Deborah P. Brunt

Recently, I attended a week-long class on health and healing. The class, sponsored by a ministry named Be in Health, dealt at-length, in-depth with the spiritual roots of disease. We explored the spirit-soul-body connection. We learned what we'd already suspected: our bodies tell on us.

 

They tell what we've been eating and drinking, of course, and whether we've been exercising. But also they tell what we believe, what we've agreed with deep within.

 

More often than not, disease signals internal "dis-ease." Illness gains entrance to our bodies and permission to stay there because something has gotten out of kilter in our relationships with God, with other people, or with ourselves. Undealt-with, often unrecognized and frequently "inherited" from previous generations, that dis-ease has remained within, festering, growing ever stronger, ever more entrenched.

 

More often than not, we try to treat physical problems without even considering that they might have a spiritual root. When healing eludes us, we attempt disease management. Meanwhile, the dis-ease deep within manages us. Depending on its nature, it relentlessly pierces, wounds, shatters, drives, torments or eats away at us. Instead of deflecting the poisonous arrows and pummeling blows others may aim our way, our internal dis-ease makes sure every attack hits its mark and goes deep. In turn, our dis-ease goads us to hurt others. It establishes cycles that, if not broken, will continue to destroy future generations.

 

The LORD himself visits us in order to change all that. He whose Name is holy, whose words are pure, comes, not to condemn but to deliver. He comes into the midst of our brokenness, pain and denial to lead us in the path of life.

We humans have a limited view of cause and effect. We live inside time. We spend our brief lives on a microscopic earth in a universe so vast we cannot begin to imagine it. Even with our microscopes and telescopes and history books and research centers, we see very little of the material realm and even less of the spiritual one.

Yet in our Western culture, when we need to know right from wrong and good from bad, when we want to distinguish what's God from what is not, when we seek to understand what causes what, we trust above all our own minds. Many times, we do this even in the church.

We consider the emotional to be far less reliable than the rational. We lump the spiritual with the emotional - label it suspect and always to be judged by intelligent minds. And thus, we worship God and seek to live out our Christianity in logic and in reason.

The eternal God, who lives outside of time and sees it all at a glance, who created the universe and holds it together, who made people in his image, who is spirit and truth - this living God sees the bigger picture. He knows the end from the beginning. He sees the heart. He knows the import of a thought before we think it. He knows the generational consequences of one small deed done in secret. He fully grasps connections that to us seem utterly unrelated.

"'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,' declares the LORD. 'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isa. 55:8-9).

This LORD began laying down the law to Israel during his fourth mountain rendezvous with Moses. For a nation in Israel's situation, logic demands far different foundational laws than those recorded in Exodus 20:22-23:33.

Logic would start at the points of greatest danger and most urgent need. To protect a vulnerable nation of former slaves surrounded by powerful enemies, logic requires immediately setting in motion a plan to recruit and train an army. To provide food, clothing and shelter for a nation with a 100% unemployment rate, living in a rock desert, logic requires swiftly setting in place practical government programs.

God's first laws didn't even mention either issue. Logic would consider inconsequential the matters God did address first - such as how to make altars; and how to treat servants, parents and other people's property.

God bookended this set of laws with commands regarding worship. He began by reiterating the first and second commandments: "Tell the Israelites this: 'You have seen for yourselves that I have spoken to you from heaven: Do not make any gods to be alongside me; do not make for yourselves gods of silver or gods of gold" (Ex. 20:22-23)

The Lord concluded this set of laws by instructing the people what days to rest and what days to feast.

Between the bookends, God set rules for honoring those in authority - he himself, parents, leaders. God set rules for treating justly the people easiest to mistreat - the poor, the foreigner, the widow, the orphan, the pregnant woman, the rape victim, the servant, the neighbor who trusts you with his stuff, the neighbor you hate.

With every word, the LORD attested: Relationships matter. They matter supremely. The Lord Jesus attested a similar thing when an expert in the law tested him with this question: "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"

"Jesus replied: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments" (Matt. 22:36-40).

Israel might have thought their safety and victory hinged on military preparedness. They might have thought their provision hinged on their skill in strategic planning. They might have thought their health hinged on avoiding sick people and having the right potions to counteract each disease. We might think the same things. Logic would tell us the same things.

Logic would see no connection between the diseases you're "managing" and your attitude toward your parents, for example, or your refusal to rest, or the loves that rival the place of God in your life. Logic would assure you that continual spiritual defeat is a fact of life in a sinful world, not a consequence of generations of broken relationships. Logic will trap you in a cycle of seeking desperately to provide for yourself what God himself will provide for you as you do the "inconsequential" things he commands.

"Worship the Lord your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you, and none will miscarry or be barren in your land. I will give you a full life span.... I will make all your enemies turn their backs and run.... I will establish your borders" (Ex. 23:25-26,27,31).

