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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Jonathan Harper

New Brain, New Body, Starting Over

Father in heaven, I want to thank you so much for the Sabbath day.

Thank you so much, Lord, that we can come here together and worship you.

And Lord, as I share these stories and we get into your word, I just ask that your Holy Spirit will be in this place and that you will speak through me, Lord, that these words will not be my own but yours.

And Lord, I want to thank you so much as I share these testimonies for your verse and your promise in Revelation 12 that those who overcame overcame by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony.

So I just ask that your spirit will be in this place as I share in your heavenly name, amen.

Daniel Harper was born on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Monument Valley, Utah in 1985.

My dad was working as a pastor there at the Navajo mission where my brother Daniel was born.

As he was lying in the nursery in this little mission hospital there were many faces pressed up against the glass nursery window looking at him and all saying, look at the albino Navajo, look at the albino Navajo.

And all around Daniel were all these cute little Navajo babies, and there was this 1 light-skinned little boy.

And ever since then, my brother Daniel has stood apart from the rest.

Daniel had always been a confident guy since he was a little kid.

My mom told me that once they were having a conversation about heaven, and She mentioned how the lion would be able to eat with the lamb.

She looked at Daniel and said, but you probably knew that already, didn't you?

He looked up at her and said, I know lots of things, I'm a smart little boy.

But he didn't just think he was smart, he actually was.

He always had a 4.0 and he didn't really have to work too hard at it either.

Growing up, my family went on lots of road trips.

I grew up in the South and all my extended family is out here, so we would drive across the country a couple times a year.

And every time it was Daniel's goal to see how much money he could make on this road trip.

Now you might ask how can a little kid make money while driving across the country?

Well wherever we stopped he would stick his fingers inside every vending machine, video game machine, or newspaper machine and surprisingly he'd actually come away with a couple of dollars.

He was incredibly athletic and at our little Adventist school in Cookville, Tennessee we played soccer almost every day for recess and his was the team you always wanted to be on.

If there was a board of any sort, he wanted to ride it.

Snowboarding, skateboarding, surfing, wakeboarding, wake skating, you name a sport with a board, he was good at it and had tried it.

He even took up mountain boarding, which was a relatively new sport, and was the fifth person in the world to do a front flip on this new sport.

He was incredibly musical and excelled at playing guitar, piano, bass, percussion, singing.

He was creative and created movies for various school and church functions and as I mentioned he excelled at school.

He maintained his 4.0 all the way throughout college, while working full-time at a greenhouse, also selling newspapers and with some business endeavors.

Being excellent at everything, my older brother Daniel seemed to think that he had it figured out.

And he was pretty confident, but perhaps a little too confident.

My brother Daniel told me that he was pursuing a dream towards becoming a millionaire, retiring, and living on a private island by the age of 35.

And nothing was going to get between him and that dream.

But my brother Daniel himself would tell you that he was a man of mistaken priorities.

He did keep moving forward with school and towards accomplishing his goals.

However, unbeknownst to my brother Daniel, something would happen that would significantly change and alter his dreams.

We'll get back to Daniel's story in a little bit, but first I want to shift to a different, perhaps similar tale, a tale of another man who thought he had it figured out, and that man was me.

I nervously came into medical school 4 years ago, but this was the fulfillment of a dream I had had for years.

So I was excited and pretty confident that I was going to succeed.

Like many people in this audience who were accepted into graduate level education, I had excelled in school up to this point.

I wasn't always, I was always near the top of my class and sure there were things I wasn't really good at, but of the things I was good at, playing piano, school, entrance exam to medical school, I performed well above average.

I felt God had blessed me and I did thank him for it.

And then medical school started And it was a huge shock to me.

I had never spent that much time studying in my life, ever.

People told me, Oh, it's going to be okay.

You spend hours every day practicing piano.

Just apply that discipline to medical school and you're going to be fine.

And I struggled to stay motivated, encouraged, and on top of the material.

But that being said, I was still confident, or maybe I should say hopeful, that I would do well, because that had been my experience up until that point.

So I took the first set of exams, and I got my grades back, and I failed.

On 1 of my tests, I'd gotten the second lowest grade in my class of 170 students, and I was stunned and incredibly discouraged.

There had been several guidepost moments where I felt that God had clearly told me that he was leading me here to Loma Linda.

I knew that God would bring me through and I had been told that just by coming to medical school by sitting in those chairs in Salon Amphitheater that I had a 96% chance of passing medical school.

And I also knew that God often brings us through trials to refine our faith, but you see, I guess I thought I had it figured out.

Up to that point, I had really never experienced personal failure before.

I excelled at whatever I did and the things I wasn't good at I just didn't do them.

I prayed that God would give me wisdom and strength to study for the next set of exams.

I met with several professors to get help.

I studied harder than I did before the first set of exams.

Every single member of my family was praying for me.

I was ready to take that second round of tests.

I was confident I was doing well, and I knew that God would bless me like he always had in the past.

I did just as poorly on my second set of exams as I did the first time around.

In my mind, I knew that God was still present, but for the first time in my life, I'm ashamed to say that I seriously questioned his involvement in my life.

I wrote down a prayer to God asking why he had blessed me in the past and been so clear and why he was blessing my friends.

I happened to live with somebody who was I thought doing very well and yet I was failing.

I knew that he had helped me get into medical school, that he'd done so much to show me that medicine was the career he was calling me to, and yet, having not had success, 3, 4 months into medical school, I feared that I might not be able to become a doctor after all.

I wondered why God had led me so clearly to medical school only to let me fail out.

Looking back at this time in first year, when I questioned if God was actively involved in my life.

I'm ashamed to say that my faith was so easily shaken.

But in yet, I'm reminded that even in times like this, it's important to be honest with God about our trials, about our doubts, and about our struggles.

And I believe there's actually quite a lot of biblical support for this, for being honest with God when we're discouraged.

I'm going to read verse 1 through 2 and then verse 13.

Oh Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out day and night before you.

In the morning my prayer comes before you.

Afflicted and close to death from my youth up, I suffer your terrors.

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New Brain, New Body, Starting Over

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