GYC 2008: For This Purpose

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Leading People From Health To Him

Don Mackintosh

Leading People From Health To Him, Part I

Father in heaven, we're thankful that we live in this time, in this place, and we, as we were challenged last night, don't want this to just be another convention, but we want this to be a revolutionary event in our lives and in the lives of others.

We're here to be equipped for service and equipped to reach this planet and this generation.

We're thankful for the time here at Generation of Youth for Christ.

And so we ask a rich blessing on each seminar today, especially drawn near here in this 1 in Christ's name we pray, amen.

This is what we're going to talk about here over the next couple days.

First of all, health to him, that's what I'm going to start out with this morning, leading people from health seminars to him, that being, you know, the Lord.

That's what we're going to talk about first.

And then the second hour, I'm going to show you a key bridge.

In other words, once people have come to your health seminar, What's that key bridge paradigm shifting conversation that just leads them from the scientific to the scriptural, from the research to relationship, from logic to love.

I wish we could start with it, but we can't.

Then, when we come back right after lunch, I've got someone that's helping me with a little presentation and rubbing people the right way.

You're going to learn a little bit about, just a tiny little bit about massage there.

Then the oldest scientific study known to mankind, we're going to cover that.

And then I've asked Rich and Susan Kallenberg to join me for Reaching Addicted people.

Like I talked about last night, and remember that the number 2 and 3 causes of death for people in the age bracket of 15 to 20 is Homicide and suicide, many times related to addictions.

And so, they have an amazing testimony to share of how the Lord led them, you know, back to sanity from self-induced insanity.

So you'll want to hear that and tell everyone else you can about it.

Neil Nedley is going to be joining me to study with you how to excel academically, how to memorize effectively, how to increase your IQ, your EQ, and decrease your DQ.

So that's what we're going to be talking about on Friday.

So, just kind of as I was preparing for this seminar I recognized that the leading causes of death for all ages are heart disease, cancer, stroke, chronic lower respiratory disease, accidents, diabetes, influenza, pneumonia, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, kidney diseases.

That's typically what we say is the leading causes of death.

But for people aged 15 to 19 and actually a little bit older than that, young adult category is the same.

Unintentional injury, homicide, suicide, then your cancers, then your heart disease, congenital anomalies.

So The problem with doing health seminars many times to young people is they don't think they have any problems.

In other words, they don't really think it's important.

In other words, their frontal lobe is not connected yet, which is the reason they have so many accidents.

They jumped off the bridge and then on the way down, they go, this was a bad idea.

By the way, they did exit polls, I guess would be the way, on people that attempted suicide that didn't quite make it.

They made the decision, then as they were on the way down, they said, this is a bad idea.

Homicide, anger, bitterness, undealt with things going on, leading to, you know, either getting killed or killing someone else and then suicide.

So the challenge in reaching someone in your age category is to help them kind of see what's important and why.

I wish I had time to go through a whole seminar on some of the things that are working reaching people that are young, but 1 of the things that really works is what I've asked Dr.

Dudley to carry or study and that is how to excel academically.

You know nobody wants to basically be stupid.

They want to be brilliant enough to go to that.

But some people need some help getting there, and we've discovered that they're very interested in those things.

Okay, leading people from health to him, after that little introduction.

If your church was to shut down, would the community notice?

Where all the churches are kind of like museums, bookstores, they're even McDonald's now.

If your church was to shut down with a community notice, what program or service would they demand you continue and why?

You can turn that on a little bit more because people are already tired.

You know, for me, the answer to that was the health programs we did at the church.

When we stopped doing those programs, we actually got phone calls from physicians, from clinicians of different kind, from dieticians, from hospitals, what's going on over there?

Because there was 1 time our director got sick, and then they all just said, man, you guys, you have to have that program.

Now, looking at Christ's method of ministry, I like Matthew 4.23, if you were writing notes, and Matthew 9.35.

They say the same thing, except for 1 little difference.

In Matthew 4.23 it says, "'And Jesus went throughout Judea, "'teaching in their synagogues "'and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing all manner of sickness and disease among the people.

