The Powerful Medicine in God’s Word

With the upsurge of the internet, self-diagnosis and self-medicating of illness appears to be at an all-time high. It seems that fewer people are apt to accept a doctor’s diagnosis or follow a pharmacist’s direction than ever before. You are probably not surprised by this. At some point you probably have taken this same approach to managing your health. I confess; I have.

Why self-medicate?

Perhaps:

·         The medicine prescribed is expensive and so in weighing up the costs you figured the financial cost to your wallet was greater than the physical repercussions. 

·         The original condition is perceived to be more acceptable than the requirements or side effects. 

·         There is a lack of trust in the doctor or the directives he or she has given.

·         The taste or the way the medicine goes down (GULP) is disliked. 

·         The loss of personal freedom to determine one’s own path seems unacceptable.

Self-medicating is also common in the spiritual realm. In Proverbs 4, a father is seeking to teach his son to trust scriptural decrees to manage his spiritual health. Proverbs 4:20–22 says, (NASB95)  ²⁰ My son, give attention to my words; Incline your ear to my sayings. ²¹ Do not let them depart from your sight; Keep them in the midst of your heart. ²² For they are life to those who find them and health to all their body.

A common commercial today is for anti-aging cream that is said to both protect and restore your skin.   This is the picture that Proverbs 4 provides us of God’s Word as it is applied to the soul. The word translated ‘life’ speaks of nourishment that promotes good health. The word translated ‘health’ speaks of a remedy for the sin sick soul. The declaration is that God’s Word provides the elements necessary to increase our spiritual vigor and at the same time has elements to restore a poor spiritual condition caused by the effects of sin. Who wouldn’t want perfect skin or perfect spiritual health? Believe it or not, many of us! Here is the hitch. This health can only be found by accepting the diagnosis of God’s Word as to our problem, trusting the solutions and carefully, willingly following them regardless. Often, we simply do not want to do this.

Please recognize there is a real cost to following God’s Word. It may cost the way of life that is familiar to us. At times it will be uncomfortable, unpalatable, and hard to swallow. It will require that we yield the final say to God’s Word rather than our inclination.

Discipleship in all our lives is met at some point with a crisis of decision. At that moment, we are confronted by God’s truth in an area very personal where it is hard to accept the diagnosis of sin and the prescribed action from God’s Word to see that soul-contaminating issue eradicated. What we do in those moments determines what will happen next in our spiritual lives. It is a crucial, crossroad like, moment! At that point we must acknowledge that God’s Word is only useful if His directions are read carefully and adhered to strictly. Moreover, we must concede that a personally made cocktail of principles that we will and will not follow are dangerous, even deadly.   

The inspired Word of God, through the pen of the proverb writer here, says that we must give careful attention to and not ‘depart’ or wander from their directions to a self-made plan of our own choosing.  Instead, we must treasure, memorize, and meditate (“keep them in the midst of our heart”) on them so it becomes second nature to know and obey them. This means we must trust God’s Word unequivocally with an understanding that it is completely trustworthy.

Friends, our discipleship is dependent on trusting and obeying God’s Word at those crucial moments. Let’s pray for and admonish one another in those crucial moments to trust and obey God’s Word. Let’s pray for God and the Holy Spirit’s conviction and unction to do the same.   

Note: While you are praying, pray for the biblical counseling ministry (biblical counseling is simply intense discipleship) as they meet the same crisis points with each counselee that comes through our door. The description above is common to what each of our counselees face. Pray that God’s Holy Spirit will provide the conviction and the unction for life change to take place.

Grinding it out or Grinding to a Halt?

I used to enjoy road races; distant races, races that required endurance and outlasting those around me.   What a joy to grind out a race and at the end slowly pass those whose endurance had ran out.   It was a powerful feeling.  Those days are gone.   It is not that I am not competitive.  The competitive juices still are pretty strong in me.   The reason is simple; I just don’t win many races anymore.   I have no endurance.   And the reason for that is pretty simple.   But before I explain it to you, listen to what Hebrews 12:1 (NASB95) says,   ¹ Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.

The Christian’s life is likened to a foot race that everyone who knows the Lord participates in.  And the reasons for failure that come in that race are astonishingly similar to the reasons we fail in real life races.     You have to giggle at Wuest’s definition of the Greek word translated encumbrance. “The word is ogkon (ὀγκον) “bulk, mass,” hence, “a swelling, superfluous flesh.” ¹    Why don’t I have endurance to run anymore?   I have ‘swelling superfluous flesh.’ Anyone else have that problem?     Jesus says that if we wish to run the race of God with endurance we have to lay aside every encumbrance or every bit of swelling flesh.  

Five years ago, Ben and I went on a backpacking trip.   Whatever we felt necessary to take on the trip, including our food, our tent and our sleeping bag, had to be carried on our back.   It didn’t take long to realize that not everything one might normally take on a long trip was worth having on this trek.    Expositor’s says: “The Christian runner must rid himself even of innocent things which might retard him. And all that does not help hinders. It is by running he learns what these things are. So long as he stands he does not feel that they are burdensome and hampering.” ²   The items in mind were not necessarily bad things but they were things that if carried too long, made running with endurance nearly impossible (- a busy schedule, a time and resource consuming hobby, a preoccupation with a career or a relationship, etc.).  Good things along the road of life, when picked up and carried, can keep us from running the race of endurance. 

But the Bible also says that we are to “lay aside the sin which so easily entangles us.”    In Bible times people often wore longer robes that, when running, could easily get tangled around their legs and feet tripping them up.  They would deal with those robes, getting them up out of the way, before they set out running.   Sin has to be dealt with or it will trip us up and keep us from running.  The sin in this passage seems to be unbelief, or a lack of faith, but the truth of sin’s entanglement stretches from unbelief onward into all types of sin.  

Here is the problem, once we get weighed down, tangled up, and tripped; it isn’t always easy to get up, cut away the tethers of the vines of sin and rid ourselves of the weights that are keeping us from effective Christian running.  This is the point of biblical counseling.   It is to help another person up, unburden and untangle them from those things holding them back, and get them back to the race.   Can I encourage you that if you are weighed down by your lifestyle or life circumstances, if you are tied down and tripped up by a particular sin that is keeping your bottom on the pavement more than your Christian running shoes, let someone help you.   Through prayer and careful training assignments from God’s Word, they can help you ditch the items holding you back and allow you to run again, with endurance, the race set before you.  Tri County has counselors right now in the process of getting certification in counseling and they want to help you, your co-worker, your family member or your friend, get back to successful running.  

¹ Wuest, K. S. (1997). Wuest's word studies from the Greek New Testament: For the English reader (Heb 12:1). Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

² Wuest, K. S. (1997). Wuest's word studies from the Greek New Testament: For the English reader (Heb 12:1). Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.