A man had a strange disease. His main problem was that his head throbbed all the time, and his eyes bulged. He went to a doctor. After looking him over, the doctor told him he only had three months to live. Trying to have the most happiness during those three months and not being a particularly religious man, he decided to go to a men’s clothing store, where he could buy shirts, because he loved shirts. He loved prints, pastels, polka dots, stripes—all kinds of shirts. He went in and picked out a number of shirts to enjoy his last three months. As he was paying for the shirts, the clerk asked him what size he usually wore.

He said, “Well, I wear size 15-¹⁄₂ around the neck.“ The clerk looked at his neck and said, “Your neck is bigger than that.“ He took a tape measure, measured, and discovered that the man had been wearing shirts that were too small for him. “Why,“ the clerk commented, “if you wear 15-¹⁄₂ when you should wear a 16 or 16-¹⁄₂, your head will thump, and your eyes will bulge.“ The man took the clue. From then on he bought size 16-¹⁄₂ and lived happily ever after.

The point is not particularly against the medical profession, but that there are many people with problems that they carry around with them, when the answer may not be as far away as they think. I hope you will notice the connection between this story and our topic, “Preventive Religion,“ which is sort of a takeoff on a very well-known practice today called “preventive medicine.“

I understand that preventive medicine is not necessarily for the purpose of preventing people from taking their medicine. Preventive medicine means the right kind of living will prevent us from having to take medicine, that is, it will prevent us from losing our health. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.“ More and more, physicians are becoming interested in preventive medicine. In fact, I was talking to a physician at a camp meeting who was old enough to retire, according to my judgment, but he was so excited about his medical practice that after he had told me some of his experiences, I wondered just what he was doing! So I asked him if he was retired.

“Retired?“ he said. “I’m just beginning! For forty years I haven’t understood the practice of medicine. Now I’m excited about it.“ His whole thing was preventive medicine.

In that same setting, let’s talk about preventive religion. Our purpose is not to prevent people from being religious. Our purpose is to talk about what will prevent people from losing their religion or prevent them from losing their faith.

It’s one thing to become a Christian, and it can be quite another thing to stay one. Many people have come to Christ, but because iniquity abounds, the love of many, including their own love, waxes cold. Jesus said, “He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved“ (Matthew 24:13). So let’s get superpractical and find some clues on how to remain a Christian and how to live the Christian life once you’ve become a Christian.

Those who have delved into preventive medicine have discovered that years ago we were given the eight simple remedies that have become well known. They are so simple that often we look clear over the top of them. There are many ways of practicing the healing art, but there is only one way that heaven approves of. God’s remedies are the simple agencies of nature: pure air, sunlight, abstemiousness (or temperance), rest, exercise, proper diet, the use of water, and trust in divine power. These are the true remedies. They are also the true means to recovery.

Someone wrote this little poem about six of the remedies:

The best six doctors anywhere And no one can deny it, Are sunshine, water, rest and air, Exercise and diet. These six will gladly be your friends, If only you are willing. Your ills they’ll mend, Your cares they’ll tend, And charge you not a shilling.

The Englishman who wrote that obviously left out abstemiousness and trust in divine power, so I have added a couple of lines, with apologies:

The cure for bad licentiousness Is trust and good abstemiousness.

You recognize why I offer the apologies, of course, but here we do have the eight simple remedies.

Some of us, being intrigued by these eight simple natural remedies, have even gone so far as to hang up our shingle and enter the practice of medicine. Often, church members, parishioners in cities and in out-of-the-way places who have suffered from ill health, have invited the preacher onto the scene as they told their troubles and woes. I have carried these eight remedies with me in my pocket, or in my Bible, and have shared them more than once.

At first glance people will say, “Oh, those are so simple!“

‘Yes, they are simple, but how are you doing on all eight?“

Invariably, someone who has been struggling with his health for years will discover that he has been “bombing out“ on one or more of the eight, and I have been amazed and surprised at the success that comes when people pay careful attention to all eight of these remedies. It’s phenomenal. It really is!

