SWYC 2005: Prepare to Meet Thy God

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GYC Southwest

Vicki Griffin: SWYC 2005 Health Seminar

Vicki Griffin

Health Seminar, Part 1

It's a real privilege I'm a little jet-laggy, but not too bad.

So I'm just it's just beautiful out here And I'm glad that we could gather together this morning, And I would like to just bow our heads before we begin this morning.

Dear Father in Heaven, thank you so much that we can come together on your Sabbath day.

We just are so grateful for this special time, these special hours.

And I pray that as We gather together that you would come to us and be our instructor and speak to our hearts.

Help us to be open to what you have to say.

I've been the health and temperance director for Michigan Conference for about 4 years now and it's really interesting.

It's sort of like being a periodontal surgeon.

People don't exactly flock to health and temperance meetings because of some preconceptions about what health and temperance really means, and you probably know what I'm talking about.

I remember speaking 1 time at a little church in Georgia, a little country church in Georgia, and a very dear little saintly elder got up to introduce me, and he said, we're so glad to have Sister Griffin come to talk to us about health.

And then he said, now health, that's important, but salvation, that's the thing.

And as I sat down, warming myself with that introduction, The scripture that came to my mind was, abstain from fleshly lusts, which what?

Can our fleshly habits war against our spiritual life today?

And another thing that I have to contend with is people look at me, I'll do some talks, and they'll say, well, yeah, sure, you look like a librarian, you know, all organized.

You probably have all your stuff color-coded in your closet and have your paperclips all organized according to color.

And I really smile because I was not raised in this denomination.

I actually came up in a very violent home.

I was raised, my family was in the wine business, actually.

And I was a runaway, and started running away from home when I was 5 years old, and developed a very, very severe eating disorder when I was 11.

I developed bulimia as a result of the chaos that I lived in and all of that kind of stuff, it's contributed to chaos in my mind.

And so I had that terrible disorder for 20 miserable years until I was 31 years old.

And so today I'm here to tell you that the gift of temperance is 1 of the gifts of the Spirit, isn't it?

It is a divinely implanted trait of Jesus Christ.

He's the only 1 that can help us to desire to do what's the best for us.

And this morning, the title of our discussion, of our message is, How Urgent Is This Message?

How many of us have this sense right now with all of the critical events that are occurring that the Lord's hand of protection is slowly being withdrawn from our beloved nation?

That things are happening at a pace which we can hardly keep up with.

Sudden unexpected changes are on the horizon and we feel it in our bones.

And in light of that, how urgent is this message really?

How urgent is the message of Sabbath keeping?

Is the message of Sabbath keeping urgent?

The message of Sabbath-keeping is urgent during this crisis hour.

But you know, when this message was given to that little group of youth in the early 1800s, the message of Sabbath keeping.

Did you know that there were already Sabbath keepers?

There were Sabbatarian Anabaptists, there were Seventh Day Baptists, and they were keeping the Seventh-day Sabbath.

They kept the Seventh-day Sabbath because Jesus and His disciples endorsed it.

They kept the Sabbath because they believed that the 10 Commandments have not been abolished.

They kept the seventh-day Sabbath because they believed that an apostate power had come onto the scene and tried to change the day of worship.

And yet when God came to our people, when God came to this little group who were anxiously awaiting the second coming of Jesus Christ, the message that came down to their hearts was that it was time for the Sabbath to be proclaimed more fully.

That is the question that we want to answer as we progress into our health message this morning.

Why were we called to proclaim the Sabbath more fully, not rejecting or ignoring the other truths which cause other Sabbath keepers to keep the Sabbath, but surely we are being given another dimension of Sabbath keeping.

And we will find that dimension if we look in Exodus chapter 31.

Exodus chapter 31, verse 13, it says, Speak unto the children of Israel, I'll wait until you get there, Speak unto the children of Israel, I'll wait until you get there, speak unto the children of Israel saying, Of a truth, or verily, my Sabbaths ye shall keep, for it, The Sabbath day, not a ceremonial Sabbath, but it, the Sabbath, is a sign between me and you throughout your generations that you may know that I am the Lord that does what?

So clearly, proclaiming the Sabbath more fully for you and for me means that it's an enduring sign that God can take nothing and make something out of it.

