Unveiling the positive impacts and transforming power of faith on recovery.
Integrating Faith and Professional Treatment: A Holistic Approach
Combining faith with other professional treatments can create a holistic approach to health and recovery. From a strictly scientific perspective, individuals can integrate their faith with evidence-based therapies, seeking guidance from both spiritual leaders and healthcare professionals to achieve extremely higher rates of positive outcomes.
Pursuing recovery through a combination of spiritual leaders and healthcare professionals has been repeatedly shown to produce extremely higher rates of positive outcomes.
This approach has proven over and over again to be an approach with high success rates. Faith is hard to define with so many ideas of what that is and is not, and there is a dynamic in anything calling itself faith-based for people who are outright misleading people or just making things up, etc. A more holistic approach creates a balance and balancing factors, including having people of wisdom to help determine the difference between healthy faith communities and fringe cults of chaos that will destroy a person faster than any addiction.
Sometimes, the faith community can also be a balancing factor for medical health or mental health professional who can also experience folks in clinical positions who are outright misleading people or just making up things as well. They can help you see that and look for other opinions or request a change of clinician to find more productive ones.
Cultivating Faith: Practical Steps for Nurturing Spiritual Wellness
I know I am repeating a point I make repeatedly, but the Book of James from the Bible is an incredible place to start on this faith journey because it is short, direct, and incredibly practical. This five-chapter book clearly states what James feels is “spiritual wellness” and what is not.
I will most often describe spiritual wellness, as outlined in James, as a ‘healthy faith journey.” One reason is that what James describes is not an event or really a destination but an ongoing journey that never really ends as long as we each live. There is an ideal of perfection outlined that we all should strive for, but there is also an assumption that we will completely fail at it periodically and have to fix the failure and keep on going.
16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. A prayer of a righteous person, when it is brought about, can accomplish much.
Here is the idea that a healthy faith community is one where, when people fail, they share with one another, pray for one another, and fix these issues. It is not an “if we fail” idea but a “when we fail.” We all will at times, but a healthy faith community will be there to lift us and support us in undoing and chaos unleashed.
19 My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you strays from the truth and someone turns him back, 20 let him know that the one who has turned a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.
James 5:19-20 New American Standard Bible
The chapter goes on to discuss the blessing of a person who supports someone at this point of failure and helps that person to get back on the healthy faith journey. That person has done a wonderful thing, and the implication of this idea being included in the Bible is that they have done a wonderful thing in the eyes of God.
A special note to those who are sponsoring or mentoring someone who is in recovery through the journey; your sacrifices and efforts are noticed and are a blessing.
The Power of a Healthy Faith Journey on Your Recovery
This article aims to illuminate some of the benefits of faith on a recovery journey. Faith is also a journey, and the Book of James is a simple but powerful tool to guide this journey. The Book of James offers valuable insights into the positive impacts of faith on health and well-being.
Research repeatedly demonstrates that, by embracing faith, individuals can tap into a source of inner strength, experience stress reduction, foster emotional healing, and benefit from the support of faith communities. Research repeatedly shows that faith as a component of recovery achieves results. Combining biblical wisdom with scientific research, we find a compelling case for integrating faith and recovery in achieving holistic well-being.
Research repeatedly shows that faith as a component of recovery achieves results.