GYC SE 2012: Ultimate Purpose

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GYC Southeast

GYC SE 2012 Seminar: Health

Debbie Beihl

God’s Power to Live the Health Message

Welcome to the GYCSE seminar on the health message.

I'm so glad to see you guys here this afternoon.

Before we begin saying God's word, I'd like to bow our heads for prayer.

Please bow your heads with me for prayer.

Father, I just wanna thank you so much for the Sabbath that you've given us and ask for you to please in your spirit now to be with us as we study your word.

Please speak through me and touch the hearts of the people here and help us to go away, not just having heard a good message, but with a changed life through your power.

I was reading an interesting story the other day.

It was a man on his way to work in Harlem, New York.

And he went and he got on the subway station.

He was waiting for the train to come along.

And you know they say the train is coming in 3 minutes.

And as the train was on its way, The man standing next to him fainted and fell down onto the train tracks.

And this man saw this terrible thing happen.

And he said, I have got to go rescue this man.

So he jumps down on the train tracks, rescued the stranger, and saved his life.

And then media, they love stories like this.

The next day they came and they said, why Did you do this?

And usually the answer is, well, the stranger looked like my brother, or he looked like my father or my son.

But the answer that this man gave was different.

He said, the reason that I jumped on the track when the train was coming and saved this stranger was because I was on the way to work.

And I knew that on the weekend, you get 1 and 1 1⁄2 times for your income.

And I knew that if the man was on the track and the train hit him, I wouldn't be able to get my train to work, and I wouldn't get that extra money.

This man did something wonderful, and it was ruined because he did it for the wrong reason.

He did it because he wanted to get more money, not because he wanted this stranger's life to be saved.

He did the right thing for the wrong reason.

And so the question comes to us, Could we be doing the right thing for the wrong reason?

The question comes to us, could we be living the health message but doing it for the wrong reason?

So this afternoon, I want to study what the health message is and why it's so important, why we need to do it for the right reason, and what that means.

God wants us to not just know what the health message is, not just have a theoretical head knowledge of it, but to have it come and impact our hearts, to impact our lives, to change our life.

And we're going to study what that means this afternoon.

So first, to know what the right thing is, we have to know what the health message is.

In 1 Corinthians 6, 19 and 20, turn with me to 1 Corinthians 6, 19 and 20.

Turn with me to 1 Corinthians 6, 19 and 20.

Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?

Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God's.

And you flip over a few more chapters to 1 Corinthians 10, 31.

It says, "...whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." The health message is a call to us personally To live lives that glorify God, glorify Him in following Him, glorify Him in living a life of self-denial, saying, God, you want this.

Even though that's not my desire, I'm going to follow You.

It's more than just how we care for our bodies.

It's a life of self-denial, of surrender to Christ.

And God's calling us to live like that, to live to glorify Him.

But the health message is more than that.

It's more than just personally living to glorify God.

It's blending physical and spiritual ministry to others.

This is not just for health care providers.

And we're going to unpack that over these next few seminars.

And we read, and Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues, preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people.

Jesus' ministry was teaching, preaching and healing.

He was doing all 3 things and he was teaching.

He was instructing them how to live both in their body and in their spirit, physical and spiritual, in a way that would glorify God.

Not only did Jesus live a life that combined teaching, preaching, and healing, He instructed His disciples to do the same.

We see this in Matthew 10, verses 1, 7, and 8.

Few chapters over, Matthew 10, verses 1, 7, and 8.

Verses 1 starts out, And when he had called his 12 disciples to him, He gave them power over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease.

Verse 7, and as you go preach, Shane, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons.

Jesus is saying to his disciples, you're called to preach, verse 7, and you're called to heal.

You're to combine these 2 things, 1 person doing both in your ministry to others.

That's what Jesus is calling his disciples to do, to blend medical work and ministry.

And it's as you receive the power that you see in verse 1.

And then in verse 8, as you have received from Christ, you give.

So this is saying this is something that we have to personally experience.

And then we, out of our relationship with Christ, out of what God is doing in our lives, we give because God has given to us.

The health message is a call to glorify God in our bodies.

And it's a call to follow Christ in blending medical work and evangelism.

God is calling every church member to this ministry.

So we know what the health message is, the head knowledge.

But the question comes to us, what about the hurt?

You can do the right thing for the wrong reason.

So now that we know what we should do, let's see why we should be doing that.

Why do we need to have the health message go from a theoretical knowledge to something impacting our heart, impacting our lives?

Could we be doing what's right, but doing it for the wrong reason?

