Hartland Fall Convocation 2025: Engage Clarity Mode

Debbie Raj

Martin Raj

Lilena Walker

Hartland Institute of Health and Education

You Are More Than What Happened to You – Triumphing Over Trauma

First things first, how many of you have this printout with you?

We have some of them that will come and give it to you.

Thank you, Martin, for leading us in that.

Because as we were all standing, I hope it did give the feeling that I'm not alone in this experience.

Sometimes that's the deceptive thing about trauma.

We feel like we can't talk about it because of how bad it was.

So I hope that this gave hope to all of us seeing that other people have experienced what I have.

And even we, even those of us sitting up here, right?

Can we share maybe some of the traumatic events we've been through, 1 or 2?

Well, for me, the 1 that really hit hard was have you ever had a parent that has abandoned you?

And this story I have not shared with many people.

I have written it in my book, but not a lot of people know about it.

It is when my mother was pregnant with me.

And he really fought for it, and she felt pressured, and yeah, so she went to this clinic and Thankfully the doctor Tried to abort me but 3 times he tried it and he was not able to take anything out.

But when I heard that story, and recently when we went to India as well, the aunt that accompanied my mother for that procedure, she shared also about that.

And I felt really abandoned knowing that my own father didn't want me.

Yeah, I might have not known that my father did not want me if my mom did not share it, but he also left even before I was born.

So we were raised in a single mother family and I exactly know how that trauma feels.

So for me I was raised in a Christian home with both parents and with a desire to really follow God's will.

But for many years, my parents struggled a lot with communication, a lot of fights, a lot of disagreements.

But I grew up feeling like I was the counselor to my parents, they would confide, share their struggles.

And so there was a lot of fear that I had for future marriage.

I was like, I don't want to go through what all of this marriages are going through.

I don't want to be in a situation that I feel stuck or abused or misused and I also feared a lot conflict.

So I tried to run away from it, be a people pleaser, be the nice, kind girl, but I would pile everything inside and that really impacted me later on in relationships when I wanted to build healthy relationships.

So that was 1 thing that till now I'm working on and growing from and trying to make changes to not follow in the same patterns that maybe we grew up with.

Those are very vulnerable sharings, you know, experiences they've had.

I, too, experienced something that I definitely would say was traumatic in the sense that I told you all earlier, My dad died when I was 9.

And she had started dating this new guy, I didn't like him, but this new guy, his name was Vincent.

And we were at his house watching movies, watching TV.

So I would estimate, okay, the distance to get to the store, how long it would take for the groceries she said she needed when she'd be back, And she took longer than that.

And I remember having a bad feeling that something bad had happened.

And then Vincent comes back and he said, your mom's been in a fender bender.

And I knew what a fender bender was right?

That's like if your rear-ended or you know something that maybe causes damage to the car I'm like, why isn't mom telling me this herself?

My mom is covered in blood from head to toe She's literally spitting out blood and glass from her mouth as she mouths, I'm okay, I'm okay, Lena.

And my brother, she doesn't even say anything to him.

She's telling me because she can see on my face, trauma.

And having had the feeling that something bad had happened.

I know that I was traumatized from that event because after, and thankfully my mom was able to heal.

She had deep lacerations all down her legs, her arms.

She also cut her liver from the seatbelt.

But I remember any time she would leave the house, fear would take over my body.

Any time she was out of my sight, she was going to die.

Something is gonna take her away because the last time you felt that way, that's what happened, right?

And so I struggled for years with deep separation anxiety.

And it was only through what we'll talk about in a minute that I was able to overcome that, to move past that trauma.

And could we have it without even realizing it?

So trauma comes from a Greek word that actually means wound.

A wound can be, you know, something small or it can be something deep, as we just talked about with the lacerations.

Trauma by the mental health community is usually thought of as an emotionally and psychologically distressing event that overwhelms the person's capacity to handle it.