But we want to bridge from the health side of it to the spiritual, even as John did when he said, “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth“ (3 John 2). He put the two together: the health of the soul and the health of the body. And, interestingly enough, we see a very fascinating similarity between the spiritual and the physical realm. Pure air—what’s the spiritual facsimile? Prayer. Proper diet. In the spiritual realm that’s God’s Word. Exercise. That’s service and witness. Water? The Holy Spirit. Abstemiousness? We have to look that one up. It means moderation, it means temperance, self- control, and these are as spiritual as they are physical. Rest. What is that? Come unto me, Jesus said, and I will give it to you, including the Sabbath. Sunlight. Jesus is the sun of righteousness. Trust in divine power. Of course, that’s already spiritual in nature. Let’s look at these eight remedies in preventive religion.

Air

The first one is pure air. Lamentations 3:55, 56 says, “I called upon thy name, O Lord, out of the low dungeon. Thou hast heard my voice: hide not thine ear at my breathing, at my cry.“ Perhaps it was this verse that a Christian author had in mind when writing that “prayer is the breath of the soul.“

When a baby is first born, breathing, I understand, is very important. In fact, it’s top priority. My wife and I had the painful experience of attending a young mother-to-be and an anxious husband over a very ominous birth. We went to the university hospital as their supposed godfather and godmother. They later called us their parents, which gave us access to the ICU for babies. The doctor’s premonitions were right. The baby was born not breathing. In fact, there wasn’t much evidence of life. But they went to work immediately, and what a relief it was when the baby began to breathe. That’s the first thing the doctors want to know. They give the baby the traditional pat or shake or whatever, and everyone smiles when the baby breathes. We can’t live very long without breathing. And could it be that in the spiritual realm, you are not going to be alive spiritually very long without prayer, the breath of the soul?

The admonition is for pure air, and I suppose we could call this the need for pure prayer. You mean there is some prayer that isn’t pure? Evidently so. I’d like to remind you of the primary purpose of prayer. Apparently most Christians have the idea that the primary purpose of prayer is to get answers, and whether or not they get answers determines whether they keep praying.

I’d like to suggest that if your primary purpose for praying is to get answers, you will stop praying before very long, because that is not the primary purpose of prayer, any more than getting answers is the primary purpose of communication in marriage. Any kind of a normal relationship is based upon communication for communication’s sake, not just to get answers. People talk for fellowship, they talk for fun, they talk for communication. They talk just to be together, and answers are secondary. The purest kind of prayer is for the purpose of relationship. Even though answers are not left out, and God still invites us to ask, that is not the primary purpose of talking to Him.

We’re also invited to unceasing prayer, which would have to involve something more than just getting answers. I mean, how many answers can you unceasingly go for? Unceasing prayer, we are told, is the unbroken union of the soul with God. We’re also told that, as wonderful as our initial conversion experience has been, no human being is righteous any longer than he has faith in God and maintains a vital connection with Him. Those who will devote some time every day to meditation and prayer and to the study of the Scriptures will be connected with heaven and will have a saving, transforming influence upon those around them. The life of prayer is essential to maintain the Christian life.

I suppose that one of the first things we notice when we don’t have sufficient air is that our thinking begins to get hazy. If we are starving for oxygen, we can’t think straight.

I remember one time going on a camping trip in a small vacation trailer. We wanted to go to the high country, to the snow. And, foolishly, there were eight of us in this little trailer that slept only four or five. In order to keep warm that night, we tamed on the propane gas stove because the trailer had no heater. Well, I’m still here to tell about it, but we didn’t realize what we were doing. My wife awakened in the middle of the night gasping for air, with a strange feeling that something was wrong. She somehow opened the window and saved all of us. But she had trouble thinking it through. When one goes without fresh air and oxygen, his or her thinking gets hazy. Perhaps there’s a close relationship between this and the next item for preventive religion—proper diet.

Diet

What do we think of when we think of proper diet in the spiritual sense? Of course, we are talking about eating the Word of God. “Thy words were found, and I did eat them“ (Jeremiah 15:16). Jesus said, “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst“ (John 6:35). In John 6:53-56, Jesus said,

Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.

This was a mystery to those people who heard it, but if they had thought a little further along some of the lines that their Old Testament prophets had written, they wouldn’t have been as confused. We have insights as to what this is all about today. It is by receiving the life poured out for us on Calvary’s cross that we can live the life of holiness. And this life we receive by receiving His Word.