Could we be living healthy lives, living long lives for ourselves, for our personal benefit, for selfish reasons?

Could we be sharing physical health with others, which is a good thing, but not sharing with them eternal life, what matters most.

And how we care for our body, what we eat, how we live, and everything we do.

God’s Call for Pastors, Doctors, and Nurses

I'm a second year medical student at Loma Linda University and I actually went through the nursing school too.

So I'm going to be talking about medicine and nursing and other areas of health care as well as pastoral ministry and how we can capitalize on that for winning souls for Christ.

So before we begin, I'd like to bow our heads.

I'd like you to bow your heads with me for prayer.

Father, I just want to thank you so much for another day of life, for your Sabbath, and ask for you to please, in your Spirit, to speak through me now.

Please touch the hearts of the people here.

Teach us how to live like you lived, to Reach out to those around us through our professional lives, through our personal lives, through everything we do.

Pleased in your spirit now to work in our lives and to speak through me.

She has a very interesting problem, a very sad problem.

She has a right hand that is uncontrollable.

She'll be in the grocery store shopping and her left hand will put things into the cart that she wants.

And this right hand will come and take them out.

She'll be driving the cart down the road and trying to turn 1 direction and then this uncontrollable hand turns it the opposite.

She'll be trying to read a book, turning the pages 1 way with the good left hand, and then the right hand decides, no, we're gonna turn them backwards.

She can't read, she can't get groceries, She can't even get dressed.

She'll try to button up her shirt with the good hand, and then the bad hand will be unbuttoning it.

Now, the problem that Josephine has is a real problem.

It's something called alien hand syndrome.

And it's actually something we studied in neuropathology last week in medical school.

It happens when there's a problem with communication between the left and right side of the brain, an area called the corpus callosum.

It sometimes happens with strokes and other medical conditions.

It's a Very sad condition where you have this side of your body, usually like a hand or a leg, that doesn't cooperate.

And in a similar sense that people get this rare and very sad condition.

The health message is the right hand of the gospel and it's to facilitate the body of Christ in reaching souls.

It's a work in cooperation with the body, but often it does not.

You have a handout, many of you have, should all have.

It has some of the quotes that we're going through in addition to the Bible this afternoon.

And the first quote you have, I believe, is from Testimonies, Volume 6, page 289.

It says, the medical missionary work should be a part of the work of every church in our land.

Disconnected from the church, it would soon become a strange medley of disorganized atoms.

Instead of acting as God's helping hand to forward his truth, it would sap the life and force from the church and weaken the message.

Conducted independently, it would not only consume talent and means needed in other lines, but in the very work of helping the helpless, apart from the ministry of the Word, it would place men where they would scoff at the Bible.

God is saying if you have medical ministry, apart from ministry to the spiritual needs of those that you come in contact with, your patients, those in your community.

It actually is not just a neutral force, it's a negative force.

It's that hand that undoes the good the church does.

It places people with a scoff at the Bible.

So that it cooperates, it facilitates the work of the church.

The page before in 6 Testimonies, page 288, describes this some more.

It says, again and again I have been instructed that the medical missionary work is to bear the same relation to the work of the 3 angels' message that the arm and hand bear to the body.

Under the direction of the divine head, they are to work unitedly in preparing the way for the coming of Christ.

The right arm of the body of truth is to be constantly active, constantly at work, and God will strengthen it.

At the same time, the body is not to say to the arm, I have no need of thee.

The body has need of the arm in order to do active, aggressive work.

Both have their appointed work and each will suffer great loss if worked independently of the other.

God is calling for medical work to combine with ministry, both in health care and in the church, so that this right hand facilitates the work of God, so that more souls are won.

In Matthew 4 23, We see that this is how Christ lived.

We saw in the last message that this is a message, a way of living like Christ lived, teaching, preaching and healing.

In Matthew 10, 7 and 8, We saw last seminar that this is not just what Christ lived, it's what he called his disciples to live, a life of blended ministry, physical and spiritual.

Matthew 10, 7 and 8 says, and as you go preach saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons, freely you have received, freely give.

It's a message to us as the followers of Christ to combine physical and spiritual healing and those that we minister to.

A call to medical evangelism, chapter 8, says, when connected with other lines of gospel effort, Medical missionary work is a most effective instrument by which the ground is prepared for the sowing of the seeds of truth and the instrument also by which the harvest is reaped.

Medical missionary work is the helping hand of the gospel.

So far as possible, it would be well for evangelical workers to learn how to minister to the necessities of the body, as well as the soul.

For In doing this, they are following the example of Christ.

