Causes of Sickness

Ultimately sickness comes from the fallen condition of the world. We cannot always know the causes of specific sickness. However many diseases result from bad life style choices, specific sins and from spiritual and emotional conditions.

Contemporary medicine has done much research into the relationship between various emotions and disease. Every emotion produces a chemical response in the body. It is known that joy for example causes the body to produces disease-fighting endorphins. Similarly depression lowers resistance disease. Stress causes the body to secrete excess cortisone, which over time may damage the heart veins and arteries. Certain fears produce an adverse effect on the lungs and so on.

Grief, sorrow and the hurts of life can break our hearts, and weaken our immune system so that we become more vulnerable cancer and immune deficiency diseases. (For a fuller treatment of this see “ A More Excellent Way – The Spiritual Roots of Disease” by Pastor Henry Wright

Whatever the causes of disease, the scriptures and the example and teaching of Jesus show that it is God’s will to heal disease. Believers should rightly turn to the Lord to remove their sickness and to help them discern and remove the factors that cause the disease in the first place. Medical science is part of humanity’s fight to resist disease. Seeking God for healing does not exclude the use of medicine.