How Did I Miss the Core Message of the Gospel?
My epiphany didn’t happen on the road to Damascus, but what I experienced one morning three years ago changed my life and medical practice, casting a big, bright light on the true source of all health for body, mind, and soul. The revelation I received that day became the most important one in my forty-plus years as a doctor.
The day began quietly in the kitchen where I was brewing up some good coffee and listening to one of my favorite sermons. I like to wake up early and dive straight into the Word of God, either turning on an audio version of the Bible or finding a good message by a Spirit-filled preacher. Years ago, I gave up blasting myself with the news every morning because it only tends to breed anxiety and put my mind on the wrong things. I need to anchor my thoughts to Jesus and eternal realities, which are far more powerful and enduring than whatever is swirling around in the latest news cycle. Plus, the Bible says the Lord will keep our minds in perfect peace when we set our minds on Him (Isa. 26:3), and the news is anything but peaceful.
On this particular morning, I chose to listen to a message on the subject of love by Kenneth Hagin, Sr. In it Hagin stated that far too many believers have made Jesus their Savior from hell but not the Lord of their lives. Love, he said, is the main message of the gospel but not the main focus of most believers’ lives.
That’s when it hit me. For some reason, his words stopped me in my tracks. I realized in a burst of insight that as a medical professional, operating a practice and writing more than fifty books during my career, I had helped people find health and freedom through better eating habits, exercise, lowering their blood pressure, taking the right supplements, having good thought practices, and more—but love had never been central to my approach. Of all the life-enhancing topics I had researched and taught, somehow, I had never emphasized the core message of the gospel: love.
How could I have missed it, I thought, as the magnitude of the revelation sank in. How could I have dealt with so many matters of health and wellness in such a detailed way, yet mostly given peripheral attention to their Source? In some ways, I had been examining the branches of health while ignoring the tree trunk—or, more accurately, ignoring the root. As the supreme characteristic of God and the number one goal of all His children, love should have formed the foundation of my work from the beginning.
I stood in the kitchen, totally taken off guard by the flood of new ideas. I realized I had climbed to the top of the health and wellness field and missed the main thing. Without discounting the good that God in His grace had allowed me to do, I had to admit I leaned heavily on my intellect and not on issues of the heart. I emphasized the physical aspects of care while addressing the deeper root causes with a fairly light hand.
Please don’t get me wrong; basic health and wellness are a crucial and valuable part of God’s plan for each one of us, but no matter how well we achieve optimum fitness and nutrition, these bodies of ours all have expiration dates. For most people, it happens when we are around eighty years old. Then, no matter how well we have cared for our bodies, they go into the grave while our spirits, as believers, go to heaven, where we give account for everything we did on earth. Which is more important: how well we ate, exercised, and optimized our hormones, or how well we loved? The answer now seemed obvious to me.
To learn more about Don Colbert, MD’s latest book, Dr. Colbert’s Spiritual Health Zone, visit Mycharismashop.com