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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Don Mackintosh

The Will of God, Part 1 - Free Will

I'm glad to be here with you this weekend.

I thought I was gonna develop a theme of the will of God.

And tomorrow I wanna talk about the purpose of the will, of really doing the will of God and what that purpose is in the world.

So tonight's part 1, tomorrow will be part 2.

Maybe just a little bit about what I am doing up at Weimar Center of Health and Education.

Nedley on several programs there and 1 of them is depression recovery and I see 1 of our counselors here tonight, Amanda, who comes up and also works with us in the 10-day depression recovery program and we talk to people that are severely depressed among other things but mostly depression.

It's exciting to see what happens in just 10 days time.

In talking with people and also exercising with people and counseling with people and to see what happens just by the choices people make.

It all comes down to the choices they will make.

To see what happens in just 10 days, I wish I could just transport it to your mind, because you would be so excited.

Well, it would be even more exciting than Jonathan's pizza.

Which was fairly exciting for some of us recently.

The other thing I do there is I'm in charge of what's called New START Global.

Now all of you are familiar with the New START acronym, right?

I heard someone on the plane earlier today going through that acronym.

I listened and I was interested with the creative way that that acronym was covered.

And he actually did better than the rendition I heard on the plane.

And there's strength in a multitude of counselors.

But that acronym is based on a statement really from the spirit of prophecy, but also it's based on a patient who went through the New Start program a number of years ago.

You may or may not know that the Weimar Center of Health and Education started really as a result of a group that met on this campus and was looking for a place back in the 70s to do lifestyle medicine.

And Neil Wilson, Ted Wilson's father, was part of that group.

And just recently, Elder Wilson himself came to visit the campus just about a year and a half, 2 years ago.

And there was a patient that went through and summarized everything that had happened during their 19 day program and the New Start program with that acronym, New Start.

So now I'm in charge of what's called New Start Global and that's because, you know, with 7 billion people in the world, there's a lot of people that haven't even heard the name New Start and don't know anything about those principles.

So our desire is to globalize that and we're doing that through various means.

Health Evangelism and leadership training for him.

So health evangelism and leadership training for him.

I'll show you a clip tomorrow of some of the people in the community and what's been happening in their lives.

If you just spend time with people, you just spend time with people, they're able to make amazing changes in their lives.

And what I saw happening in this, just this last class, It was just so, I don't know, heartwarming to me to have people see the physical changes in their lives and then just say to you out of the blue, well, I want to join your church, because if your church is like you have been treating us just by spending time with us and all those things, then I wanna join your church.

And I said, well, you don't even know what my church believes.

And they said, well, we don't really need to know what your church believes because we've seen what your church believes.

And that's a different type of evangelism.

And I wanna talk more about that tomorrow.

I'm gonna talk a little bit more about it in the setting of the will.

But I've gotta tell you that, that there's not anything more exciting than to be interacting with people on a practical basis in their lives.

There's really nothing more exciting than that.

And if you're having a problem in your own spiritual life, many times it's because you're not interacting with people on a practical basis.

You're not witnessing to them in some very practical way.

Now you say you know that sounds scary witnessing.

You know what we do in our program is very simple.

You know this is not really a hard principle.

And how many of you like to ask questions?

So, you know, it is just the most natural thing, once you start serving people that way, that they're going to ask you about your relationship with God, it's just very natural.

We also make medical missionary work very complicated.

We all think we have to move to Loma Linda and graduate from medical school or dental school or dietitian school or nursing school or some kind of school, counseling school, to do medical missionary work.

If you look at the definition, the way Ellen White describes it, You know what she says that medical missionary work is?

Now how many of you think everybody could probably get a hold of a little bit of that?

Now granted when you have specialized training you can meet more needs and you can do things that are on a larger platform.

So I don't diminish at all, don't take my remarks to diminish at all what happens in this place, I'm very thankful for it.

But I think that there is so much more, and this is not a weekend on medical missionary work, although maybe it is turning into 1 right now.

Testimonies, volume 7, she says that we've come to the time when every member should be a medical missionary work.

And what I saw in the last 4 months, last 8 months, was that every person could become a medical missionary.

Myself, personally, I don't know, some of you have seen me in the past, I actually went out and started walking with my students every morning.

So I was up every morning walking with my students.

In the first class there were 2 physicians, there were 6 nurses, there was an MPH, and there were a number of lay people in the first class.

We had about 20 people in the first class.

The amazing thing in that class was, I didn't realize how out of shape I was.

By the end of that first class I had lost 22 pounds and I was able to do things I hadn't done in years.

The Lord really blessed me as I was attempting to bless others.

As I was walking with the students, I actually had the benefit.

And that is only continued in the next session as well.

So, If you ever would like to have a revival of your own life, physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, and you'd like to do that for 4 months, then come up to the health program.

You can come to the health program that we run for about the same cost you can go through the New Start program for 19 days.

So you could go for 4 months instead of 19 days.

Now some people say I don't have that much time, but I tell you what, if you get healthy, you're actually adding years to your life I just watched a TED talk not long ago about this man who decided also he said look The Bible talks about having a Sabbath every 7 days I want to have also Sabbaticals and I'm not gonna wait till I retire.

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The Will of God, Part 1 - Free Will

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