Let’s dwell for just a minute on the illustration. Jesus said that we need to eat His flesh and drink His blood. When we think of His flesh and His blood, we think of His spilled blood and broken body. And when we think of that, we think of the cross, we think of death, and we think of our Substitute. So to eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of God is to take into our lives what He has done for us. We accept into our lives, our hearts, our minds, our very existence, what Jesus has done for us. Now, a person does this when he first comes to Jesus, after reaching the end of his own resources and accepting Jesus as his personal Saviour. But that isn’t enough, any more than the baby’s first meal is enough.

Eating His flesh and drinking His blood must be a daily matter. Jesus is the One who used the similarity between the physical and the spiritual. Genuine conversion is needed, not once, but daily. This conversion brings man into a new relation with God, but this work must be continual. No renewed heart can be kept in a condition of sweetness without the daily application of the salt of the Word. Divine grace must be received daily, or no one will stay converted. I suppose that’s why Jesus had something to say about iniquity abounding and the love of many waxing cold. “But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved“ (Matthew 24:13).

So let’s accept Jesus’ own analogy that eating is a daily matter. What are we going to eat? We are going to accept nourishment from His Word. That is the source of our spiritual food. But just reading the Bible is not enough. I’d like to remind you that knowledge, just simple knowledge, might destroy us.

The greatest deception of the human mind in Christ’s day was that a mere assent to the truth constitutes righteousness. In all human experience a theoretical knowledge of the truth has been proved to be insufficient for the saving of the soul. It does not bring forth the fruits of righteousness. A jealous regard for what is termed theological truth often accompanies a hatred of genuine truth as made manifest in life. The darkest chapters of history are burdened with the record of crimes committed by bigoted religionists (The Desire of Ages, p. 309).

Our only hope is not only to know the words of Scripture, but to realize that scriptural difficulties and scriptural understandings are never mastered by the same methods that are employed in grappling with philosophical problems. Understanding Bible truth depends not so much on the power of intellect brought to the search as on the singleness of purpose, the earnest longing after righteousness.

And, of course, that is what the initial experience of conversion will motivate us to do. And only Jesus can bring truth to us that’s more than words, that goes deep into the heart, deep into the soul. I’d like to ask you, my Mend, are you really longing after righteousness? Are you hungering and thirsting for God, more than just going through the form of reading words out of a book? I’m thankful that Jesus has promised the Holy Spirit to be our teacher, for without Him we’re sunk.

But the most important ingredient in the spiritual diet is the realization that the cross is our only hope. The enemy knows that, and so he constantly tries to cause what grasped our attention in the first place to fade from view. That’s why we should spend a thoughtful hour each day in contemplation of the cross. That’s the good diet—the life of Christ, especially the closing scenes. To remove the cross from the Christian would be like blotting the sun from the sky, for without the cross, man would have no union with the Father. On it depends our only hope. From it shines the light of the Saviour’s love, and when at the foot of the cross the sinner looks up to the One who died to save Him, he may rejoice with fullness of joy that his sins are pardoned. Kneeling in faith at the cross, he has reached the highest place to which man can attain.

And that’s what your devotional life is going to center around. If your attention doesn’t focus around the cross, then the foundation of the Christian gospel is going to fade from your mind and become hazy, and all you will have left is to become a theoretical or pseudo- Christian who grapples with philosophical religious problems but seldom if ever focuses on Jesus.

Exercise

The third element in living the Christian life, to keep us from losing our faith, is exercise. Exercise, of course, is more and more in the foreground these days. Some people are overdoing it. I had a doctor tell me that just recently. It made me feel good. Exercise, as far as the bodily functions are concerned, is more and more considered a top priority in our world today. But it has gotten to be such a fad among many that the Reader’s Digest had to publish an article entitled, “Why Not Not Jog.“ They were suggesting a new fad of not jogging.

Now let’s move from bodily exercise to spiritual. Paul made a very interesting statement to Timothy which, I suppose, would make the physical-education people throw him out in a hurry. “Refuse profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise thyself rather unto godliness. For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come“ (1 Timothy 4:7, 8). So what is Paxil’s appeal? I am sure he must have gotten a lot of exercise himself, what with all the camping, walking, and traveling he did. But he said that in comparison, the most important exercise is exercising ourselves unto godliness. The book Steps to Christ, pages 80 and 81, makes a very good application of this in these words:

Strength comes by exercise; activity is the very condition of life. Those who endeavor to maintain a Christian life by passively accepting the blessings that come through the means of grace, and doing nothing for Christ, are simply trying to live by eating without working. And in the spiritual as in the natural world, this always results in degeneration and decay. A man who would refuse to exercise his limbs would soon lose all power to use them. Thus the Christian who will not exercise his God-given powers not only fails to grow up into Christ, but he loses the strength that he already had.

