Peace does not come in capsules! This is regrettable because medical science recognizes that emotions such as fear, sorrow, envy, resentment and hatred are responsible for the majority of our sicknesses. Estimates vary from 60% to nearly 100%. Emotional stress can cause high blood pressure, toxic goiter, migraine headaches, arthritis, apoplexy, heart trouble, gastrointestinal ulcers, and other serious diseases too numerous to mention. As physicians we can prescribe medicine for the symptoms of these diseases, but we cannot do much for the underlying cause–emotional turmoil.¹

In his book, Dr. McMillen gives a masterful description of the effects of hate:

The moment I start hating a man, I become his slave. I can’t enjoy my work anymore because he even controls my thoughts. My resentments produce too many stress hormones in my body and I become fatigued after only a few hours of work. The work I formerly enjoyed is now drudgery. Even vacations cease to give me pleasure. I may be in a luxurious car that I drive along a lake fringed with the autumnal beauty of maple, oak, and birch. As far as my experience of pleasure is concerned, I might as well be driving a wagon in mud and rain.

The man I hate hounds me wherever I go. I can’t escape his tyrannical grasp on my mind. When the waiter serves me porterhouse steak with French fries, asparagus, crisp salad, and strawberry shortcake smothered with ice cream, it might as well be stale bread and water. My teeth chew the food and I swallow it, but the man I hate will not permit me to enjoy it…

The man I hate may be many miles from my bedroom; but more cruel than any slave driver, he whips my thoughts into such a frenzy that my innerspring mattress becomes a rack of torture. The lowliest of the serfs can sleep, but not I. I really must acknowledge the fact that I am a slave to every man on whom I pour the vials of my wrath.²

When your body hurts, check your spirit. The pain may be a signal to pay attention to your thoughts and emotions.

I once assumed that pain was always the physician’s territory. But now I ask, When resentment, anger, hatred, and rebellion are involved, are you not in the minister’s territory?

Here is a scripture to think about:

I say then:  Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

Galatians 5:16

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¹S. I. McMillen, None of These Diseases (Waco, TX: Word Books, nd.), 64-65

²Ibid., 73-74.

“Three years ago I was bedridden. I had a half-dozen things wrong with my body. I just lay in my room, disgusted with God that He should allow such misery to come to one who had served Him as I had. My only consolation was the radio. One day your counseling program came on. You spoke about the importance of forgiving those who had wronged us. You quoted Matthew 6:15, ‘But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.’ ‘Of course,’ I said to myself, ‘he’s no doubt young and healthy and has everything going for him. Nothing ever happened to him like it has to me. It’s easy for him to forgive.’ The following week, I was determined not to listen to you, but I did. You said that unforgiveness can cause misery for the one who refuses to forgive. You quoted from James 3:14 and 16, ‘But if you have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not … for where envying and strife is there is confusion and every evil work.’ I yelled at my wife to turn that radio off. In the silence that followed, those words continued to resound in my soul. I have never experienced such anguish. When it came time for your program the next week, somehow I couldn’t keep the radio off. That time your Scripture was Isaiah 32:17, ‘And the work of righteousness will be peace; and the effect of righteousness will be quietness and assurance forever.’ I was a wretched man, but a thoughtful one, when you finished speaking that day. ‘What he says is from the Lord,’ I told myself. ‘The strife and confusion that he spoke about certainly describes me – and I have no peace or quietness, so where is my righteousness?’

I have a son and daughter, both married. Their two families entered business together, but by dishonest means one family wrestled the business from the other. Bitterness flared in my heart toward the guilty pair. I said I could never forgive the evil deeds that brought so much turmoil to my home. But there on my sickbed after the third broadcast, I began to see that by refusing to forgive, I was hurting only myself. I cried out to God to forgive me. In my heart, I forgave my children. I committed the whole matter to God. Eventually, the wrong was made right, but it wasn’t this happy development that brought me health again. My crippling ailments disappeared when my bitterness was taken away. That is what forgiveness did in my life.”

The names and certain details in this true case history have been changed to protect each person’s identity and privacy.

I was the guest speaker at a church conference and was attending one of those family-style banquets where they pass the platters of food and you eat whatever you want. I was sitting next to the minster of a local church. He filled his plate with a pile of potatoes, smothered it with gravy and all the trimmings, and ate it all. That is not what impressed me. He did it all over again! I could not get my eyes off that second plate.