So Jesus went throughout all Judea and Samaria.

Now it says the same thing in Matthew 9 35, it's 1 little difference.

It says, and Jesus went everywhere teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and disease among the people.

They started in Judea and Samaria and were successful there, Jesus was, and then he went everywhere.

If you start somewhere, then you can go somewhere else.

But he was, I was talking to a guy last night, he said, I'm gonna start an evangelism school.

I said, well how many evangelistic meetings have you preached?

I said, well who's gonna come to your school?

In other words, you have to do something, then other people come.

So, He would start with which 1 of those 3?

So right after he healed people in Matthew chapter 4, verse 23, what comes after Matthew chapter 4?

What happens after Matthew 4, what chapter comes next?

Matthew chapter 5 is the Sermon on the Mount.

Just leave that door open if you don't mind.

It gives me a sense I can escape if I need to.

So right after Matthew chapter 4 is Matthew chapter 5, which 5 through 7 is what?

It's education, and that's the next thing he did.

And then after he was through restoring people and educating people, they couldn't help but respond in adoration.

Leading People From Health To Him, Part II

All right, welcome back, those who are alive and remain.

The, just a little overview of what we've been doing.

How many of you just got here and were not here before?

You missed what you need to understand this next session.

However, we will review so that you will feel as though you didn't miss anything.

What we've been talking here about in this seminar for the first couple hours here is leading people from health seminars to him.

And I would say to you that it's increasingly easy to do that in a more rapid fashion than even a year ago or 2 years ago or 5 years ago that I thought possible.

Because there's a great spiritual openness now and especially during an economic downturn.

A couple weeks ago I was in Loma Linda and I preached a sermon at Loma Linda Advent Hope Sabbath School slash church group, the upside of the downside And I mentioned an economist in that sermon and I had done a little research.

Well there was a New York Times reporter that called that same economist and the economist said, well you got to listen to this sermon on audioverse.org.

So the New York Times reporter, Paul Viletto, got on AudioVerse and listened to 5 of my sermons, including the upside of the downside, which was how, in the economy, people's health improved, they become more spiritually open and all that stuff.

He called me up and interviewed me 5 times.

And an article came out in the New York Times 2 days ago and referenced me as the, as a tele-evangelist from California.

But the interesting part about the article was that it went on and it talked about how people are now much more spiritually open.

And if you simply will show them the scientific research that shows the power of spirituality as it relates to health outcomes, if you just show them that and then you take a vote and say how many of you would like to have the spiritual brought into the seminar, 98 percent of the people will raise their hand.

And then the other 2% you say, look, this is a democracy.

98% of the people say this is the way it goes.

We're sorry you lost the election but we still love you.

Or not something like that but you just say to them, you know, we know that you're going to be okay, and then we bring it in.

And so what I've discovered is you can bring in the spiritual very rapidly if you use the pulpiteer or the pulpit of science to get there.

And like I showed you last time, there would be no science without Scripture.

Okay, so just by way of introduction to those just coming, we looked at last time leading people from health to him, the 9 or 8 characteristics to do that.

And now we're gonna look at the key bridge.

I want to say though that there's a lot more coming up.

We're gonna look at the oldest scientific study in the Bible and we're also going to Talk about reaching addicted people this afternoon.

You're gonna want to be here to hear that and also those principles this afternoon and then tomorrow.

Nedley, how to be smart, how to excel academically, how to memorize effectively, how to increase your IQ, EQ, but not your DQ.

So, now after you do this very, if you do a very successful health program, then people are very interested and what I do is I will start to invite them to whatever the name of your program is.

I want to study with you the first depression recovery program or I want to study with you the first CHIP program.

I want to Study with you the first New Start program, whatever the name of your program is.

I'm just going to put this here on the pyramid.

So, you put it there and then you start to, I'll just give you the study kind of like as I've given it to people.

Now, I've got to tell you that most of these studies, when I started out in these health programs, I didn't know what I was doing and there's probably a good case to make that still I don't.

But as I would start to answer the questions for people, they would become, they would sophisticate my way of answering the question.