So it's Like something happens to me that I can't make sense of.

I don't know what to do about this thing that's happened.

That's usually how we as therapists think of trauma.

In terms of can someone be traumatized without consciously being aware?

Maybe in our own experiences, we maybe thought like, oh, no, I'm good.

But usually that I'm good was because we kind of just pushed it to the back.

And our bodies, as I was talking to Rico earlier about this book, our bodies kept the score.

So sometimes even if we don't think we're traumatized, our bodies will let us know this was heavy for you, right?

Mark Quion

Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Giftedness & Godliness: A Message to the Graduate

Family, Father, we're so grateful to be able to stand here today and allow you to do what you do on our hearts to work, to write, to change us.

There are so many influences that tell us what success is, but we want to know from your word.

We want to know from the way that you've worked in others' lives who have come before us.

Each and every person here is busy carrying finals weights in with them from this week, from work, from busy cases, difficult cases perhaps, I pray that we would be able to cut through that fog and your Holy Spirit would come and change us.

Just abide with us now, In your name we pray, amen.

I was excited to do the neurological exam.

And in 1 of those first couple days out at Kettering, we had a patient on the neuro ICU.

And so I walked up there with the attending and as any good attending wanted to see how good my neuro exam skills before letting me loose.

We went in to see a patient together and I got the best type of history someone can being just starting on the wards.

And as I began to approach the patient and start my neuro exam, the patient's family said, Whoa, wait a minute.

And so I stopped and they said, Just how old are you?

So I explained again, well, I'm a medical student, I'm just starting out, This is my third year.

And usually how the conversation will go, that just kind of flies by them.

1 of them even asked me, are you on a high school field trip?

I thought, why would I be at a field trip in the neuro ICU?

1 patient even asked me, there's no way, there's no way you're a medical student.

I said, no, no, I'm just the normal kind of med student, just getting by.

And I walked out of that room and my neurology attending took me aside and he said, son, you're probably going to need to grow a beard.

And I told him, sir, this is me trying to grow a beard.

This is my seven-day shadow just coming in.

I know some of you are just finishing finals.

When you're staring at those questions and you're remembering all that Dr.

Werner has told you about how to go through each 1 and you've covered it up and you're going through and you get to the last 1, you say, nope, none of these still make sense.

Wouldn't it be nice to be a child genius?

Please turn in your Bibles to 2 Kings 23, chapter 23, verse 25, And we'll look at a child who was a genius, but in a different sense of the word.

And it reads, neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength in accordance with all the law of Moses." No king before and after.

We grew up reading these kings, we know there are bright spots, but for some reason scripture delineates Josiah as being above them all.

Now Josiah was put in at the ripe old age of 8 years old.

He inherited the kingdom from his father, Amon, who was indeed wicked, who had followed the steps of his father, Manasseh.

No improvement along that line, no hereditary help there at all.

His father was killed by his own servants, who were in turn killed by the citizens.

Hardly a vote of confidence for the young eight-year-old king.

Imagine yourself reading this on paper as an applicant of somebody who has an incredible life.

Here he is, 8 years into his reign, so he's 16 years old, he begins to actively seek the Lord.

At 20 years old, he's purging the high places of idolatry to Baal and the ashram poles and the idols, which is unique as we'll learn later.

At 26 years old, just around my age, he is actively repairing the temple.

And while doing so, the high priest Hilkiah finds a book, probably in the back corners of the temple as they are repairing it, and it is the book of the law.

It is the law of Moses, likely being referred to in this passage.

Josiah is cut to the heart, tears his clothes, realizes how far into apostasy Israel is, and this triggers, initiates a nationwide revival geographically and in depth beyond any revival that occurred in Israel to this time.

He himself reads the words to the people.

It says in verse 23, 2, chapter 23, verse 2, And the king went up to the house of the Lord, and with him all the men of Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests, and the prophets, and the people both small and great.

