Michigan Conference Campmeeting 2021: How Much More?

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Strength Through the Storm – Better Brain, Better Habits, Better Life!

Vicki Griffin

01 Food, Mood, Cravings, and Immune Health

You are about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2021 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

Father in heaven, thank you, Lord Jesus, for this amazing time that we can have together.

Lord Jesus, we want deeper obedience, greater loyalty, better understanding.

Help us to understand these brain-body relationships.

We're not at the beginning of the judgment hour, Lord Jesus.

We're at the end, and it is time for our faith to climb, our hope to soar, and us to gain strength in the midst of trials, trouble and tribulation.

Come and be our teacher today, we pray in Jesus' name.

I'm going to begin by sharing this post is really a problem and I just can't, you know, I'm sorry I can't do anything about it.

It's just, it's an interference, but I'll try and see everybody.

I'm going to begin by sharing a statement that I carry with me in my Bible that's filled with hope and I believe that it's our marching orders as well.

This is from a devotional entitled, To Be Like Jesus.

Looking upon the people in their suffering and degradation, Christ perceived ground for hope where there appealed only despair and ruin.

Wherever there existed a sense of need, there he saw opportunity for uplifting.

Are we looking for opportunities for uplifting other people right now?

In every human being, he saw, he discerned infinite possibilities.

He saw men and women as they might be, transfigured by His grace in the beauty of the Lord our God.

Looking upon them with hope, He inspired hope.

Meeting them with confidence, He inspired trust.

In many a heart that seemed dead to all things holy were awakened new impulses.

To many a despairing 1 there opened the possibility of a new life." Amen?

We cannot but look forward to new perplexities in the coming conflict, but we can look on what is past as well as what is to come and say, hitherto hath the Lord helped us as thy days, so shall thy strength be.

We're going to be looking at how to build strength this week, mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, not in the absence of trials, but in their presence.

The trial will not exceed the strength that shall be given us to bear it.

Then let us take up our work just where we find it, believing that whatever may come, strength proportionate to the trial will be given.

God is in the business of changing our wishbone to backbone.

And I speak from experience and I will just share a little bit of my testimony because we have a lot to cover today and the nutrition feature is actually on the slides.

The first time I ran away from home I was 5.

I came from a very abusive home, beaten up a lot.

And by the time I was 11, My father had left home and I was left with the abusive parents, so by the time I was 11, I was taking drugs, smoking, running away from home, and also developed bulimia for 20 years, from age 11 to age 31.

My worldview was of a God that tortures people for all eternity, that's what I was taught, so I rejected the idea of God and entered into the hopeless world of atheism.

And so I'm here to tell you today that worldview and your environment, that's what dictates our choices.

And so I gave a promise to God that I would never separate the gospel and our truths from these teachings, from what we do.

Because really, who cares about adding 14 years to your life if your worldview is so horrible and creates a picture of a God that is so sadistic that you wouldn't want to live anyway.

So I'm here to tell you that we have reason to worship today.

We have reason to get serious about our message, because it's about more than believing it.

Of course we believe it, but we have to know it.

And that's what I've been pushing recently, and I have study lists I want to give you so that we can really become so part of this message that it's part of our DNA.

Because to me, these teachings are not doctrines, they are pictures of God.

They're a picture of God that is worth worshiping.

And so what my prayer for each and every person in this room is, is that whatever your worst experience was, Whatever your past is, whatever your worst weakness is that maybe nobody knows about, my prayer is that it will be weaponized for the Kingdom of God.

Because when I gave my heart to God, I was about 25 pounds thinner than I am right now, severely bulimic, and my prayer was not lovey-dovey.

I didn't know God that well, but I knew who the powerful 1 was in the room now, and so I made a deal.

I said, I will give you everything that I am and that I have.

But here's the string that I'm attaching to my deal with God, which was very kind of rude of me, but that's what I did.

I said, I just want to spend the rest of my life paying the devil back for what he did.

And he hired me, and I'm a hit man right now.