And this is basically the Bible study that came out of it.

People in medical schools, Harvard Medical School as well as many others are looking more closely at the connection between spirituality and healing.

They have seminars, they have conferences, and there's just an increased awareness and interest in this.

Likewise in the major periodicals of today, there is this talk about faith and how it relates to healing and meditation.

Dean Ornish, a renowned cardiologist who does a program not dissimilar to some of the programs done in Adventist churches to reverse heart disease talks about meditation which is of course the lowest common denominator of spirituality.

In his seminar he just has everyone go, om, that's the extent of the spirituality.

But in other words he's trying to bring that in, focus I guess, I don't know what it is, I haven't tried to get into it.

Others, other articles are talking about prayer, but some people get concerned.

Keep in mind, this is the study I'm giving, some of them I know pretty well now, gone to my seminar.

Some people are concerned, they complain that they've been, as this article put it, ambushed by spirituality.

They say, well this is only, this is, excuse me?

Oh, yeah, That's, she's with me helping present.

Yeah, we still love you though, even though she tried to pull rank on you.

But Studies indicate that ignoring the spiritual aspect of our lives can be hazardous to our health.

So then I just go through some of the studies.

And I, you know, this is what I do now, just even almost initially in health programs to be able to bring it up sooner.

But I used a popularized version of some of the studies found in the Reader's Digest.

Church members have lower death rates than non-members regardless of risk factors.

How many of you think that's a good enough reason to join the church?

Now it's going to go probably 2 in a row here in a minute.

Also you know all the factors of heart disease and blood pressure and cancer and general health studies, those with religious commitment did better in those.

People with strong religious commitment did better when it came to not having as much depression, not committing suicide, alcoholism, other addictions, which are related to the top several killers of people from 15 to 20 years old, right?

Because remember number 1 was accidents, number 2 was homicide, number 3 was suicide, you know, and so religious commitment really helps avoid that.

80 percent of Americans believe that faith or prayer can help people recover from illness or injury.

It's probably higher than that now when these studies were done.

There's a whole book that's come out on the connection between health and spirituality by a guy by the name of Koenig, I think his last name, or Hoenig.

He was a psych, had some mental health issues and he was living homeless under a bridge.

He saw this passage in a, I think it was a living Bible that said, publish me to the world.

And he took that letter and he says, look, I will become a physician and I will publish all about you if you help me.

And he's published the most about the Lord and its relationship between spiritual health of anybody.

How many think the Lord even answers prayers of people under bridges that are homeless?

So more than 60% of doctors think they should talk to their patients about faith and prayer and that's increasing.

Now the internal medicine, the archives of internal medicine recently had an article that showed how to bring spirituality and health into your medical practice and what questions to ask to bring that up and basically suggested if you're not doing that it's malpractice.

Sixty-three percent of doctors said God intervened to improve their own medical condition.

People are wanting to move beyond the facts to consider faith issues, beyond the science to look at scripture, beyond logic to look at love, and beyond research to look at relationships.

And they're very interested in those things.

Leading People From Health To Him, Part III

A friend of mine, Nancy Adams, is here today, and Nancy is going to share a little bit of her testimony as a, working in health evangelism as a massage therapist.

And then she wants to just show you real quickly how to do a simple massage.

Now, because of the spirit of actual ethics, we don't want necessarily everybody rubbing on everybody else here, but maybe what we could do is if you want to participate in this, sit next to someone it would be appropriate for you to rub their back.

And that may be, you might be sitting next to your wife, or your shoulders, your shoulders, just the shoulders, okay?

And I'll let you be up to that in terms of your ethical standards.

We will be videotaping this and sending pictures to your parents.

So we'll let Nancy kind of take over here and she's going to take just a few moments to share her testimony of a frontline medical missionary worker and then I'm going to come back, kind of finish our little section on the Book of Daniel, then we're going to have a powerful last section also dealing with addictions.

And I just, I learned massage in Hawaii in 1973 by a native Hawaiian lady named Margaret Machado who was an Adventist.