In temperance as well, I filled the world with disease and the ministers of the gospel cannot spend their time and strength in relieving all in need of help.

The Lord has ordained that Christian physicians and nurses shall labor in connection with those who preach the word.

The medical missionary work is to be bound up with the gospel ministry.

And the gospel minister should preach the health principles.

The Christian physician has a high calling with his full knowledge of the human system and its laws.

He is in a position to preach the gospel of salvation with much efficiency and power.

The ministry of the gospel, whether by the minister or the physician, is to reach out to man a helping hand wherever it is needed.

Here the gospel minister and the Christian physician unite, and the Bible worker, and who visit from house to house as well.

No line is to be drawn between the genuine medical missionary work and the gospel ministry.

They are not to stand apart as separate lines of work.

They are to be joined in an inseparable union, even as the hand is joined to the body.

The presenting of Bible principles by an intelligent physician will have great weight with many people.

There is efficiency and power with 1 who can combine in his influence the work of a physician and a gospel minister.

We see that it starts out with a connection between gospel work and medical work.

God's saying this is not just the way the ground is prepared.

It's not just the health series, getting ready for the evangelistic series.

It's specifically this is the way the harvest is to be reached.

God is calling us as nurses, as doctors, as health care providers to not just have medicine or health care be a way to prepare the ground, but actually be the way that souls are won, the way a harvest is reaped.

And it's to prepare for other work of the church, you know, evangelistic series and all this too, but it's more than what we see right now as a vision for medical work.

It says that evangelical workers are learned to minister to the necessities of the body.

Doctors and pastors are called to learn to bring healing to people physically as well as care for people spiritually.

The Christian physician and nurse are called to labor in connection with the preachers, with the pastors.

To work together, the hand is to work with the body of Christ to facilitate winning souls.

It says again the gospel minister should preach the health principles.

And then it says something very interesting.

The Christian physician is called to preach the gospel salvation.

God’s Call to Every Church Member

Father, I just want to ask for you to please send your spirit to speak through me.

Please touch the hearts of the people here and help us to not just hear a good message and go back to the same people, but to live lives for you that are fully dedicated to you.

It was the week before exams, the first year of medical school.

And it was a day where I did not have any class, I was going to study all day long, to go take a practice exam, and then go and study all day long till I went to bed.

But how on earth is that going to happen when you study all day long, go take your practice exam and go and study until you go to sleep?

I was studying all day long at home by myself.

Went to take the exam, walked in, dropped my backpack off, ran into a classmate.

She had heard I was the class pastor and we started chatting.

Nothing particularly spiritual, just the usual, where are you from, where did you go to undergrad, that sort of conversation.

Turns out that she went to a Protestant university and she said, you know, I wish it had been more spiritual.

I didn't expect that answer just from my interaction with her.

She said, you know, I had a friend that went to Bob Jones University in South Carolina, and I really wish I could have gone there.

And she said, no, we'll walk into the exam together.

I actually grew up in this other church, this other Protestant church.

And when I was a teenager, we left because it was getting very liberal, very unbiblical.

And she said, you know I've been looking for a church ever since.

I've been looking for a church in college.

I've actually tried going to the local Adventist church." I said, oh really?

And she said, yeah, it seems like Adventism isn't very different than these other Christian denominations.

I said, well, you know, there are a few differences.

And she kind of asked me, you know, what are these differences?

And I said, you know, I'm not trained at AAFCO, I'm not trained at ARISE, but God was, I was willing for God to use me.

So the thing that came to my mind was to share about the state of the dead.

By this time, we were sitting down in the exam.

It just so happened that we were able to sit next to each other.

In all the other exams, we were not allowed to sit next to each other.

But God allowed for us to sit next to each other in this 1 exam.

So this conversation continued as the exam was getting ready to begin.

And I said, you know, we believe that when we die, we rest in the grave until Jesus comes.

And she said, you know, that makes so much sense.

Because my grandmother said that the Bible says that when Jesus comes, the dead rise up to meet him in the air.

I said, you should come with me to Avento sometime.

A couple of weeks later, she came with me to church.

And You know what the sabbatical lesson was on?

And we came, she came to my home afterwards.

We had lunch together and we started talking.

She started asking me about prophecy, about the role of modern day prophets, about all these different questions she had about spiritual things.

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GYC SE 2012 Seminar: Health

God’s Power to Live the Health Message

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Parts

God’s Power to Live the Health Message

43m

God’s Call for Pastors, Doctors, and Nurses

57m

God’s Call to Every Church Member

46m

Sound Doctrine