And he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord." If you read the rest of his stories, particularly in Kings, maybe more so than in Chronicles, his life is devoted to uprooting wickedness in the land of Judah and reaching into the northern territories, which was unusual compared to his predecessors.

Josiah looked neither to the right nor to the left.

Qualitatively, his reforms were different.

Asa had tried, Jehoshaphat, Joash, you know these names in the blue book, Bible stories.

Amaziah, Uzziah, Jotham, but you'll see in the red, there's Always something at the beginning of their story that says, yes, they were good, but this 1 thing.

And it's usually having to do with these high places.

Each of them, Asa, high places were not taken away.

Nevertheless, though, the heart of Asa was wholly true to the Lord.

Jehoshaphat, the high places, however, were not taken away.

Joash, nevertheless, the high places were not taken away.

And the people continued to sacrifice and make offerings on the high places.

Interesting for Joash, I put there Jehoiada, Joash is only faithful so long as he has a mentor.

The moment he loses his mentor, the people and himself turn back into apostasy.

Amaziah actually is reported to have tried to live by the law.

You see him making decisions in Israel, in Judah, based on what we believe he was reading scripture.

But when he went to Edom, he brought back with him the idols and worshiped them.

The high places were not removed and the people continue to offer sacrifices and Jotham does no better.

Jotham tries, he leaves the high places though, but the issue there is even though his heart is converted, the people don't follow him.

There's something lacking between his conviction and those of the people.

But you get to Josiah and he does take down the high places.

Perhaps the only person that came close to him would have been Hezekiah.

But as we'll look at a little bit closer, there are still areas where Josiah just edges him out with how deep and how intense he's willing to go for the Lord.

It is clear that Josiah's desire to change is not because there's a king coming down the road, which often triggers reforms in Judah.

It's not because he's promised something if he does, it is because he found the word of the Lord in some dark corner of the sanctuary and he read it.

That is the only motivating factor that we can find for his reforms.

This is a simple initial point, but it is simply this, to be fully faithful.

This is a point that applies to everybody, especially as we're coming to the close of the year.

If there is something that the Lord is convicting you of, if you have a high place that's taking your worship, a high place that belongs to him, Perhaps you've made advances to remove it.

You've taken all the astral poles, you've taken everything else but this 1 last thing.

Whatever it is between you and God, I'm not gonna stand up here and play roulette and just start spinning off different sins.

Likely, whatever it is is coming to your mind right now.

Don Mackintosh

Healed While Healing

I remember the first time I was here on a Tuesday night.

It was the first time it was ever taped on AudioVerse.

That's, I don't know how many years ago, 20 some years ago.

And it's good to see what Advent Hope has been able to do over the years.

What is the significance or was the significance of October 31?

Actually, you know, George McGeady Price, so I don't know if he taught here years ago, did the chronology and said that October 31 was actually the anniversary of the flood.

And so what arose was this idea of Being in touch with the spirits of those who had died in in the flood and So when they had these various festivals, I was just in Malaysia.

They have a festival there of lights light over darkness and of course in this country you have the bonfires or the bonfires supposedly This was actually a celebration of October 31 of being in touch with those spirits.

But actually, you know, Reformation Day, or remind ourselves of Martin Luther and the Reformation is what many people who are Christians think about.

Of course, when we think about Martin Luther some 508 years ago, you think about the Reformation.

And if you go to Geneva, you can go to the Reformation Monument.

How many of you have ever been with me to the Reformation Monument in Geneva?

Okay, some of you from the tours, yeah, good.

And we go there and we talk about what are called the magisterial reformers, Calvin and Beezer and Zwingli and Knox.

And these reformers recalibrated things and brought forward the doctrine of justification by faith and also sanctification, but largely justification which had been lost sight of.

And as a result of their labors and as a result of the way they approached the Bible, there was a reformation in natural science.

So the Bible, Protestantism, and the rise of natural science should be actually required reading for everybody here at a medical school.