That He can regenerate the human heart, nurture it, grow it, and blossom it into Christian maturity.

And so the message of Sabbath keeping is a message about dominion.

I keep the seventh day Sabbath as a sign that God has dominion over my life the other 6 days of the week.

Sometimes, and I don't want this to be taken the wrong way, but sometimes I wish there was a sign over my door, over our office, that said seven-day Adventist.

Not to minimize the seventh day, because I want to be a seventh day Adventist 7 days a week.

And what I do the other 6 days a week is what shows whether God has dominion over my life those other days.

That's what the Sabbath is a celebration of.

It's a celebration that He is in control of every area of my life.

That I've given Him dominion over my life.

That I've given Him permission to come into my heart, into my life, and change me.

That means change my heart, that means change my habits, it means changing my thinking and my perspective and my motives, and what I do and how I do it, and what I watch and what I wear and how I present myself to the world as a child of Jesus.

And as I see the spiritual declension in terms of Sabbath keeping, I have a meeting coming up in another state in a few weeks, and they scheduled me for 2 afternoon meetings, and they wrote me a little email and said, we're grateful that you're doing a second meeting.

We want you to know that this is important because there are people who are delaying starting their vacations to come and hear you speak, Sabbath afternoon.

And I thought, well, what on earth compliment is that?

They should stay put until the Sabbath's over and then start driving on their vacation.

I'm not doing them a favor by speaking and making them stay there.

And as I see the carelessness of conversation, the carelessness of dressing the sanctuary of God, the carelessness of our attitudes about how we reverence the Sabbath day and what we do on the Sabbath, to me, it's just a sign of something deeper.

It's a sign that something is going on the rest of the week that isn't quite clicking.

And I think we need to find time for Jesus every day.

And we have a very precious man in Michigan.

His name is Jim Mitchiff and he is our youth director.

And he interviews young people every year to come and be camp counselors.

And he asks them a series of questions to qualify them for camp counseling position.

Health Seminar, Part 2

It's just a real blessing to be able to be together again this morning and talk about some issues that seriously affect our mental as well as our physical health.

How many of you believe that nutrition and lifestyle choices can affect stress sensitivity?

All right, good, we're all, we're on the same page.

Well, I'm really thankful that at the Michigan conference, our very consecrated leadership there has poured resources into the development of materials that you can reach your community with to help people to understand how nutrition and lifestyle choices profoundly affect mental as well as physical functioning.

And this afternoon we're going to talk about food addictions and food cravings.

Ever hear of a junk food junkie or a chocka-holic?

And so We've developed a series of materials that I want to just let you know about.

It's called the Lifestyle Matters Health Intervention Series.

And the topic that I'm going to be presenting to you today is from this book, which is available.

It's called Foods for Thought, Nutrition's Link with Mood, Memory, Learning, and Behavior And I'll invite you to take a look at this.

We have designed programs that you can do just for interventions over a two-week period.

We had meetings at a hundred different sites simultaneously.

So we have some very dedicated pastors in Michigan, some wonderful lay people that were involved.

We had thousands of guests and We've been able to go throughout the United States and in Canada training how to reach the community.

And then there are follow-up programs that last up to a full year.

The other topic that we have is diet and stress, is what you're eating, eating you.

And it shows the relationship between nutrition and lifestyle and stress sensitivity, immune function and depression risk factors.

Our MAGA book, Cole Porter's, went out in Michigan with this book last year and it outsold cookbooks 5 to 1.

It was especially popular in well-to-do communities because people are just so stressed out.

And we sold thousands and thousands of these books throughout the state which prepared the way for these meetings.

Is that available at any Adventist book center?

It's available at any Adventist book center.

Yes, see my husband afterwards and he can help you with that.

It's part of our literature program with the conference.

And just to open with a spiritual thought today, when was the book of Hebrews written?

I can tell you're used to answering essay questions.

It was written about 4 years, about 66 AD, 4 years before the destruction of Jerusalem.

And if you read the book of Hebrews you pick up on the urgency of the tone.

And in Hebrews chapter 1 Paul expends an enormous amount of energy and appeal and exhortation establishing the divinity of Jesus Christ, establishing that he is not like the angels, he is worthy of worship, that this is something that is part of the new covenant that the Jews need to understand.

