What Do You Believe About Disease?

September 13, 2026

What Do You Believe About Disease?

Last Sunday, I sat in a small-town church in Wisconsin, listening to a sermon on spiritual warfare.

The pastor was teaching from Ephesians 6 about spiritual warfare and the importance of the armor of God when he said:

“It is foolish to fight a spiritual battle with only human strength.”

I thought…of course it is.

And then immediately, I thought about medicine…and disease.

I want to ask you a question this week, and I don’t want you to answer it too quickly:

What do you believe about disease?

Not what does your textbook say about its pathophysiology.

Not what does the latest clinical guideline recommend.

Those things matter tremendously. I’m asking something deeper:

What do you believe disease, illness, injury, and infirmity represent in the Kingdom of God?

Do you believe disease comes from God?

Do you believe disease is something we should eventually become comfortable with, simply manage, and encourage our patients to accept?

Or do you look at your patient’s condition and recognize something fundamentally contrary to God’s will?

I once heard a powerful healing minister say, “We need to get to a point in life where we HATEdisease.”

I do!

I hate disease. I hate what disease does to the person God created.

I hate watching it steal, kill, and destroy.

I hate watching it steal hope.

And I really hate watching a diagnosis become someone’s identity.

I hate watching someone receive a prognosis and begin constructing the rest of their life around what science-based medical facts have told them is impossible to overcome.

And because I hate disease, I want to fiercely love the person standing in front of me and free them from it!

That love requires Truth.

It requires excellent medicine.

It requires wisdom.

But it also requires us to be very careful that the words coming out of our mouths don’t unintentionally become words of death.

There is a profound difference between telling someone the medical facts of their condition and declaring those facts to be the absolute limit of what is possible for their future.

We can say:

“Based on what we know medically, this is what we are facing. But don’t allow the medical facts to become the final authority over what is possible for your future. We serve a God who heals. We will use everything medicine has to offer, while continuing to pray, believe, and leave room for God to do what only He can do.”

Without saying:

“This is your new reality. There is no known cure, so you need to begin accepting this condition as part of who you are and learn how to make the best life possible with it. Thankfully, we have treatments that can help you manage it.”

Do you hear the difference?

One communicates the medical reality while leaving room for hope.

The other can unintentionally turn today’s medical knowledge into tomorrow’s final verdict.

As medical professionals, we have a responsibility to communicate what we know truthfully. But we must recognize the difference between communicating a diagnosis and declaring a destiny.

Medical knowledge does not define the outer boundary of God’s power.

Let me tell you about a day when I experienced this firsthand.

A friend reached out to me with an urgent request.

She was preparing to leave on an international mission trip that had been planned for more than a year.

One of the key leaders on the team was particularly gifted at entering incredibly dark circumstances—including situations involving human trafficking, which was the purpose of this mission—and bringing the hope and love of Jesus to people desperately needing freedom.

Just days before they were supposed to leave, he was playing a pickup basketball game and injured his calf.

The diagnosis was a significant calf muscle tear.

He was placed in a walking boot and told there was no way he could handle the international travel and extensive walking this mission would require.

He wasn’t going to be able to go.

My friend begged me:

“Marilyn, will you please work on him? Do anything you can.”

Now, if you know my background in sports medicine and physical therapy, you know this kind of challenge gets my attention.

I have always loved getting people back in the game as quickly as possible.

So I accepted the challenge.

When I evaluated him, I confirmed the physician’s diagnosis.

The injury was real.

I could palpate the significant defect in the muscle fibers, and his strength testing confirmed the weakness and pain that would make the travel demands extremely difficult.

Based on my experience, I also knew the expected recovery timeline: approximately six weeks before moving around really well and potentially twelve weeks before confidently returning to pickup basketball.

But I also knew something else.

I hated what this injury was threatening to take from him—and from the women and children he was going to minister to.

So I began treating him.

I used the manual therapy techniques I had been trained to use, working with the damaged tissue and attempting to approximate the injured fibers as well as I could—doing everything my clinical knowledge told me to do to facilitate healing.

I was practicing medicine.

But at the same time, I was praying.

