I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (I Thess. 5:23).

If you agree with God's purpose, He will bring not only your conscious life, but all the deeper regions of your life which you cannot get at, into harmony (Oswald Chambers: My Utmost for His Highest).

"The glory of God is man fully alive!" (St. Ireneaus: 130-200).

God did not create man to die, but to live.  To this day, science has still not discovered the 'death' gene in the human body.  But we die anyway.  The Book of Proverbs says "Guard well your heart, for out of it flow all the issues of life" (4:23).  When the Bible speaks of the "heart' of man, it is speaking of the "spirit," which is not the same as the "soul," even though in popular usage, we tend to interchange the terms.  The "soul" of man more properly refers to the part of us the Greeks called "Psyche," the mind and the emotions. 

Once the spirit of man is led by the Spirit of God, the life-energy (zoe, in Greek) overflows to the soul (mind and emotions) and to the body.  We are meant to live --on all levels -- by the breath of God in us.  Whatever is deepest in our hearts will control our minds and our bodies:  the mind of the sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace....if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit, who lives in you (Romans 8:6&11).

We all recognize how stress and anger affects our minds and bodies, causing all kinds of confusion and illness.  What is less recognized is how peace and joy also affect our minds and bodies:  we think more clearly, we recover from trauma more easily.  God desires our health of mind, body, and spirit, but it is only by walking with him, trusting him for the next moment, that we can finally begin to give up the anxiety that we use for protection against the future. 

Romans 8:28 says, And we know that all things work together unto the good of those who love Him...and Psalm 27 says, I am still confident of this:  I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living (v.13).  If our confidence is in ourselves, we will be anxious, for none of us is immune from evil, and our resources are limited.  But if we know that God works everything that happens toward our good, if our confidence is in His love and His ability, we can be at peace in all circumstances.

When I first began reading the Bible, I was reading The Living Bible, a paraphrased edition.  (The translation does not aim at accuracy, but at readability.)  I have since given away my copy, but I remember being struck by a phrase from Psalms in TLB:  My body, too, knows full well that you are my God!"

That phrase has remained with me all these years, and I still say it often:  my mind and my body know full well that He is my God, and I will rest securely.  Surely, goodness and kindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever! (Ps. 23).