Bill Johnson - How Your Internal World is Affecting Your Physical Health
The target is to be so impacted by the heart and mind of Christ that our internal world becomes healthy. When my internal world becomes healthy, it affects everything about my life—my physical health, my mental health, my emotional health—it affects my finances, my worldview; everything is impacted by what I allow to go on in my heart of hearts.
Welcome! I’m glad you’re able to join us once again. We call this the Quest for Wisdom. The need has never been greater for people to rise up in the earth with the wisdom of God, for the wisdom of God brings solutions. We have never been more surrounded by challenges and problems than we have been in recent years. So anyway, welcome to the Quest for Wisdom. I’ve forgotten to mention this in previous weeks, but I’m doing most of my study or reading in this series from the New King James Version. I happen to have the Holy Spirit-Filled Life Bible that Jack Hayford put together, which includes many great word studies and information. It’s not a promotional for that, but just to let you know where I’m reading from, as some of the translations are quite diverse, adding nuances or flavors that can really help us in our pursuit of wisdom.
We’re starting with Chapter 14, which is pregnant with meaning. I was just telling the team here that this is a pregnant chapter; there’s so much in here for us. I’ll do my best to get through as much of it as I can in the seven or eight minutes we have together. So, Proverbs Chapter 14, I want to begin with verse 4. It’s one of my personal favorite verses, which I call Revival verses. You have to understand, I’m loosely translating Revival verses because they don’t directly talk about an outpouring of the Spirit of God, yet the principles involved in this book of wisdom pertain directly to great moves of God. Here’s the verse we’re starting with: Chapter 14, verse 4—where no oxen are, the trough is clean, but much increase comes by the strength of the ox. Where there are no oxen, the manger, the barn area, is clean. It’s orderly; everything is perfect. But if you want increase, you have to have a shovel; you’ve got to be ready to clean up a mess. Honestly, I don’t know of any verse that more accurately describes being involved in great moves of God.
There’s a notion some people have that if it’s a great move of God, there won’t be any problems with it, and that’s simply not true. Anytime people are involved, you increase the odds of complexities, difficulties, and conflicts—all of the above. The enemy is a counterfeit; he’s not a creator, so he likes to counterfeit things. When you’re involved in something that God is doing, in a mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit, there will always be opportunities for the flesh, always opportunities for the enemy to try to come in and deceive. That’s not to make us paranoid; it’s just to help us to sort through priorities. If you want a move of God, just be ready to clean up messes. You know, perhaps you’ve heard the comparison: graveyards are nice and orderly, but nurseries with lots of babies are really messy. One has life; the other doesn’t. Really, moves of God automatically bring challenges to life and force you to learn how to pray.
We’ve gone through seasons where, night after night, God was doing something so powerful, and we would look at what was happening and just shake our heads, wondering, «Is that the Lord?» I don’t know. First of all, is it biblically accurate? This is so unusual. We would just shake our heads and measure the fruit over time, coming back and saying, «Yeah, that was God; it was amazing.» So, I want to encourage you; it’s a risky but well-deserved journey to embark on—to say, «Holy Spirit, come and do as you please. I just want to cooperate with you.»
So, where there are no oxen, it’s a clean barn, but if you want increase, you’ve got to get a shovel and be ready to clean up messes. Welcome to Revival; that’s the life of Revival. Let’s move on through Chapter 14; there’s so much here. I guess I’ve already said that. There’s really so much that I want to talk about, so let’s jump right to verse 7: «Go from the presence of a foolish man when you do not perceive in him the lips of knowledge. The wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way; the folly of fools is deceit.»
Here’s the point: go from the presence of a foolish person when you don’t perceive that he is speaking truth or revelation knowledge. Why? Because who you associate with impacts and affects your discernment. Those you live life with actually impact your perception of truth. If you continuously give input to your life—whether it’s your best friend at work or the sitcom you watch on TV—and that input is not true, it will affect your ability to discern right from wrong, truth from a lie, and that which is vital from that which is inferior. So, the Lord wants us to be very deliberate about who we associate with.
This is my approach: I will serve and minister to anybody; they can be the worst person on the planet, and I will love and care for them. However, the ones I allow to speak into my life and contribute to me are a different story, and I will approach that with much more caution and care. So, choose the people you spend time with carefully.
I’m running out of time here; I must go fast. Verse 9: «Fools mock at sin, but among the upright, there is favor.» Fools mock at sin; this is a significant issue. What does this tell us? I’ll tell you: the enemy works to erode godly culture. He’s not going to get us to approve of sin overnight. Instead, he brings sin into sitcoms, jokes, and various parts of culture, knowing that if he can get us to laugh at sin—if we find sin humorous—then it weakens our resistance. That’s what happens. You can look over the last 40 years of TV and the subject matter. Every significant area of sin our nation is involved in today started as humor 20 or 30 years ago. When you laugh at sin, when you make light of it, you ruin your resistance and affect your discernment. It’s a big deal for us to be careful about what we’re willing to laugh at and accept as part of our entertainment.
Alright, let’s go down to verses 27 and 30, and we’ll end our time on this chapter today. Verse 27: «The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life to turn one away from the snares of death.» Verse 30: «A sound heart is life to the body, but envy is rottenness to the bones.» This quest for wisdom is more than just finding answers for the world’s problems. To me, that’s a spillover, a benefit, and a result, but the target is not simply finding solutions for world peace. The target is being so impacted by the heart and mind of Christ that our internal world becomes healthy. When my internal world becomes healthy, it affects everything about my life—my physical health, mental health, emotional health. It affects my finances, my worldview; everything is impacted by what I allow to go on in my heart of hearts.
Here it is: a sound heart, a stable heart; that inner world is life to the body. I encourage you, if you’re dealing with health issues at all, go through the Book of Proverbs and look at every time it references our words and our internal world of health: sound mind, sound heart—the internal world having an effect on our bodies. I pray that in this next season, together, we can learn some of the secrets of divine health because that’s God’s will for us. So, I pray that for you. In this next season, I pray everyone watching this would come into a place of breakthrough in areas of health, especially as it pertains to just having a sound heart. In 3 John 2, it says we would prosper and be in good health even as our soul prospers. So my prayer for you, for me, and for all of us is for the prosperity of our souls and for our internal world to be healthy. Amen. Bless you!