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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Eric Walsh

Prayer in a New Light

Is any is any sick among you let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up, and if he has committed sins they shall be forgiven him.

Confess your faults 1 to another and pray 1 to another that you may be healed.

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

Our message this morning is prayer in a new light, prayer in a new light.

Father God we thank you for this opportunity.

We ask Lord that you would show up in our message this morning.

I ask Father God that you make me not be seen but that Lord you would speak through me.

This is our prayer in Jesus's name, amen.

James was a powerful writer and spoke very well on many subjects and 1 of the subjects that I like that James wrote about is this idea of prayer and community inside of the church in order to gain victory.

This is something that sometimes seems to lag in many of our churches where we we we seem more antagonistic inside of the church rather than cooperative inside of the church.

And I mean in order that people gain victory.

Sometimes we focus so much on smaller issues that huge issues are overlooked.

So in other words, sometimes we focus on what that family is eating, let's say, rather than how well the family communicates.

How well do the children and the parents connect?

And of course, Ellen White, in the books like The Adventist Home and Messages to Young People, writes a lot on the simple aspects of the family and how well we communicate, how well we get along, how well we all fall into order in the home.

And a lot of times because we can't see inside of the home, the church kind of neglects some of these issues.

And so we have people in church who are very unhappily married, yet every week they come to church and they smile and they and they sing and they dress up and they come to church, but realistically their homes are miserable.

And then you wonder when their children turn 18 or 19 or 20 and leave the church and never come back.

Why did the children, this was such a good church family, why did the children leave and never come back?

Because you can't see inside of the family and so often we neglect to speak to the issues of the family.

Instead we look at what we can see and we judge often based on what we can see of the family.

So we all have mastered to some extent, most of us have mastered an ability to put up a charade or a facade So that when we come to church or when we go to school or when we go to work everyone looks at us and everything always looks like it's okay even when at home or inside the whole our whole world our whole reality may be in chaos.

James says it not it's not supposed to be that way.

You're not a member of the Church of God.

You're not a Christian so that you can be totally confused, so that you can have no support, so that you wander aimlessly without others who believe to support you.

James says, no, that's not the way it's supposed to be.

Instead, let's look at prayer in a new light and see how God expects us to function together, not even just as a nuclear family, but as a church family, God expects us to do certain things in order that we receive support.

I submit to you that 1 of the biggest challenges facing America today is the challenge of people feeling loved and supported and feeling encouraged even.

I'm doing a dissertation for my doctorate in public health and I'm looking at something they now call an allostatic load, the allostatic load.

It is a concept based on allostasis, which is kind of the next step from homeostasis.

They're now looking at the fact that the body changes in order to survive, just like homeostasis brings us back to stability in order for survival.

Well we find that if you are climbing a flight of stairs, allostasis kicks in and your heart rate goes up and you might even, if you exert yourself enough, have the release of some endorphins and so forth and even some glucocorticoids and definitely like adrenaline might kick in if you're really running up the stairs fast.

And so your body changes in order to deal with the stress that's being placed on it.

The stress of running up the stairs, the stress of a fast break in a basketball game, the stress of a test, your heart rate might go up, You focus a little bit better because of the adrenaline.

Your body changes in order for you to survive.

Well what science is finding out is that with these allostatic changes and with what is happening if those changes are not met properly, if in other words if you begin to change to survive yet the stressor is never removed from you, then those allostatic changes begin to cause disease.

So in a set of monkeys, there was an experiment done where they stressed the monkeys.

And by piling monkeys in the cages, they could study, and when they tested their blood, they had higher levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline.

Cortisol levels in the morning were higher, and the monkeys were really amped up.

And by amping up and revving up the systems and getting them stressed out, the monkeys were able to survive better in the short term.

They could clear out space for them in being overcrowded in the cages.

But what they found is with time, they had an accelerated rate of atherosclerosis compared to the same monkeys put in different cages with enough space.

So allostasis kicked in so they could survive better, but without removing them from the stressor, their bodies began to literally break down.

