Body, Mind & Health: Discovering God's Solutions for Total Health

by Monte Kline, Ph.D.

Published by:

Pacific Health Center

PO Box 1066

Sisters, OR 97759

www.pacifichealthcenter.com

ISBN 0-9632948-0-6

Copyright 1992 by Monte L. Kline

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system – except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper or online – without permission in writing from the publisher.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The information contained in this book is not intended for diagnosing illness or prescribing treatment. Rather the material herein is designed to be used in cooperation with your health practitioner to deal with personal health problems. Should you use this information on your own, you are prescribing for yourself, which is your constitutional right, but neither the author nor the publisher assumes responsibility.

Table of Contents

Introduction – Your Health Checklist

Examine yourselves . . . (II Corinthians 13:5)

PART ONE – PHYSICAL HEALTH

Chapter 1 – God-Made Food

Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good. (Isaiah 55:2b)

Chapter 2 – Water That Refreshes

For I will pour water on the thirsty land . . . (Isaiah 44:3a)

Chapter 3 – Cleansing That Purifies

. . . let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit . . . (II Corinthians 7:1)

Chapter 4 – By the Sweat of Your Brow

If anyone is not willing to work . . . (II Thessalonians 3:10a)

Chapter 5 – Let the Sun Shine

Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun. (Ecclesiastes 11:7)

Chapter 6 – Sleep that Satisfies

. . . that one may sleep satisfied . . . (Proverbs 19:23, NASB)

PART TWO – EMOTIONAL HEALTH

Chapter 7 – Healthy Attitudes

. . . have this attitude . . . (Philippians 3:15, NASB)

Chapter 8 – Capturing the Present Moment

. . . forgetting what lies behind, I press on . . . (Philippians 3:14)

Chapter 9 – Resolving Emotional Stress

. . . do not be anxious about your life . . . (Matthew 6:25a)

PART THREE – SPIRITUAL HEALTH

Chapter 10 – Spiritual Roadblocks to Health

For this reason many among you are weak and sick . . . (I Corinthians 11:30)

Chapter 11 – Defeating Spiritual Strongholds

Neither give place to the devil. (Ephesians 4:27, KJV)

Chapter 12 – Total Health at the Cross

By His scourging we are healed (Isaiah 53:5c, NASB)

Chapter 13 – Living in God’s Sovereignty

His sovereignty rules over all (Psalm 103:19)

Closing Thoughts

Footnotes

About the Author

Appendix A – Physical Health: A Health Strategy for Anyone . . . Anywhere

Appendix B – Emotional & Spiritual Health: Encounter God through Personal Retreats

Introduction

Your Health Checklist

Examine yourselves . . . (II Corinthians 13:5)

Mr. Kline, you have cancer, and we need to operate immediately.

So, began my adventure into discovering God’s health and wholeness, an adventure that continues over forty years later. I had thought I was whole – I was a Christian, in vocational Christian ministry, 24 years young, married with a new baby. Everything should have been okay, but that simple statement from a doctor revealed how unwhole I really was.

Maybe that’s your story as well. You have health problems or may even be in a health crisis right now. Even worse, you just don’t know why. You think you’re doing the right things for your health, but something must be missing. Is there some magic drug or vitamin that would solve all your problems? Probably not. But there is another way of approaching health – a way to discover what’s missing in your health recipe. That’s what this book is about.

What is health anyway? Is it just the absence of disease as I was taught in junior high school or something much more? The answer to that question is found in the word itself: Health comes from the old English word hale. Guess what other word also comes from hale? It’s the word whole. Therefore, to be healthy is to be whole. So what then does it mean to be whole? Most people think of wholeness and health only in terms of the physical body. But that’s only one-third of who we really are. The Bible reveals that God made us three-dimensional people – body, mind and spirit. To possess wholeness in all three dimensions is the real definition of health. Unless you are experiencing God’s design for body, mind and spirit, you lack wholeness and health will elude you.

Have you ever walked into a shopping mall looking for a particular store (or maybe the restroom)? If you’re like me, you probably look for that big mall map near the entrance showing where everything is and containing three very special words:

YOU ARE HERE

To go anywhere you must first know where you are – what is the starting point? Self-examination tells you where you are, and in so doing, is fundamental to all areas of life. When it comes to health, not everyone has the same needs. Some people have a lot of missing ingredients in the physical dimension but may have things together pretty well emotionally and spiritually. Others are very physically healthy, but void of any spiritual life. Still others may be emotional and psychologically healthy, yet out to lunch in the other two dimensions.

Recognizing this problem, I developed a Checklist for Health – a self-evaluation tool for measuring your physical, emotional and spiritual health. It simply lists some of the major ingredients for health for body, mind and spirit. Though the rest of this book will give a more detailed examination of these aspects of health, for the moment we only want them as a checklist. If you are mostly practicing that item, check it off – it’s not likely to be a cause of health problems for you. However, if you are mostly not practicing it, leave it blank. The blanks that you cannot honestly check off reveal what’s missing in your health recipe.

CHECKLIST FOR HEALTH

Body

_____ I primarily eat a diet of whole, natural foods.

_____ I regularly go through a cleansing/detoxifying program.

_____ I do aerobic exercise three or more days per week.

_____ I drink purified water rather than tap water.

_____ I spend some time outside daily getting fresh, pure air and sunlight.

_____ I take high quality nutritional supplements according to my nutrient deficiencies.

Mind

_____ I generally love myself – I have a positive self-image.

_____ I usually look at the positive side of my circumstances.

_____ I am free from guilt over past or present failures.

_____ I generally feel love for other people.

_____ I accept people who have different views from mine.

_____ In relating to another person I am more interested in experiencing a positive, loving relationship than in just being right.