And then in chapter 2 it begins with this verse.

It says, Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip.

There's an amazing author in our church from the olden days.

And if you can get your hands on a copy of that book, I suggest you do so.

He has a comment on this verse that I'd like to share with you as we open our health segment today.

Because I believe that our message of biblical living is a spiritual message.

It says here, the picture is 1 of drifting inhabitants, unaware of the fact.

Before they realize it, they are nearing the cataract, far from the old landmarks, and no effort is needed.

As 1 glides down the river towards sure death, the sensation is 1 of contentment and well-being, a delightful drowsiness.

Do we eat some meals that just cause a delightful drowsiness?

It says, the downward movement is hardly perceptible.

The water moves with the boat and appearances are deceitful.

Unless 1 awakens in time, the danger is very real.

For everyone who falls into great sin, there are 10 who are drifting.

Now the point that I'd like to draw out in relation to the health message with that statement is that the subtle erosion of mental faculties begins in childhood with an inordinate diet.

When you think of dementia, what's the first symptom that you think of?

You think of memory loss, but in actuality, by the time memory loss really occurs, There's already been 23% atrophy of the brain.

Subtle erosion of personality has occurred that has been taking place over years.

And so we want to understand that our most precious commodity is not our waistline.

It's not even our pancreas or our heart or our liver.

The battle is not for the bulge, it's for the brain.

Today we wanna take a look at the brain effects of good nutrition.

And we wanna see how pharmacologic doses of macronutrients can actually change brain chemistry and the structure of the brain and create addictions.

We're going to look at that this afternoon.

But before we do, I want to give a little demonstration just to show you what a psychopharmacologic dose of a macronutrient is.

Fat, sugar, and protein, basically, glucose.

So what would a psychopharmacologic dose of a macronutrient be?

It would be a mind-altering dose of a nutrient that has drug-like effects in the brain.

And the reason I need to do this demonstration before we have our multimedia presentation is because I want you to understand that there's a difference between having an after dinner mint or an occasional dessert and having these drug-like doses of a macronutrient.

I do not have a problem with us having an occasional sweet item.

Health Seminar, Part 3

As we begin today, I want to draw your attention, and I'm going to try to go as quickly as I can because I really don't want to have you sitting too long.

My husband told me that he started late because somebody else was late.

So this is a chain reaction thing that is happening here.

But I'm going to try to go as quickly as I can without the material being indigestible.

But I want to draw your attention to the story of the paralytic by the pool.

Because today we're talking about addictions.

And basically the same thing is happening in the brain with an addiction, with whatever it is, but they're problems.

Wherever you go, you're going to meet people whose lives are all bound up because they're just stuck in a rut.

We want to understand a little bit more about that today.

But remember, if you're 1 of those people, and if you want to reach, or if you want to reach out to people who have had problems or who are having problems, remember the story of the pool of Bethesda.

How many years was that man laying by that pool?

38 years, and we know from the context that it was his own choices that put him in that position of being paralyzed from the neck down.

And when Jesus walked by and saw this man, it says he saw him and saw that he had been there a long time.

And more and more we're seeing kids 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 years old who have been involved in addictive behavior for 5, 6, and 7 years already by the time they are in their early teens.

And sometimes we have people that have been into an addiction for 30 or 40 years.

What is the message of this story for those people?

He asked This paralytic, he said, do you want to be made whole?

He saw that his choices had brought him into that miserable state.

You know, that's the most important question.

But the real truth of the matter is, is that it's more about attitude than aptitude.

And I see this more and more as I work with people on a daily basis, that I have to find out what their attitude is before I can start giving them fix-it lists.

So often we're so excited about going in with a fix-it list for people, but I want to find out what it is that they know that they're not doing and why they're not doing it first.

And what are they...next thing I want to find out is what are you willing to do?

And then I can begin to add some support and encouragement to that person.

After all those years of self-inflicted worthlessness and people that have addictions feel hopeless, helpless, and worthless, and they need deliverance.

But it's really interesting, you know, in our church, if we saw that kind of an amazing deliverance, wouldn't we, I mean, wouldn't we jump out of our chairs at least.

