The only thing better than living the Christian life is living the Christian life and relishing it. Loving and enjoying God is one of the greatest privileges that God has given to mankind. And yet, for most of my sincere Christian life, I failed to enjoy God. My love for Him was tepid, at best. In this seminar we will look at why the plant of love failed to grow in my life and how, in practical terms, we can Delight in the Almighty. 

ASI 2017: Called. Chosen. Committed.

<p>The only thing better than living the Christian life is living the Christian life and relishing it. Loving and enjoying God is one of the greatest privileges that God has given to mankind. And yet, for most of my sincere Christian life, I failed to enjoy God. My love for Him was tepid, at best. In this seminar we will look at why the plant of love failed to grow in my life and how, in practical terms, we can Delight in the Almighty. </p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

2-Applying the Faith

Don Mackintosh

Leading With Enthusiasm

Father in heaven, Lord, we're thankful today we could come to ASI, and we come to be inspired, to be filled with hope, to be filled with enthusiasm for your cause, and we ask that would happen today as a result of this presentation, and that your work would go forward in this world.

We thank you, we come in Christ's name, amen.

Did you hear that music that came up during the prayer?

Weimar Institute is a college and a new church.

We started a church there because we believe that the purpose of the college is to support God's church in this world.

Harvard used to have a seal that was Veritas for the church, for Christ and the church.

But they took off for Christ and the church.

But Veritas is truth according to whatever they come up with.

But I'm excited to be a part of a school that is attempting to produce people for Christ and his church.

In that capacity there, just a little more about me, is I'm kind of a vision caster at Weimar, I work with Dr.

And basically work as the church pastor and the leader of a small health evangelism school that's a four-month school, or certificate program, and then also work with the depression recovery program as a counselor 50 days out of the year.

So I wear about 3 hats, but most importantly, I'm married to Luminizza La Cremiora Constantinescu.

Luminizza La Cremiora Constantinescu, and I'm also the father of the 4 living creatures, James Madison Sabatismos, Catherine Caroline, Donald Malcolm, and Elizabeth May.

Now, enthusiasm, it changes things, okay?

It changes things beginning in the brain.

I want to talk about some of the technical aspects of enthusiasm and then close with a case study maybe.

There are correlates in the brain that go along with enthusiastic message propagation, in other words, talking.

They examined the neural precursors of spreading ideas with enthusiasm.

They studied it, kind of like dissecting a frog to see how it jumps.

A frog no longer jumps, but you figure something out.

So anyway, they dissected the brain and dissected enthusiasm into component processes or processes that can be identified through automated linguistic analysis.

So they were looking at what the person was saying, human ratings of combined linguistic and nonverbal cues.

And they looked at that as well, and points of convergence between the 2.

And Then they combined all the above by looking internally at the brain from functional magnetic resonance images, or MRIs is what we call them.

And they looked at that and attempted to link the neurocognitive mechanisms that are set in motion during initial exposure to ideas and subsequent behaviors of the message communicators.

So they took these enthusiastic communicators and basically said, what's happening?

And, you know, what are those language patterns?

And then also, what's happening inside the brain?

And participants were exposed to the ideas, had a video discussing the ideas, Those videos were transcribed and then rated, and looking at the neural correlates of enthusiastic message propagation.

And here's what they found, in some senses, from some of those MRIs, okay?

First of all, if you have a personal positive sentiment, how many of you have met these people that are not personally positive people?

Very hard to be enthusiastic if you're not positive, right?

Look at the person next to you and say, are you positive or negative?

You can probably tell just by looking at them.

Positive sentiment was associated with activation in neural regions, including the medial prefrontal cortex, and the precutaneous posterior signal net cortex, and the medial temporal lobe.

In other words, the place that's lighting up on the screen.

I know you're going to go out there and say, look, I just want to talk to you about your medial prefrontal cortex just for a couple of minutes.

How many of you are going to not probably do that?

But Anyway, it sounds fancy, so that's why I'm saying it.

And then a positive, not just a sentiment, but evaluation.

You normally look at things, and you can find something positive to come out of it, right?

An enthusiastic person is not easily dissuaded.

Everything that comes along, they usually will look at what the element is that they can agree and approve and accept the person has shared with them.

They don't just dismiss people, but they'll say, I hear what you're saying, but here's what I think the positive element is in this evaluation coming out of it.

That more evaluative positive descriptions was associated exclusively with the neural activity in the temporal parietal junction, TPJ.

