<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Kalamazoo SDA Church

Jermaine Gayle

A Life Changing Question

The title of my message, A Life-Changing Question.

Father, we humble ourselves as we come before your word and we make ourselves available to be molded by Scripture.

Oh Father, be our teacher, is our prayer in Jesus' name, amen.

For some of you that might be a new term, but let me describe what catastrophizing actually looks like, and it turns out that you actually might be a catastrophizer.

In a article published in the Harvard Business Review, a psychologist mentions the story of a student who came to meet with her 1 afternoon.

And the student walked into her office and wanted to have a conversation.

Paul came into Meg J's office and he had quite a few things to say.

He said, his first words, my life is ruined.

The issue with Paul was that he had taken an exam that afternoon and he failed his exam.

He had been studying for many years and he was working his way through medical school and he had been successful on quite a number of things and this is the 1 exam that Paul failed.

But his pronouncement was, my life is ruined.

This is what Meg J calls catastrophizing.

She says in her article, not long ago, a medical student by the name of Paul walked into my shift in the emergency room of a large university and told me that his life was ruined and she adds for the past 20 years I've worked with young people in many capacities and I've counseled them in my private practice I taught them on college campuses and given them given talks at companies and this day this student walks in and I could see it on his face that he was about to catastrophize.

Paul continued, I feel like I'm having a panic attack.

And then he yelled out finally, this is a catastrophe.

1 failed exam and his conclusion was my life is ruined and this is a catastrophe.

In other words, his mind went to the extreme worst by 1 failure.

You and a friend, you've been talking for a while and you're good friends and all of a sudden you get a text message having not talked with maybe a few hours or so and the text message reads, we need to talk.

Perhaps it's from a friend or from your spouse.

Immediately your mind thinks, wait a minute, am I in trouble?

Catastrophizing, it shows up in various ages.

It shows it's most common, psychologists say, among young adults.

And that's because the most uncertain period of one's life is in the age of, between the ages of 18 to 35.

So you begin to think that things might not work out based on your current decisions, your current choices.

Catastrophizing shows up as well among the older group.

Now, another area that you might catastrophize is you know you have the doctor's appointment coming up.

I don't know how many of you think as you're driving towards that doctor's appointment, how many of you think the best case scenario.

The doctor is going to give me a stellar report.

He's going to say you are in very good health.

In fact, some of us are afraid to go into the doctor's office because of what we might hear that's catastrophizing.

You know, I see it happen sometimes when I talk to church members and I say, hey, can I talk to you for a minute?

And they're like, wait a minute, are you calling me into the principal's office?

The issue is that in life it doesn't take you long to experience some kind of trauma, some kind of tragedy, some kind of difficulty and as a result Our minds are trained to expect the worst.

I have a good friend of mine who told me once, I will never drive over a bridge.

And I wonder, how do you navigate the world?

And that's because of a video that was seen at some point that showed a bridge collapse.

I've had people tell me I'll never fly again.

Because of the recent reports with travel by air.

The Bible tells us there in John chapter 5, now you imagine if you were in this man's situation, if you were in his shoes, perhaps you would be a catastrophizer too.

Nothing works, you've tried everything, it all fails and you find yourself 1 more time by the pool of Bethesda where you have showed up multiple times to find a solution to your health concern.

The Bible tells us after this there was a feast of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having 5 porches.

In these lay, what everybody, a great multitude of what everybody.

Have you ever been surrounded by a crowd?

There you can identify all the types of sickness.

You see the blind in 1 corner, you see the lame in another corner, you can see all of the sick people and you can diagnose by just looking at them what their conditions were.

Perhaps you might not know what disease or the exact type of malady that had touched their lives but you could tell that each and every person in this crowd was sick.

This is where all the sick people went, by the pool of Bethesda.

And this is where all the catastrophizers came, by the pool of Bethesda.

And the Bible tells us that this was a very popular time in Jerusalem.

It tells us that this was 1 of the times around the Feast of the Jews.

Some scholars tell us this might have been around August or September, sometime in the fall, and Jerusalem would swell to about 50 to 60, 000 people around this time.

So now imagine this friends, the feast of the Jews, there's so many people that are stuck in this 1 spot, but not only that, they say in the fall in Jerusalem, the weather would be sweltering hot.

How many of you have ever been somewhere in the world where it's very hot?

Now, Michigan has some hot summers, but I tell you, I was in the Philippines, and I was there preaching, and I wore a suit 1 Sabbath morning.

And I tell you, when I preached I was sweating all over the place.

The next day I went and bought myself a barong, which is the traditional Filipino wear that helped a lot.

But they say that around this time of year, Jerusalem would be about 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

In the middle of a crowd, at that level of heat.

Now it's going to be very stuffy, very difficult to move around.

And even though the pool of Bethesda was there, it's very hard to make your way because everyone is making their way to the same pool.

Not just to cool off, but to find a solution to their malady.

These people couldn't enter the temple to worship because for the Jews, the idea of sickness is often connected to sin.

Now we know this if you turn with me in your Bibles to the book of John.

John chapter 9 and this was a common belief, such a common belief that even the disciples were affected by this.

Notice what the Bible says in John chapter 9 and verse 1.

Now as Jesus passed by, he saw a man who was blind from what everybody?

Back to Menu

A Life Changing Question

Transcript

Sponsor

Recorded

Related

Getting Through to God

02-I Have Trouble Everywhere

26m

The Necessary Experience

1h 18m

Look Up and Live

The Healer and Restorer

41m

Live By the Word

1h 10m

No Trial Wasted

39m

Reclaim Your Life

42m

Twin Cities

Get Up

45m

Christianity 24-7

3. How to Meet the Enemy

1h 11m

A Call to Revival

When You Lose Your First Love

1h 15m

Prayer by Gem Castor

Gentle Healer

54m

The Weeping Prophet of Hope

51m

Sound Doctrine