A joyful heart is good medicine

A joyful heart is good medicine, But a broken spirit dries up the bones.
-Proverbs 17:22

Did you know that laughter reduces the risk of heart disease?

Did you know that rejoicing triggers the release of the body's natural pain-relieving chemicals?

Did you know that a joyful mindset increases the activity of infection-fighting antibodies, which target viruses and tumors?

Being joyful boosts the immune system!  A joyful heart is indeed a good medicine.

Long before medical science proved that our mental outlook can effect our health, Solomon wrote that verse, under the inspiration of God.

The Hebrew word for medicine, “gay-HAAH”, only occurs this one time in scripture and it means "healing", or "relief".

Notice that this verse does not say, "a broken heart heart dries up the bones".  What it says is there are two things that can happen to us in two different but related parts of our inner lives.

Our hearts are the center, where we think, feel, and decide.  The control center.  

A joyful heart points us towards positive thoughts, not just saying "I think I can" over and over, but thoughts governed by God's word.  When our hearts are positioned in a joyful state, it affects all our other feelings.  And that joy is not something I'm talking myself into, but anchored in God's faithfulness.

I think we can understand this verse to say that when you don't have a joyful heart, that heals and relieves the sorrows and negative experiences you may experience, you can end up with a broken spirit.

What does this mean?  How can the failure to walk in joy end up breaking your spirit and drying up your bones?  

If the heart is your control room, the spirit is the engine room.  If our spirits are operating as designed, then we can experience God, His faithfulness, His goodness, His lovingkindness, and His fatherly affection towards us.  When we are walking in joy, our capacity for God opens up.  We see, we hear, and we know.  We are able to walk in faithfulness.

If the engine room of your life isn't working, you begin dying or living below your calling.  God's children need their spirits to be in tune with God.

Our hearts need to be controlled by us and steered into joy, faithfulness, and the love of God.

A joyful heart has been taught or trained to find happiness in God.

Proverbs 3:5 says:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.

The way that joy in the heart is good medicine is by having New Testament faith.

In 1842, Alexander Campbell wrote this, 

“Being cheerful is a Christian duty and God’s powerful means of health to both the body and the mind”, and that, “New testament faith produces a calm, logical, and medically beneficial cheerfulness”.
(1842, Millennial Harbinger)

Listen to what Romans 5 says about how New Testament faith that gives us a joyful heart:

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (ESV)
Romans 5:1-5

We will rejoice in hope of the glory of God and we will even rejoice in our sufferings, having been justified by faith and having peace with God through Jesus Christ.  And this hope is not shameful because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And our spirits, which is the driving force of our lives as Christians, can be broken and dry up our inner life.  Our sin or sin against us or misfortune and how we react to it can sink us into despondency.  

If we have sinned, we know that we can repent.

1st John 1:9 says:

"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

And when we repent, we can have our joy restored, just like David prayed in Psalm 51, verse 12:

"Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit."

What if you have not sinned, but your heart is filled with fear because of what is happening to you?  God's love is the solution.  1st John chapter 4, beginning in verse 15 says this:

"Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love."

1st John 4:15-18

"A joyful heart is good medicine."

Human philosophies and religions say that our mind, body, and spirit are separate.

But the Bible teaches us that these are connected and our mind and spirit affects our body. 

The reverential fear of the Lord brings health to our bodies and nourishment to our bones.
-Proverbs 3:7 and 8

A heart at peace gives life to the body.
-Proverbs 14:30

Unconfessed sin causes spiritual distress and physical exhaustion.  

When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.
For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. Selah.
-Psalm 32:3 and 4

God makes us holy in our spirit, soul, and body.  

Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
-1st Thessalonians 5:23

We are admonished to honor God with our bodies because it is the temple of the Holy Spirit.  

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.
-1st Corinthians 6:19-20

Our spiritual lives were not designed by God to only be lived out in our heads nor did He make us to just do things right with our physical bodies.  

In other words, the Christian life is neither about getting all the knowledge so that we know things and can say things that we know but have little transformation unto Christlikeness and even live like pagans, nor is it about scrupulosity where our number one concern is not sinning with any and all actions which puts our focus on self-effort rather than Christ and His saving grace and distorts the character of God, replacing faith with fear.

He made us with a vital necessity for joy, to live in joy which is vital to our health.

Joy is normal for us and it means we are doing good.  It means we are continually rejoicing in our salvation.  And when you have joy, you smile.  Christians should be the most joyous people and should be people who smile all the time.  Your neighbors who see you or your co-workers who work with you should notice that you have joy and smile all the time.

And a joyful heart does not ignore or be in denial about sad things and loses, but trusts God, and sees Him as good no matter what the circumstances.

