health Archives • Knowing God and His Ways

God’s purity and your health are linked. Because God is absolutely pure, he loves what is clean, and what is clean brings health to every aspect of your life.

With all the knowledge and technology available today, you would think clean, healthful water would not be hard to get in America.

Several decades ago the idea that tap water was contaminated and unhealthy took hold among the masses, and a wave of marketing persuaded us that if you wanted pure water you needed to buy bottled water. I did not want to spend a major part of my budget on bottled water, but when I did drink it I felt as though I was doing something healthy. I felt I was putting purity in my body, water that cleansed my body of toxins.

Then we began to learn that bottled water was contaminated. Chemicals could leach from the plastic. Lots of bottled water did not come from clean sources. Just because water was in a bottle did not mean it was pure, as many people had assumed. Bummer.

Foul in Flint

Then you have a case of major negligence from a municipality like Flint, Michigan. In 2014 a crisis began over the presence of lead in the city’s water supply. For months numerous governmental leaders and agencies who were responsible for the situation denied or minimized the problem. But eventually they could no longer deny the facts. The number of children showing up in local hospitals with lead poisoning was increasing. They were being poisoned by drinking tap water and suffering neurological harm.

One outside expert on municipal water quality, who was brought in to study and report on the situation, said about the governmental leaders handling the crisis: “It was the injustice of it all and that the very agencies that are paid to protect these residents from lead in water, knew or should’ve known after June at the very, very latest of this year, that federal law was not being followed in Flint, and that these children and residents were not being protected. And the extent to which they went to cover this up exposes a new level of arrogance and uncaring that I have never encountered.”¹

Stories like that do not make for trust in government.

Don’t drink from the water fountains

Here in Chicago we have not had a problem as bad as Flint, Michigan, or the same level of official negligence as far as I know, but we have had tainted tap water. When the Flint story came out, people here started testing the water and found that the water flowing from the fountains in public parks and in public schools had excessive levels of lead in many places, due to old lead pipes. News sources listed locations where the water was bad. Now the city is systematically digging up old water pipes and replacing them with new ones.

Meanwhile, don’t drink the water unless it is filtered.

Everything tainted?

All that is unsettling. What do you do? At my home we drink tap water run through a Brita filter. Is it pure? I don’t know. Is it tainted? Certainly. My son works for the EPA, and he says there is no such thing as food or water that is absolutely pure; the best you can hope for is toxin levels below what has proven harmful. Acceptable contamination. Relative purity. Minimal pollution.

Nontoxic God

The point of all this is not water, but God. The Bible says he is what our water cannot be: absolutely, 100 percent pure, without a trace of toxins.

1 John 1:5 says, “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”

Revelation 22:1 describes the New Creation: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.”

The water of life that God supplies is as bright as crystal, sparkling with purity like a crystal vase under a lamp in a jewelry store.

The Bible highlights God’s absolute purity not only by comparing him to bright light and sparkling, clean water but also to pure gold. Again and again God’s directions for the construction of the tabernacle specified that Moses was to use pure gold on various articles such as the Ark of the Covenant. “You shall make a mercy seat of pure gold” (Exodus 25:17). The pure gold symbolized God’s absolute purity.

God’s Purity and Your Health

Therefore he loves what is morally clean. Through Moses he gave Israel detailed laws to follow for what is clean and unclean. God knows clean and pure.

Therefore he knows what is perfectly healthful for us in every aspect of life. He is not like a negligent government official who fails to tell people what can poison them. Rather, God has been faithful to warn us about impurity of every kind.

He knows what is pure and healthful for you sexually and in your thought life. He knows what is pure and healthful in your attitude toward possessions and money, and toward other people. And he knows about pure emotions and desires, and pure speech. He knows about pure books, movies, and music. He knows about pure doctrine.

What is pure is clean, and what is clean is healthy. God is absolutely pure, absolutely clean, and therefore he brings health to your spirit, soul, and body.

Footnote:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis. Accessed 5-18-21.

Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)

When we know our protection comes from Almighty God, we have nothing to fear.

In this series on God’s protection in Psalm 91, we come to the second half of verse 1.

“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty” (Psalm 91:1).

Why can you feel safe at all times and in every circumstance? Because God is “the Almighty.”

God Almighty

That is quite a title to carry. How would you like to be able to legitimately call yourself almighty? Because we cannot, this world is a dangerous place, and if we think about it at all, we feel it.

But God truly is Almighty. He is more than able to protect us. He is so mighty that he can do not only the impossible, but the inconceivable. God could even stop the sun and moon in their tracks and leave them poised in the sky as the clock ticks. One hour with the sun and moon locked in place… two hours…five hours. In fact, he once did that for a full day.

Locked in place

Here is how it happened. When Israel invaded the Promised Land under Joshua’s leadership, defeating Jericho and eventually Ai, the king of Jerusalem recruited four other kings to join forces with him to attack Israel.

God told Joshua, “Do not fear them, for I have given them into your hands. Not a man of them shall stand before you.” Israel made a lightning march through the night and fell suddenly upon the five kings and their armies. God threw Israel’s enemies into a panic. Israel struck them down, and they fled. As they fled, great hailstones fell from the sky, killing more enemies than did the swords of Israel. It was a rout.

Since God had commanded Israel to wipe out these evil nations completely because they were under his judgment, Joshua did not want a single enemy soldier to survive the battle. For that to happen, he needed sunlight, for the day was nearing its end. What Joshua did next could only have been done by a man who knew beyond doubt that God is the Almighty.

Joshua 10:12–13 says, “At that time Joshua spoke to the LORD in the day when the LORD gave the Amorites over to the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, ‘Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.’ And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies. Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? The sun stopped in the midst of heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day.”

Inconceivably almighty

Knowing astronomy as we do today, that story may stretch your faith to the breaking point. Did the earth instantly stop rotating? That is only half of the miracle. Did the moon also instantly stop orbiting the earth? The physics of what happened boggle the mind, and no doubt, secular astronomers would mock the notion that this actually happened. It is truly inconceivable.

But only for our puny understanding and strength. The God who had the power to create the universe and all its heavenly bodies, and to uphold continually each particle in the universe with his powerful word, who is not restrained by any “law” of physics because these “laws” are simply a description of how God personally controls every particle and wave of his universe at all times, making every particle do exactly what he wants when he wants—this God is able to do not only the impossible, but the inconceivable.

This is what Scripture means when it says that God “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20, ESV). Another translation says: “All glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.” (NLT)

Let that sink in. It is not hyperbole. God is able not only to do more than we can imagine; he can do infinitely more than that. “Infinitely” is a large amount! God is the Almighty! He is infinitely Almighty. God can do not only the impossible; he can do not only the inconceivable; he can do infinitely more than the inconceivable!

The Lord can do the infinitely inconceivable. He can instantly freeze every single particle and wave in the universe in its place, in its state, unchanged for a day, while continuing normal physics within the bubble of planet earth and its atmosphere. Then resume the forces of light, gravity, motion, and thermodynamics in the universe as though nothing unusual had happened. Whooooooooooooaaaaaahhh.

That could be how God accomplished this miracle. Perhaps not. But one thing is sure: the sun and moon stood still in the sky for a day. It happened.

Overshadowed by God Almighty

God Almighty is the one who protects you. It is no strain for him to do so. He does not need to take a deep breath and work himself into a hyper-focused state like a chalked-up Olympic weightlifter hoisting a barbell of record amount. He is easily able to protect you from any virus, plague, criminal, or economic downturn.

Our focus Scripture says you can “abide in the shadow of the Almighty” (Psalm 91:1). You can be in his “shadow.” If you stay close to him, if you “dwell in the shelter of the Most High” (v. 1), he overshadows you with his almighty protection, like a high cliff shades a desert traveler from the burning sun. You can “abide” there. You do not have to come and go from his shadow.

He is near, and he is God Almighty. You can trust him.