Finally, he leaned over to me and whispered, “You know, Doc, I am a compulsive eater.”

What was I supposed to say to that? You cannot blame a man for being a compulsive eater, can you? I do not pass this way very often, so I wanted to give him a helpful answer.

I said, “Sir, I think there is a better word for it than that. It is called intemperance.”

That is a provocative thought, is it not?

I continued, “With reference to food, there is even a more drastic word than that – gluttony. There actually is an even more drastic word than that – sin.”

He smiled and finished his plate, but he was stirred up, spurred on, disturbed. I heard from his wife that he was very disturbed. The next time I saw the man was when he invited me to a banquet in his church a year later.

He had slimmed down. In fact, he looked great. There we sat – this time it was the pastor’s opportunity to challenge me. He leaned over me and said, “Doc, you are heavier than you were a year ago.”

I explained, “Yes, I cannot resist all this great food when I’m traveling.”

He said, “There is a better word for it. The word is intemperance, and with reference to food there is even a better word than that. It is gluttony. There is an even better word. It is called sin.”

That fellow stirred me. Whenever I head his way, I think about my eating habits. When I see him, I size him up and he sizes me up.

We need each other. People need to be reminded of what is right and wrong. It takes a happy person communicating these wonderful truths – not an angry, bitter, rebellious individual.

Our goal is to make people conscious of their good qualities and their liabilities. We must help people to realize that life stimulates whatever is in you – good or bad.

This story is taken from Dr. Brandt’s book, “The Power of the Call.” The names and certain details in this true case history have been changed to protect each person’s identity and privacy.

“Why, I bet I have to tell them three times before they fill out their repair tickets right or turn out a light they’re through using,” he raged.

Mr. Morgan had come to me from a sickbed. Every month or so he had to quit work. His stomach pained him; he was short of breath; he couldn’t eat. He would blow up at the garage and go home.

As we talked, he unburdened himself. Not only did things go wrong in the garage, but at home and at church, too. The baby’s crying upset him. The teachers in his Sunday school department were slow in putting through desired changes.

From his story, I learned that John Morgan never had much confidence in himself. As an expert mechanic working for someone else or in the ranks as a church worker, he had known how things should be done and he did them, to near perfection. When other workers fumbled, he would stew but say nothing. Even when asked for advice, he choked on the words in his throat.

This stemmed from his childhood, it turned out, when his mother and father never asked nor accepted his opinion, and they silenced him when he tried to express one. His conclusion was: “I can’t afford to open my mouth or I’ll get hurt.”

John Morgan saved his money and one day bought the garage. About the same time, the baby came, and he was appointed a departmental superintendent in the Sunday school. Now at work, he had to give orders. At church he had to give directions. His wife expected him to help in the decisions concerning the baby. What he had wanted to do all these years, he had the opportunity for, but no one paid much attention!

I reminded him that as a mechanic, it had been hard for him to do his job someone else’s way, and now it was hard for others to work his way.

Together we worked out a definition of supervision: The enforcement of a standard set by proper authority. Why was supervision necessary? Because people always fall short of the standard. It is human nature to miss the mark. Isaiah said everyone has turned “to his own way.” The psalmist said, “There is none that doeth good, no, not one.”

Supervision wasn’t simple or soon accomplished, but a steady, delicate task. As John Morgan learned and looked to God for patience, his blowups and sick days decreased drastically. And his effectiveness as a leader grew.

The names and certain details in this true case history have been changed to protect each person’s identity and privacy.

Up to this time, I had always assumed that pain meant something was wrong with the body and that a physician would know how to fix it. When there was a problem, you simply got it fixed, much like you would take your broken watch to a jeweler. The proper choice of pills or an injection would hopefully do the job. It simply never occurred to me that thoughts and feelings could affect the body.

According to Dr. English, the emotional state of a person can cause a perfectly healthy heart to beat faster and irregularly. There can be the sensation of tightening, pain, and numbness. There can be a shortness of breath and the feeling of faintness, weakness, or even giddiness.

The information that interested me the most was about the autonomic nervous system. There are certain emotional centers in the brain that are linked to the entire body through the autonomic nervous system. This system can be compared to the wires that carry electricity from a main power source to all the outlets in your house.

Charges of emotions are relayed from the brain, down the spinal cord, and through the autonomic nerves to the blood vessels, muscle tissues, mucous membranes, and skin. When you are under emotional stress, all parts of your body can be subject to physical discomfort because of a change in blood nourishment, glandular function, or muscle tone.

