Podcasts + Posts

Emotional Wholeness involves recognizing your emotions, reading what they say before you react, and then responding to the world around you in a healthy + intentional way. 

In this video we discuss three important ideas about emotional health… and then we end with the three-point emotional wholeness checklist. 

I'll start with the three main ideas and then provide you with the checklist...

1. Emotional health is a vital component of total health.

Emotional health is a vital component of total health- yet it’s one that we often overlook (or don’t even own in ourselves). We may be unaware of emotional issues.

Peter Scazzero (Emotionally Healthy Spirituality) observes that many Christians walk through life with an under-developed emotional center. He reminds us, first of all, that we are multifaceted people- each of us having various components: 

• Physical
• Spiritual
• Intellectual
• Social / relational 
• Emotional

Most of us readily...

I've looked throughout the Bible to try and find a "formula" for faith and healing. I've discovered that, well... you can't find one.

(Listen to the podcast talk at https://www.overflowfaith.com/blog/07 for more)

A lot of people think that you've got to have complete faith in order for God to bless you- and that if you don't then somehow He's restrained until you "get your faith up." Now, sure, belief makes things better. It gives you more stability... a foundation.

But there's no "one-sized" fits all formula for faith in the Bible. I've looked. Over and over. It's just not there...

Get this: Jesus healed people who had no faith- people who didn't even know who He was! (For instance, the man He healed at the Pool of Bethesda, in John 5.)

Jesus also healed people with "partial" faith, like the guy who exclaimed, "I believe- help my unbelief!" when his son was being tormented by a demon (Mark 9:24). And like the lepers who said, "If you're willing..." (Matthew 8:2).

...

I thought the Holy Spirit was temperamental. Tidy. Reserved. And that we had to act a certain way in order to see the Spirit move. I thought we might "move" in the wrong way and cause the Spirit to exit the building. Turns out, I was wrong. Here's something I learned from the healing evangelist.

The strangest thing happened on a “Christian TV station”  one night (I know- I thought only people could be “Christian,” not music, books, stores, clothing lines, and even station stations… but… alas… a “Christian station” is a cable television network chock-full of televangelists, prayer cloths, and commercials with starving kids that you can save right now for less than the cost of a cup of coffee per day). OK, I exaggerated a bit on that, but you get the idea... yes, there is a station full of this stuff!

Here's what happened: a well-known evangelist (you'd know him if I mentioned his name, described his hair, or detailed the...

Continuing the discussion from the previous talk, we go back to the Exodus story and look at how God first revealed Himself to the Children of Israel after freeing them from slavery. 

A lot of people feel that we somehow diminish the other gifts of God- particularly, forgiveness of sins- if we “emphasize” miracles. Things like healing. 

“Keep our eye on the main thing,” people caution.

“And stay focused on the meat of the Word,” they warn, “instead of the superficialities.”

Some of even argue that Satan wants to heal people in order to lead them astray. And, while we DO see examples in the Bible where false prophets can do false signs and wonders, the general thrust of Scripture is that God wants His children well.

What good father wouldn’t want THIS for His kids...?

It makes sense, then, that the first way in which God revealed Himself to the Children of Israel AFTER being freed speaks to this very issue. This first...

Somebody asked me a few weeks ago, “Why do you teach natural health?”

By that, they meant something like this: “You teach grace and healing… why do we need natural health if we have supernatural power available to us?”

It’s a great question. 

The sarcastic reply would be, “Why do you need doctors and Western medicine if we have supernatural power available? Whereas ‘church people’ seem hesitant to venture into the natural health waters for fear that they’ll contract ‘new age’ demons, few of them give a second thought about rushing to the doc in the box, big pharma, or invasive surgeries…”

Why do you need that if you have supernatural power?

The honest reply, though, the sincere one that penetrates the heart… and loves deeply… and is THE RIGHT answer (I believe) is multifaceted:

First, we have far more control over our health than we’ve been taught. We’re not victims...