So that is the motive and the basis for what I do.

You know, being the health and temperance director is a bad enough title to clear a room, isn't it?

So I'm really thankful for the perspective that God has given me, for the journey that I've been on, and I want your weaknesses to be weaponized for the Kingdom.

You may have been thrown under the bus, but you can get out and drive it.

You may have had a dark past, but you can have a bright future.

And that's what we're going to be exploring and digging down into this week.

Can some tech person test to see if it's good to turn this light off or do we not want to bother?

This is why I don't do stress reduction programs.

Is there anybody that's a tech person that would like to come up here and calm me down?

I need somebody to just support me right now.

You know, this is why I have to take a nap after these programs.

02 Depression: Lifestyle Keys for Beating the Blues

We're so grateful to be able to be together as your people.

Our souls are looking to you today to enrich us, inspire us, and educate us.

For these things we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

So we're going to take a look today at some more brain-body connections in a very significant area of mental health.

I was reading an article today that 44% of interviewed Americans felt that, feel that this pandemic has caused them the most emotional stress they've ever experienced in their life.

So we've seen an increase, this pandemic has shown us an increase in stress, suicide at nearly all age groups including small children.

And so clearly it's really important that we understand at a deeper level some of these crises that people are experiencing and that we are experiencing.

I've noticed that as I do programs for the public and programs for the church, there really aren't very many differences in the kinds of challenges that we face as God's people and in the public.

God wants to make these problems our opportunities, not only for personal growth but for public ministry.

But we need the personal strength to be able to do it.

We need to know how to put 1 foot in front of the other.

And this is something that I love, this statement, that There are things that I just carry with me in my Bible.

And so this is a comment found in Patriarchs and Prophets on the story of David when he fled King Saul and went into the land of the Philistines to King Achish, and he realized that he was in the land of Goliath, and he feigned madness in order to escape.

When he was recognized as the Slayer of Goliath, he feigned madness.

So you can imagine, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing, he was frightened, he made wrong moves, and here is the comment regarding that situation with David.

It says, he who had sought refuge with the foes of Israel found himself in great peril.

And it just make makes it worse because you chose the wrong thing.

But feigning madness, he deceived his enemies and made an escape.

Yet this experience was serving to teach David wisdom.

How many of you just want to keep saying yes to whatever God shows you?

You may have gotten yourself into a mess.

But Jesus wants to use it as a learning experience for you and grow you out of even that.

That's what makes our Savior so lovable, isn't it?

It led him to realize his weakness and the necessity of constant dependence on God.

How precious is the sweet influence of the Spirit of God as it comes to depressed or despairing souls, encouraging the faint-hearted, strengthening the feeble, imparting courage and help to the tried servants of God.

And That is the course that we have signed up for Jesus said come to me and Learn so we've signed up to learn And today we want to take a look at depression not just as a mood, but as a condition.

There's been a lot of misunderstanding about depression.

And so I hope that we can just bring some clarity today in introducing some concepts that I think that will be helpful to you and it has certainly helped me.

Depression is the leading cause, isn't that surprising?

The leading cause of disability worldwide ahead of heart disease, any given cancer and AIDS.

If you suffer from depression, you are not alone.

Severe depression, disabling depression, at least 2 weeks of being absolutely disabled, don't even know which way to put the key in the door handle, affects 20 million Americans, 3 million teens, and milder forms are everywhere.

And in fact, these statistics are much higher now, post-pandemic.

How many of you knew that Abraham Lincoln famously suffered from severe melancholy or depression?

I am now, he said, the most miserable man living.

If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be 1 cheerful face on this earth." Have you ever felt that way?

Winston Churchill famously battled the demon of depression for many years, almost fulfilling his father's prediction of a shabby, unhappy, and futile existence.

Winston Churchill was not a handsome little boy.

He was put away in a school where he did not do well scholastically, didn't have a lot of friends.

His mother was a socialite who was too busy for him.