Look at that person next to you and say, hey, what's your TPJ doing right now?

I mean, is it evaluating even what you've heard so far in this presentation positively?

Yes or no, look at the person next to you and say, or, I'm trying to figure out how I'm doing, see?

All right, then they looked at enthusiasm, which was looking at the positive evaluative as well as the other and putting all these things together, the researchers did.

And they found that there was activation across the medial prefrontal cortex.

In other words, it's the frontal lobe, folks.

Look at the person next to you and say, it's the frontal lobe.

You guys have a problem looking at each other.

Just look at each other to see if I can see you can do that.

Some of you are still not looking at the person, I mean, you're just looking right at me.

Okay, it's kind of like saying I love you.

Don't just do it just once, you gotta do it again and again.

Activation across the medial prefrontal cortex, the precutaneous posterior cingulate cortex.

I mean, you guys should be saying these things with me at this point.

The dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, the temporal parietal junction.

The medial temporal function, as well as the ventral striatum.

All these things are hopping and popping at the same time, including the inferior parietal lobule and premotor cortex.

In other words, all I'm trying to say, and I probably should have just said it this way, is that there are many areas of the brain that are activated when you're enthusiastic.

How many think that that should have been what I started with?

But I'm just trying to impress you that the entire brain comes on board, and enthusiasm starts there.

Don't try and look for enthusiasm coming from somewhere else.

X means out, to incite someone, excite someone.

So, enthusiasm actually internally comes, alright?

And, you know, the way you relate can influence others.

So the way you look, especially when someone who does not have a prefrontal cortex that's really developed well, they will, through the agency of mere neurons, pick up on your enthusiasm.

Alane Waters

Tom Waters

Connected Relationships In a Disconnecting World

Father in heaven, what it is a blessing to be able to meet together as brothers and sisters in your family.

What a blessing it is to have the freedom to do that and not be persecuted for the assembling of ourselves together.

May we not take these freedoms for granted, but may we recognize the blessing they are.

And as we listen today and as we participate, we pray that you will speak to all of our hearts to draw us closer into that beautiful relationship with you and with 1 another.

So connected relationships in a disconnecting world.

I think it's quite obvious to most of us that the world is falling apart, okay?

And unfortunately in the time that we're living in, although prophecy, the Bible has made it very clear that this time would come, we're seeing a breakdown in an intentional and deliberate agenda to break down relationships, to confuse relationships.

And it's kind of ironic because we're in a time where technologically we can connect with more people more quickly and more efficiently than we've ever been able to connect in the world prior to this time.

That's ironic because simple situation that we just experienced recently and it's not an unusual 1.

Well, we traveled 1.5 million miles just on Delta Airlines.

Sitting in a seat, those are no bonus miles.

So we travel a lot, sometimes more than we'd like to, but we were in an olive garden recently and we were enjoying our connection together, our communication, and we noticed these 4, apparently 4 friends come and sit down at the table right next to us.

I mean, close enough that, you know, we could have tuned into their conversation if we would have wanted to, but the irony was that they greeted each other with hugs, with enthusiasm, they sat down and there was no conversation.

And we thought, well, they're waiting to order, waiting for the food, whatever.

But through the almost the entire meal, they were communicating like this.

I can't even make my thumbs go as fast as some people can text today.

On occasion, 1 of them would tap another 1 and move their phone over in front.

So obviously it was some kind of message or some kind of photo they wanted them to see.

But these 4 women are sitting there for probably 45 minutes to an hour, and they hardly spoke a word.

But at the end, I mean, we were just being entertained by this, right?

At the end, they got up, oh, it was so good to catch up.

And they were just, oh, this is such a great time together.

And I'm thinking, wow, they hardly spoke.

There was nearly No really verbal exchange.

And I said to my husband, hey, maybe they're texting each other at the table.

Now, we can see that example as a little bit way out there, right?

But in reality, we want you to think about your situation, not about the 4 women that we saw in the Olive Garden.

We have to evaluate this in our own home because if we are not intentional to build strong relationships and have good verbal communication, we will unintentionally be swept with the tide of the modern culture we live in.

And we want you to think about, during this presentation today, think about your tables at home.

And what takes place at your table, is your smartphone an invited guest?

Or is it just expected to be there and that's just an example?

It can be many other distractions out there.

But we have to be intentional about building relationships that are secure, that are loving, that are growing.