A healthy example of this is when a speaker who is about to be introduced before a crowd becomes fearful over facing the audience and suddenly his mouth will become dry. That’s because his blood vessels have constricted and glandular activity has been reduced. When the fear goes away, the dryness also goes away.

It has also been proven that emotional stress will increase the size of the blood vessels in your head; this, in turn, produces pain because of the stretching of the tissues around the blood vessels and the consequential pressure on the nerve endings.

Within the medical community, it has been know for decades that emotional or relational problems that remain unresolved can be “turned over” or “taken up” by some other part of the body. When an irritating friend or a troublesome family member cannot be coped with, the patient develops physical symptoms. A medical doctor cannot find any real reason for the symptoms, but knows that the true cause of these body pains may be because of emotional conflict.

Dr. English wrote a list of the thoughts and feelings that can disturb the autonomous operation of the body:  envy, frustration, worry, oversensitivity, ambivalence, inferiority, fear, ambition, resentment, self-centeredness, hostility, need for approval, guilt, repressed hostility, sorrow, rage.

He then gave us a list of words that were very similar. This list came from the Bible: “When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division” (Galatians 5:19-20). In essence, many of our negative emotions are actually sin manifesting itself in our lives.

Bob was a young pastor fresh out of college and just beginning seminary. He wanted to do well in his first church staff position. Bob had always wanted people to accept him and approve of what he said and did. However, not long into his new job, he discovered that not every church member liked what he said and did.

Bob began to notice that reading caused tremendous pain in his eyes. Normal lighting in his office gave him headaches. He couldn’t sleep at night. He was not as relaxed as he once was. Sitting still was almost impossible. Nervous twitching compelled him to see a Christian medical doctor. Bob was convinced that he had a brain tumor.

After the examination, the doctor said to him, “Bob, the good news is that you don’t have a brain tumor. The bad news is you have a severe case of stress! I will recommend two solutions to your problem and you can decide which one you want to try. I can give you tranquilizers to help you relax; or, you can leave my office, spend time with God, and ask Him to show you why you can’t relax.”

Bob left the doctor’s office knowing what he needed. He knew why he couldn’t relax. Although he respected the judgment of the people who did not approve of all he said and did, he also resented them and tried to cover it up in their presence. This was self-deception. The result? Restlessness and sleeplessness.

Bob’s experience illustrates these two Biblical principles: 1) “For not he who commends himself is approved, but whom the Lord commends” (2 Corinthians 10:18) and 2) “Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me” (Luke 9:23).

After Bob repented of his hypocrisy and allowed the Lord to give him genuine respect for the people he once despised, the headaches, nervous twitching, and all the other symptoms were completely gone within a week. Like the red warning light on the dashboard of a car, Bob’s body warned him that not all was well with his spiritual life.

Bob’s experience is not an isolated one. Over the years, I have met many people who have had similar experiences.

One day during a counseling session, David spoke of his problem at home. Often he would arrive in a good mood and would be hungry enough to eat a side of beef. Then his wife would begin to air her complaints. Perhaps he had slammed the door when he came in. Or, he might have been a few minutes late. So just before dinner was ready, his body would become tense and he would lose his appetite. His angry, resentful reaction to his wife produced drastic bodily changes.

A young girl reported she suffered from severe headaches. Careful questioning disclosed that the headaches always occurred when her fiancé failed to call when he said he would. A further look back through her life showed that she had headaches whenever something went wrong with her plans. She also resented anyone who interfered with her plans.

Ed sought counseling at the recommendation of his physician. “How can you help me get over a stiff neck?” he asked, truly puzzled. As he told his story, it became clear that life, to him, was one big pain in the neck. The tenseness of his neck muscles gave him the pain. He was tense because he approached the problems in his life as if he were a football lineman charging his opponent. He had a quick temper.

Mrs. Diamond was a beautiful, cultured, well-educated woman. But in certain situations she was having difficulty swallowing her food. I learned that these times of difficulty came in connection with appointments that her husband demanded she make and keep and which she resented.

The Bible acknowledges the connection between certain feelings and bodily affliction. For example, King David was aware of the relationship between sin and pain: “There is no soundness in my flesh because of Your anger, nor any health in my bones because of my sin. For my iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden they are too heavy for me” (Psalm 38:3-4).