Sometimes, what we need betrays our theological box. So the box has to go. That is, we find ourselves facing a circumstance where we DESPERATELY need God to shine… yet it doesn’t fit the way we’ve been told He moves….

Physical healing is one of these areas. It’s a box we create, and a box that can’t withstand the pressure of reality. 

My experience… 

In the past I came in contact with two groups on two different extremes that theologically didn’t believe in physical healing. It didn’t fit their “intellectual system.” 

On one hand, Christian fundamentalists assumed that Jesus healed, and that the disciples healed. But, healing passed away once we had the Bible. We no longer needed miracles to “know” how God is since we could just read about Him in print…

Say what? 

Yeah, that’s what they said. 

Some of the leaders in this movement even said that when we see healing-...

It's a given that it takes time to learn to ride a bike, bake a cake, or even do a bit of public speaking. What's odd, though, is that we don't often extend that same grace to learn when it comes to matters of the Spirit.

(It's no secret that I believe in healing- in "instant"/Divine/miraculous healing and in health & wellness- lifestyle choices that make you better over time. In fact, I think they both work together- and that each works better with the other. I discuss that in great detail in our healing workshop.)

When it comes to healing, though, people think that you've either "got it" or that you don't. That is, it's either "your gift" or it's not.

(Incidentally, a lot of people think the same thing about hearing God’s voice when we pray… that you either CAN or you CAN’T, that some people are just born with it and some people just aren’t).

SOME PEOPLE HAVE THE SPIRIT, SOME DON’T?

Now, I do believe that...

Some people are hoping for a miracle. That's their health plan. And, let's be honest, sometimes that's exactly what's needed- a miracle. 

However, even if a miracle comes, you'll need to manage it, to steward it... in the same way lottery winners have to manage their money.

Ask the tough questions with me...

• Why do most of the people get a financial windfall- be it through the lottery, through a large inheritance, or through a huge sports contract- go broke within just a few years?
• And why do some people "lose" their healing?

I don't know about you, but I've seen people healed of something- radically, miraculously- and then watched it all go away. It's almost as if the healing never happened. Honestly, I struggled with this concept for a few years.

Why does the healing disappear?

One day it dawned on me...

I was watching an ESPN documentary about professional athletes- how many of them earn incredible sums of money (in the millions, overnight!),...

Faith is something that usually penetrates our only. We think of it as belief- as something that happens in the head. Perhaps that's why we make theological fences, counting some people "in" and other people "out" based on how well their beliefs (their logical framework) lines up with our own...

That's kinda odd, isn't it?

Don't get me wrong- I'm all for truth. But when the Bible speaks about truth it calls us NOT into a relationship with facts and figures and data... not even to a relationship with a book. Rather, it calls us into relationship with a person.

Are relationships information-based or experience-based?

Solomon was pretty clear that "without vision people perish" (Proverbs 29:18). 

Or, they "cast off restraint." 

Or, to say it another way, they lose heart, motivation, and drive...

The word Solomon uses for vision here isn't the word Hebrew people in his culture used for "ideas" (read: logic). Rather, he uses the word they used to denote the...

A few months into researching the material for the health & healing workshop, I came across an interesting tidbit... it seems that there are a TON of places we go for info. Some of those places aren't traditional at all...

For example... 

A few years ago, Cristy and I decided it was time for a getaway- a second honeymoon of sorts, seventeen years into our marriage. We set some money aside in a savings account, arranged childcare for a specific week, and began looking for places to fill the time...

The first place looked? The web. 

Specifically, this: Cristy made a post on Facebook- "Where would you go if you were...?" She went on to describe the criteria. 

• All-inclusive. 
• No kids (We have nine, so if we were wanting to hang out with kids we could have just stayed home, right? We love kids, but this was a couples getaway- LOL!). 
• Wiling to pay more than the average vacation but didn’t want to break the bank.

We got a...