The Body Spiritual
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The Body Spiritual

A comparison of the physical and spiritual body

Victoria Moots

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eBook - ePub

The Body Spiritual

A comparison of the physical and spiritual body

Victoria Moots

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About This Book

Are you intrigued by the wonders of the human body? The apostle Paul was also and compared it to the spiritual body of Christ, the Church. Surprising things can be learned through comparison of the physical body to its spiritual counterpart, as you are soon to discover.

In this book, the Bible is brought to life by the author, who is both a minister and a physician, as she takes you on a spiritual journey through the physical body. In doing so, she illustrates through a series of medical parables both basic and deeper biblical truths, while at the same time providing practical and useful medical information. These illustrations provide much fuel for thought as well as food for the soul.

Dr. Victoria Moots practiced rural family medicine for thirty-two years in the town of Kingman, Kansas, and was the first female physician in that county. In addition, she is a minister, having served as a volunteer pastor for a country church as well as a volunteer chaplain for female prisoners. Throughout the years, she has also put her medical and ministerial knowledge to use on multiple medical mission trips to a third-world country.

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Information

Year
2020
ISBN
9781647733452
Subtopic
Religion
Edition
1
Spiritual Heart Disease
Of all diseases, heart disease is the number-one killer in the United States, surpassing even cancer. According to the CDC, almost 65,000 Americans die from it each year, and 20 percent of those are under the age of sixty-five. Approximately every forty seconds someone has a heart attack, and one out of five of these are silent attacks, with no warning signs. Heart disease is often overlooked in women because their symptoms are more subtle and often disguised as other problems such as indigestion, back pain, or unexplained fatigue, instead of chest pain. Symptoms of heart disease should not be ignored in the physical, nor should they be in the spiritual; they need to be evaluated.
The Bible has much to say about the heart, as it is also the number-one killer spiritually. Heart disease can lead to disability, not just death, because it could result in heart failure and a weakened state. We are going to see that this is also true spiritually.
The unregenerate heart of all mankind has been evaluated by God and found to be diseased. Jeremiah 17:9 states: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Therefore, we all need treatment for spiritual heart disease.
I am going to discuss the function of the heart and how heart disease can affect it, then apply this to us spiritually. The heart is the pumping organ of the body that circulates the blood, which carries nutrients and oxygen to all the cells in the body. If it stops working, you die. If it does not work properly, you become weak and ill and can eventually develop congestive heart failure.
The heart has four chambers: two upper (the atria) and two lower (the ventricles). The atria receive the blood, and the ventricles do the pumping. The right side receives blood from the body and then sends it to the lungs to exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen. Then the blood flows to the left side, which is bigger as it must pump the blood to the whole body. The four chambers are not equal, but they are balanced and they must be synchronized to be effective. They are unequal in size and strength but equal in importance.
This is also true in the body of Christ, the church. We have been placed in the body according to God’s choosing and given a ministry to perform. We are not equal in size, but we are of equal importance and must work together.
What would happen in the natural if the right ventricle became jealous of the left ventricle because it was bigger and thus decided to keep back some of the blood and not share it with the rest of the body—or if it refused to work with the left ventricle anymore? Even worse, suppose the right ventricle decided its job must not be very important so it just took the day off.
Now, perhaps the left ventricle thought it was better because it was bigger and its job was more important, so it decided to try to take on more work. As a result, since it is a muscle, it would just keep getting bigger. However, an enlarged heart is not good for the body. Either way, you would quickly go into heart failure.
This may sound absurd, but this sometimes happens in churches when members refuse to work together as a body and start comparing themselves to each other instead of to Christ.
A weakened heart is unable to pump enough of the blood it receives back to the rest of the body, so the blood backs up into the lungs, resulting in congestive heart failure. This condition was described by King Solomon in Ecclesiastes 12:6. In this chapter, he is describing things that happen to the physical body as it ages. Verse 6 states: “…the pitcher be broken at the fountain.…” The fountain is symbolic of the heart, which makes the blood flow, and because pitchers are vessels that carry fluid, the pitcher would refer to the vessels that carry the blood. He is saying that the pitcher (the vessels) cannot carry the blood because there is a problem with the fountain (the heart), indicating heart failure.
One of the most common causes of heart failure is underlying coronary artery disease or atherosclerosis, which means hardening of the arteries. Cholesterol plaque builds up in the arteries of the heart due to a diet high in saturated fat and sugar. Inflammation in the walls of the vessels causes calcium to be deposited, and they become hardened. As the plaque continues to build up, the flow of the blood is decreased. If a clot forms in the narrowed artery, then it becomes completely blocked, resulting in a heart attack.
Risk factors that can cause this include improper diet, lack of exercise or limited activity, weight gain, diabetes, and smoking. Other risk factors such as age, sex, or genetics cannot be changed, so we must concentrate on the ones over which we have some control.
What about spiritually? God cannot flow through blocked vessels, so we need to guard against the things of the world that can cause hardness of the heart. In Mark 3:5, we see that Jesus was upset with the Pharisees and He “grieved for the hardness of their hearts,” for they condemned Him for healing on the Sabbath. Legality had caused spiritual hardening of the arteries, and they became calcified, unmovable, and stiff. Hardened vessels cannot dilate or yield, so God was not able to flow through them. The Word of God will either soften or harden our hearts. Pharaoh’s heart was likewise hardened when he rejected God’s Word that was spoken through Moses.
Psalm 119:70 describes the hearts of those who are proud: “Their heart is as fat as grease.” Pride causes our hearts to become hardened and resistant to hearing God’s Word. Job stated as he was going through his trial: “He performeth the thing that is appointed for me” (Job 23:14). And in verse 16, “God maketh my heart soft.” Job was yielding to the hand of God as He was purifying him, rather than becoming hardened.