Proverbs 28:13 tells us, “He who covers his sins will not prosper, But whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.”

Unfortunately, I have met with many righteously indignant Christians. They came to me because their physicians ruled that their headaches, stiff necks, skin problems, chest pains, breathing difficulties, digestive problems, and tensions were caused by emotional stress. Regrettably, theologically trained, highly respected staff people from the churches they attended had justified those symptoms by attributing them to righteous indignation. However, righteous indignation is often a disguise for sinful anger.

You may be thinking that to explore the possibility of sinfulness is a harsh approach. If so, be assured that most people I talk with think the same as you do. Let me simply remind you that Jesus came to save us from our sins, and that if your problems are linked to sin, you are just a prayer of repentance away from wholeness and restoration. Is it not heartless cruelty to treat people for sickness if they are only sinful? When a Christian is suffering bodily pain, exploring the possibility of sinfulness should have priority.

A dear woman named Mrs. English asked me for an appointment. I was reluctant to do so because it appeared to me that she was merely sick and in need of a physician. She later wrote about our experience together; it is a startling illustration of the interplay between sickness and sinfulness:

Fighting for my life! That’s what I was doing. Pain creeping through my body had progressed from aching hips to aching spine, both knees, now one ankle. A horrible nightmare, but I was living it!

X-rays revealed the discomfort in my hip was osteoarthritis. Within two years the hurt had traveled over almost my entire body and I was frightened and appalled at what lay ahead.

One year later I went to a very fine specialist. He ordered x-rays and blood tests and, then announced that although I did have arthritis, the pain was too severe to be caused only by my physical condition. I left his office in a daze. Getting into the car, I pled, “Lord, if these pains are psychosomatic, I need to know.” It was very perplexing, for supposedly I was a happily married woman with her needs met, one who had no real excuse to worry and who claimed her trust in God meant that, through Him, she could be joyful, loving, peaceful, gentle, and good. But I wasn’t. Active in Christian circles, I was regarded as a “nice, sweet lady.” But I wasn’t.

For the next three days, I felt much better and again went to the Throne of Grace and said, “Father, You have healed my body but how about my mind?” That evening someone disappointed me. When I went to bed, my bones felt as though they had been lit with matches. This was so devastating that I fell on my knees and cried, “Help!”

An eminent Christian psychologist was coming to town a few months later and a one-hour interview was arranged. I prepared for it by reading his book “The Struggle for Peace” and by compiling a list of “what bugs me.” A pattern began to emerge as I read and made my list–every time I did not get my own way, I had adverse reactions!

As my counselor read the list, I told him of my nasty feelings and reactions, admitting hatred for the way I felt and acted, but being unable to prevent it. He dropped a bombshell! He said I was an angry person–that I like being an angry person or I would have changed long ago.

I could hardly believe it, but I had no choice. I was fighting for my health. So I took it on faith that I was in the right place at the right time, listening to the person God had sent to help me out of this mess.

The doctor further explained that I had fooled many people, including myself, making them think I was what I should be.

Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?”

I was denying what was in the inner recesses of my life and thus was in great conflict. By now I was in tears, recognizing that actually it was a question of violating a divine principle of spiritual living, just as someone who is sick has broken some medical rule of living. I couldn’t wait to hear what would come next because I was looking for a way of escape.

As I continued to cry my heart out, my counselor pointed me to answers from the Bible:

I began with Proverbs 28, “He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.”

Going from Scripture to Scripture he showed me the way out.

I confessed my sin and received forgiveness for my reactions. Since that day, I have asked that I might not yield to the temptation to strike back at anyone, but prayerfully ask Him to take away these feelings and fill me, by His Spirit, with love, joy, and peace. Then I remind Him that I am thankful that He is so gracious, kind and good to me. He is always so gentle, yet firm, in His corrections.

I could hardly believe what happened. My severe joint pains were relieved, blood pressure was down, a new ability to relax developed, and my first reaction was not always [that] of anger. He began filling me by His Spirit with a new kind of peace and joy and a capacity to love.

Was it real? More than two years have elapsed since my visit to the Christian psychologist, and I feel better now than then. I have come to know the Lord Jesus Christ more intimately, to appreciate the work of the Holy Spirit in my life as never before and to trust God for all things in a way unknown in the past. Each new day I look forward to increased spiritual growth.

When your body hurts, check your spirit. The pain may be a signal to pay attention to your thoughts and emotions.