I was praying that God’s will be done and for His healing timeline to be accelerated.

I was praying over this trip, knowing that whether this particular leader went or not, God was fully capable of accomplishing His purposes through that team.

And then something phenomenal happened beneath my hands that I had never experienced before…

As I was palpating and working through the injured area, I suddenly felt the muscle fibers grab.

He felt it too.

Something had significantly changed.

Immediately.

I palpated the area again.

The defect I had been feeling was gone.

So I tested his strength again.

Full strength.

I checked again.

And again.

What I could objectively assess before that moment was no longer what I was assessing afterward.

I had just witnessed—and physically felt—something I could not explain by the normal biological healing timeline I knew so well.

It was incredible!

This wasn’t medicine versus God.

This wasn’t clinical skill versus faith.

I had used everything I knew to use. And simultaneously, I was partnered with God.

Let’s be very clear about something.

The mechanism of his injury wasn’t mysterious or spiritual.

It was physics.

He planted. He moved. The force exceeded what the tissue could tolerate, and muscle fibers tore.

I understood the anatomy, biomechanics, and expected healing timeline.

Science explained the injury.

But science did not have to define the limits of what could happen next.

That day, I wasn’t standing against injury with my human knowledge alone.

I was armored up in Truth—even as I entered the room with science.

I knew God heals.

I knew what Jesus accomplished on the cross.

I knew the Word of God was Truth.

I knew I could pray for God’s Kingdom to come and His will to be done “on earth as it is in heaven.”

I knew God had given me years of education, clinical experience, and hands-on skills that I was responsible for using with excellence.

And I knew I didn’t have to choose between them.

Science was in my hands.

The mind of Christ was directing my thoughts.

The Word of God was shaping what I believed.

Prayer was coming from my mouth.

And love was driving me to fight for the person in front of me.

That is what unity of Science + Spirit can look like in medicine.

I hated that this injury was threatening to keep this man from getting on that airplane to bring hope and freedom into the horrific darkness of human trafficking.

And I loved him enough to pray while I treated him.

The old me would have treated the tissue while operating almost exclusively from my scientific understanding.

This time, I treated the tissue while standing in the Truth.

This is what came flooding back to me as I listened to that sermon last Sunday.

Paul writes:

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power.” — Ephesians 6:10

Notice what he doesn’t say be strong in your mighty power.

He tells us to be strong in the Lord and in HIS mighty power, because there are battles we were never designed to fight with human power alone.

Then Paul tells us:

“Put on the whole armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the wiles of the devil.” — Ephesians 6:11

There is action involved.

Take up the armor of God. Make a decision to fight disease with God’s power.

Speak from Truth.

Walk in righteousness.

Stand firm in the Gospel and all Jesus accomplished for us on the cross.

Take up the shield of faith.

Put on the helmet of salvation.

And fight with the sword of the Spirit—the Word of God.

And pray.

We need God’s power to fight disease. We were never designed to fight this battle with human power alone.

So sharpen your sword.

Know the Word.

Study the life of Jesus and understand the significance of living on this side of the cross.

Then, when disease, illness, injury, and infirmity enter our exam rooms, we don’t meet them armed only with medical knowledge, skill, and expertise. We stand in the full armor of God.

We can speak the medical facts without making them the final authority.

We can communicate evidence without extinguishing hope.

We can practice excellent medicine while praying and speaking life.

And we can stand firmly in the Gospel, knowing that the ultimate victory over sin, suffering, disease, and death was already won through Jesus Christ.

So, What Do You Believe?

I said at the beginning that I wanted you to decide what you believe about disease.

I have decided. I hate disease.

How about you?

I want to love my patient enough to stand in the gap.

Love them enough to carry hope when they cannot carry it themselves.

I invite you to do the same.

Take up your armor and stand firm.

Practice medicine with excellence.

Speak Truth. Pray. Invite God into the exam room.

Because perhaps we were never called simply to manage the chains our patients carry into our exam rooms.

Perhaps we are called to stand in the gap, love them, and set them free.

There is a better way to practice medicine.

Welcome to the White Coat Revival!

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power, Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

— Ephesians 6:10-12 NIV