I’m going to make a bold statement. Anyone, regardless of how much he reads his Bible, and how much he prays, how much he breathes, and how much he eats spiritually, who does not become involved in exercise as well, is going to lose spiritual health. It always happens that way, and it always will. Every once in a while the phone rings, and someone says, “I’ve been reading my Bible, I’ve been studying the life of Christ, and I’ve been praying, but I have the religious blahs. God doesn’t even know my address. My prayers go no higher than the failing.“ They were excited at first, but now there’s nothing. As I probe a little bit with these people, I inevitably discover that they have not become involved in Christian service, witness, and outreach. And without exercise, eating and even breathing can kill you.

I admire those people that I see early in the morning and late at night getting their exercise. It reminds me of something I learned when I was a student. It was the one o’clock class, right after lunch. We’d sit there and doze and try to take notes. At the end of the class we’d go stumbling drunkenly down to the room for a three-hour nap, only to wake up feeling worse than when we went to sleep.

Then one day it dawned! Our problem wasn’t that we were physically tired. Our problem was that we were nerve tired. So we went off to the gym instead and threw some baskets, or jumped on the trampoline. After thirty minutes we were feeling fine again. Don’t miss it, you people with the white collars; you can be tired and exhausted all the time, not because you don’t get enough sleep, but because you don’t get enough exercise. That’s true, isn’t it? Have you discovered it? And if you get the proper amount of exercise, you don’t have to sleep as much.

But exercise—Christian service and witness and outreach—will make us thirsty. And that brings us to the fourth of these eight preventive remedies for spiritual life.

Water

Exercise makes you thirsty and drives you to water. Notice what Jesus said as He talked about the spiritual life:

In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth in me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified)” (John 7:37-39).

When Jesus sat down at His Father’s right hand, the Holy Spirit stood up and went into action in a new way, as the Comforter whom Jesus had promised. And the Holy Spirit is likened to water in Scripture. The Holy Spirit brings righteousness. The Holy Spirit is involved in the latter rain—water, refreshing—and the loud cry of Revelation. The Holy Spirit is all through the Christian life, from conversion to the end. But it’s exercise, reaching out in service and witness, that drives us to the water. And as we’re driven to the water for deeper drafts of the mighty resources of God through the Holy Spirit, we grow in grace. If you want to know the mighty power of the Holy Spirit in your life, I’d like to give you a few steps that will help you to understand it better.

1. Accept Jesus again every day as your only hope of salvation (see Galatians 3:2-5).

2. Receive the gift of repentance that Jesus has to give, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (see Acts 2:37, 38; 5:31).

3. Obey! But this obedience is primarily continuing service instead of laying down the torch, continuing to reach out toward others (see Acts 5:32).

4. Admit that you’re thirsty; tell God you’re thirsty; accept His promise that at whatever cost, you want to have the Holy Spirit in your life, giving up on all other methods to experience the vibrant Christian life (see John 7:37-39).

5. Ask God for it. Ask Him for Him. Sometimes we call the Holy Spirit an “it.“ I guess that’s all right, but the Holy Spirit is also a Him, and, more important, a Person. Jesus has promised Him, and He said that if we ask, He’ll give Him. He’s willing to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask (see Luke 11:13). Why should we not seek for the Holy Spirit, when this great gift brings all other blessings with it?

In the next chapter we’ll talk about the last four preventive- religion remedies, which are more results of the first four than they are causes themselves. The last four are self-control (or temperance), rest, sunlight (of God’s presence), and trust in divine power. But in the meantime I’d like to invite you to break the bread of life every day, to breathe every day—for you can’t go long without either one—and to exercise every day in a spiritual sense. This will make you thirsty for the Holy Spirit.

Break Thou the bread of life, Dear Lord, to me, As Thou didst break the loaves Beside the sea; Beyond the sacred page I seek Thee, Lord; My spirit pants for Thee, O living Word.