We get fatty hearts in the natural by eating fat. Healthy oils are, however, beneficial. The Old Testament tells us what to do with fat; we do not need to wait for a doctor to tell us. Under the Mosaic law, all the fat from the animal sacrifices was to be burned on the altar, and none of it was to be eaten, for “all the fat is the Lord’s” (Lev. 3:16). Fat is a good source of energy; it will burn and give off a hot fire. It produces energy but does not build you up; it just fills you up and fills you out. Fat is something our flesh lusts for. The more fat we eat, the more we want. This is not just a health precaution, for it has a spiritual meaning also. Fat speaks of fleshly zeal. We want to do something for God, but God has already done the work for us and wants to work in us. Our zeal needs to be given over to God so that He can work through us in order that His name will be glorified. Our works must be energized by God, not self. The zeal, the fat, belongs to God.
The apostle Paul, who was previously known as Saul before his conversion, had a zeal for God. He thought he was doing service to God when he persecuted the Christians. God saw his heart and turned that zeal around so he would preach the gospel instead of trying to destroy it. But he had to be humbled and come to the end of his own strength first. He had to give all of the fat to the Lord before God could use him. We should not eat the fat spiritually or physically if we want to avoid a hardened heart.
What should we do to find out if we have heart disease? First of all, if you are aware of any physical symptoms that are suspicious, you should seek medical attention as soon as possible. The psalmist, David, sought help from God when his heart began to trouble him spiritually. He recognized the symptoms, for he said, “My heart is sore pained within me” (Ps. 55:4); and he cried out “when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I” (Ps. 61:2). He went to the Great Physician and requested, “Search me, O God, and know my heart…” (Ps. 139:23). God knows the reason why our hearts are pained or troubled, and He wants to heal us. All we need to do is to call upon Him.
In the natural, to evaluate you, a cardiologist would likely do a stress test by putting you on a treadmill to see if there are any changes suspicious of coronary artery disease that would show up on the EKG tracing or on the nuclear scan. The treadmill, of course, would not treat the problem, only cause it to show up, for it only tries the heart.
God tries our heart also, as we read in 1 Chronicles 29:17: “I know also, my God, that thou triest the heart.” The Law was given to show the wickedness in our hearts. But, just like the treadmill, it can only reveal the problem, not provide the remedy. However, God did provide the remedy through His Son, as we find in 1 John 1:7: “…the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.”
If the stress test is abnormal, then you proceed to a cardiac catheterization. For this test, dye is put into the heart arteries to determine where the blockage is located. In order to have this test you must sign a consent form to give your permission for that procedure and possibly a balloon and stent to treat the problem if needed.
We need to seek God and give Him permission, as did David when he said, “Create in me a clean heart…” (Ps. 51:10). God desires to clean out our hearts. We are all God’s chosen vessels after we accept Christ, and He wants to flow through us. We need to submit to Him to search out the problem and allow Him to remove anything that is blocking His will in our lives, things that may be hindering the flow of the Holy Spirit.
Do we really want the Lord to try our hearts and search out our secret faults? Sometimes we even have things that we have hidden from ourselves, but they come out of our mouth under stress, for “…out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Matt. 12:34). If anger is hidden in our heart, it will come out when we are tested. Do we have any hidden anger or unforgiveness toward someone in the past (or present)? We must be like David when he asked God in Psalm 19:12: “cleanse thou me from secret faults.” It is only as we allow the Lord to examine our hearts and uncover the secrets that are hidden that He can heal us.
If a blockage is discovered during the heart catheterization, the cardiologist guides a small wire with a balloon through the narrowed opening and then inflates it. When the balloon is deployed there may be severe pain, but it is only momentary and it serves a purpose. The balloon must be expanded long enough and hard enough to crush the plaque and restore the flow, but the doctor knows when to stop.
This is true spiritually when we go through trials. We don’t like the crushing because of the pain, but the end result is an open, clean vessel. Job went through a time of severe testing and a fiery trial, but he was purified as a result, and his end was better than his beginning. Paul was also a “chosen vessel” (Acts 9:15) that God desired to use, but God had to humble and crush him first. Paul said, concerning his trials, in 2 Corinthians 4:17: “our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory”.
God knows, just like the cardiologist, how long to do the crushing or the chastening. He does this through His Word, other people, or circumstances so that we can become “a vessel unto honour” (2 Tim. 2:21), fit for the Master’s use.
What can the cardiologist do if the blocked vessel cannot be opened because the blockage is too severe? The next step would be to refer the patient to a surgeon for a coronary artery bypass graft or “CABG.” In order to do this, the surgeon must take a useable clean vessel from another part of the body and bypass the blocked vessel. The blocked unusable vessel is not removed, only bypassed, for after a period of time it may actually open up enough where blood can flow through it again.
This is the same thing that God sometimes has to do in the body of Christ when a vessel becomes defiled, obstructing the flow of the Holy Spirit, and is no longer capable of fulfilling their ministry in the church. That person is then bypassed until such time that their heart has been cleaned and useable again.
In the natural a bypass is quite a painful surgery from which to recover. Likewise, it hurts God to have to bypass an individual and use someone else in their place. Therefore, a bypass is always done as a last resort, both physically and spiritually. It is God’s desire to keep us as vessels of honor, open and yielded, so He can flow through us in the place He has chosen for us.
What keeps us from yielding? Why does the plaque build up in the first place and cause blockage? Is there anything we can do to prevent it? Let me answer these questions by first discussing our options for the natural body. I have already addressed the fact that diet is important. We must avoid eating saturated animal fat, which is high in cholesterol, but our bodies need the healthy fat th...

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