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Loma Linda University Student Association

Relationships Week 2006

Don Mackintosh

God? Why?

Parents? How?

Peers? Who?

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Phil Mills

God’s Purpose in Marriage

God’s Ideal in Courtship

The Essentials of Happiness

Key Questions Before Marriage

Courtship Question and Answer Session

It's been good to be here in Loma Linda and talk about relationships.

And let's just bow our heads and ask the Lord to lead today as we again talk together.

Father in heaven, we're thankful today that we can come at this noon hour.

And we remember that woman at the well that you met in the middle of the day and who came to realize who you were, who she was, what your purpose was, what her purpose was in life and as a result she reached the 10 cities around her and we still read about her today.

We ask that we would go from this place with a sense of power and purpose and of your presence and we come in your name amen.

Okay this week we talked about relationships the first day we talked about God why why in the world would we be in relationship with God and I kind of share my personal testimony about how I came to be a believer in God and how that journey was you know very specific to me and let me know that there was a God, He did exist, He was interested in my life, and He not only knew me, He wanted me to know Him, and it was a real blessing.

Then secondly, we talked about, what did we talk about secondly?

How in the world do you get along with your parents?

That was for those of you that don't get along with your parents, those of you that do, we were just saying, you know, take a break and rest.

And we talked about that, we talked about bitterness, we talked about how sometimes parents, we can't get along with them, but that doesn't mean we can't have balance, that doesn't mean we have to live in the midst of bitterness.

We can take the initiative and at the end of time God wants to turn the hearts of the sons to the fathers and the fathers to the sons and bring healing.

And I talked about how that happened in my experience as well.

And I just shared with you, you know, kind of my journey with friendships and the pain of trying to do things my way with friendships, and then the pleasure of learning how to do things God's way, and I'm still in that process.

I still make mistakes every day, so basically I've been able to come here and share about, you know, my mistakes.

So hopefully you've learned vicariously from that so you don't have to repeat them.

Frankly, I couldn't think of another title when they called me up, so I just thought that would be gripping.

But I remember when I was working as a nurse, I'd go into a room and people would say to me as I was, you know, especially a nursing student, they would say to me, are you a male nurse?

And to me, that was somewhat offensive because, you know, It kind of looked obvious, I thought.

So I would kind of look, I believe so, what would give you an indication that I'm not?

So we'd have some interesting discussions.

And some people say, well, that's not normal.

So I got used to being abnormal in some ways.

I could tell you a lot of stories about that, but I won't waste time with that.

I believe that there's different definitions of normal.

I mean, if I ask you what normal is, you might say something, someone else say something else, but ultimately, if you wanna have a definition of normal, you gotta have an absolute.

You gotta have something to look at that can can give you the the baseline, right?

This entire university is based on the fact that there are baselines.

There would not be a normal in the universe.

There would be no science unless there was something normal.

And there would not be any ability to come up with that norm unless there was an absolute.

I don't want to get into this philosophical stuff too much, but I would just say this to you.

There would not be science as we have it today unless there was a Judeo-Christian milieu.

Because in the cultures where God was seen as capricious and unpredictable and imprecise, people just didn't know what to do.

And so you know it might be God doing this or that and they were always reactionary and they never could reason from cause to effect.

So I've got a whole list of these quotes on my computer But I forgot my cords.

You know I sometimes forget very important things Harvard Cambridge Oxford all these places these imminent historians they say without this understanding of God that came from the Judeo-Christian context there would be no there would have never been this idea of we can discern absolutes and come to know them So what you have here at Loma Linda University and any university is a reflection of the belief that there is a God and that there are precise absolutes.

Now I want to suggest to you that you really can't have a, you can't have science without norms and you can't have relationships without norms.

You're going to have relationships that just don't make it unless you have a norm.

And I want to suggest to you the same norm that we need in science is the norm that we need in our relationships.

In fact, The exciting thing is that God himself, according to the Bible, is a relationship.

That's interesting in Deuteronomy it says, Hear O Israel, the Lord, the Lord our God is 1.

That word 1 is the same as in the Hebrew as Genesis chapter 2 verse 24 where it says, the 2 shall become 1 flesh.

So this relationship with God, this idea of who God is, if we know him, if we come to know him, you know how it says, Adam knew his wife Eve.

It forms the basis of all the other relationships.

Can you see how important it is to come to know God?

Now God's big desire and his big desire for my life was when I was out of balance, he says how can I get Don back to normal?

I remember this patient 1 day, I was taking care of him in a psychiatric unit.

The unit I worked on had a closed section, a locked section and an open section.

I liked to work with the patients who were on that locked unit because they were more like me.

And then also I always knew that they were somewhere, you know, there, They didn't escape.

And I was playing with this herbophrenic schizophrenic.

You know, I'd do ping pong, a little aggression therapy.

Angelo, he would just in the middle of these games he'd start crying.

He'd be just crying, his limbic system would just go crazy and he'd start bawling.

You know, I thought, you know, it's just his disease, you know, it's okay, you know.

And that was because I moved his piece when he went to the bathroom.

Anyway, the guy was a brilliant chess player.

Finally, you know, I asked him, I said, Angelo, why is it that you start crying?

And he couldn't articulate things well, you know.

And then I said, is it because you realize I'm about to lose?

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Series

Relationships Week 2006

Back to Normal

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Disappointed but Not Discouraged

32m

Hebrews 11- Faith

04 The Faith of Abraham Part 1

38m

Family Drift

Family Drift, Part 2

51m

Timeless Keys to Resilience

The Power of Forgiveness, Part 1

28m

A Man After Gods Own Heart: King David

18 A Perilous Thing to Lose Dependence On God

41m

Israel and the Judges

33m

More or Less

39m

Jesus on Prophecy

01 Prophecy Unfolds Today

48m

Morning Devotional

Purified & Preserved

45m

Jesus on Prophecy

14 Jesus on Revelation’s Rapture

37m

Living by Faith

1h 7m

Restoring the Joy

49m

Sound Doctrine