The Best Way to Complete Health is Found in Christ
Inside: What if I said wellness and wholeness couldn’t happen without a relationship with Christ? We can be well when we use these healing verses as an example.
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I’m an easy sell. If you tell me that eating vegetarian is healthy, I’m bound to try it. The Paleo diet can improve all my bodily systems and it will uncover the foundation of youth, Sold!
When you tell me my family will be healthier without parabens and plastic containers, Amazon has already delivered my glass containers to the front door.
It can become an endless rat race trying to keep up with what will put my health at risk. As a mom, it can cause a whole bunch of unneeded anxiety.
What are Wellness and Wholeness?
Wellness and Wholeness, seem to be popular buzz words. For most of us, these words bring up visions of healthy eating and living. Perhaps a Paleo diet, spending hours doing yoga at the gym or meditating during the day.
The definition of wellness: the quality or state of being in good health especially as an actively sought goal (Merriam-Webster).
Wholeness: being healed, physically sound, free of disease or deformity, mentally or emotionally sound (Merriam-Webster).
God tells us in the Bible that our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit. We are to treat them in a God-pleasing way in worship offering ourselves as daily sacrifices to do what God wants us to, not what our sinful body desires. We give our abilities and trust God to lead us.
This daily discipline is a conscious, directed effort with God to reach our full potential someday in Heaven.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Our bodies and spirit can’t reach the perfect design of the Creator without His help.” quote=”Our bodies and spirit can’t reach the perfect design of the Creator without His help.”]
</idvGod’s Image was Well and Whole
When God created Adam, he was whole and well in God’s image. The balance between his physical body, spirit, and soul was perfect. Adam was completely well and whole.
Once sin happened, these three entities became in disarray. Adam’s body slowly began dying, his spirit began desiring things apart from God, and his soul started longing for the perfect way it had once been.
Finding Balance Through these Healing Verses
Our culture puts a strong emphasis on health and training of our physical body, however, when some tragedy befalls us, the fact we can bench-press 100 pounds at the gym makes little difference. What about the effects on our spirit and soul?
How we weather circumstances is a joint effort of our mind, soul, and spirit persevering through the difficulty.
Even in the worst of situations, with faith in God as our stable focus, circumstances can’t overpower us and take us down.
We all can receive God’s grace and help. God is willing to bless anyone who asks for wellness and wholeness.
He is the best personal trainer to get us well and whole.
Healing Verses:
7 Do not waste time arguing over godless ideas and old wives’ tales. Instead, train yourself to be godly. 8 “Physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better, promising benefits in this life and in the life to come. (1 Timothy 4:7-8, NLT).
Are you working in tandem with God?
11 As Jesus continued on toward Jerusalem, he reached the border between Galilee and Samaria. 12 As he entered a village there, ten men with leprosy stood at a distance, 13 crying out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” (Luke 17:11-13, NLT).
Jesus told them to show themselves to the priests, and they became healed. One leper returned thanking and praising God for the restoration to health. Jesus said his faith had made him well.
The King James version says, “19 And he said unto him, Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole (Luke 17:19, KJV).
All these men found healing of leprosy, but only one returned in faith and became well and whole.
Did you catch it?
The others became healthy on the outside but remained messes on the inside. [clickToTweet tweet=”No balance within the body can happen until Jesus is at the center.” quote=”No balance within the body can happen until Jesus is at the center.”]
Becoming Well and Whole in Christ
Every part: soul, physical body, and spirit affect the other and they need the Savior to become well and whole.
“God’s ultimate goal for your life on earth is not comfort, but character development. He wants you to grow up spiritually and become like Christ.” ~Rick Warren
How to Become Whole and Well in Christ:
- Come to faith in Jesus as your Savior.
- Repent and ask for forgiveness.
- Give God your burdens, guilt, and shame.
- Trust in His directing your life.
- Be thankful and practice gratitude.
- Form a daily relationship with God through prayer and reading His Word.
- Serve and love others.
We will never become complete in wellness and wholeness until we are in Heaven.
This Christian life is a progression of becoming well and whole in Christ. As we throw off the old, sinful habits and embrace new God-pleasing ones, we start the journey to wellness.
We will always be work-in-progress Christians until God embraces us in His arms on the pearly streets of eternal life. What diet we follow, the exercise we do and the stress relievers we use can help keep us healthy, but true wholeness and wellness are found only in Christ.
We can meditate on God’s Word and these healing verses to begin our journey! -
Walking Out of Captivity: A Simple Guide to Becoming Whole in Christ
The Journey to Wholeness in Christ: A Devotional Adventure to Becoming Whole
The Best Yes: Making Wise Decisions in the Midst of Endless Demands
Healing Through Christ Family Workbook: Help, Hope, and Healing for those who have a loved one in addiction
Walking with God through Pain and Suffering
Losing Everything in Divorce, Finding Healing through Christ: Finding Healing through Christ
Restoring Virtue: A Testimony of Healing Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ
I love that point that the leper came back to Jesus and became well AND whole! He came back. That’s important. When we come to God we receive more of what we need.