And I'm going to tell you that story, but 1 of the things that she taught me is massage is a praying work.

She would say that over and over again, massage is a praying work.

And she taught me a prayer, and I'm going to pray it right now.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for all the many blessings that you give us.

I pray that you will empty me of self right now and use me as an instrument in thy hand to speak thy word and to bless these souls gathered together.

Thank you for hearing our prayers in Jesus name, amen.

Every time I do massage, empty me of self and use me as an instrument of thine as a great prayer.

If I would sincerely pray that, He answers it.

The greatest joy in the world is to be used of God.

There is nothing that can turn you on as much as knowing that you've been used by God.

And I have to tell you, I wasn't raised an Adventist.

And you know, there wasn't religion in the home, but I'm very thankful because you know, God works in every home, no matter how bad it is.

In fact, the worse it is, the more the child feels their need of God.

I felt my need of God and I thanked the Lord that my mother was open enough that she took me to a Sunday school in Cradlewell and I learned about the love of God at a very young age.

I couldn't see really God working there, but I knew that there was a God who loved me.

And you know that's the most important thing that we can get across to another person, right?

That we need to let God get across to us.

But when I was 14 years old I came home from school 1 day and my father, I found my father, he had committed suicide in the car, in the, with carbon monoxide poisoning.

And I was, I had prayed, I prayed, Lord, please save my father.

And I, 14 is that age where you're really making decisions.

And there was a lot of anger all the time in my home anyway.

I got into drugs and every kind of thing.

I lived in Oakland, California and Berkeley was right next door.

And I went from Oakland to Berkeley and got into the whole hippie scene in the late 60s, early 70s.

But you know the Lord had his hand on my life.

Oh by the way I forgot to tell you that my parents were both from Brooklyn, New York and they moved to California and bought a house 2 doors down from a huge Seventh-day Adventist church at East Oakland Seventh-day Adventist church where I went to vacation Bible school and gave my heart to the Lord for the first time when I was 9 years old.

But I had no support in my family and you know I want you to know if you're coming from the outside, Adventists can be a very close society.

And so I didn't become an Adventist at 9 years old, but the seeds, never worry if people don't come right away, because you plant the seeds and the Lord waters and he knows the time when he'll call them.

So anyway, I went into this whole angry phase and got into feminism and anti-war and all that and but the Lord began to work in my life when I was about 24 years old.

And my sister had just gotten breast cancer and had a terrible surgery.

And I found a tumor in my breast a couple of months later.

And I found out that my grandmother had died of breast cancer at the age of 40.

But my friends, I had all these hippie vegetarian friends, which I didn't think anything was food unless it had meat in it.

So I was always, get away from me with that.

But they convinced me to go to Herbalist.

And this Herbalist said to me, you have to get rid of all that anger and resentment and just drink carrot juice.

And I started to cry because I thought, first of all, my whole motivation for life was anger and resentment, anti-this and anti-that.

And the second thing was I just didn't think I could give up a junk food diet.

And I tried to make this decision whether I was going to go with the doctor, whether I was going to listen to this crazy herbalist lady.

And for the first time, I consciously knelt down and prayed.

And I said, Dear God, if you're still up there, please tell me what to do.

And he said, he didn't talk to me, but the thought came to me really strongly, you always pray in Jesus' name.

And I didn't want to pray in Jesus name because I was a women's liberationist and I didn't want to mail God and all that.

And but it was so strong that I said, oh, all right, in Jesus name.

And I got up from there, I opened, I went to the refrigerator because I was starving, I hadn't been eating, been smoking cigarettes, and I opened the refrigerator and there was absolutely nothing to eat but a pint of carrot juice.

Later I found a friend had brought it over and put it in the refrigerator.

I'm getting goosebumps even now thinking about it.

So I started on a 30-day carrot juice fast.

I lost 52 pounds, quit smoking, drinking, and drugs, and got rid of the tumor in my breast.

That was the prescription of the herbalist.

Series

Leading People From Health To Him

Leading People From Health To Him, Part III

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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2. God’s Righteousness or Yours?

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Sound Doctrine