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1. Faith Means Trusting God

Faith in the Bible is more than believing that God exists. The Greek word pistis, translated “faith,” includes trust, confidence, reliance, and faithfulness. Its Old Testament counterpart, emunah, carries the ideas of steadiness, faithfulness, and trustworthiness. Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please Him,” and Hebrews 11 then illustrates faith through lives of action. Noah built the ark because he trusted God; Abraham followed God's call; Moses chose to identify with God's people; Daniel continued to pray. Their actions did not create their faith. **Their trust in God produced their actions.**¹,²,³ Biblical faith is therefore confidence in God's character that leads a person to trust His wisdom and follow His instruction.


2. God Connects Trust, Obedience, and Health

One of the clearest biblical connections between trust in God and health is found in God's words to Israel after the Exodus: “If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His sight, and wilt give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee” (Exodus 15:26). The statement places God's commandments and statutes within a larger framework of health, protection, and healing. Scripture repeatedly presents God's instructions as life-giving: “keep therefore his statutes, and his commandments... that it may go well with thee” (Deuteronomy 4:40); “I have set before you life and death... therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19); and “length of days, and long life, and peace” are associated with keeping God's commandments (Proverbs 3:1–2).


There is also historical evidence that serious disease existed in ancient Egypt during the period surrounding the Exodus. The Ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian medical document dating to approximately 1550 BC, contains descriptions of excessive urination that several medical historians have identified as an early reference to a condition consistent with diabetes mellitus.⁴,⁵,⁶ The evidence should be described as an early description consistent with diabetes, rather than assuming that ancient Egyptians used the modern diagnostic category. The important historical point is that disorders characterized by excessive urination were recognized in ancient Egyptian medical writings thousands of years ago. Modern research on ancient Egyptian remains has also demonstrated evidence of chronic diseases such as atherosclerosis.⁷


3. Faith Changes the Way We Live

Faith becomes especially important to health because genuine trust changes behavior. A person who believes that God created the body and understands its needs has reason to follow His principles for living. Scripture says, “Ye are not your own... ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). Research has repeatedly found that religious involvement is associated with lower mortality. A meta-analysis of 42 independent samples found a significant association between religious involvement and reduced all-cause mortality.⁸ A later systematic review likewise found evidence of lower mortality among people with greater religious involvement, particularly among initially healthy populations.⁹ In a nationally representative U.S. cohort of 8,450 adults, weekly religious-service attendance was associated with an 18% lower risk of death, while attendance more than once a week was associated with a 30% lower risk compared with never attending.¹⁰ Among 74,534 women followed in the Nurses' Health Study, attending religious services more than once a week was associated with a 33% lower risk of all-cause mortality.¹¹


These findings are consistent with the idea that religious commitment can shape everyday life. Religious participation may influence health through healthier behaviors, social relationships, emotional well-being, and other pathways. The important biblical principle is that faith is lived. Trust in God affects choices, and repeated choices become a way of life.


4. Longevity and The Seventh-day Adventist Experience

The relationship between faith and longevity becomes particularly interesting in the Seventh-day Adventist population. Loma Linda, California, is widely recognized in Blue Zones literature as a longevity population, and the Seventh-day Adventist community there has been reported to experience substantially longer life expectancy than the surrounding population.¹²,¹³ The Blue Zones framework identifies religious belonging as one of its nine common characteristics associated with longevity and specifically points to the importance of participating in a faith-based community.¹²


The Adventist experience is especially relevant because health is not treated as a separate subject from faith. Seventh-day Adventist teaching connects care of the body with stewardship of God's creation, while practices such as abstaining from tobacco and alcohol, emphasizing a plant-based diet, exercising regularly, maintaining social connection, observing the Sabbath, and cultivating a life of faith are woven into the community's way of life. The Adventist Health Studies have followed large populations of Adventists for decades, beginning with the Adventist Mortality Study of 22,940 California Adventists and continuing through Adventist Health Study-1 and Adventist Health Study-2, which enrolled approximately 96,000 Adventists.¹⁴


The longevity findings should not be reduced to a single factor. A recent review notes that Loma Linda's longevity cannot be separated neatly into individual components such as diet, exercise, social connection, or religious commitment. Rather, these elements are interconnected within the Adventist way of life.¹³ That observation is important because biblical faith likewise is not merely a belief held in the mind. It shapes the whole person.


