AMEN 2009 Student Conference: The Ministry of Healing

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Adventist Medical Evangelism Network (AMEN)

Raja Tooma

Prayer for the Sick

Thank you for coming to my breakout session.

Thank you, dear Heavenly Father, for all your blessings.

Thank you for this privilege of sharing your word and sharing some exciting messages, dear Lord, about what you have done in our lives and how we can reach out to others.

I plead with you, dear Lord, hide me behind the cross.

Help me that every word I say would be to the glory of your name.

And help my audience, dear Lord, that they will be inspired with what's being presented.

Thank you so much and for hearing us and answering our prayer in the precious name of Jesus Christ I pray.

Okay, I'd like to start out with telling you a little bit about my life.

That's a picture of me when I was really little, before I entered kindergarten.

My daddy was first an engineer, then He heard the call of God and he became a minister.

I grew doing what my parents wanted me to do.

When I graduated from kindergarten, the principal of the school wrote on my certificate, graduation certificate, as a conjecture as what I'm going to be become in future, a doctor and a preacher.

But I grew up, even though I was in Adventist family, all I did really was what my parents want me to do.

I grew up reading the Bible here and there.

But just to say I read it, but I really did not understand, did not put enough thought into it to get out of it what the Lord wants me to get out of it.

Then I grew more and I at age 16 I finished high school and then I was accepted to medical school.

This is a picture of first year medical students, that's myself, that's after a depressing anatomy class, a dissection after 2 hours of dissection, that tells you what we used to go through.

During all those years that I went to medical school, and this is the second year medical school, that's a picture of me, and then third year medical school, fourth, fifth year medical school, and then that's the sixth year, it's a year of graduation.

All those years I missed every Sabbath, just like I don't know if you heard in the morning, I missed every Sabbath going to school.

So I literally missed a sixth of medical school because the students there went to school 6 days out of 7.

But the last 3 years we went to school winter and summer.

And all during those years I'd miss lab sometimes.

I'd be able to make up sometimes when I'd go and ask the professors if they'd allow me and they usually did.

But at night, when I'd go to my friends and borrow the lectures, because I would miss the lectures in the morning, I was treated with coldness many times.

Even these are good friends because they'd want to be studying, they don't want to give their notes out and I would be faced with a kind of rejection coldness.

It was very, very difficult, very painful.

But, and then later on, some exams would happen on Sabbath day.

And then if I missed that exam, it means I flunked.

So I would go to the head of the, 1 time I went to the dean of the medical school and I asked, please, I need my exam changed to some other day.

And they usually coordinate the schedule of exams for the whole medical school for the 6 years together because they have to allocate certain halls and certain places and stuff and so if they make a switch the whole schedule has to be changed.

Well they did that for me in 6 years of medical school.

They changed the schedule of the entire medical school for 1 Seventh-day Adventist student.

So praise the Lord, I graduated from medical school, but did I really know him?

Even though I kept Sabbath, it seems like it was a legalistic act, like I had to do that.

So I kept Sabbath and I went through all that keeping Sabbath.

But I really did not have a relationship with Christ, not a love that I can call in any way what I've got right now.

Then in 2001, I was elected as the president CEO, Medical Director of our 14-doctor company.

We had at the time 18, 000 patients, 120 employees, and at the time it was very difficult to take this position because our company was about to shut our doors.

The previous president, CEO, medical director, and the management company, the administrator had really messed up the company very, very badly.

It was a very difficult task to take over, to be able to turn the company around.

But with God's help, even though I was not close to him in any way, I mean, sacrifice, hard work, many decisions were made, and finally, thank God, we turned the company around and now we're prosperous.

Those titles that I just mentioned to you brought a lot of pride, self-exaltation to me, to where I started looking kind of down at our CFO, our chief executive officer.

His decisions were many times not the right decisions for the company, and I really did not have much respect for him.

He started, I don't know, out of jealousy because my decisions were always very good.

I don't know what it was, but he started plotting, he started undermining me.

For instance, I would take vacation time, he would start spreading amongst the board members or the owners that my decisions are really bad and he just kind of falsified them and stir outrage.

And so the administrator would call me and say, Dr.

Tuma, you can't believe what he's doing now.

And so I'd break my vacation and come in and call an urgent board meeting.

And I explained to all of them what the decision was and what happened.

I could not sleep at night with palpitations.

During the day I'd wonder what is he up to next.

Board meetings were a terror because we would fight.

The board members, the owners would be sitting and they'd just watch us and wonder, you know, they just, oh my, what's going to be next?

I didn't bring a picture of the San Bernardino office.

Oh, this is a beautiful flower that I found outside of our Fontana office and I took the picture of it because I love it so much.

Okay, so not just with our chief financial officer was I at odds.

But because I was not, I didn't have the love of Christ in my life.

When I used to go to my parents' house, it was a disaster.

He's hard of hearing and when I'd say something and he'd say, huh, I would raise my voice a lot louder than I needed to and that really irritated him and it irritated me as well.

We're 4 siblings, 2 brothers and 2 sisters.

They and their families are in the beach.

I'm the only 1 that physically located myself 5 minutes away from my parents to look after them.

But with that, even with that sacrifice, because I did not really want to live here, I thought I wanted to live on the beach, but I stayed there to take care of them.

Despite that, I'd walk into their house at night after spending long hours at work, like till 8 or 9 o'clock at night.

I'd go to my parents' house to look after them, but I was full of resentment.

They were not happy that I was there, and I was not happy that I'm going there either.

I would sit there just waiting for the time for an hour, hour and a half, to know I need to go home and there's so much more on my plate to do at home.

So my poor daddy was very, very unhappy as well as my mom.

All that, as I mentioned, Christ was not in my life yet.

Then in 2004 my son was in La Sierra University.

He was invited to a evolution versus creation or creation versus Evolution seminar.

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