62: Hold Fast to Your Integrity

 Wellness Series

 Health is relating to troublesome physical symptoms in ways that bring improvement in condition as well as increased knowledge about yourself^1.

Then the Lord said to Satan,

Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil? And still he holds fast to his integrity . . . . (Job 2:3).

So Satan answered the Lord,

Skin for skin! Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life.  But stretch out Your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will surely curse You to Your face! (Job 2:4).

Do you know yourself? I mean on a real level.  When I explore this question with young and old, the responses are usually describing personality traits: “I am . . . intelligent; independent; the quiet-type,” etc.  But do you ever stop to think about who the real you is?

The real you is that person who comes out in times of crisis, pain, or sickness, especially when your bone and flesh are touched with affliction; and often displays itself in ways so ugly we force to keep the sight of that “other me” from public appearance.  We don’t want anyone to see that “person” in us.  Well, guess what? God sees him or her; and the people who live in the house with you probably see more of “that person” than they care to.

Integrity is the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles (a sense of right and wrong and choosing to do right no matter what it might cost you).  Integrity is also defined as the state, or condition, of being whole and undivided (not double-minded or broken).

Troublesome physical symptoms bring pain and frustration to our lives.  How we overcome that pain and fear of loss of control demonstrates just how whole (well), how healthy, we are.  “Can symptoms of chronic sickness be improved with “happy” thoughts?”  “I should think positively; and it all will go away?” There have been testimonies which confirm the answer to these questions with a great big resounding: “Yes!”

What results from a life of living in “happy” thoughts was discussed in the previous blog (#61) talking about enjoying your body.  In today’s conversation, we are looking at ourselves and how we react in times when parts of our bodies want to swell, overheat, get hypo or hyper, ache, atrophy, liquefy, cough, stutter, or shake. 

In the Bible, Job was a very wealthy man, yet used his wealth to serve the Lord.  Satan hates children of God who walk with integrity.  Integrity is a quality of being; it is not a mere description of one’s personality. Integrity encapsulates (sums up) our emotions—every feeling and every thought, spoken and unspoken—and moves them in the direction of staying right with God, through good times and bad times, unwavering, neither doubting nor denying the choice you made to do the right thing. 

Integrity can cost you to lose family, friends, business deals, property.  Read the story of Job. And his wife said to him as he was sitting in ashes scraping at boils on his skin from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head , “Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9).  And, after rebuking her, Job did not sin (curse God) with his lips (Job 2:10).

Life is a flow of the spiritual mixed with the emotional (soulful) and physical.  We have previously discussed our triune nature and concluded that when one part of our being is affected, it affects the others.  Not enjoying your body physically can cause it to sicken.  The body feels that you are not giving it enough attention perhaps due to mental worrying about the situations currently going on in your life.  That stress on the mind causes various parts of the body to break down.

If bodily symptoms are genetic, you didn’t bring it on yourself, but the intensity of those symptoms can fluctuate based on how you address them or not.  And, spiritually, if you open up your physical body to debauchery by looking at sinful pictures or by going to sinful spots, or by listening to sinful words in poetry, jokes or songs, you allow spiritual evil to get inside your physical temple; and that also causes symptoms of sickness to appear.

It is when these troublesome physical symptoms appear that we must relate to them with the WORD OF GOD, the King of Integrity.  We’ve got to step outside our “panic zone” and fight those symptoms off with the balm of Gilead, God’s promises and blessings for keeping right with Him through the storms of life, until He rains showers of blessing upon our lives.

Watching loved ones relate to symptoms of hypertension, diabetes, and various other physical afflictions and dealing with some myself, it is easy to curse God by blaming Him for doing this and for letting them die.  But I have come to realize that it is not God who plans evil against our flesh; He’s the Creator of it. 

No, Satan also buffets and tempts us to break, to lose, or to throw away our integrity. But pain is not always from Satan. It can also be from the choices we make that go against what is right. It could also be from how we think: that we have lost faith or don’t have faith, or belief, that things can get better.  Doubt, or broken-heartedness, also causes bodily breakdown. 

Why did God allow Satan to make Job to go through such terrible affliction?  He knew Job would hold fast to his integrity—hold fast to God—no matter what.

You may be at a point in your life where you want to give up on God.  DO NOT GIVE UP! He’s right there in the midst of your pain.  Trials will come in life.  Relate, respond, reply to them with unshakable belief in God’s Word, God’s promises: “By the stripes of Jesus Christ, I am healed.  I am more than a conqueror through Jesus Christ.  No weapon fashioned against me shall prosper, because the Lord fights for me and destroys all my enemies for I am His child; and I cling to my Father.  So you, devil, you may afflict my body, but you can’t touch my soul.”

  

Then snap out of self-pity, get real honest with yourself, and start eating right, exercising right, resting right, taking the right medications at the right time; and stop ingesting, injecting, or inhaling all that is wrong.  You will surely experience improvement; and you will surely describe yourself your real self as a person of integrity.

And the Lord restored Job’s losses . . . . Indeed the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before (Job 42:10); because Job held on to his integrity.  It’s the only thing we got when everything is taken away.  It is the life-force of our soul.

© 2020 by Patience Osei-Anyamesem. All rights reserved.  Published by The Liight In Me Enterprise.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—without the prior written permission of the publisher.  The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews or other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Unless otherwise stated, all scripture quotations are from The New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.  Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Paintings retrieved from Black Art search engine.