And he was so used to rejection and a feeling of abandonment and being isolated and misunderstood That when he became Prime Minister and had to make decisions against all of the European allies in World War II.

He was so used to standing alone that guess what happened?

So as I said yesterday, God wants to take your worst memory, your worst weakness, your most awful experience, and weaponize it for His kingdom.

So as a runaway, I started running away seriously when I was 11, but age 5 was my first experience.

God can turn those curses into a blessing.

There are many causes for depression, but depression can actually become very quickly a physical condition.

There is a pastor, not of our faith, who was very health-minded, a jogger, very gifted speaker, he traveled, he had all kinds of church ministries going, happy family, wonderful wife, busy, busier, as Jay Gallimore used to say, than a bee on a griddle.

1 day he got up to go to a speaking engagement, some kind of prayer breakfast for men.

He sat in his chair, had a complete breakdown.

He was clinically depressed, couldn't get out of bed for 3 months, actually suffered quite seriously.

And this story reminds me of a seminar that I attended by a professional physician who specializes in the interaction of the nervous and immune system and the stress system called a psycho-neuro-immunologist.

And he explained what happened to this pastor.

Because this was not a self-absorbed, selfish, self-indulgent, think-about-myself-all-the-time person.

He was not doing horrible things that are depressing.

He was doing amazing things that are wonderful, but his body shut him down.

And this psychoneuroimmunologist explained that each and every 1 of us have in our brains something called a governor.

Now, when we moved to Michigan from the hills of North Carolina, we had some acreage with lawn and my husband and son, the first thing they did is they went out and bought a riding lawnmower.

And the second thing they did with that riding lawnmower is they opened it up and they took out something called the governor.

Now somebody tell me what the governor does for the lawnmower it slows it down That's exactly what it does so that it can't become a hot rod, which is what our lawnmower became And it burned out.

I have a friend, my sister has a friend who is a businessman who travels a lot internationally and all over the place, and he absolutely can't stand hotel showers.

So he has a little toolkit that he carries with him.

And the first thing he does before he does anything else when he enters his hotel room is he takes the shower head off, takes the governor out, puts the shower head back on, enjoys lush showers.

Then before he leaves, he puts it back and goes, and nobody knows the difference.

So An interesting question that this physician asked in this seminar on depression was, if you think about the flu and you take away the fever part of the flu, What are some of the symptoms that a person would experience without fever?

What are some of the other symptoms that a person would experience when they have the flu?

Aches, just extreme lethargy, they call it lassitude.

I remember being really sick with the flu and having my hand on a devotional, as if by osmosis something would happen.

But I did not have the strength or the mental inclination to even pick it up and look at it.

Headaches, nausea, muscle aches, chills, low energy, no creativity, can't think, mental fog.

03 Living Free: Freedom from Habits that Hurt

Father in heaven, thank you, Lord, for this time that we can have together.

We have a common need, we have a common love for you, but we know that it must be deeper than it is.

We want greater trust in you, more loyalty, deeper insight, more fervor for your kingdom, but we also need more wisdom, more knowledge, and more practical application.

So please be with us today, enlarge our hearts and make our steps certain through the influence of your Holy Spirit on each heart, we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

Probably 1 of my favorite Bible stories is found in John chapter 5, and it's the story of the man at the pool of Bethesda.

How many years was he at that pool paralyzed from the neck down with no 1 to help him?

38 years paralyzed, waiting for those waters, waiting for his miracle, but somebody would climb over him and he was helpless, he was hopeless, he was worthless in his own eyes.

We know from the context of the story that it was his own course in life that brought him to that place.

And so he had the misery of self-reproach, self-hatred, and guilt, and shame on top of it all.

And I love the way the story starts because it says that Jesus came and he saw him.

And he saw that he had been there a long time.

Because some of these problems that we are dealing with, we're at the end of the genetic line.

And some of these challenges that we face might be through the environment that we were in, were born in.

