AMEN Australia 2012: Right Arm, Right Approach, Right Now

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Adventist Medical Evangelism Network Australia

Skip Dodson

Tim Howe

Something Better, Changing Patient Behaviour

I want to spend just a minute or 2 reviewing the weekend.

Don't you enjoy that when you have classes?

So this weekend We started out Friday evening, Tim and I, with talking about the right arm, demonstrating how the health message and the healing ministry was connected with the work of proclaiming the gospel in the New Testament times, showing that conclusively, the benefits that were accrued because of that.

Then yesterday we spent nearly the whole day dealing with the right approach.

And I paralleled how Xerox lost the opportunity with the personal computer, and how we, in a sense, for a time, have lost the opportunity with the health message.

But you know, there is 1 difference, 1 huge difference.

The work of proclaiming the gospel is not exactly the same as the business world, is it?

We have a loving and merciful God who is going to reopen the door for us and allow us to go through the second time.

And he's going to help us to get the things that we missed before right this time.

He's going to hold that door of opportunity open, and I believe this work will finish in glory, more rich and full than it began.

And then yesterday evening I sought to share some just practical thoughts from Elder Tyndall's experience as to how medical evangelism might look in the modern context.

Now, I realize that there are going to be some differences, no doubt, but this was just simply to help us to start thinking practically about what this might look like.

But this morning, Tim and I are going to be sharing about changing patient behavior, and that's more of the right now message.

What can you do this week if you're seeing patients in your practice this week?

What are the practical things that you can do?

So to do this, I would like you to turn in your Bibles with me to John chapter 5.

And look at a patient visit that Jesus made.

John chapter 5, Jesus goes up to the feast at Jerusalem, we're told in verse 1.

The pool is called Bethesda actually in the Hebrew tongue, according to John.

There were all these Roman colonnades there.

And in those colonnades, verse 3 tells us, there lay a multitude of invalids, Blind, lame, and paralyzed.

Continuing in verse 5, 1 man was there who had been an invalid for 38 years.

I'm not a physician, but I can only imagine that dealing with patients with chronic disease has to be probably 1 of the most discouraging aspects of medicine.

Am I correct, those of you who are involved with this?

You see these people and they continue to get worse, they progress downward.

It's not a nice, easy, here's your treatment, they get better, everybody's happy.

I want you to think about this man and what he may have looked like.

Shrunken, atrophied muscles, flabby skin tone.

Think about what he may have smelled like.

I don't think he probably smelled very good.

I'm sure he may not have had someone there attending him at all times, turning him when he needed to be turned, et cetera.

So there is the potential here for bedsores.

There's potential for soiled garments, et cetera.

And verse 6 tells us that when Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, do you want to be healed?

Every time you go into a patient visit, you implement this word.

In fact, implied here is that Jesus did not simply glance at the man and then look away, but that he actually studied this man's condition.

The great physician does the very same kinds of things, or did the very same kinds of things that you do in your practice.

He studied people, you studied people, and then Jesus came to some conclusions.

That's why it says in verse 6 he knew that he had already been there a long time.

There's an important principle here I think.

Did Jesus have in mind already what He wanted to do for this man?

What does it communicate to your patients when you take the time to look?

If you're a pastor, what does it communicate to people when you take the time to listen to their story?

But take the time to listen to their story.

So Jesus was aware of his condition, knew what was needed, and he said to him, do you want to be healed?

There are different words for healing in the New Testament.

This is the word, hugges, which we get the word hygiene from.

It's quite significant actually, as we'll look at the rest of the passage, but I'll just let that go for now.

But what he's saying is, do you want this hygienic experience, which means you want to be made healthy, sound.

Look at the sick man's answer, verse 7, and what do you find interesting about that answer?

And have you ever experienced such an answer as you talk to a patient?

He's expressing his dependence but what he starts doing is telling Jesus all the reasons why he can't get better.

Why he has not been able to get better up to this point.

He starts out by expressing his lack of social support.

Some of your patients when they come to you will not have a good social support system.

Where does he think he needs to go to get well?

He says, if I could just get to the pool, did Jesus have something there better than the pool?

Do you have something better than the pool?

You know, the pool was the standard of care.

But there was something better than the pool.

There was this hygiene that Jesus wanted to give him.

Now, some of you understand the significance of the word hygiene in Adventist history, right?

So, our methods of healing used to be referred to as hygienic methods.

Which means they were methods that used the natural processes and remedies, changed the lifestyle to allow the body to heal itself by the power of God.

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Something Better, Changing Patient Behaviour

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