Wellness Series: Hold Fast to Your Integrity

"Smile" by Julia Brinkfrau

Health is relating to troublesome physical symptoms in ways that bring improvement in condition as well as increased knowledge about yourself^1.

Then the Lord said to Satan,

Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil? And still he holds fast to his integrity . . . . (Job 2:3).

So Satan answered the Lord,

Skin for skin! Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life.  But stretch out Your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will surely curse You to Your face! (Job 2:4).

Do you know yourself? I mean on a real level.  When I explore this question with young and old, the responses are usually describing personality traits: “I am . . . intelligent; independent; the quiet-type,” etc.  But do you ever stop to think about who the real you is?

"WHO AM I?"

The real you is that person who comes out in times of crisis, pain, or sickness, especially when your bone and flesh are touched with affliction; and often displays itself in ways so ugly you force to keep the sight of that “other me” from public appearance.  We don’t want anyone to see that “ugly-in-spirit” person” inside us.  Well, guess what? God sees him or her; and the people who live in the house with you probably see more of that “ugly-in-spirit person” than they care to.

Integrity is the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles (a sense of right and wrong and choosing to do right no matter what it might cost you).  Integrity is also defined as the state, or condition, of being whole and undivided (not double-minded or broken).

Troublesome physical symptoms bring pain and frustration to our lives.  How we overcome that pain and fear of loss of control demonstrates just how whole (well), how healthy, we are.  “Can symptoms of chronic sickness be improved with “happy” thoughts?”  “I should think positively; and it all will go away?” There have been testimonies which confirm the answer to these questions with a great big resounding: “Yes!”

What results from a life of living in “happy” thoughts was discussed in the previous blog talking about enjoying your body. Is anyone one of you in trouble? He should pray.  Is anyone happy? Let him sing song of praise (James 5:13, NIV). In today’s conversation, we are looking at ourselves and how we react in times when parts of our bodies want to swell, overheat, get hypo or hyper, ache, atrophy, liquefy, cough, stutter, or shake. 

Felix shouted from his hospital bed and out of the depths of his excruciating pain, “Lord, why?  I can’t take this anymore.  Deliver me from this fateful disease!” He cried and wept for what seemed like hours.  Then an awesome peace filled his soul, and he began to sing, “O Lord, My God, when I am in awesome wonder consider all the works Thy hands have made.  How great Thou art. Then sings my soul, my savior God, to Thee. How great Thou art.  How great You are!”  It was at that turning point, when Felix gave all his pain to the Lord, that the Lord took that pain and gave Felix a promise: “Fear not, for I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you, Yes I will help you, I will hold you with My righteous right hand.” (Isaiah 41:10).

In the Bible, Job was a very wealthy man, yet used his wealth to serve the Lord.  Satan hates children of God who walk with integrity.  Integrity is a quality of being; it is not a mere description of one’s personality. Integrity encapsulates (sums up) our emotions—every feeling and every thought, spoken and unspoken—and moves them in the direction of staying right with God, through good times and bad times, unwavering, neither doubting nor denying the choice you made to do the right thing. 

Integrity can cost you to lose family members, friends, business deals, and/or property.  Read the story of Job. And his wife said to him as he was sitting in ashes scraping at boils on his skin from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head, “Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9).  And, after rebuking her, Job did not sin [curse God] with his lips (Job 2:10). And neither did he think about doing that.

Life is a flow of the spiritual mixed with the emotional (soulful) and physical.  We have previously discussed our triune nature and concluded that when one part of our being is affected, it affects the others.  Not enjoying your body physically can cause it to sicken.  The body feels that you are not giving it enough attention perhaps due to mental worrying about the situations currently going on in your life.  That stress on the mind causes various parts of the body to break down.

If bodily symptoms are genetic, you didn’t bring it on yourself, but the intensity of those symptoms can fluctuate based on how you address them or not.  And, spiritually, if you open up your physical body to debauchery by looking at sinful pictures or by going to sinful spots, or by listening to sinful words in poetry, jokes or songs, you allow spiritual evil to get inside your physical temple; and that also causes symptoms of sickness to appear.

It is when these troublesome physical symptoms, your brokenness, appear that you must relate to them with the WORD OF GOD, the King of Integrity.  We’ve got to step outside our “panic zone” and fight those symptoms off with the balm of Gilead, God’s promises and blessings for keeping right with Him through the storms of life, until He rains showers of blessing upon our lives.

Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord (James 5:14).

Jabez is a name that literally means ‘pain’.  Can you imagine a parent giving a child such a name?  It is because, during his birth, it gave his mother so much pain, that’s what he was named: “Hello, pain, come here.  Pain, have you completed your house chores?”  Pain, Pain, Pain.  Everyday, he was called “Pain.”  Then the turning point came when Jabez cried out to the Lord: “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory. Let Your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain!”  And God granted him his request (1 Chronicles 4:10).

Watching loved ones relate to symptoms of hypertension, diabetes, and various other physical afflictions and dealing with and overcoming one or two myself, it is easy to curse God by blaming Him for letting them die or by doing this to you.  But I have come to realize that it is not God who plans evil against our flesh; He’s the Creator of all flesh. 

No, Satan also buffets and tempts you to break, to lose, or to throw away your integrity. And one of his weapons is pain. Whatever can pain you, that’s what Satan will use to break you. But pain is not always from Satan. It can also be from the choices you make that go against what is right in God’s sight. The cost of sinning can be as high as death, and that includes pain (Romans 3:23). It could also be from how you think: Have you lost faith or don’t have faith, or belief, that things can get better? Doubt, or broken-heartedness, also causes bodily breakdown. 

Why did God allow Satan to make Job to go through such terrible affliction?  He knew Job would hold fast to his integrity—hold fast to God—no matter what.

You may be at a point in your life where you want to give up on God.  DO NOT GIVE UP! He’s right there in the midst of your pain.  Trials will come in life.  Relate, respond, reply to them with unshakable belief in God’s Word, God’s promises: “By the stripes of Jesus Christ, I am healed.  I am more than a conqueror through Jesus Christ.  No weapon fashioned against me shall prosper, because the Lord fights for me and destroys all my enemies for I am His child; and I cling to my Father.  So you, devil, you may afflict my body, but you can’t touch my soul!”

Then snap out of self-pity, get real honest with yourself, and start eating right, exercising right, resting right, taking the right medications at the right time; and stop ingesting, injecting, or inhaling all that is wrong.  You will surely experience improvement; and you will surely describe yourself your real self as a person of integrity.

And the Lord restored Job’s losses . . . . Indeed the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before (Job 42:10); because Job held on to his integrity.  It’s the only thing we got when everything is taken away.  Integrity is the life-force of our soul.

© 2020, 2025 by Patience Osei-Anyamesem. All rights reserved.  Published by The Light In Me Enterprise.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—without the prior written permission of the publisher.  The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews or other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Unless otherwise stated, all scripture quotations are from The New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.  Used by permission. All rights reserved.

1.     From Travis, J. (1977). The Wellness Workbook. Mill Valley, CA, USA: Wellness Resource Center.

The artwork depicted in the blog article is carefully selected to draw out the points made for healing of the soul, and by no means promote any ideologies from the various artists unless they are found in the center of God's perfect will.