I mean, wouldn't you do something like that?

As conservative as I am, I think I would jump if I saw somebody that had been paralyzed for 38 years be revived and restored.

Well, we'd have a testimony meeting and a fellowship dinner and we would just have a grand time.

Well, Jesus didn't do any of those things, did he?

It's in John chapter 5 and if you look at verse 14, what did he say to the man?

And I remember Dane and I were driving to a business appointment 1 evening, and I was having the worship, he was driving, and it just struck me as I read that story and I looked at my husband and I said, Dane, what could be worse than being paralyzed from the neck down with no 1 to help you?

And he looked at me, he didn't miss a beat, he said, being paralyzed from the neck up and not wanting help, That's what's worse.

So in the morning before your feet touch the floor, do an attitude check.

The Lord can take care of you if you give your attitude to Him, No matter how long the addiction has been and we need to understand that he can even change our attitudes can't he he can put a hatred in our hearts for the things that are destroying us and So we have much encouragement today as we look at this topic today.

We are looking at the basic addiction food addiction And let's just see what science is beginning to tell us about addictions, about the addictive nature of certain types of foods, and how we can avoid that trap, because it does lead to other kinds of dependencies.

My pointer is working today, so that's really nice.

We're taking a look at obesity, food cravings, and food addictions, I've had to pare this down, So we're not going to get into the genetics of obesity as I would normally, but what we cover today will be sufficient to understand the topic that we need to look at.

Albert Hubbard said this, He said, habit is the great economizer of energy.

Habits are good when they're our friends, right?

Habits help us repeat safe and effective behavior, perform multiple tasks with minimal effort, increase task speed and accuracy.

Whenever you learn a new skill, you learn it in the higher centers of the brain and then it's pushed down to the lower cortical centers where the behavior becomes automatic.

If you're in an airplane and something goes wrong in the airplane, do you think the pilot has to pull out his manual and look up what to do and figure it out?

I don't wanna fly with a pilot like that, how about you?

They have been through hundreds of hours of stimulus response, stimulus response, stimulus response, until when certain things happen, the behavior is automatic, how they respond.

It frees mental, habits free mental resources for challenges and change.

And this is 1 of the dilemmas of addiction, is that when a person becomes preoccupied with their addiction, they don't have mental resources or the cognitive capacity or energy to engage in other kinds of challenges.

And so their world gets smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller until there is nothing left except that 1 thing in their life.

In our book, Living Free, Finding Freedom from Habits that Hurt, which will be out by the end of this year, we have a chapter on television addiction and there's a story in there of a police officer, happily married man, well at least he was happily married, happily he's a married man, full-time police officer, 3 children, 71 hours of television a week.

And he said, I can't get away from the set and I just don't get out very much anymore.

Driven behavior is a very real phenomenon.

But good habits help to build consistency and security into our lives.

Have you ever moved but you keep driving your old route just automatically without thinking?

I don't pay any attention to my surroundings when I'm driving.

When I went back to meet my husband in, where did you live?

They sent me to the corner store for cornflakes and I wound up in Manassas, Virginia.

2 hours later I called them from a different state.

Anyway, we are still searching for the food to correct this problem.

But Abraham Lincoln said this, he said, certain habits of men are like luxurious finds.

They destroy the trees that they decorate.

Now, In the normal brain, if you were at this morning's meeting, you learned that through the limbic area of the brain, sensory information comes in, and it acts like a percolating system to stimulate coordination, vision, sensation, movement, judgment, reward, perception, place, logic, reasoning, and all of these things work in harmony to create this active mechanism that we call the mind.

But in addictions, you have several areas that become very overactive and overengaged.

The ventral tegmental area, the nucleus accumbens, and the prefrontal cortex, which is typically involved in planning and orchestration of activities.

When it becomes overactive, the drive to organize becomes a compulsion.

And this is where compulsions are formed.

Now, drugs of abuse increase dopamine in the synapses of the brain.

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Vicki Griffin: SWYC 2005 Health Seminar

Health Seminar, Part 3

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Parts

Health Seminar, Part 1

41m

Health Seminar, Part 2

1h

Health Seminar, Part 3

56m

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