5. Faith, Lifestyle, and Longevity

The Adventist Religion & Health Study provides an especially valuable window into the relationship between religious commitment and health. This study included approximately 11,000 Seventh-day Adventists and was designed specifically to examine religious beliefs and practices, stress, psychological characteristics, social relationships, and health.¹⁵ Researchers have found that religious engagement can be connected with health through several psychosocial and lifestyle pathways.


Morton, Lee, and Martin examined these pathways among Seventh-day Adventists and found relationships involving religious engagement, healthier diet and exercise, positive religious support, reduced negative emotionality, and mortality.¹⁶ This does not mean that religion functions as a drug or that faith guarantees a particular lifespan. It demonstrates something much more consistent with the biblical understanding of faith: what a person trusts influences how that person lives.


Other Adventist research has examined intrinsic religiosity—the degree to which religious belief is deeply integrated into a person's life. In a study of 9,581 older North American Seventh-day Adventists, researchers examined the relationship between intrinsic religiosity and hypertension while controlling for demographic and lifestyle variables and church attendance.¹⁷ The significance of this work is that researchers are beginning to distinguish between merely belonging to a religious group and actually allowing faith to become part of one's inner life.


6. Prayer and Survival

Prayer is one of the clearest expressions of trust in God. Scripture calls believers to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) and to bring their concerns to God with thanksgiving (Philippians 4:6–7). Prayer acknowledges that human beings are dependent upon God rather than completely self-sufficient.


Research has also begun examining prayer and survival directly. A nationwide longitudinal study of 1,931 U.S. adults with chronic illness followed participants from 2014 through 2020. After adjustment for age, physical symptoms, sex, race, education, depression, social support, alcohol use, smoking, exercise, and body mass index, participants who reported praying daily or more often were 1.48 times as likely to survive the six-year follow-up as those who prayed less often.¹⁸ Earlier research on prayer has produced mixed findings, so prayer should not be presented as a replacement for appropriate medical care. Nevertheless, the survival association is noteworthy because the study examined private prayer itself rather than simply combining prayer with general religious participation.¹⁸,¹⁹


7. Trust in God and the Laws of Health

The biblical picture becomes clearer when faith and obedience are considered together. God does not ask human beings to trust Him while ignoring the principles He has established for life. Instead, Scripture repeatedly calls His people to hear His voice, follow His commandments, and choose the path of life. Exodus 15:26 is therefore especially significant: God identifies Himself as the One who heals while simultaneously instructing His people to listen, obey, and keep His statutes.


This principle is consistent with the Seventh-day Adventist understanding of health. Ellen G. White repeatedly emphasized cooperation with God through obedience to the laws of health. She wrote, “Natural means, used in accordance with God's will, bring about supernatural results,” and described the believer's responsibility to cooperate with God rather than expect Him to do what human beings are able to do for themselves.²⁰ This does not place human health under our complete control; rather, it recognizes that God has established natural laws and that trusting Him includes respecting those laws.


The same principle appears throughout Scripture. “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding” is immediately followed by the promise that God will direct the paths of those who acknowledge Him (Proverbs 3:5–6). Trust is therefore not passive. It leads to a willingness to live according to God's wisdom.


8. Faith and Oral Health

The principles of stewardship extend naturally to the mouth. The body belongs to God, and the mouth has important functions in nourishment, communication, worship, teaching, encouragement, and service. Caring for the teeth and gums therefore protects more than appearance; it helps preserve functions that are important to daily life and service.


Research specifically examining religion and oral health is still developing. A 2023 study using a nationally representative German sample of 3,075 adults found an association between religious affiliation and oral-health-related quality of life.²¹ Although this type of study cannot establish that faith itself prevents oral disease, it adds to the growing body of research examining relationships between religious life and oral health.


For the believer, however, the foundation does not depend upon a statistical association. Scripture provides the principle: “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Caring for the mouth can therefore become an ordinary expression of faithful stewardship.


9. Trust in God Is a Way of Life

The evidence from longevity research, Adventist populations, studies of religious participation, and emerging research on prayer points toward a consistent pattern: faith can influence the way people live, and the way people live influences health. Faith provides a reason to choose wisely, strength to practice self-control, hope during difficulty, connection with a supportive community, and confidence in God's wisdom. The Bible goes deeper still. It teaches that God is not merely interested in helping us live longer; He desires to restore us to the life He designed from the beginning. “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). Trust means placing our lives—including our health—in the hands of the Creator and then living according to His wisdom. In that sense, Trust in God is not simply one part of healthy living. It is the faith that gives healthy living its purpose.