1.     From Travis, J. (1977). The Wellness Workbook. Mill Valley, CA, USA: Wellness Resource Center.

Take My Hand Inspirations

61: Are You Happy?

Wellness Series

Health is enjoying your body by means of adequate nutrition, exercise and physical awareness^1.

This enjoyment manifests as a radiate inner glow that comes from excellent personal hygiene, a handsome or beautiful appearance, and the enriching environment in which surround yourself.

I have entered homes where even the cats and dogs are actually battling to bloodshed because the environment wreaks of chaos and confusion.  Your physical body is the temple of God, but can His Spirit live with you, let alone in you, if it is planted in ungodly soil?

We talk about the joy of the Lord being our strength.  That joy comes from an inner peace and contentment that everything is well now; or is going to be all right soon.  That joy is a knowing that this storm in life, too, shall pass; and I am coming out stronger in faith because of it.  That joy is from the Spirit of God.

Yet, that joy must be seen in your physical body and in the environment in which it functions, or has its being.  The outward expression of joy looks like happiness—a feeling showing or causing pleasure or satisfaction. Happiness is a product, or a baby, of its parent called joy—the feeling of great unspeakable happiness.

Do you get the connection?  Joy is the highest level of being happy.  But joy can only be seen by others and yourself in a mirror when you smile; when you dress gorgeously; when your environment is clean and wherever you take your body to go—the places you enter.

"Smile" by Nigerian Impressionist Nelson Obinna

The smile on your face comes from a body getting good nutrition, a regular regimen of exercise, and a positive posture in how you dress, talk your talk and walk your walk.  By experience, we all know that when you eat healthy foods, you feel “fit as a fiddle!”  When you exercise regularly, even the “happy” chemicals called endorphins are released from the brain and flow through your bloodstream keeping you giggly throughout the day. 

We all have experienced pure joy when dressing up so sharply that we confess in the mirror, “Wow! I am looking good!”  We genuinely smile at that new “happening” hat, or chic, slick suit, or eye-goggling gown.  When you are a child of God, what’s holding you back from making your ordinary, everyday dressing just as special?  Washing and ironing can make an old skirt or shirt look pleasing, even professionally passable.  Don’t discard your station just because you cannot afford designer clothes.  If you have the gift of fashion, design your own line of clothing.  But keep your common clothes neat, crisply ironed and smelling great.

Let’s look at the type of environment in which you place your physical body.  If your surroundings are not clean, your soul suffers despair.  The Holy Spirit is a “person” of excellence in all areas of your life.  Excellence is found in cleanliness, orderliness and beauty.  Our Heavenly home is ordered by these principles and so should your earthly home. 

Our earthly home is our physical body and outside habitat.  Are you taking care of your hygiene?  From the top of your head to the bottom of your feet, pamper your body with soothing moisturizers, good grooming, and a balanced diet.  Throw everything away that screams, “junk food!” and fill your digestive track with “spunk food”—highly nutritional that spark your happiness spunk.  And get in the habit of doing manageable bits of exercise, from 5-minute workouts or walks; and increase daily from there until an hour-long exercise regimen seems too short.

Do not enter into spots where there is no “positive energy”.  It will only bring your soul down into depression.  You know those places.  They are usually dark and sinfully dangerous.  Be careful where you put your body.  The Holy Spirit in you can only thrive in light.

Lastly, but by no means least, are you getting enough rest?  Workaholics, like me, must take my advice, dear Christian.  Over-working only leads to sleeplessness, agitation and more worry that all the things you planned just won’t get done.  On the spectrum of work, one end carries the lazy man while the other end supports the workaholic.  Both must meet in the middle and balance themselves on the fulcrum (the mid-point) called physical awareness—that point when the lazy man becomes aware (sees the results) of his poverty and starts working like the ant in Proverbs 6:6-11 to get out of it; and when the workaholic realizes he needs a break from the hustle for a moment to regain the inner strength he throws haphazardly into too many projects. 

When you focus on doing that one thing that is meaningful to you and that reflects your most important inner values, that’s when you find rest.  That’s when you can get 8-10 hours’ sleep satisfied that the work you accomplished for that day is leading you toward fulfilling your dream goals.  No matter where you find yourself on the “work spectrum”, you can always change positions until you reach balance—that point which gives peace to the soul; and then rest for the body follows.

Is anyone one of you in trouble? He should pray.  Is anyone happy? Let him sing song of praise (James 5:13, NIV).  Pray and give it all to God, then move out of the way and sing songs of praise expressing the joy you have in knowing that God is in control; and that He lives in you. Because God’s Holy Spirit is a person, He wants to live in a body enjoyed by its soul—enjoyed by you.  By taking good care of your body, you give glory and praise to God.

© 2020 by Patience Osei-Anyamesem. All rights reserved.  Published by The Liight In Me Enterprise.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—without the prior written permission of the publisher.  The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews or other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Unless otherwise stated, all scripture quotations are from The New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.  Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Paintings retrieved from Black Art search engine.

1.     From Travis, J. (1977). The Wellness Workbook. Mill Valley, CA, USA: Wellness Resource Center.

Take My Hand Inspirations