Joy and Healing

Part 7

“A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.” Proverbs 17:22

“Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul.” 3 John 1:2

Read that verse from Proverbs again. A joyful heart is good medicine. That is not a suggestion. That is not a nice thought for a greeting card. Solomon under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is telling us that joy has medicinal properties. It heals. And the flip side is just as clear – a crushed spirit dries up the bones. Joylessness does not just make you sad. It makes you SICK. The Scripture is drawing a direct line between your spiritual condition and your physical health and most of the church has walked right past it.

The Connection We Keep Missing

In an earlier post in this series (Power of Forgiveness) I shared how my sister died of bile duct cancer and how just three years later my father died of the same disease. The doctors said it was extremely rare for two people in the same family to die of this in such a short span. What the doctors did not know – what they could not know – was that bile in the Old Testament is synonymous with bitterness. The Hebrew word mererah means bitterness (Job 16:13). There was a physical manifestation tied directly to a spiritual condition. Unforgiveness and bitterness literally ate them alive from the inside out. I did not see it at the time. I did not connect the dots until later. But the connection was there all along – because the Scripture had already told us. A crushed spirit dries up the bones.

Now if bitterness and unforgiveness can produce disease in the body – and I have seen it firsthand – then it stands to reason that the OPPOSITE is also true. If a broken spirit dries the bones then a merry heart – a joyful spirit, a heart that is alive and at peace with God – does good like a medicine. Joy HEALS. Not as a metaphor. As a reality. The same God who designed your body to respond to stress and bitterness with inflammation and disease designed your body to respond to joy with healing and restoration. He wired it that way on purpose.

What the Doctors Are Discovering

Modern medicine is only now catching up to what Solomon wrote three thousand years ago. Researchers have found that positive emotions like joy and gratitude reduce cortisol (the stress hormone that breaks down your immune system over time). They have found that laughter increases the production of natural killer cells – the cells your body uses to fight infection and cancer. They have found that people with a positive emotional outlook recover faster from surgery, respond better to treatment, and live longer than people who are anxious and depressed. The medical world is publishing papers about this as if they have discovered something new. Solomon wrote it in one sentence. A joyful heart is good medicine. God did not need a clinical trial. He BUILT us.

Now I am not saying that if you are sick all you need to do is cheer up. That is not what this is about and I would never be so flippant about someone’s suffering. What I AM saying is that your spiritual condition – the state of your heart before God – has a direct impact on your physical body. And joy is part of God’s prescription for wholeness. Not the only part. But a part that has been largely ignored by the church and misunderstood by the world.

Jesus Healed the Whole Person

Look at how Jesus healed people in the Gospels. He did not just fix bodies. In my earlier post on forgiveness I talked about the difference between dunamis (spiritual miraculous power) and exousia (authority and jurisdiction). When the paralytic was let down through the roof Jesus did not say “get up and walk” first. He said “Son, your sins are forgiven” (Mark 2:5). He dealt with the SPIRITUAL condition before He dealt with the physical one. The forgiveness of sin and the healing of the body were connected. They were part of the same act. The power of forgiveness is the literal separation of sin from the sinner and the evidence was obvious to everyone – they were instantly healed.

Do you see this? Jesus understood what we keep separating. The spiritual, the emotional, and the physical are not three separate compartments. They are one system. What happens in your spirit affects your soul and what happens in your soul affects your body. When sin was removed the body responded. When forgiveness was received healing followed. And when joy – real deep Spirit-given joy – is present in your life it does something to your whole being. Not just your mood. Your WHOLE being.

David understood this too. Psalm 51 is his prayer after the worst season of his life – adultery with Bathsheba, the murder of Uriah, months of cover-up and deception. And look at what he writes. “Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit” (Psalm 51:6–12). Do you see what is happening in that prayer? David is asking for spiritual cleansing – purge me, wash me, create in me a clean heart. He is asking for emotional restoration – let me HEAR joy and gladness. And he is asking for physical healing – let the BONES that you have broken REJOICE. Bones. The same word Solomon uses in Proverbs 17:22 about a crushed spirit drying up the bones. David’s sin had affected his spirit, his emotions, AND his body. And his prescription? Restore to me the JOY of your salvation. Joy was not a nice extra. Joy was the medicine that would put him back together – spirit, soul, and body.

Third John 1:2 says “I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul.” As it goes well with your soul. Your physical health is connected to the prosperity of your soul. And what makes a soul prosper? Forgiveness. Peace. Right standing with God. And JOY. The joy of the Lord flowing through your spirit into your soul and out through your body like a river of life. That is God’s design for wholeness.

The Prescription Nobody Is Writing

Here is what grieves me. The church has a form of godliness but denies the power thereof (2 Timothy 3:5). We preach about healing but we do not connect it to the spiritual condition of the heart. We pray for sick people but we do not address the bitterness or the unforgiveness or the joylessness that may be at the root of what is wrong. We send people to doctors – and there is nothing wrong with doctors, thank God for them – but we do not send them to their knees first. We treat the symptom and ignore the cause.

I am not anti-medicine. I am pro-wholeness. And wholeness starts in the spirit. If your spirit is carrying bitterness your body will eventually show it. If your spirit is weighed down with grief and joylessness and hopelessness your body will respond to that too. A crushed spirit dries up the bones. But if your spirit is alive with the joy of the Lord – if you are walking in forgiveness and peace and right relationship with God – your body gets the benefit of that. A joyful heart is good medicine.

I have experienced this personally. In the same forgiveness testimony I shared previously, when I prayed and released the bitterness I did not even know I was carrying, the CAT scan came back completely clear. The x-ray showed a mass. The CAT scan after prayer showed nothing. My doctor looked at me and said “I don’t know what happened.” I told him I knew exactly what happened. I was healed by God. The spiritual condition changed and the physical condition followed. That is not theology. That is testimony.

Joy as Daily Medicine

So here is the practical part and I want you to take this seriously. If Solomon says a merry heart is good medicine then joy is not just something you experience on Sunday morning when the worship is good. It is something you TAKE. Daily. Like a prescription. You choose it. You cultivate it. You protect it. You fight for it. Because the enemy knows that if he can steal your joy he does not just make you sad – he makes you vulnerable. Spiritually, emotionally, AND physically.

How do you take your medicine? You get into God’s presence. Psalm 16:11 – “In your presence there is fullness of joy.” You get into His Word. You worship even when you do not feel like it. You forgive quickly because unforgiveness is poison and you know it. You surround yourself with joyful believers because as we talked about earlier in this series joy is contagious. And you choose – CHOOSE – to count it all joy even when circumstances say otherwise. Every single day. Not because you are pretending. Because you are taking your medicine.

Nehemiah told the people “Go and eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing prepared, for this day is holy unto our Lord: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). Feast. Celebrate. Share with others. And in the feasting and the sharing and the joy you will find strength. And in the strength you will find healing. That is the prescription. It has always been the prescription. We just stopped filling it.

A Prayer

Father, I confess that I have neglected the connection between my spirit and my body. I have carried things – bitterness, grief, joylessness – that have taken a toll on me in ways I may not even fully understand. Today I choose to release what is not mine to carry and to receive the joy that is mine to have. You said a merry heart is good medicine. I am taking my medicine today. Heal me from the inside out. Spirit, soul, and body. And let the evidence of Your joy in my life be obvious to everyone around me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

— — —

“There is no better evangelist in the world than the Holy Spirit.”

– D.L. Moody

“The Spirit-filled life is not a special, deluxe edition of Christianity. It is part and parcel of the total plan of God for His people.”

– A.W. Tozer

Always i-CH