BY GREG CRUM
“And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.” Matthew 10:28-31
We read here in Matthew of God’s care for us and His intimate knowledge of every fiber of our being, right down to the number of hairs on our head. It reminds me that God knows all about us, the major things and the minor details, and He’s always going to be the Expert who we should listen to!
Recently, I’ve either had or overheard conversations concerning the physical health of believers. Mind you, these conversations didn’t start out as discussions on health or healing, but through the course of the conversation, comments were made and beliefs about health and healing were revealed (out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, right?).
What got my attention in these discussions were the stipulations, addenda, clauses, and conjunctions that people of faith were putting on God’s promises of health. When you boiled down what was being said, there were a lot of “ifs, ands and buts” these individuals were placing on God’s ability and desire to keep them healthy, and/or their ability to receive it.
What do I mean? Let me give you an example. My wife and I went out to eat with another brother in the Lord. Good man, loves the Lord, been in this thing for a good while. We were ordering food and this brother was struggling to decide on what to drink. He didn’t want water, but didn’t want to waste calories on a soda. Easy choice then, right? Diet pop. Nope. Said he couldn’t choose that because he had come to the determination that the ingredients in the soda were making him forgetful.
A little later this same brother encouraged us to quit using sunscreen because that was causing people to have skin cancer. After that he told us not to wear sunglasses because it would fool our eyes into thinking our bodies didn’t need the benefits of the sun. Yeah. Now, a few of you, upon reading that, are thinking, “Wow, that guy needs a reality check,” but I’d say at least as many of you are thinking, “Well, he’s right about that.”
Now, I’m not writing these things to debate with anyone the “science” behind any of these presumptions, my point is this, all these beliefs that this man held, maybe without realizing it, were beliefs that put an “if, and or but” on God’s ability to keep him healthy.
How did he, and many Christians like him, get to this point of faith? Who are they listening to? No doubt someone whose opinion they value, someone wise in their eyes, some expert in the field. Sure, but this begs the question…Who’s the expert?
Sure, there are numerous people on this planet that know a lot about our bodies, but does that make them infallible experts? Should we listen to them and believe their words when they speak contrary to God’s Word? Absolutely not! God’s wisdom is always superior, even when we don’t understand His logic. That’s the takeaway from I Corinthians 1:19-25, right? But even with that said, does it make sense to listen to anyone more than God when it comes to our physical bodies? He’s the One that designed these things and still keeps up with every function. (Remember, He keeps a running total of the strands of our hair!)
So, who is the ultimate expert? God, of course! What has He declared concerning the physical bodies of His New Testament Children? “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.” (I Peter 2:24) Ye were healed. Period. No ifs, ands or buts about it!
Greg Crum is the pastor of Calvary Temple in Lovely.