The Lord’s desire for our health and prosperity is clearly displayed throughout His Word. In 3 John 1:2, the apostle John, moved by the Holy Spirit, expresses this divine wish:

“Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.”

This statement depicts the direct correlation between our physical health and our internal thoughts. Prosperity and health are not merely external blessings but are deeply rooted in the condition of our spirit, specifically our thoughts, so we need to take control of those thoughts if we want to see healing in our lives.

As humans, it is naturally difficult to never worry or think negatively, and that is why we must accept a transplant of God’s thoughts into our minds. We must surrender our earthly thoughts to His divine perspective, and that takes meditation, meditation on the powerful Word of God, just like Joshua 1:8 says:

“This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe
to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.”

What does that look like? This verse seems to say that we will have prosperity just by speaking verses, but many times, people recite powerful verses over and over without receiving the outcome they desire. Why is that? It is because you cannot spend what you do not have, and when you just read a verse without meditating on it, you do not truly have it in your heart.

There are so many intricacies missed by just glossing over verses while we read. Sometimes, a single word holds groundbreaking revelations that we don’t think about when we just read it at face value. That is why meditating on the Word requires that we pore over a verse or verse fragment one word at a time. This can be applied to any part of any verse. For an example, let’s look at 1 Corinthians 2:16:

“For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? but we have the mind of Christ.” 

We can break it down even further and look just at the phrase, “we have the mind of Christ.” If we have the mind of Christ, that means we have a mind that resists temptation, like Jesus resisted temptation in the wilderness. If we have the mind of Christ, then we have a mind that loves all people, because He loves all people. If we have the mind of Christ, then we have a mind that can remain firm in our convictions even in the face of extreme adversity, just like Jesus never wavered even when being sentenced to death. Do you see how many hidden victories are contained in that phrase? How much do we miss when we don’t take the time to study and meditate on the scriptures and truly commit them deep into our spirit?

It is important to get these things down deep into our souls because, like it says in Proverbs 23:7, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” If we want to be godly people, then we need to think of godly things, but this works the other way too. That is what worrying is; it is meditating on bad things, things that do not yield good results, and we need to realize that it is futile. It cannot fix anything! Our problems do not need the attention of our futile worry; our problems need the attention of God, who is more than capable of solving them. 1 Peter 5:7 says, “casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you.” We can cast all our cares on the Lord because He cares for us! He wants what is best for us, and anything that would cause us to worry is not His best. God’s will for us is not for us to suffer.

In Greek, “worry” is merimnao (μεριμνάω), which means to be anxious or to be overly concerned. This word is found in Philippians 4:6: 

“Be careful [merimnao] for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.”

God commands us not to worry but instead to trust Him with everything. That means that when we worry, we are breaking His command! We sin against God by not trusting Him, and we must repent of that sin.

Worry is a wrong way of thinking, and the devil can only operate in our lives through the doors that wrong thinking opens. Many people believe that God brings about trials to test us or teach us a lesson, but God does not use bad things to teach us lessons; He teaches through His Word. James 1:17 says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” Every good and perfect gift. Very few people live in the Lord’s best because they do not realize what belongs to them, they have not developed their faith to receive it, or they are in disobedience. We must recognize that worry is not a thought pattern of faith, and we must replace it with prayer, thanksgiving, and supplication.

It is God’s part to manage the problem, but we have a part too, and it is to be disciplined in what we do with our mind and bodies. 2 Timothy 1:7 says, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind,” and the word for “sound mind” in the Greek is sōphronismou (σωφρονισμοῦ), which refers to a disciplined, self-controlled mind that is stable and well-balanced. God has given us a well-balanced mind with discipline and self-control so that we can routinely cast down thoughts that do not bring peace and are not of Him.

Any situation that is not peaceful must be answered with faith. During times of emergency, anxious thoughts will still come to bombard us, but we must out-talk them. Satan is a tormented being, and when he comes into a room, his torment can be felt, but it does not belong to us. We must not take it upon ourselves. Victory is not about the devil leaving us alone; it is about remaining untroubled even when he comes, no matter what surrounds us. We are fortunate to have a God who prepares us and gives us everything we need to overcome, but we need to make our spirits the master, our minds the servant, and our bodies the slave. The spirit of man is the feature that is like God, and our spirits are equipped to take the lead. We are not called to simply cope with fear and worry; we have total authority, and we are called to rule and reign over them!

Jesus told the woman with the issue of blood in Mark 5:34, “Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.” Continued peace was the condition for continued healing, so peace must become a way of life for healing to be continuous. It may seem impossible to maintain peace during a storm, but Jesus said in John 14:27, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” According to His words, we do not even have to form our own peace to take solace in because Jesus takes care of that. He gives us His own peace! He wants us to have it because what we choose to meditate on will bring a harvest, and He does not want us to reap a harvest of worry.

The enemy often tries to get us meditating on the wrong things. He points out where we have failed, where we are struggling to see God, and where we are ashamed, but even when we make mistakes, we can still cast our burdens on Jesus, and that is the way He intends for us to handle worry. When the spiritual life is in order, the body responds, so we must quiet our minds and ask the Lord what needs to be transformed, because the Holy Spirit knows what is within us that needs to change. If we do not correct what the Lord is dealing with us about, we open the door to negative consequences, so we must purge our conscience and silence the replay of worry in our minds. Replace that worry with scripture. Meditate on God’s holy Word, and I promise you that He will use it to renew your worrying mind.