If we don't, we will begin to deteriorate, not only in our relationship with God but in our human relationships and they break down fastest in the circle of the home.

So we introduce that because it is an irony that we are in a society that we can connect so quickly, so often with so many people, and yet, if any of you read the statistics, we do because we work with families and marriages.

And to see the rate of breakdown in the family and the lack of communication that's happening and the results of that, Often the devices that we have that have made our world much more connected in many ways have also had a liability on the other side and that is that we are too accessible too much of the time or all of the time.

So we're certainly in using this as a part of an introduction, we're not making a case against devices.

They're here to stay and they are either a tool that we control, I've got 1 stuck on my side right now, or it can become a trap that we never intended for it to be.

How does it affect, how do these devices affect us in our relationships as individuals our relationship with God you know some people spend their quiet time with the Lord in the morning on a device that's fine As long as that device is being used for that quiet time, not becoming a trap that's causing us to listen to every bing bong, whatever the tone is that reminds you that you've got a new email or a new, you know, Facebook, you know, contact.

If that's what's distracting us, that's going to affect that relationship and it's going to affect this relationship and every other relationship.

So, we want to talk about being connected with God.

This is the most important relationship that we can have, both in this life and for eternity Do you think that the adversary of our souls likes us to have a good connection with God?

No That is the most vital connection that we need and it will not happen by accident.

Our default mode is also the mode of being so busy in the world that we live in because we are so accessible to so many people, so much of the time, that our default mode is also being so busy that sometimes the most important relationships in life get unintentionally pushed aside.

Yeah, and that busyness can be doing good things.

So again we want to make it this this seminar very practical.

Think about your experience since you've been here at ASI.

Now you just look at your program schedule.

And they start pretty early in the morning, don't they?

And they end, at least for us, we have a booth downstairs.

So any of you who have booze, you're on duty till 1030 at night, right?

And our default mode, our humanity, says I have got things we got to get done.

We have places and people we have to meet.

We have responsibilities that we have to carry through.

And so it can be all too easy, because we are all Christians, right, and we all love Jesus, right, that We don't even spend any time with him, but we get up and we're into the day.

Now we're not asking you to raise your hands, and it can be out of the context of ASI, but in reality, too often we unintentionally let the pressures of life come in and we unintentionally set aside our time with God because we know that, Okay, well I can, you know, I'll take, I'll have some prayer time a little bit later.

I will spend time studying this evening when I get home from work, or whatever it is.

We have given all of those above excuses and many more in between, and we have found in our experience that if we do not make the conscious choice to begin the day with God, we are already setting ourselves up for problems for the day, right?

It doesn't mean if we have time with God that our days go flawless, but what it means is that spending time with God, we have a disposition to turn to him for help.

We have a more sensitivity to the spirit of his voice speaking to our hearts in situations, and we are better prepared when we encounter the trials and difficulties of the day to turn to the source who not only has the answer and solution, but also the power to overcome or resist that temptation.

So Matthew, the sixth chapter and the thirty-third verse, is a very common text.

Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto us.

I memorized that verse when I was 12 years old, but it did not have any practical impact in my life for many years after that.

We too often intellectually assent to the truth.

But It isn't practically working in our lives.

When God began to open my eyes and our eyes to the reality of what that meant, to seek first his kingdom, oh, that First is an important word there.

And when we are getting to bed late, and my wife used the example here at ASI, This is way past our bedtime, okay?

We make no apologies about that, because we've learned that the later we go to bed, what's the other end?

The harder it is to get up in the morning, but we still need to get up in the morning because we've got to be ahead of the day with God.

James Marcum

The Physiology of Worship

Father Heaven, thank you for the opportunity to be here as a group, that for this moment of time we can come to you and worship.

And please open our minds and teach us new things that we might use to make our lives better and to help spread the gospel message.

Krista and Volker are my friends from way back.

I went to do my cardiology training at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, and they were like my parents away from home when I was in Lexington, Kentucky, much younger back those days.

Boy, that was in the late 90s now, so I'm glad that they've shown up, and I'm glad that each 1 of you have come here today.

We're gonna talk about the physiology of worship, and this can be a pretty heavy subject, but I've tried to make it as simple as we possibly can.

I am a cardiologist, and a lot of people ask me if I do this, if I do ministry full time.

I actually am a cardiologist that works with the Chattanooga Heart Institute in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

But I've already got text on a couple patients that they had questions about.

So I help people that have bad blockages in the arteries.

Some of them can get the arteries out of, the blockages out of their arteries.

