Joanna Daniels was 19 years old and sitting in the doctor’s office—again. She had spent her entire life sick in one way or another and had ingested a long list of medications that over time, had messed with her system so badly, she could not recall when she did not feel awful. To make matters worse, the last few years had seen her nearly doubled over every time she ate. Now, being in the doctor’s office once more, she was again looking for answers to the question that she had asked herself a thousand times, What in the world is wrong with me?
When the doctor came in, Irritable Bowel Syndrome was his diagnosis. His plan of treatment? Medication—for the rest of Joanna’s life.
This just wasn’t going to do. Over the next seven years, Joanna tried every regimen, diet, cleanse, and read every book on nutrition to try to find a way to eat her way back to health. Still, the crippling pain reverberated around her body every time she ate. At the end of her rope, she realized that the only book she had never consulted was the Bible. I wonder if God tells us how to heal our bodies, she thought.
Once her quest began, it didn’t take long to find a direction. In the very first book of Genesis, she read, “Then God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you.’” Genesis 1:29
Plant yielding seed, Joanna thought. Hmmm. As soon as she began to change her life to eat only food that was made of plants that yielded seeds, her body began to react. “The pain began to subside right away,” says Joanna. “And it wasn’t just a case of my body being shocked into feeling better. It was finally luxuriating in the food that it had been craving all along. I have been pain free for nearly nine years now—with more clarity of thought and energy than I ever had before.”
The more she began to research God’s Word with respect to health and how we were meant to eat, the more a few questions began to rise to the surface: If Christians are supposed to be set apart, why are we just as sick, diseased, overweight, and broke from our health bills as the rest of the world? As we go off to church with our sick and damaged bodies, does the world see anything they would aspire to? Are we “set apart?” If “the body is the temple of the Lord,” why do we treat it with so much disregard?
Joanna went to school to earn certifications for nutrition, all the while continuing to craft a foundational approach to health from Biblical teachings. Now she leads the Nutrition Ministry at Rock Church where she leads a program, Devoted Bodies, that is focused on what the Bible says about how to be healthy. The group has seen people reverse diabetes, lose 40-80 pounds, get off blood pressure medications, eliminate pains, lower cholesterol, and more.
In January, she will begin 6-Month Transformation, a program that focuses on mind, body, and attitude for better health. It operates under the premise that health is not just what one puts on their plate or how much he or she works out. Instead, health is affected by a mindset, physical health, and spiritual attitude. Not only will participants learn the best way to eat according to Scripture, they will improve their mindset and spiritual walk with God. Past graduates not only lost weight, but were freed of medications and bondage to food addictions such sugar, coffee, and more.