The same truth jumped out at me. His faith made him whole. Not just a facade of wellness, but whole. WOW! What a word.
Calvonia- yes, well and whole! I want that too!
Kelly- I wonder what the other lepers saw when they still struggled in their diseased state. While Jesus healed the physical body the soul was still infected. Maybe they came to faith in the end?
True words, thank you for sharing this & love, “Every part: soul, physical body, and spirit affect the other and they need the Savior to become well and whole.” I’m definitely a work in progress & thankful for his wholeness & healing even in my broken places…
Debbie- I’m also a work-in-progress too. Broken but being remade!
Hi Julie! Great post on true wellness. I look forward to reading more from you.
Connie- welcome! Thank you for your kind words!
Love this post! I so agree with your quote, “No balance within the body can happen until Jesus is at the center.” We have often heard the acronym for JOY being: “J” for having Jesus first in your life; “O” is for placing others second; and “Y” is for placing yourself last. However, I recently heard a new praise and worship song, “Jesus At The Center,” by Darlene Zschech, which shifts our focus to…
Jesus at the center of our lives,
Jesus at the center of our marriages,
Jesus at the center of our families,
Jesus at the center of our homes,
Jesus at the center of our work,
Jesus at the center of our relationships with others,
Jesus at the center of our churches.
It’s all about Jesus. That is what brings me joy . . . Jesus at the center of my life . . . from the inside-out, from the innermost part of me where the Spirit of Christ dwells, not dependent on my circumstances. Many blessings to you!
Beth- thank for sharing this! I will have to look up the song!
Blessings to you also!
I enjoyed reading your explanation of wellness and wholeness certainly in terms of being healthy on the outside but a mess on the inside. Thank you for sharing!
Robin- nice to meet you! Thank you for the kind words!
Julie, I especially love your list of 7 ways to become whole and healthy in Christ. I’ve gone the route of chasing after every newest health craze myself. We really can go overboard, can’t we?
Pinning this!
Betsy- thank you for pinning and the encouragement! Yes, it can be a rat race of trying to live and eat a certain way and then feeling guilt and shame when we can’t keep it up!
Rebecca- thanks for stopping by 🙂 Diets and fads seem to come and go, but God’s truth and true wellness has been around forever.
Julie, thank you for sharing this. It is a much needed focus. I especially love the quote that reminds us that it’s not about our comfort, but it’s about our character development. If we can look forward toward all that God is helping us to become in the midst of our difficulties, that brings much hope! Thanks for sharing this with us today!
Leslie- Thank you for the kind words! I look forward to it too:)
Julie, I like the thought to have balance we need Jesus at the center. Great thoughts!
Debbie- thank you! Jesus at the center of everything!
As I was thinking about the physical aspects of wellness and wholeness, I know that I fail often in keeping myself on any kind of good diet for my body. I was sure I was not going to want to read this post in ‘whole’ because I would become even more discouraged. BUT…instead I have been blessed for I have allowed Jesus into my life. He is the One Who makes me whole and well. Hallelujah! As others have mentioned the lepers above, I, too, have always wondered about those others. I pray you hope is right…that they came back to Jesus.
I have been encouraged! Thanks.
Linda- I’m not good with diets either! I’m so glad it blessed you instead of discouraged you 🙂
Jesus is the key to wellness and wholeness!
Julie, Great thoughts and encouragement on becoming whole and healthy in Christ Jesus!
Karen- thank you!
Wellness and wholeness begin and end with Jesus. Great reminders and questions to consider.
Debbie- thank you, I appreciate it!
Have you seen that video where a guy goes back in time to the 70’s and pops into the kitchen of a man eating steak, eggs, and bread for breakfast? He tells the guy and his wife that the steak he is eating is bad for him. He then disappears through the door he originally appeared in. The wife throws out the steak. Then the guy appears again saying he was wrong. Steak is fine. It’s the bread that is bad for him. Then he leaves. The eggs get tossed and the guy appears again saying he was wrong. The eggs are fine. But the bread is unhealthy. This keeps going on until finally, the guy says something like “just eat whatever you want to”. I may have gotten the order wrong, but the idea remains – we can get so caught up in what’s healthy and what’s not just to have it change in a few months. But the health and wellness from God is immutable. He is immutable.
Thanks for sharing on Grace and Truth!
Aimee- I think we get caught up in what you described, is it conforming to the world? Thank you for sharing this!
This idea of Christ making us whole has come up over and over again in the past week. I am fascinated by the fact that Jesus made people whole, and that the more of our lives we hand over to Him, the more healed we will be on other levels of our being.
Susan- It’s all about surrender, isn’t it?