But Jesus answered, “No more of this!” And he touched the man’s ear and healed him. Luke 22:51

 

When the level begins to sink in the honeycomb of life, it does not merely affect one aspect of your life–say the physical or the emotional. It affects everything–your body, your emotions, and your spiritual nature all at once. There has been a blind spot in our thinking that compartmentalizes life. You have aches or pains. “That is physical!” you think. You are sure that aspirin or an antibiotic will be enough to cure it, but it does not work that way. The physical may merely be the cause of tension, and aspirin or antibiotics would merely be treating the symptom–not the cause.

 

Here is another example. You have just come back from a hard weekend. You helped your brother-in-law move, and for all you knew, he might as well have had rocks in those boxes. When Monday morning rolls around, you are tired and things never looked worse. You do not understand it…at least not completely. You know that you are tired–but you find yourself depressed and even angry. You have forgotten that the physical affects the emotional just as the emotional does the spiritual.

 

Elijah is the classic example of a man who learned the hard way that when one area of our lives is down, we are down straight across the board. Remember when he prayed the fire down from heaven on Mt. Carmel and God gave him a tremendous victory. But, the next day he learned that Jezebel, that was out to get him. What was one well-painted old woman when he faced the 450 prophets of Baal? That one old gal would not have put a dent in his emotional armor the day before, but Elijah was physically and emotionally exhausted–so he turned and ran for his very life.

 

Why? Was he a coward? Not for a minute. That fiery old prophet had taken all he could handle, and the physical exhaustion could not help but affect his spiritual outlook as well. May I say it again? When the level goes down in the honeycomb of your life, it goes down in every area and compartment. This is a simple truth, but how often we forget it.

 

The physical affects the emotional and the spiritual. The emotional affects the physical and the spiritual just as the spiritual affects the emotional and the physical. Medical science has coined a word for it. It is called “holistic medicine,” recognizing that life is a composite, a whole, and that our disorders cannot be isolated into little compartments.

 

There is one more thing to be said on the subject, and perhaps it is the most important of all. There is healing for all of your life–body, soul, and emotions as well, and when one troubled area of your life is made whole, your entire being is enriched. Holistic medicine recognizes that emotional and spiritual healing are vital to good physical health, and a recognition of the spiritual means that we recognize God made us for fellowship with Him.

 

Spiritual healing eliminates attitudes of bitterness, hatred, envy, anger and resentment that disables. When those attitudes are eliminated, the physical problems that often tie us in knots are healed as well. Holistic medicine treats the whole person–not just the symptom. Jesus Himself did this. “Out of the heart,” He said, “come the real issues of life.”

 

Inversely, when you refuse to let God touch your life, you refuse His presence in your heart. We have also deprived ourselves of spiritual healing that produces harmony physically and emotionally. It is high time to recognize that life is a whole, and when God touches you, He touches your life.

 

Resource reading: Matthew 12:30-37