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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Adrienne Weiss

In His Image

Thank you for a room full of people ready to get to know you, ready to celebrate relationship with you.

I ask that you use me as a humble vessel in this process and that everyone hear what you want them to hear and that their hearts are touched as you would like them to be touched.

I'm actually curious today, how many in the audience are students?

I am a recent graduate and I just want to share a little bit about the process of being a medical student and kind of a testimony about my personal growth.

I really really struggled at the beginning with the concept of what does doing my best mean and what compromises does that include?

Does it mean I can't talk to my family every day?

Does it mean I only study the Bible, never study the Bible?

How do I balance this in the high demand setting of medical school?

And I want to just share today concepts that have helped in that process in finding peace.

And ultimately, through this faith walk of the last 4 years, I had a really vibrant, joyful med school experience.

And I hope to surpass that in residency with some of these concepts.

To set the stage on kind of what I dealt with in medical school, I want to share a story from third year.

I was on my OBGYN rotation, and it was in Florida, so I'm not dropping names.

But I was on surgical oncology, And I walk into the OR 1 morning, 6 in the morning, I've got my granola bar in the pocket, exhausted, giant purple circles, the works.

But I'd done my part as a good medical student.

I'd gotten the right glove size, I'd gotten the right gown, everything was ready.

And I walk in and kind of sidle onto a corner and I'm looking for where the circulating nurse is so I can follow all the procedure and I see the scrub tech and she does this dramatic eye roll like well this could be tricky and then the fellow who's running the surgery walks over to the scrub tech, neither of them makes eye contact with me, neither of them greets me, and they start talking about, oh it's so exhausting having medical students along, they just don't know what they're doing, they always break sterile field, this is just awful, And the fellow turns to the scrub tech.

Again, no eye contact, no recognition that I'm in the room.

And she says, Ah, well, this one's less insufficient than the last 1.

We do the three-hour surgery, no conversation, no eye contact, and I'm thinking, less insufficient.

But as I kind of reflected on it, that kind of turned into my motto moving forward.

Every day I baseline and am insufficient.

We know that, I recognize that, that's why we're in school.

And yet I'm gonna be less insufficient every day.

So what does it mean to do my best, given that I'm insufficient?

And I started realizing that my best just wasn't going to be enough.

So it led me to hold really tightly to 2 concepts.

The first 1 is biblical, and we'll get to the verse in just a second.

And the second is a daily prayer to be used by God.

That is going to be my definition of enough.

So the in my weakness he is strong, 2 Corinthians chapter 12, verses 9 and 10.

But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

For the sake of Christ then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.

For when I am weak, then I am strong." This verse is reassurance that God has got us in the moments when we feel insufficient.

It's also a promise that God will work through us when from all appearances we are insufficient, even less insufficient than yesterday.

And this is what I found most reassuring during medical school, these 2 topics.

I also want to share what I found exciting and energizing, because There are lots of things that are exciting and energizing about this cool career in health care, taking care of people.

And the exciting energizing part is the concept.

We also know that at the time of the fall, that image was distorted.

And I get to strive toward that image and how he intended me to be by getting to know him more.

I have the amazing opportunity and responsibility, specifically as a physician, of helping others towards the image of God as well.

Helping them in the healing process, the restoration process, in dimensions physical, social, mental, and spiritual.

Now these 2 concepts, the inward and the outward, they have to go together.

You can't have the inward without the outward.

So this combined concept has gradually become my understanding of how the prayer to be used by God is answered.

I am insufficient in my weakness, he is strong, and then I'm gonna pray to be used by him.

The answer to how I'm used by him is when he pours into relationship with me, and through changing me back to his image, he allows me to be part of pouring into everyone around me, and moving them back to the image of God as well.

They're the cliff notes of my philosophy so far, kind of developed through medical school, and I'm sure it's gonna grow more.

There's gonna be more challenges in residency.

But let's take these nebulous concepts and make them a little bit more concrete by attaching them to a Bible story.

This is a Bible story that I find to be just 1 of the most intricate, amusing, and powerful stories from the Gospel of John, which is already a really powerful gospel.

It's jam-packed with politics, religion, double meanings, and layer upon layer we're studying.

I recognize that, there's so many layers in this, but let's have fun and let's open our Bibles.

You'll notice I don't have slides, so our visual today is actually the paper.

We're just gonna go through the whole chapter basically.

And I'll say I practiced preaching most in the mission field where it has to be handwritten because there's not even printers around.

So the slides didn't happen and we're back to the Bible.

So this Bible story is robust with teaching points and examples of Jesus as the perfect human being.

He's created in the image of God and he goes around repairing the image of God in others.

It's also a story of how in their weakness, they are strong and how God effectively works through the insufficient.

And we're gonna look for all those themes.

So follow along and I'm gonna tell the story and then quote a couple verses, but follow along as we're talking about it.

So we set the stage with Jesus and his disciples.

They are walking along, they're getting more than their 10, 000 steps a day, and they come across a beggar blind man.

He is at the bottom of the social totem pole.

And it's assumed in this society that all misfortune is punishment by God.

They assume there's a sin that caused his suffering.

So the disciples ask Jesus, "'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, "'that he was born blind?' Can we say from the medical perspective, they're members, the disciples are members of the care team and they're seeking a debate about what caused the illness, but they're not actually providing care.

He says, neither this man nor his parents sinned, said Jesus, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me.

While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

So Jesus shuts down the unproductive debate and he tells them what is about to happen.

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In His Image

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