{"id":15480,"date":"2026-08-04T00:00:51","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T07:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/?p=15480"},"modified":"2026-08-07T07:50:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T14:50:21","slug":"a-prayer-for-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/2026\/08\/04\/a-prayer-for-health\/","title":{"rendered":"A Prayer for Health"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">3 John\u00a0<strong><em><sup>2<\/sup><\/em><\/strong><em>Beloved, concerning all things, I pray that you may prosper and be in good health, as your soul prospers. <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">As with other New Testament letters, after the greetings comes a prayer of thanksgiving. This verse serves as a blessing expressed for Gaius. Love drives the whole letter with the repeated use of <em>Beloved<\/em> as a direct address to Gaius (verses 2, 5, 11). Each time John uses this, he follows it with a personal comment about Gaius. Verse 2 is a form of prayer wish or blessing. <em>Prosper <\/em>(<em>euodousthai<\/em>) means \u201cgood journey\u201d and conveys the sense of things going well and successfully. John gives three areas that he hopes are going well with Gaius. <em>All things<\/em> is a sweeping category that comes right at the beginning of the sentence that captures the overall good will and love John had for him. <em>Good health<\/em> could be an important quality in an era where many diseases existed, and the average life span was relatively short. Common illnesses we face today could be devastating in that time. Good health would provide Gaius the energy to continue and lead in his ministry. Finally, his <em>soul<\/em> has been prospering, primarily because of his acceptance of the truth of the gospel. He was healthy spiritually, and John was hoping that the rest of his life would match it in health.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">There is no indication that Gaius was ill or had some type of physical difficulty. This verse may simply be a well wish for the wholeness of life. Even when our physical condition may be unhealthy, or we suffer some type of ailment or disability, our souls can be healthy and prospering in the Lord. What really determines the health of person is the spiritual condition. We can ask God that the rest of our life will be healthy and whole as well. This pray captures the Old Testament idea of <em>shalom<\/em>, peace and prosperity in life when all is well-ordered according to God\u2019s will.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>3 John\u00a02Beloved, concerning all things, I pray that you may prosper and be in good health, as your soul prospers. As with other New Testament letters, after the greetings comes a prayer of thanksgiving. This verse serves as a blessing expressed for Gaius. Love drives the whole letter with the repeated use of Beloved as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devotions","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15481,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15480\/revisions\/15481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}