Our LORD says our health, our welfare, our provision, even the security of our borders, hinge first and foremost on how we treat him, how we treat others, how we treat ourselves. Worshiping HIM alone in the ways he has designated is key because our own logic and even our own compassion will err in teaching us how to rightly treat others and ourselves.

Logic concurs with some laws God laid down for Israel. It seems good to our rational minds that God decreed: "Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan" (Ex. 22:22). "Do not spread false reports" (Ex. 23:1). "Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong" (Ex. 23:2).

We approve the balance God showed in these two laws related to the poor: "Do not show favoritism to the poor in a lawsuit" (Ex. 23:3). "Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits" (Ex. 23:6).

But some of what God says seems neither logical nor just and certainly not compassionate. When we come upon such laws, we may become offended. We may try to defend God. Even those laws we think we "get," logic by itself will mislead us as to how to apply.

Today, we cannot logically understand why God made laws to protect slaves in ancient Israel against mistreatment, rather than abolishing slavery entirely. In the nineteenth century, the church in the Deep South logically deduced from such laws and other scriptures that the slave system they practiced reflected God's intended order. Today, we find harsh and offensive God's command to Israel, "Do not allow a sorceress to live" (Ex. 22:18). In a previous era, the church's logical implementation of that command led to the infamous Salem Witch Trials.

When we don't understand God's written word, and when we think we do, it's good to ask God questions. It's far better to question him than to try to make up answers for him. In fact, it's crucial to ask God questions, as long as we don't use our so-very-limited logic to refute what he says or to put God himself on trial. If we question the Lord with a snide, supercilious or unbelieving attitude - as if his goodness or justice depends on our evaluation of it - God will typically remain silent, and we'll continue believing whatever our mind can wrap itself around. If we ask as a seeker, mystified by what we can't begin to grasp, but willing to be taught, willing to see in the Spirit, the Lord will take us deeper into truth than logic can begin to reach. That's not a goal for the spiritually elite; that's a promise for everyone.

Pilate stood before Jesus. To protect his political backside, Pilate had decided to condemn an innocent man to death. When Pilate asked, "What is truth?" Jesus didn't answer. A virgin named Mary stood before an angel who had just announced something utterly illogical: Mary would give birth to the Messiah. Ready to accept the assignment, regardless the impossibility, regardless the cost, Mary asked, "How can this be?" Immediately, the angel explained things Mary received even without being able to comprehend.

The God who gave his laws to Moses spoke every word of scripture to persons who met with him, heard his voice and faithfully wrote what he said. This God knew his written word would raise questions, would create dilemmas, would be used for purposes other than his own. He knows that, when people try to follow his word mind first, we always end up misunderstanding and misapplying it.

From the beginning, he planned a two-fold approach to communicating with his people: his written Word and his Presence. During the fourth mountain rendezvous, the same meeting in which God began giving Moses laws to write down, God said, "See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him. If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you" (Ex. 23:20-23).

After Jesus' death and resurrection, even as the New Testament books were being written, God continued to urge his people to know and follow his written word: "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that all God's people may be thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Tim. 3:16-17).

Meanwhile, just before his crucifixion, Jesus told his disciples, "The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you" (John 14:26). "When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth" (John 16:13).

God spoke to Israel through his written Word and through his Angel going before them. He speaks to us through his written Word and through his Spirit dwelling within.

God said of the Angel that led Israel, "Pay attention to him and listen to what he says ... my Name is in him ... Listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say."

Paul wrote in Galatians 5, "The whole law can be summed up in this one command: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' But if you are always biting and devouring one another, watch out! Beware of destroying one another. So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves ... Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit's leading in every part of our lives" (vv. 14-16, 25 NLT).

We hear the Lord best when we draw aside at his call, open his Word and listen as he speaks, Spirit to spirit. We hear the Lord best when we obey what he said last. We love the Lord with all our mind when we make logic the servant of the Spirit, not the master and judge.

The things the Lord says may seem to have no connection with the problems, illnesses and dangers before us. But as we worship him in spirit and truth, as we treat others and ourselves the way he says, he proves himself strong in those very matters we thought he was ignoring. We find ourselves in ever-increasing measure stepping into wholeness, peace and abundance. We find ourselves waging spiritual warfare victoriously, from a place of rest. We open the way for others, even those we previously counted enemies, to walk with us on the path of life.

The Israelites had no clue how impossible it is to walk in God's ways apart from God's accomplishing it through us. They repeatedly declared, "Everything the Lord has said we will do" (Ex. 24:3). But declaring it and doing it proved two entirely different things.

Today, because of the sacrificial death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, because of the Spirit who baptizes and fills, convicts and teaches and empowers, we can declare, "Everything the Lord has said HE will do - and we will cooperate with him."

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Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures references are from The Holy Bible, Today's New International Version™ TNIV ® Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society ® All rights reserved worldwide. Also quoted:

Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, [NLT] copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.

Graham Cooke, Coming into Alignment (Vacaville, CA: Brilliant Book House, 2009), pp. 153-154

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