_____ I forgive others who wrong me rather than holding resentments or anger.

Spirit

_____ I have a relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ as my Savior from sin.

_____ I have surrendered the control of my life to the lordship of Christ.

_____ I have discovered and resolved spiritual strongholds affecting my life.

_____ I see God’s grace expressed on the cross completing all my deficiencies

_____ I am trusting God to sovereignly work through my circumstances to fulfill his purposes for my life.

THE HOLES IN YOUR WHOLENESS

What could you check off? More importantly, what couldn’t you check off? The later represent the holes in your wholeness! Conversely, the areas you easily checked off represent your areas of greater strength and maturity. Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of the checklist. The ingredients of health really are pretty simple for the most part. The problem is that we like to make health more complicated than it really is. Plus, we just plain avoid self-examination, preferring to just keep too busy to reflect on where we really are. We’ll do just about anything to keep from truly examining ourselves as the Bible commands.

Few people lack all the ingredients of body, mind and spirit health. Usually we tend to camp in a given dimension while minimizing the others. I don’t know how many people I’ve met over the years that were into health, as far as diet and taking vitamins, but really weren’t very healthy at all in the overall body, mind and spirit sense. They had holes in their wholeness. Sometimes they were ignoring physical ingredients like detoxification. They were trying to solve every health problem with another vitamin pill when their body first needed cleansing. More typically, though, they lacked in the emotional or spiritual areas – areas for which no vitamin pill will suffice. But that doesn’t stop many people from trying.

I could tell a lot of stories at this point. Many years ago I met a well-known health food guru whose focus was on raw food. Eating everything raw was the answer to all your health problems. I will never forget how offended she was when I expressed the opinion that her health problems primarily resulted from emotional stress rather than nutritional deficiencies. She thought I was a heretic for suggesting such a concept! And, by the way, this person was a Christian and should have known health was about a lot more than just the physical.

Let me share another story that typifies this problem: When I was first in clinical practice, a semi-retired couple traveling in a motor home came into our clinic for testing. Since our testing instrumentation could electronically evaluate the compatibility of nutritional supplements, the lady wanted me to test the products she had, as is pretty routine in my practice. What isn’t routine is the two large boxes of vitamins she then brought in with perhaps 50 bottles of vitamins! Naturally I queried her about why she was carrying so many vitamins (most of them unopened, by the way) around the country with her in their motor home. Her reply was typical:

I read a lot of articles and hear a lot of programs about different vitamins. Every time I learn about something that is supposed to help a problem I have, I go out and buy it.

What was she doing? By trying to solve all her health problems with just limited physical remedies, she was ignoring a lot of other health ingredients. I must admit, I spent much of my life doing the same thing, trying vitamin and vitamin to solve my health problems, often going from one fad nutrient to another, always hoping the next vitamin pill I would try would be the answer:

Well, zinc is supposed to be good for that – I’ll try it

Funny, that didn’t work; maybe I need selenium. No, that didn’t help either

Oh, it must be aloe vera that I need. Gosh that didn’t work.

Maybe a raw food diet will straighten me out.

And on and on it goes – a futile attempt to achieve total health using only physical ingredients of health. If you’ve ever wondered why you see so many sickly people at health conventions (and I mean the ones that have been involved in doing all the right nutritional things for years), I submit that this is the reason. The song talks about looking for love in all the wrong places, but a lot of people are looking for health in all the wrong places too.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not criticizing taking nutritional supplements. I take a lot of nutritional supplements and suggest supplements for my clients. Any particular supplement or diet may help certain people for whom it is appropriate. But if you have that area covered already, if you’ve already devoted a lot of attention to properly nourishing your body, you’ll usually find the answers to your remaining health problems somewhere other than in a vitamin bottle. The point is to evaluate which dimensions of your health are lacking and then supply those deficiencies, whether they are physical, mental or spiritual.

But now let’s get into the specifics of health in body, mind and spirit. What are the physical, emotional and spiritual ingredients that will make us healthy, that will make us whole? And more importantly, how do we supply those missing ingredients?

Chapter 1

God-Made Food

Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good. (Isaiah 55:2b)

A dentist friend of mine shared a story of the mother of one of his patients whom he found particularly frustrating. The child suffered from numerous dental and other health problems, and Mom couldn’t figure out why. In a moment of wisdom he gave some simple advice to her saying:

If you want to fix his health problems, stop feeding him man-made food and start feeding him God-made food.

Could it really be that simple? Absolutely. I must ask you the same question: Are you eating man-made food or God-made food?

It’s not news to say that food is essential to life. But which food is that God-made food that will produce optimum health in your body? It seems everyone has a different idea about what’s good to eat and what isn’t. Scientific studies and professional opinions muddy the water even more: One study says coffee’s bad; another says it’s good. One authority is for meat; others push vegetarianism. One opinion tells you to eat unsaturated fats; another says they give you, rather than prevent heart disease. And on it goes. How do you navigate this turbulent sea of opposing ideas about food and health?

Have you ever pondered the significance of God giving man instructions on eating immediately after the creation? We read in Genesis:

And God said, Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. (Genesis 1:29)

But, before you renounce meat and go vegetarian based on this verse, don’t stop reading at the first chapter of the Book. God had more to say about food after the flood:

Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. (Genesis 9:3-4)

The fallen, post-flood world was no