When we cultivate joy under difficult circumstances, it acts like a medicine, restoring our faith and affects how we think and the health of our bodies.

A joyful heart is good medicine.  

A joyful heart affects our body.

A joyful heart means happiness and contentment on the inside of you no matter what is going on around you or in your physical body. 

This means a deep-seated trust in God and His promises based in scripture.

How joy in the heart is good medicine is by having a faith filled outlook.

This was illustrated by Job, when the bottom fell out of his life and he got sick.  He said these words that might be the most faith filled words uttered by anyone in the Bible besides Jesus:

“Though He slay me, yet I will trust Him."

-Job 13:15 (NKJV)

After Job lost his children and his possessions, the Bible says that:

In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing. 

-Job 1:22 (NIV)

"A joyful heart is good medicine."

Means that we trust God no matter what and continue to have faith in God no matter what happens.

Throughout the Bible we learn that our physical health is linked to our spiritual and emotional health.

Nehemiah 8:10 says, "The joy of the Lord is your strength".  

And Joy itself is a fruit of the Spirit and we need to be manifesting in our lives (Gal. 5:22).

Salvation is inside out.  My heart and soul is the place where Christ reigns as King.  And he heals my life through the joy of my salvation.  He heals all my diseases.  What is the worst disease?  Sin.

Bless the Lord, O my soul,

And forget none of His benefits;

Who pardons all your iniquities,

Who heals all your diseases;

Who redeems your life from the pit,

Who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion;

Who satisfies your years with good things,

So that your youth is renewed like the eagle.

-Psalm 103:2-5

A joyful heart is what is going on inside of us.

Our greatest joy is in our salvation.

After the Israelites had been delivered from the Egyptians, Moses led them in this song recorded in Exodus 15:2

The LORD is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation; This is my God, and I will praise Him; My father’s God, and I will extol Him.

David and Isaiah echoed these same words:

The LORD is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation.

-Psalm 118:14 and Isaiah 12:2

When and if we sin and get in trouble we know that we can ask forgiveness and be cleansed of our sins according to 1st John 1:9.

And if we lose the joy of our salvation we can pray to have it restored, like David did in Psalm 51 verse 12:  

Restore to me the joy of Your salvation And sustain me with a willing spirit.

David's heart needed to be renewed with joy again and and he asked God to give him the sustenance of a willing spirit, so that God would be the strength of his life again.  He turned away from stubbornness and rebelliousness and asked God to fill his life with "not my will, but thy will" again.

"A joyful heart is good medicine, But a broken spirit dries up the bones."

Even as Children of God, we can face discouraging times.

Habakkuk prayed this prayer in chapter 3 of his book:

Though the fig tree may not blossom,

Nor fruit be on the vines;

Though the labor of the olive may fail,

And the fields yield no food;

Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,

And there be no herd in the stalls—

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,

I will joy in the God of my salvation.

The Lord God is my strength;

He will make my feet like deer’s feet,

And He will make me walk on my high hills.

-Hab. 3:17-19 (NKJV)

Habakkuk demonstrates living out Proverbs 17:22.  In trial and tribulation, he rejoices and receives strength in his body.

As Christians, we are commanded to walk in joy.  This is not optional.

How does New Testament faith produce the joyful heart that is good medicine?

Paul wrote in Philippians 4:1, “Rejoice in the Lord always, I will say it again rejoice”.

Paul repeated himself to emphasize the point that we must keep on rejoicing, no matter the circumstances.

In order to thrive, we must actively choose rejoicing.

And who or what do we rejoice in?  The Lord.  Our ongoing joy is in Christ and is not dependent on what is happening to us.

James wrote in James 1:2, “Brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials”.  

This is a command.  We are instructed to train our minds to think of trials as an occasion for joy.  When any challenging situations arise, we experience joy from knowing that God is maturing us.  When we obey, counting it all joy, we create a joyful heart that promotes healing, like a medicine.

And Peter wrote in 1st Peter 4:12-13, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you; but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation.” 

Some Christians need to stop having stars in their eyes and thinking that life is supposed to be sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows.  He is instructing us that suffering for Christ is normal and actually to be expected.  He says, “Do not be surprised by this!  But keep on rejoicing”.

Do not go into spiritual panic when tribulation comes.  We can not control what happens to us, 

but we must obey the commands to rejoice in trials.  The result will be having a joyful heart that is good medicine.

This is the power of the joy of God!

So how do we get this joy that the Apostles wrote about? 

Through Jesus Christ.  First by being saved, and then by abiding in him.  

What is the ultimate demonstration in scripture of how to have this joy that is like a medicine?

Hebrews 12:1 and 2 tells us:

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses 

surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 

This is the source of our joy.  The joy that is like a medicine.