Especially before you get desperately sick, think seriously about taking good care of yourself. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (see 1 Corinthians 6:19) and you and I are called to “offer our bodies as a living sacrifice…this is your true and proper worship” (see Romans 12:1 NIV). Neglecting your physical body is not a virtue and it works at cross purposes with true and proper worship. Taking care of yourself means, among other things, doing what is in your power to ensure that you eat conscientiously. Consider what you regularly eat and its long term effects on your health. Foods laden with sugar, gluten and useless carbs add unnecessary weight and adversely affect health. Experts say that 80% of fitness is not achieved in the gym, but at the table. Making dietary changes isn’t easy, but we do have the influence of the Spirit to help us. Thankfully, there are many resources to help (for starters, see Body By God by Dr. Ben Lerner, Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes). You’ll learn that if you eat the right foods, you’ll never have to go hungry and over the course of time, you’ll shed some unwanted pounds.
Exercise doesn’t have to be radical. Get moving. Walk, jog, and do some resistance training. There are many “beginner’s guide” type books and videos which you can find by simply googling. Regular exercise should be a lifestyle thing. There’s no one size fits all approach. Becoming healthy isn’t about an ideal weight or shape. There are skinny people who are very unhealthy.
Getting sufficient sleep is critical. The psalmist writes, “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep” (see Psalm 127:2). Also, be careful about the misuse of alcohol and if you are a smoker, do what you have to do to quit smoking.
Of course, just because you do the right things, you won’t necessarily experience the desired results. A niece’s friend, someone who was very conscientious about diet, exercise and all things pertaining to fitness, was unexpectedly diagnosed with late stage 4 pancreatic cancer and died just a few short months later. Puzzling, but such is the nature of life and a situation such as this does not constitute a compelling argument against taking care of oneself.
I’ve experienced a significant upgrade with regard to my back. My back pain was, for several years, chronic. My pain was so severe and unrelenting that if I could find two minutes a day when I didn’t feel it, those two minutes were quite noticeable. Walking was difficult. I was working out, using an inversion table regularly, getting red light therapy, stretching, receiving chiropractic care, massage therapy, acupuncture, intensive rehab at a clinic that specializes in neck and back injuries, received outpatient surgery and more. Even so, my pain was so intense and chronic that I didn’t want to live.
God spoke to me in a dream-vison and convinced me that He’d take me home soon or I could stick around for another twenty years or so. I said that if I could get an upgrade, I’d like to stick around. Many people had been praying for me. One night, at a church in northern Minnesota, a woman prayed for my back and I received an immediate upgrade. No, it wasn’t a complete healing, but the change has been significant. My pain is reduced and my functionality has increased. God has used all of the things I’ve mentioned and healing prayer to bring about a breakthrough.
I think we should do everything in our power, aside from things like voodoo, to get well. And, we should pray and ask God to show us what is standing in the way, keeping us from experiencing more healing. When things keep getting worse, we can seek the Lord for grace to persevere or we can ask for Him to expedite our death. Ideally, we’ll include our faith community in our journey and allow God to use them to guide us in the way we view our suffering.
Make sense?