We get a genetic deck that maybe we didn't choose, we've made choices when we were dead in trespasses and sins, we have problems and sins that cling to us like lint and we don't seem to be able to get traction, you take a few steps up in a shale or sandy hill, you take 4 back.

And so Jesus saw that He had been there, and He saw that this was a long time.

And the man does not have the faith to grasp what Jesus is asking him.

And when the waters are stirred, I have no 1 to help me.

First of all, I'm thankful today that salvation is not a competition.

He came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

And so Jesus listens to him and he says, rise, take up your bed and walk.

The interesting part of this story to me is in verse 14, when he later sees this man at the synagogue.

And he says something interesting to him.

Go and sin no more, lest A worse thing come upon you.

And I remember my husband, Dane, and I were driving to some appointment, and I was reading the evening worship.

And as I read that phrase from Christ to this man, it really shocked me, it hit me.

And I looked at Dane and I said, Dane, what could be worse than being paralyzed from the neck down with no 1 to help you?

He said, being paralyzed from the neck up and not wanting help.

And depression and addictions and being dead in our own miserable life without Christ is being paralyzed from the neck up and Jesus came to heal that paralysis and we're seeing in this class and it's something that you already know, is that these mind-body systems work in concert to heal us of that paralysis.

So not only is it a healing of spiritual paralysis, but there are body systems that also need to be healed of paralysis.

And so today as we begin, we're going to be, I love Wednesdays, you know, when I go to the staff meetings, the first day of the meeting it's, you know, rise up, oh church of God.

And by the time we get to Wednesday, it's if your hand's on the plow, hold on, hold on.

So if you find some workers today, tell them that you appreciate what they're doing for you.

So what we want to do, I don't know if you know why I told you that story, but it's true.

So what I want to do before we get into our presentation on addictions, oh I know why I told you because Wednesday I always tell a really cool story and that's in our program today because this is Wednesday.

It's Wednesday for you also and it can get to feel like kind of a long week.

So I'm glad you're not ditching class today.

We did 1 yesterday on concentrated refined carbohydrate, and I think that that was a good visual.

I want to do another 1 today does anybody remember from yesterday how many grams in 1 teaspoon of sugar good for you'll never forget that because you were standing right here with me and so in 1 tablespoon, today we're talking about fat.

Fat is so good, it's so important, but we need the right kind in the right ratios for it to reveal its benefits.

So in a tablespoon, this is a tablespoon of fat, a tablespoon of fat is 15 grams.

So in 1 8-10 ounce steak, this is a high fiber steak because it's plastic, but in 1 8-10 ounce steak you're going to have 50-60 grams of fat.

But how many people do you know that just eat this and nothing else?

We're going to have baked potato with sour cream and butter, maybe a white roll with butter, maybe a little ice cream at the end to settle the stomach.

And we're doing this for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

There is a fast food breakfast, And they give them these amazing names like, be a lumberjack and take down the world breakfast.

But these breakfasts, some of them have 93 grams of fat.

And how much fiber do you think is in these breakfasts?

So this is the amount of fat that you're going to get in various combinations of burgers and fries.

It's the same amount of fat you're gonna get in 4 slices of cheese pizza.

It's the same amount of fat you're gonna get in 6 handfuls of Fritos.

Now, this is the important thing about fat and cell structure.

Lipids are fats, and they are called bilipid layers, 2 double lipid layers of fats.

You could imagine them like double layers of ping-pong balls in a jacuzzi.

So they're constantly remodeling themselves.

And fats are important because not only are they carriers for fat-soluble vitamins, they are also precursors to important hormones, and they make up, the fats you eat make up, a large part of the structure of every cell in your body.

Now, here's what happens when you have a diet that is high in saturated fat, particularly animal saturated fat.

So we're talking marbled meats, chicken skin, butter, hard cheeses, egg yolk.

These are very concentrated forms of saturated fats.

What happens to the cells is that they, because we're talking about being what from the neck up?

They make the cells of the body and the brain less flexible Because these are stiffer fats.