Many in the Christian community believe that God governs everything that happens in their lives, including whether they get sick or remain healthy! Some even believe that their health, and even the time of their death, is totally out of their control and totally in God’s hands!
I personally reject that kind of thinking, because my Bible tells me that God wants us to “be in health!”
“Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth!” ~ 3 John 1:2If the Bible tells us that God wishes “above all things" that we prosper and be in health, how can we say when sickness comes our way that the sickness we are experiencing is “God's will”? I have been a Christian for 58 years, and during those many years, have often come in contact with people who accepted sickness as God’s will for their lives. I believe health, in most instances, is a matter of choice! In the book of Deuteronomy, God tells the Israelites that they have a choice to make concerning their future:
“And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse . . . And shalt return unto the LORD thy God, and shalt obey his voice . . . That then the LORD thy God will turn thy captivity and have compassion upon thee . . . And bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed . . . And He will do thee good” ~ Deuteronomy 30:1-5 “But if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them; I denounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish, and that ye shall not prolong your days upon the land.” ~ Deuteronomy 30:17-18After God gave His people the above choices, God, in Deuteronomy 30:19, offers the Israelites an opportunity to choose one or the other of the two choices He had offered them — a choice that would affect their future destiny:
“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”
You Have A Choice
I believe that just as God gave the Israelites an opportunity to choose their future, we today, in this 21st century have choices we can make that will affect our future concerning whether we “live in health,” or whether we live in sickness. Whether we “live in health,” or whether we live in sickness, is almost totally in our own hands and under our own control! In my seminars, I used to often say, “the next time you get sick, don’t go running to the doctor and ask him to fix you, or even to God and ask Him to fix you – but rather run for the bathroom, turn on the lights, and look in the mirror, and ask this question – "What did I do to create this physical problem?" My dear friend, we live in a society that is always trying to blame sickness on someone or something else. Some people even blame God for their sickness. When I was told I had colon cancer 40 years ago, the doctors told me I had cancer because my mother had colon cancer before me, and that I had inherited it – it was in my genes. Have you not noticed that more and more of the physical problems being experienced these days are blamed on bad genes? In other words, our sickness is not our fault! Or we are told that it was a germ, or a virus, or some bad bacteria that chose to attack us and that we are just the innocent and unfortunate victims. Again, we are led to believe that the sickness is out of our hands and not our fault. I don’t believe that we are the innocent victims for a moment, nor will I accept that rationale! Rather, I believe that life is a series of choices, in almost everything that happens to us, including our health. Listen to what God says here in Galatians 6:7:“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”Whether we experience sickness or health depends on this irrefutable natural law of sowing and reaping! If we want health, we can almost always experience that health that we say we so desire IF we will but sow the seeds that produce health! The problem is that too many people who are saying they want health, instead of sowing the seeds that will produce health, are sowing seeds that will produce sickness, with almost every mouthful of food, or beverage, they put into their body.
God Created Man
“I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.” ~ Psalm 139:14I believe man is a direct creation of God and not a product of evolution! My Bible even tells me how God created man:
“and the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." ~ Genesis 2:7
God Gave Man A Diet
My Bible then tells me that after God had created man, He placed that human creation in a garden and gave His human creation a diet:“And God said, behold, I have given you every herb (vegetable) bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat (food).” ~ Genesis 1:29Satan questioned what God had said mankind could eat:
“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, yea hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” ~ Genesis 3:1The result of that temptation was that, Eve chose to reject God’s instructions as to what she should or should not eat. Eve then offered that same forbidden fruit to her husband Adam, and he chose to eat it also. As a result of the choices they each made, they both suffered horrible consequences. Today, Satan is still at work. Satan’s first and primary goal is to keep someone from choosing God’s Son, Jesus Christ, whom God sent to this earth to die and shed His precious blood, for his or her sin. If Satan fails at this point, his next objective is to destroy the physical body, or at least cause it to so malfunction, that the person cannot effectively serve the Lord and fulfill the mission God has given that person to perform. In Roman’s 12:1-2, we find God literally begging Christians:
“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world . . .”Here God is pleading with the believer to: present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto god . . . and be not conformed to this world. In I Corinthians 6:19-20 God again challenges believers with these words:
“What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit which are God’s.”