Monday, December 27, 2004

Loss, Grief & Christ's Strength

by Donna L. Watkins
Originally Published in A Healing Moment

People all over the world are grieving due to some loss in their life. Grief will break down a body! David says, in Psalm 31:10, "My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my guilt, and my bones grow weak."

I think the loss is always there when you lose somebody. I lost my parents within five months of each other and I still miss them. My Mother died Christmas Eve 1985 and my Daddy, June 4, 1986 (a day after his 76th birthday).

The next month my husband was given the choice to lie or leave at his job. He left. I couldn't find what life meant at that time and my health quickly followed my thought life. I spent six months on the couch barely being able to lift my arm. I spent the next 14 years with burned out adrenals and fibromyalgia.

The past can really take it's toll on you if you don't take the toll on the past. The devil tends to whisper in my ear things that would want me to feel guilty and awful about many things in life, but I know that each day of my life regardless of how awful will be/has been used for good. God promises that to those who love Him. We don't always see it, but I know it's that way.

It wasn't until I got a book, "A More Excellent Way," that I began to learn Truth and take control over my emotions and guilt and pain. My first health victory with this knowledge was for the fibromyalgia to leave overnight, never to return. That was on May 6, 2000.

So, when I see what a mess I've made of something or what an awful circumstance has happened in a season of my life, I realize that the pain can mold me into a better person. I know my heavenly Father has a plan for me that I can't always see and no matter how much garbage the devil throws at me, He is always on my side.

There is war in the heavenlies for our souls and daily lives and it is a true battle to make it through this fallen world, but with our hearts in Christ it can be a pleasant journey and the load is a little lighter when we hang on to those ahead of us --- and those behind us :-)

We have Christ's strength within us to draw upon, for Isaiah 53:4 says speaking of Jesus, "Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrow" and the end of verse 5 is, "and by His wounds we are healed."

Do we believe the Word or do we believe the whispering between our ears. The devil's kingdom has nothing to do but destroy our faith. He certainly can't keep us from heaven if we're saved through Christ, but he can keep us from joy and peace on this earth if we let him. Revelation 20:10 says, "the devil who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur...." Don't wait until the end of the world to get rid of him. Take the power in you to do battle now.

Search for what the root of the pain is that you feel and then take the axe to cut it out. Choose to be healthy and think healthy. The past is past and you are only allowing yourself to be buried with the past, which means you have no future. Life will never change until you change your mindset about it.

The fact that Christ did take upon Himself our sickness and disease. We have access to that power for healing within. It's a process. It's a precept upon precept kind of walk and it's been the most exciting journey of my life! I eat healthy and have a totally different attitude about what life is all about.

God still provides our income from the sale of herbs and supplements because it's His provision for us and others while we learn to apply His Truth. God is always good and His perfect will is for us to be free of sickness and disease.

Copyright and Reprint Information
All photos remain the property of Donna L. Watkins and may not be republished without written permission. You may forward or use this copyrighted article on a website if you include the following credit and an active link back to this site:
© 2000-2007 Donna L. Watkins - This article was reprinted with permission. Visit the author's website, TheNatureInUs.com for more articles and free email subscription.
Link URL: http://www.TheNatureInUs.com

Friday, December 17, 2004

Any Wicked Way

by Donna L. Watkins
Originally Published in A Healing Moment



"O Lord my God, I called to you for help and you healed me. O Lord, you brought me up from the grave; you spared me from going down into the pit. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple." Psalm 30:2-3 and John 2:7

Working on our health requires a lot of inward looking into our heart and our soul structure. What do we really think all day long? Do our thoughts allow our hearts to sin? Are we really willing to bring up all the stuffed hurts and wounds so they can truly heal, or do we believe it's going to be too painful to live through?

We must be willing to let God search us and for the Holy Spirit to speak to us about things that must be dealt with and washed clean with the blood of Christ. It's so easy to harbor resentment and unforgiveness, to have buried anger unseen by our own eyes.

When you're really ready to go digging, find somebody that really knows you and ask them to be totally honest with you about what they see as spiritual problems in your life. Ask others if they see anger or bitterness in you? What is hidden to us is usually very visible to others.

If somebody accuses you of something, before getting offended, spend some time in prayer asking God if there's any truth in the accusation. Use these times to grow - not to allow the devil to dig deeper into your soul.

From "The Spirit-Filled Daily Devotional" by Dick Mills:

"See if there is any wicked way in me...." (Psalm 139:24 NKJ)
In the Greek Old Testament (LXX), the word translated 'wicked' here is 'kakos' meaning "ill." David is praying for the Lord to check him over to see how spiritually healthy he is. He is saying to the Lord: "How about my attitude? Do I harbor resentment? Is there repressed anger lurking inside of me? Do imaginations and fantasy dominate my thinking? Do hurts, real or imagined, constantly occur?" By asking the Lord to make a spiritual x-ray of his inner man, David is risking the pain and embarrassment of being found guilty of hidden and presumptuous sins. Can we take the same risk and ask the Lord for His inspection?

