glad he did it.
Through what he experienced, my righteous one, my servant,
will make many “righteous ones,”
as he himself carries the burden of their sins.
Therefore I’ll reward him extravagantly—
the best of everything, the highest honors—
Because he looked death in the face and didn’t flinch,
because he embraced the company of the lowest.
He took on his own shoulders the sin of the many,
he took up the cause of all the black sheep.
Give thanks this Easter for the life He has given you. You can be completely whole in spirit, mind and body because Jesus died for you.
Let’s Connect!