And this is sort of a new trend in cardiovascular disease.

And we'll talk a little bit about that today.

In fact, I was in the office on Thursday morning, and a patient came to me that I wanted to tell you about, 21 years old.

And Kristen came in the office, and I'd seen her in the emergency room before when her heart was going 200 beats a minute.

Needless to say, if your heart's going 200 beats a minute, you don't feel very good.

Well, we got that under control, but the problem that Kristen had was Kristen was not only pregnant at the time with her first child, but she was heavy into methamphetamines, and she was smoking, and she wasn't taking good care of herself, and she was 6 months pregnant.

Needless, she was on her own at that time, but thank goodness in the office on Thursday, her mom came with her.

And she says, what do we need to do to straighten Kristen out?

And I said, well, it's not so much sometimes it's about what we do, it's why we do it.

And so we talked about ways that we could change behavior.

And some of the principles that we're going to talk about today, I introduced to Kristen.

But yeah, I am a full-time cardiologist that has a ministry called Heart Wise Ministries, and we're based in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

And that ministry, we have a television program on 3 Angels broadcast called Ultimate Prescription.

We have a radio program that we sponsor, and it's now on about 300 radio stations across the world.

Charles Mills is our host with that and we have guests from all walks of life.

We have a website called HeartWise Ministries, and it's heartwiseministries.org, and if you go to that site, there's free medical information given.

Now, we don't enter into relationships, but we can steer you in the right direction, And there's no fee.

We also have webinars and different things you can be part of.

But recently, we've really got as branch.

We've been doing this since 19, oh, since 2000, and about 4 as an official ministry.

But recently, we've been focusing on developing resources to help people spread the gospel via the health message that doesn't cost anything that they can use and bring into their communities.

We have one-minute spots on the radio and television that can be downloaded and put on Facebook pages.

We have lectures that are free to people.

We have television programs and MP3s they can download.

We have Facebook pages they can be a part of.

But we also have, we've developed a seven-week Bible study.

And people are doing this all over the country now, and they're introducing this to their friends and neighbors to help people enjoy better health 1 step at a time.

And in the last chapter of this, we talk about the physiology of worship, how worship in itself changes our physiology.

And that's what I want to talk to you a little bit about today, how you might use this to improve your lives, but you also might use this as an evangelistic tool to help your friends and neighbors because this is all evidence-based and people like evidence, you know, they want to see evidence, they want to see proof that something works and this all goes into the evidence and this is a rapidly growing field, this field of, and we're gonna talk about this as we go on.

So today we're gonna talk a little bit about the physiology of worship.

James Markham, and I've been practicing cardiology for over 20 years now.

I discuss health issues with patients every day at the office, and I try to help each patient grow to experience the best possible outcome.

But the longer I practice medicine, the more evident it becomes that what I was taught in medical school didn't show me the complete picture.

Today in medicine we conduct procedures and prescribe medications but too often our efforts are treating symptoms rather than getting to the root of the problem.

In realizing this I determined that something had to be done.

And so I opened up the best textbook that I've ever owned, the Bible.

Our Creator's original design for our health is well documented, and these concepts found in God's Word have significant implications for our lives today.

Jesus asks us to come unto Him and He will give us rest.

I invite you to join me in experiencing life more abundantly as together we learn to apply biblical prescriptions for life.

Series

2-Applying the Faith

Delighting In the Almighty- A Practical Guide to Primitive Godliness

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Plenary

Coming Forth as Gold

1h 27m

ASI 2013 Plenary Sessions

Confession and Repentance: The Conditions of Revival

1h 28m

Unusual Sacrifice

Three Angels’ Messages and End Time Events

1h 21m

ASI 2010 Seminar: Business

Creating Value, Making a Difference

1h 13m

Seminar: Management

Motivating Employees: The Biblical Record & Contemporary Research

1h 20m

Plenary

No Applications, Only Commitments

58m

ASI 2009 Seminar: Understanding Evangelism

The Five Ws of Public Evangelism

1h 11m

Plenary

Sabbath School: Believe the Gospel

1h 27m

Seminars

8 Reasons God Gave the Seventh-day Adventist Church the Health Message

1h 17m

Plenary

One Hour to Live. The Gospel

1h 27m

Young Professionals

ASI 2020 YP Highlights: Kyle Morrison & Bowtie Brian

24m

Plenary

Why Did You Laugh?

1h 58m

Sound Doctrine