Man has explored everything but the explorer himself. He has climbed all the mountains of the world, but has not penetrated or searched out all the ridges of his own heart. Jeremiah labored with this truth when he posed the classic question: "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked (Hebrew: anach = "sick"); who can know it?" (Jer. 17:9 NKJ).

In the very next verse, the Lord responds rapidly with these reassuring words: "I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doing." (NKJ)

Heart searching is painful but it is part of the purifying, purging, pruning, perfecting, and polishing process designed by the Lord to bring us to full maturity in Christ. It is possible to approach the Lord with "clean hands and a pure heart," but it does take honesty and a commitment to truth that will not allow us to hide anything in our heart that displeases the Lord.

This book is now hard to find, but Dick Mills' book, "God's Word For You" is a great selection to glean his wisdom.

Copyright and Reprint Information
All photos remain the property of Donna L. Watkins and may not be republished without written permission. You may forward or use this copyrighted article on a website if you include the following credit and an active link back to this site:
© 2000-2007 Donna L. Watkins - This article was reprinted with permission. Visit the author's website, TheNatureInUs.com for more articles and free email subscription.
Link URL: http://www.TheNatureInUs.com

Tuesday, December 7, 2004

Allergies, Chemicals & Immune System

by Donna L. Watkins
Originally Published in A Healing Moment

There are layers to peel away as you walk your way to good health. As I read and reread the book, A More Excellent Way, and other related books, I realize that there is so much that God wants for us in many areas of life....and we walk by the gifts thinking they are not for us. Within us is the power to be who God designed us to be, but the enemy is always trying to convince us that we're nothing. Too often we listen to the wrong voice.

As I've been working on allergies and the layers and Biblical truths that relate to them, I've renewed my mind with some new tapes. You know how when you really grab a Truth, you kinda grab hold of God's hand with it and His power sinks it into your heart and soul and it becomes a part of you. Without that you can read and read something and it just not make any sense or have any 'guts' to it.

One of which is that God didn't create us to live in the world He placed us in. In our own generation. I've often thought how great it would be to live in earlier times when the world wasn't so full of environmental catastrophes that challenge our immune systems so greatly. I didn't realize that I was not believing that God placed me in this moment in time because that's where He decided I should be and made all things around me as they should be for me.....for His purpose in me. I realized that believing or wishing otherwise made me very ungrateful for being born when I was.... and it also, somewhere deep inside, made me think that God didn't love me as much as somebody that wasn't born at a time with so much pollution and trauma to the earth.

Let's take the topic of allergies! If God chose our point in time to enter this world before the foundation of it.....then perhaps we think He's a cruel God to choose a time when the world would be polluted and our immune systems wouldn't be able to handle it? God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow......are we really much worse off today? YES! the Earth is in a bad state of health, but has He give us provision for our bodies to adapt to it? Much like the bugs have adapted to the chemicals? You gotta admit that there are still healthy people around the world and if it's the chemicals that are killing us and making us sick....then why isn't everybody sick? Is it something within each of us "sick" people that makes us that way....rather than the environment around us?

Are our immune systems challenged not by what they were created to fight off, but by our own thought patterns? So many people are almost paranoid about germs. My generation grew up with the Mr. Clean commercials. It built within us a type of fear of germs. Fear will destroy our immune system, germs won't. We were meant to fight off germs, but how does fear consume our immune system functions? Does the anxiety about dirt (or about other's seeing our dirt, for some) weaken the immune system enough so that it cannot handle what it was designed to do?

God placed us in this generation at this point in the environment and I refuse to believe He loves me less than somebody centuries ago when the chemicals were nil. If the bugs have adapted, we probably have too. My belief is that our weak leak is not the chemicals or germs but the fear, stress, and anxiety that we accept as commonplace daily living...and that weakens the immune system that was designed to handle the environment around us.

It is certainly a different focus to have. With this new focus we can get busy working with ourselves to change the inside environment so that we can be healthy. A book that I've found to help determine the wrong emotions with individual health problems, and to encourage me on this journey is "A More Excellent Way" by Pastor Henry Wright.

Copyright and Reprint Information
All photos remain the property of Donna L. Watkins and may not be republished without written permission. You may forward or use this copyrighted article on a website if you include the following credit and an active link back to this site:
© 2000-2007 Donna L. Watkins - This article was reprinted with permission. Visit the author's website, TheNatureInUs.com for more articles and free email subscription.
Link URL: http://www.TheNatureInUs.com

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