The world we live in is both spiritual and physical. If you are a Christian, it is foolish to discount the spiritual realm. Paul said “that which is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor 4:18). Thus the ultimate reality is the unseen or spiritual. To go one step further, it is not as if the physical and spiritual realms never touch or influence each other. We had a good example of this truth just recently:
Last week, my wife Jennifer and I went to Birmingham, AL with friends to visit pastors. We were gone only two days, but came home exhausted. After coming home, my wife began having chest pains. They had happened before during periods of stress, but they had never been like that. The first thing we did was to pray, but I thought we might have to go to the doctor. As we prayed, the pain began to lift. So we prayed more. The more we prayed, the better she felt. The next day, she had no more pain.
A couple days later, we went to our regular Friday morning prayer meeting. Our friend, with whom we went to AL for the visit, also reported having chest pains and asked for prayer. Instantly we remembered Jennifer’s bought with the same. We prayed over her, and her pain was lifted as well. As we sat and praised the Lord for helping the two of them, our friend sat up-right and said, “My sister, the one with whom we had lunch that day in Birmingham, was hospitalized last week with chest pains.” It was then that we put the pieces together.
Our friend’s sister is not a Christian. The week before last, she was hospitalized with chest pains and the doctors could not do much to determine the cause. She was sent home. We suppose that in the end her physical problem was spiritually induced. Then we had lunch with her while in Birmingham. There were some spiritual forces at work during that lunch time with her, and our friend and my wife picked up that “spirit” and both exhibited the same symptoms. That is why, after we prayed fervently over them, the symptoms left completely.
In the western world, we are not very attune to the spiritual realm. But don’t let the pendulum swing so far to the other extreme that you discount the place where the spiritual and physical realms touch.