Whether you are living with emotional or physical pain or are trying to cope with chronic poor health, you are dealing with a difficult situation. Do not despair. Do not give up or give in to your condition. With God’s help and your efforts, there is a possibility that you can improve your situation.

Obviously, when faced with pain or poor health, medical attention is required. But along with medical care, there are emotional, mental, and spiritual ways to feeling healthy on a daily basis. They are:

1. Mentally picture your body as being perfect in condition and in function. Don’t visualize it as in decline or as deteriorating. Don’t look for something to go wrong. Think positively about your physical self.

2. Every day strongly encourage God’s health forces.  Re-stimulate them to creative action within your being. Standing straight and tall, say, “I affirm the presence within me of God’s re-creative forces. I hereby open myself in confidence and faith to their health-giving effect. I feel the life force that created me is now re-creating me.”

3. Drain your mind of all thoughts and attitudes that breed ill health and pain. Ill will toward others is one of these attitudes. Tensions created by such unhealthy attitudes can cause or aggravate many diseases. Goodwill is the opposite and healthy state in which love is a curative element. Practice goodwill each day. Fill your mind with love, forgiveness, calmness and faith. Cultivate these qualities and you’ll begin to feel better. To do so, visualize Jesus Christ cleansing your mind of unhealthy thoughts and bad attitudes. Then visualize your mind being refilled with positive, healthy thoughts.

4. Practice prayer breathing. If you are able, take a brisk walk breathing deeply in and out. Say, “I breathe out pain, ill health, ill will, ill attitudes; I breathe in good health and good attitudes. I breathe out staleness; I breathe in vitality. I breathe out godlessness; I breathe in godliness.” Open your lungs, your heart, your mind and your soul and receive the gifts of vigor, energy, and pain-free living.

5. Finally, put your pain in God’s hands. Actually visualize it being lifted from your body and put into God’s enormous, strong hands. If, for some reason, it is God’s will that you bear this pain, be assured that He will give you the understanding and strength to endure it. But don’t give up praying about it.