For years, after a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis at the ripe old age of twenty six, I asked, begged, pleaded and tried to brownie-point my way into God’s good graces for a healing miracle. I doubt there’s ever been a call for healing or an offer of prayer in my life I haven’t responded to.
I’ve been prayed for, in the past thirty plus years, more times then I’ll ever remember and I still believe and know that I know that I know, God can and does miraculously heal! He can heal me right now while I’m typing this with two crooked fingers. No one knows how to make the crooked straight like my Heavenly Father.
But He hasn’t. Not yet anyway.
One day, I asked Him if he was tired of me asking for healing – again! I was tired of begging and told Him so. Seems as if most of my prayers were all about me and honestly, I was tired of me.
The thought immediately downloaded into my heart and mind. “Don’t you know your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?”
For several days, I went to bed and got up in the morning with this question stalking me. I couldn’t shake it.
“OK, God. Yeah, I know that. I’ve read it a zillion times. So what are you trying to say?”
I went and looked up 1Corinthians 6:19. “Do you not know that YOUR BODY is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who LIVES IN YOU and was GIVEN BY GOD? You do not belong to yourself.”
“You do not belong to yourself.” The answer came in the gentlest way. “I could heal you today but you will be sick again in six months. You are not giving your body what I designed for optimal health. You are not fueling it properly.”
I was stunned. After years of expecting an instant fix, this was not what I had in mind. After all I had cut my teeth on living a faith-filled, easy believe-ism, ‘God said it and He’ll do it’, name it and claim it, speak it and see it Christianity, which included the doctrine of healing.
In the meantime, my ‘temple’ was systematically falling apart and in a severe state of disrepair.
I had a big decision to make; keep doing what I’d been doing and stay sick or make a drastic change and get better. I was set on a path of discovering what God’s Health Plan is and has always been for the human body, the temple He resides in, and I had a lot of work to do.
I could write a book about my health journey from that day until now but I will just say, life has changed for this gal. I’ve learned and am still learning much; reading, researching, praying and asking for discernment and wisdom.
In this internet age there’s plenty of information out there, some of it misleading, but I’m encouraged to ask for wisdom from my Father (James 1:5). Who else knows better what my body needs to operate optimally but the one who made it? I don’t examine anything without first asking God to show me what I should accept or disregard. He’s been my best teacher.
Though still limited by severe joint damage, I’ve been off all medications for over ten years. Four years ago when I started having reoccurring outbreaks of urticaria hives, I kicked it up a few notches and went for a ninety percent plant based plate. The hives return only when I stray too far from this plan.
I’m now convinced many of the chronic diseases we deal with come from our SAD (Standard American Diet) way of eating. If I know I can’t fuel my car on anything but what it was designed for, gas and oil, why do I think I can continue to pack my body full of non-nutrient, processed, chemically laden, hormone and antibiotic induced meat, packaged food and obsessive sugars, stuff it doesn’t recognize as food or fuel, without eventually suffering a breakdown.
We are well fed, but not well nourished. We are stuffed, but not full of life giving, cell restoring nutrients. Yep, it’s certainly easier to microwave a hot dog and grab a cupcake then cut up veggies. It’s more fun to suck down a couple Diet Cokes then drink a glass of water with a lemon wedge floating in it.
But I am living proof that a lifetime of hot dogs, soda and their nutrient deficient relatives don’t make a body happy in the long term. I’m also living proof that reversing this trend keeps every cell inside me smiling and thankful. As my eating choices improve, I can almost hear them screaming to each other in pure exhilaration, “Hallelujah! She’s finally figuring it out!!”
Eating well is mostly common sense and I find many people instinctively know what they should and shouldn’t be swallowing. Following a healthy lifestyle is difficult, when tantalizing junk food constantly surrounds and entices us, but as my always wise husband says, “Everything that is worth it will probably be hard.”
Since my body ultimately belongs to God, I believe He wants my temple, the place where He resides, to be full of health and vitality more than I do. He says I am fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:13-16). He says this body He made for me is a miracle. I need to be a good manager of this miracle, which includes what I put in my mouth.
Healing can come in ways we don’t expect and good health starts with me. It begins in my grocery cart, in my kitchen, on my plate, with my fork and with grace and strength for every new day.
God and I will do this.
Together.
Genesis 1: 29-30 “ Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.”
“Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food” ~ Hippocrates
”The doctor of the future will give no medication, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.” ~ Thomas A Edison
“Sickness is the vengeance of nature for the violation of her laws.” ~ Charles Simmons