Because it actually helps you understand why it is you even have a medical school.

Why it is you have sophisticated scientific thought, which never originated in any other place in the world except for where the Bible was available and studied.

And during the Reformation, I'm gonna pray in a minute here again.

During the Reformation, the way they studied the Bible, the way they, well I think I have a quote here on this.

The way they studied the Bible actually led to an explosion of science.

Recent work on early modern science has demonstrated a direct relationship between the resurgence of Hebraic literal exegesis of the Bible in the Protestant Reformation and the rise of the empirical method in modern science, not referring to the wooden literalism, but the sophisticated literal historical hermeneutics that Martin Luther and others, including Newton, championed.

So, This is why, you know, we Bible believing Christians believe in science as it arises from the Bible.

And this is why in the world today, most scientific research that's done is done in Bible-believing countries.

And this is why you get so many people coming from other countries to study in America, because of the science, Right?

So, but I think sometimes we forget that it's the Bible, it's the Protestant Reformation that actually led to all that.

How many of you are thankful for the Protestant Reformation?

How many of you knew everything I already told you?

And this whole idea of the reformation was to bring the saving, oh let me ask you this.

What's the leading cause of death in America?

The leading cause of death in every part of the world is sin, Spiritual heart disease, amen?

So let every means be devised to bring about the saving of souls in our medical institutions.

Wait a minute, I thought it was, You know, cathartics and laxatives and ophthalmology and anyway, from stem to stern.

If the spiritual work is left undone, there is no necessity of calling our people to build these institutions.

They got a big new building coming up over here, I think it's for pediatrics.

Just stop building it unless the purpose is to save souls.

Those who have no burning desire to save souls are not the ones who should connect with our sanitariums.

So at Weimar University, I teach a class called Religion and Health.

Got about 3, 000 studies in it that show the connection between religion and health.

He graduated from Loma Linda, but now he works at Weimar University.

And we work together and he does the science lectures over the last few months, and I did the spiritual lectures.

So here are the students in class learning how to study the Bible like Newton studied the Bible.

Newton's favorite book in the Bible was the book of Daniel.

And they study in class with 1 another, and then the next day on Sabbath, they study with people from the lifestyle programs in the community.

How many of you here today are patients who were invited by students to come today?

So every week, The goal is the soul and studying the scripture because the major purpose is not life, it's eternal life.

It's not avoiding the second death, it's avoiding the second death.

And so every week we have a time in the community where we go out in the community, total community involvement, and we allocate time.

Now, the recent research tells you that you don't move, you move someone from being a friend, from an acquaintance, or from 1 you don't know, to a friend, it takes 3 hours in a block of time, 11 times over a 6 month period.

So you gotta spend at least 3 hours, engage with somebody, 11 times within a 6 month period.

The way we do that at Weimar is right in keeping with this research.

Now some students take advantage of it and some people don't.

But the ones that do, like Carrie right here, had someone from the community baptized last week.

Yes, she actually flew up from Lou to Wu to see this through.

I wasn't there, but I watched online from Switzerland.

And when we see the loop close, we realize that people have moved from life to everlasting life and we're fulfilling our purpose.

And as a result of this, as we meet people's needs, we become stronger ourselves.

Strength to resist evil is best gained by aggressive service.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

You Are More Than What Happened to You – Triumphing Over Trauma

43m

Giftedness & Godliness: A Message to the Graduate

45m

Healed While Healing

57m

The Incomparable Birth

23m

Open Conversations: Sexuality without Shame

49m

Education that Originates with God

32m

A Better Way to See Yourself

1h 9m

Behind the Smile: Recognizing & Responding to Teen Mental Health

32m

A Legacy of Faithful Service

54m

G.I.D.E.O.N.

44m

Attachment Theory and Your View of Salvation

55m

25 The Feast of Tabernacles

52m

Sound Doctrine