My whole life (at least the part when I’ve been sick), I have talked about gut healing. I never once thought about healing vs wholeness…..until Friday night.
Healing vs wholeness is where this whole conversation is going to begin.
It’s sort of a deep one, and if you’ll hang in here with me for a couple/few weeks, I’m going to talk about all of it.
It starts here, and the foundation was biblical, but the application is for everyone.
On Friday night I heard Terri Savelle Foy speak, and it was incredible!
I was shaking my head “yes” to all the things, but probably not in the ways most people were.
The night rooted when she asked,
Do you believe that healing and wholeness are different?
I wasn’t sure, until she explained it via the story from the Bible about the 10 lepers that Jesus healed.
10 Lepers
10 lepers wanted to be made clean from their disease.
Jesus responds to them by physically healing them.
Of the 10, only one, the Samaritan, turns back to praise God and, “fell before his feet” to thank Jesus.
Jesus asks rhetorically, “Were not 10 made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”
Jesus then addresses the healed Samaritan:
Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well . (Luke 17:19)
Now, truth be told, the Bible doesn’t say (verbatim) that the 10th was made whole.
I think Terri extracted that from the message because he was the only one to say thanks and give gratitude for the blessing.
Perhaps she equated “well” with whole vs. simply just healed.
Regardless, Terri said that nine were healed (the leprosy went away), but only one was made whole (the leprosy went away and the missing body parts from the disease actually came back to form a whole person again).
I could not stop thinking about it.
I laid in bed and thought about it that night, and I told Ryan all about it the next day when he got home.
Healing vs Wholeness
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My entire blog and even, heck, my entire life, has been built around healing – for myself and teaching other women to do the same.
In fact, if you’ve never read it, I have a book dedicated to healing: A Gutsy Girl’s Bible: a 21-day approach to healing the gut.
Part of my mission is to help women worldwide heal with food and lifestyle vs drugs and medication.
Healing, healing, healing.
The word means to become sound or healthy again.
But whole…..whole means all of; entire, in an unbroken or undamaged state; in one piece.
The way Terri described the difference is very simple:
Healing will make you well; disease (or problem) will stop, but only wholeness will allow you to move forward, fully repair, and rebuild.
I’ve been thinking about and praying hard on this.
What if I’ve been wrong all along, and healing plus wholeness are truly different?
What if the reason we all struggle to heal indefinitely is because of a/the missing link?
The Missing Link for Wholeness
For the nine lepers it was their lack of gratitude and thankfulness.
Is that our missing link? Is that my missing link? And if not, what is?
It seems like we heal, then relapse, heal then relapse…..everyone, over and over and over again.
For you, maybe it’s not your gut, maybe it’s something else – some other area of your life, but you heal, then relapse, heal then relapse.
I don’t care who you are or what your status might currently be.
If you dig deep, I’m guessing you’ll find yourself wedged in the scenario somewhere.
I started peeling back the layers immediately because I truly believe I have not yet been made whole because of my own missing link.
Of course I still believe that there is an underlying condition that is the SIBO bottleneck, but why have we still not found it (when I have been searching so hard) and what caused the trigger this time (after staying in remission for so long)?
Through Terri, I heard very clearly on Friday night that in order to address this and a whole host of other things, I need to,
Clean Up and Clean Out
Leaving that thought here for the day, and I’ll be back for more soon.
If you liked this article on healing vs wholeness, you might also enjoy:
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Xox,
SKH
🤰 bloating be gone! weight loss through optimal gut health for women
💃ʜᴇᴀʟ ʏᴏᴜʀ ɢᴜᴛ. ʜᴇᴀʟ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʟɪfe.
🫶🏻 founder gutbyome.com
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Hi Sarah-
I find this post interesting bc I too have chased down the gut healing bullseye. At times I have found it and then it fails yet again. As a believer, I have had many questions regarding health.
I looked closely at the story of the 10 lepers. Two different Greek words are used for describing the “cleansing” that was given the 9 and the “healing” that was given the 10th one who was thankful in his response. To the 10th, Jesus said his faith has made him well so there is a premise there that his healing was actually salvation, belief in God. The 9 took the physical healing and walked away but the 10th “believed” which made his healing complete. He was now reconciled to God. This is the healing we absolutely have promised in Scripture, being in a right relationship with God due to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Not all other healing is promised to us on earth although greatly possible in Jesus. We should surely pray for it though and then let God decide. However, complete healing is what we are promised in heaven. Yay! No gut issues in heaven. Can’t wait!
For now, unless God totally heals our guts for good, we can and should make the best nutritional choices possible. But here’s one of the things the Lord reminded me of; as believers, we still live in a fallen world which also means our food supply is also fallen along with our bodies. Nothing works as it was created to, food and bodies alike. So we may relapse. This we know though and it is our place of rest… “Not a nerve or tissue, valve or vessel, of our bodily organization is uncared for; all the littles of our little world are thought upon by the great God. There is no such thing as self-existent or self-governing matter.” -Charles Spurgeon
Thankful for your blog and all the knowledge and help you offer us readers!
Carolyn
Gosh…I love all of this so much, Carolyn! Thank you so much for thoughts and for the insight. Xox
This is very beautiful analysis and comment is very torching subject.
Healing and Wholeness. Seeking brings healing for the lepers and Gratitude brings wholeness to the stranger that returns
Thank you