Change Your Health

Health & Wellness: Secrets That Will Chance Your Life, the North American Division's 2015 missionary health book, shares tips on how to improve every aspect of your health.  For motivation--just in time for Health Impact day, April 18--read our interview with co-editor and evangelist Mark Finley.

Interview by Dawna-gene Milton

Visitor: In what ways can people take the message of Health Impact Day and live it every day in such a fast-paced world?

Mark Finley: Change, particularly in the area of health often comes incrementally. Have you ever made broad ranging New Year’s resolutions on January 1 only to forget about them on February 1? Someone has said that the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. Here’s what I recommend for people who want to improve their lifestyle: Let’s suppose you have not been exercising, don’t start by trying to run five miles every day, rather make a decision that every day you are going to walk for at least 30 minutes continuously. If you can’t do that, do it for fifteen minutes. As far as diet is concerned, determine that you are going to move to a more plant based diet with many more vegetables and salads. In whatever area you want to make change, make positive decisions of things that are achievable; things that you can accomplish. Little successes will bring big successes.

Visitor: In this fast food culture, does Health & Wellness: Secrets that will Change your Life teach people how to make good choices on the go?

Mark Finley: Yes it does! In a powerful chapter on nutrition we discuss how to reduce fat and sugar in your diet as well as refined food products. The chapter has some outstanding information on the value of a plant based diet including large amounts of salads and veggies.

Visitor: This book teaches the importance of physical health, but how does it tie in mental, emotional and spiritual health as well?

Mark Finley: Every chapter focuses not only on a particular aspect of physical health but also on mental, emotional and spiritual health. Some of the chapters deal with how to handle depression, how to increase your IQ and how to have emotional stability. Spiritual principles are woven through each chapter. We have also outlined a number of recent, well documented scientific studies that demonstrate that people who have a meaningful relationship with God, attend church regularly and pray have significantly better overall health.

Visitor: In what ways is Health & Wellness different from any other health book?

Mark Finley: Health & Wellness integrates the physical, mental and spiritual dimensions of human beings and its uniqueness is not that it only presents information on health but it shares a Christ who can empower you to make powerful lifestyle changes. There are many outstanding books on health that tell people what they ought to be doing, there are few that tell them how to do it and still fewer yet that provide an understanding of the power of God to accomplish change. Health & Wellness uplifts a Christ who is intimately interested in every person and provides the power to live the abundant life.

Visitor: What your the hope for those who read Health & Wellness?

Mark Finley: As I think about the book I would have three great desires for those that read it:

• First, that they would be inspired by what they read and that inspiration motivates them to make lifestyle changes.
• Second, that they are instructed by what they read, that the scientific data really impacts them.

And thirdly, that through the power of God they implement what they read and that implementation enables them to live the abundant life that Christ offers.

But beyond health in this life Dr. Peter Landless, my colleague, and I long for those who read Health & Wellness: Secrets that will Change your Life to have such a vision of eternity that they long to live there with Christ forever. In a world where there is no sickness, suffering, heartache or death. This is indeed health to the max.