By Rick Mautz
Most of us deal with our personal health with what I call the disease/treatment model. We wait until there are symptoms or a diagnosis and then we go and seek help to fix the problem. Or we might say, “I am getting regular medical examinations. If there are any problems, my doctor will let me know and take care of it.” The problem with that mindset is that, once there are symptoms, the disease may either be not treatable, the treatment is expensive, or the treatment is worse than the disease itself.
One example is breast cancer. A few breast cancer cells are not much of a problem. But, after 20 years of silently growing, there may be a billion cells, the amount needed for detection. Why not choose a lifestyle that fights the cancer cells before you ever know it’s there?
Another example is heart disease. It silently develops until there is a small crack in the lining of the coronary artery, forming a clot leading to a sudden heart attack. There are often no symptoms, and it may not be detectable by medical examination. For too many, the first symptom is sudden death. If you were waiting for symptoms to appear to make changes, it’s often too late.
Most heart disease is preventable through lifestyle, and prevention is the only safe course. But that requires a new mindset. Instead of a disease/treatment model, you follow a lifestyle/prevention model. And the side effects of the prevention model are only good ones, like a happier, longer, healthier life with greater mental clarity. The lifestyle that prevents these two diseases also prevents many others as well.
The question may be, Is it worth the effort? There will be things that you enjoy that you will have to give up. But, from my experience, the positive results in your life will be worth the initial inconvenience.
Those are examples of the power of prevention in your physical life. How might the power of prevention change other areas of your life? Such as in relationships or preventing conflict rather than fixing it afterward. Or what about your spiritual life?
The disease/treatment model is like a sin/forgiveness model. It will take a new mindset to practice prevention in the spiritual life as well. Make no mistake, it takes no more power on God’s part to give us strength to resist temptation than to forgive us afterward. In fact, He would preferer it that way. Just pray early and avoid the remorse and pain for yourself and others. Is it possible?
The real question to ask is how big is your God? He is more than able even if we are not able on our own strength or willpower. All that it takes on our part is to just ask for His help at the point of temptation and He is more than willing to give us the victory through His strength. Both physical and spiritual prevention take a new mindset, but it’s the same mind that is changed for both. So, practicing the new mindset with one helps the other. That is the work of the Holy Spirit.
“The prince of this world cometh, said Jesus, and hath nothing in Me (John 14:30). There was in Him nothing that responded to Satan’s sophistry. He did not consent to sin. Not even by a thought did He yield to temptation. So, it may be with us. Christ’s humanity was united with divinity. So long as we are united to Him by faith, sin has no more dominion over us. God reaches for the hand of faith in us to direct it to lay fast hold upon the divinity of Christ, that we may attain to perfection of character” (DA 123.3). 1
Physical prevention is the answer to health care crises. Spiritual prevention is the answer to the Great Controversy.
—Rick Mautz, PT MS, is RMC director of the Rocky Mountain Lifestyle Center. Photo by Pexels.
1 White, Ellen G. (1898). The Desire of Ages. Pacific Press.