References

  1. The Holy Bible. Hebrews 11:1–6; James 2:17–26.
  2. The Holy Bible. Habakkuk 2:4; Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11; Hebrews 10:38.
  3. Strong, J. Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. Entries for pistis (πίστις) and emunah (אֱמוּנָה).
  4. Dupras, T. L., Schwarcz, H. P., & Fairgrieve, S. I. “Pathological skeletal remains from ancient Egypt: the earliest case of diabetes mellitus?” Practical Diabetes International. 2010. (Wiley Online Library)
  5. Loriaux, D. L. “Diabetes and the Ebers Papyrus (1552 B.C.E.).” In A Biographical History of Endocrinology. Wiley, 2016. doi:10.1002/9781119205791.ch1. (Wiley Online Library)
  6. King, K. M., & Rubin, G. “A history of diabetes: from antiquity to discovering insulin.” British Journal of Nursing. 2003;12(18):1091–1095. doi:10.12968/bjon.2003.12.18.11775. (PubMed)
  7. Allam, A. H., et al. “Atherosclerosis in Ancient Egyptian Mummies: The Horus Study.” Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Imaging. 2011;4(4):315–327. (PubMed Central (PMC))
  8. McCullough, M. E., Hoyt, W. T., Larson, D. B., Koenig, H. G., & Thoresen, C. “Religious Involvement and Mortality: A Meta-Analytic Review.” Health Psychology. 2000;19(3):211–222. doi:10.1037/0278-6133.19.3.211. (Northern Lights Health Education)
  9. Chida, Y., Steptoe, A., & Powell, L. H. “Religiosity/Spirituality and Mortality: A Systematic Quantitative Review.” Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics. 2009;78(2):81–90. doi:10.1159/000190791.
  10. Gillum, R. F., King, D. E., Obisesan, T. O., & Koenig, H. G. “Frequency of attendance at religious services and mortality in a U.S. national cohort.” Annals of Epidemiology. 2008;18(2):124–129. doi:10.1016/j.annepidem.2007.10.015.
  11. Li, S., Stampfer, M. J., Williams, D. R., & VanderWeele, T. J. “Association of Religious Service Attendance With Mortality Among Women.” JAMA Internal Medicine. 2016;176(6):777–785. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.1615.
  12. Buettner, D., & Blue Zones. “Loma Linda, California.” Blue Zones longevity research. (Blue Zones)
  13. “The Longevity of Blue Zones: Myth or Reality.” Geriatrics. 2025. The review discusses the evidence and limitations surrounding Loma Linda's designation as a Blue Zone and the role of Seventh-day Adventist lifestyle and spirituality. (MDPI)
  14. Adventist Health Study. “Adventist Mortality Study” and “Adventist Health Studies.” Loma Linda University. (Adventist Health Study)
  15. Adventist Health Study. “Adventist Religion & Health Study.” Loma Linda University. (Adventist Health Study)
  16. Morton, K. R., Lee, J. W., & Martin, L. R. “Pathways from Religion to Health: Mediation by Psychosocial and Lifestyle Mechanisms.” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. 2017;9(1):106–117. doi:10.1037/rel0000091.
  17. Charlemagne-Badal, S. J., et al. “Intrinsic Religiosity and Hypertension Among Older North American Seventh-day Adventists.” Journal of Religion and Health. 2016. doi:10.1007/s10943-015-0102-x. (PubMed)
  18. Ironson, G., & Ahmad, S. S. “Frequency of Private Prayer Predicts Survival Over 6 Years in a Nationwide U.S. Sample of Individuals with a Chronic Illness.” Journal of Religion and Health. 2024;63:2910–2923. doi:10.1007/s10943-023-01870-z.
  19. Jantos, M., & Kiat, H. “Prayer as Medicine: How Much Have We Learned?” Medical Journal of Australia. 2007;186(10):S51–S53. doi:10.5694/j.1326-5377.2007.tb01041.x.
  20. White, E. G. Selected Messages, Book 2. Washington, DC: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1958, p. 346. The passage is reproduced and referenced in John Clark, Blueprint for Health and Healing, where Clark's cited source is White rather than Clark's own work. (Northern Lights Health Education)
  21. Moszka, N., Aarabi, G., Lieske, B., et al. “Religious Affiliation and Oral Health-Related Quality of Life: A Cross-Sectional Study Based on a Nationally Representative Survey in Germany.” BMC Oral Health. 2023;23:586. doi:10.1186/s12903-023-03265-8.​​​​​​​