Fear is a debilitating emotion, which lends power to
physical illness. Fear is also contagious. We pass it along to others - our
children, grandchildren, neighbors, workmates, friends and other family
members.
I read a story by a niece who "inherited" the
fear of storms after spending time with her aunt while her parents went out of
town. As an adult, she realized that she quite enjoyed storms. We often inherit
our family dysfunction, which causes us to feel alone, shamed, grief, deprived
and/or abused.
News casters also inspire fear in us by
sensationalizing the evils in the world and the natural disasters heading in
our direction. We are influenced to adopt a fearful attitude by the expectation
that something dangerous is coming our way that may harm us.
Our perception of possible injury initiates the
"fight or flight" response in our mind, which causes distress in our
body and induces symptoms of disease. Our mind converts emotions into physical symptoms
and illnesses. Scientist call these psychosomatic illnesses.
We can combat the effects of these negative combinations
by trusting in God's will and ways, as we flexibly accept life as it happens,
rather than fearing and fighting what "might" happen.
We stop struggling with negative emotions, which
occur with illnesses, and we renounce our tendency to give in as a victim to
sickness or to spend all of our energy "fighting" it.
Instead, we allow our body, soul and spirit to
accept healing from God's gracious hands. This prevents our imagination from
creating mental illness and physical microorganisms that really do make us sick
in body, soul and spirit.
God created our body to regulate and heal itself
from many illnesses. Even organs such as the liver have this capacity. We can
use vitamin and mineral supplements and eliminate toxic ingredients from our
food, personal hygiene and household cleaning supplies in order to aid the body
in healing.
Once we understanding the root cause of our illness,
we can change our lifestyle, go to counseling, and spend time praying for God
to reveal the real root cause of our issues. Some of them are generational in
origin passed down in our genes.
These practices go a long way in healing our maladies,
because we realize that the illness is simply a courier of a deeper issue going
on in our body and soul. Once the root is uncovered by God's Spirit, He sets us
free from the fear inherent in them.
When we embrace our negative emotions as normal and
necessary, a red flag to signal a problem causing these reactions, we rest in God's
love, peace and joy. This creates a place of joyous acceptance that can
transform our poor health to healing.
Prayer:
Father God, we thank You for inspiring medical and
nutritional practitioners to study methods of healing for our body, and for
giving them the wisdom to help us to experience freedom from many physical
illnesses. You also designed our body, soul and spirit to adapt to events in
our life by reacting with physical developments that cause illness to signal a
deeper issue within us.
As we come to You for resolution of these profound
spiritual, emotional and mental conflicts, our body often heals as a result. A
positive, trusting attitude in Your faithfulness eradicates fear from the
equation and allows us to relax physically, spiritually, mentally and
emotionally so that healing will result.
Thought for the Day:
We can always trust God to help us to shift our
focus from fear and illness to uncover the subconscious cause of our concerns, rather
than to continually treat the symptoms, which often causes new illnesses from
the side effects of the medication we take.