Now I say that because in a way in America we're like the monkeys in the cage.

We're going so fast, trying to do so much, trying to accomplish so much all of the time.

And with that we wonder what is the X factor?

Because you know people who eat well and drink enough water and get their sunshine and love the Lord and yet still come up with serious illness.

There is an X factor and that X factor is allostasis.

It is if you have not settled worry deep in your mind and if you are super sensitive to stress you can accelerate disease.

That's why trust in God is 1 of the principles of the health message.

So with that in this new year as I've been studying this I've been wondering how do you change that?

What should we be practicing so that if you're here in medical school or residency or nursing school or public health or pharmacy or if you work here or if you're trying to go into retirement or or about to have a child or if you're hoping that guy proposes and he seems to not want to how do you deal with the stress the scripture gives us word In this new year understand that prayer then becomes more than simply something you do to connect to God.

Prayer is 1 of the few things you can do to reduce your allostatic load.

I believe this is 1 of the reasons that the Adventist health study comes out the way it does.

Do you know that in 1 article that will be published this summer, and probably I shouldn't mention this because I'm privy to articles before they're released, it is recommended by someone here on campus that African Americans in general all across the United States would live better if they all became Seventh-day Adventist.

The study, the science is overwhelming that if all African Americans converted to Adventism and lived an Adventist lifestyle all African Americans would live longer, have less disease burden, they would do better.

The study is overwhelming based on what we've gotten in data from the Adventist health study.

But I believe the X factor in this is trusting in God.

That when we have a problem as Christians we can take our problems walk them to the feet of Jesus and lay them down.

That we don't have to carry the load like the monkeys in the cage.

Instead God has given us a mechanism through which we can get rid of our stresses and not that we don't have to learn to become stronger or to develop but we don't have to do it in our own strength.

We don't have to rely on our own adrenaline to become more powerful.

We don't have to rely on our own wit or our own brilliance in order to pass exams.

By the grace of God we have been given a system by God in which when we practice what God has taught us to practice, God shows up in our lives and makes out of mountains molehills.

He turns the scenario and flips the equation so that what seems like dire straits and the impossible, God opens up avenues and doors of escape.

Can you imagine how stressful it would have been for the children of Israel?

Just left Egypt, 10 plagues, the firstborn of the Egyptians slain, Now they're stuck between a rock, the sea, and and the chariots of Pharaoh coming from behind them.

Under those stressful situations all through the old all through the Exodus story they go to the same line.

They can't handle the stress and eventually if you read long enough Moses stops being able to handle the stress very well either.

But when Moses calls on God in faith, God opens up a highway where there was water.

And I want to submit to you that the God that allowed the cornered children of Israel to walk away from their enemies on dry land is still available to you.

Let him call on the elders of the church and let them pray over him anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.

I submit to you that maybe we don't do that kind of intercessory prayer like we ought to.

That maybe when we have problems we're too shy to really say we're struggling in school or having trouble with our marriage and it's difficult because who do you trust with such sensitive information.

But I challenge you in this new year to find a circle of friends, a circle of believers whom you can take your deepest issues to so that as a group you all can pray over that issue.

I challenge you that this year you make a point that you don't carry all of your spiritual burdens and wait on your own.

Instead, you find others that you can gather around and and pray with weekly or daily or however often it is possible and that you leave your issues there with the group in prayer.

James says that there's power in this, in us organizing to pray, because the Bible describes a God who listens to his children and so when we pray I believe that synergy takes place in group prayer, That God hears it and sees the benevolence of his people and God wants to act on their behalf and because a group of believers have shown up in faith to pray, God then says, all right let's work this thing out.

But when we pray together we each get the benefit of seeing how God works it out for 1 other person.

And by seeing how God works it out for the other person each person in the group's faith is strengthened.

Verse 15 it says in the prayer of faith shall save the sick and the Lord shall raise him up and if he has committed sins they shall be forgiven him.

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Prayer in a New Light

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