GYC 2013: Before Men and Angels

GYC 2013 Seminar: Health Evangelism

Jason Shives

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

03-Impact Medical Missions

This message was presented at the GYC 2013 conference, Before Man and Angels, in Orlando, Florida.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

I'm glad to be able to have shared with you these last 3 seminars.

If you have not listened to the first 2, they should be available online.

My name is, how many of you, this is the first time you've come to 1 of these seminars?

How many have been at least 1 of the health seminars or the triple W seminar?

I did my training at Loma Linda University and then Florida Hospital for residency.

And 1 of the things I like to incorporate into my practice is not just healing of the body, but healing of the soul as well.

And there's lots of good counsel on doing that.

As a review, we'll do a quick review over the course of the first 3 sessions.

How many of you guys remember what the 3 W's stood for?

Ellen White specifically says that there is a neglect of the higher class, so to speak, of people.

People that have more resources tend to be neglected because, to be quite honest, it's harder to reach those people with the gospel.

Different reasons, because of the resources they're able to make their own heaven on earth.

But despite the barriers it shouldn't discourage us, we should try to reach these people as well.

The gospel if you think was more powerfully proclaimed because of wealthy people that supplied missionaries during the first century.

Think of Nicodemus and Joseph, Pharamathia.

So those, that's a neglected group and they as well need the gospel just as much as everyone else.

We talked about the Adventist health message and how this small group of people with basically no knowledge at all in and of themselves were able to change the world.

And now just about anywhere you go you see the trappings of pieces of the Adventist health message.

We talked about the history and a lot of the science which has really gone against what we've been preaching as Adventists for over a hundred years is just now starting to catch up with what God had given Ellen White through vision.

And very powerful and it's still catching up.

So the challenge was to stay ahead of the curve and not wait for everyone else to figure it out and then join and follow things you knew already.

Don't let science be your God, let God be your God, amen?

We gave you a Daniel challenge, we talked about Daniel and how many of you guys just by showing hands took that Daniel challenge?

And basically it was for 10 days to allow God to give you the same experience that he gave Daniel.

If you're someone that maybe put health on the back seat, to try to give God a chance for 10 days just like Daniel to eat a plant-based diet, to exercise daily, to make him a priority in your life.

I took that Daniel challenge when I was a medical student in Loma Linda.

A friend of mine gave me that challenge and 10 days has become 10 years and I haven't looked back and I'm thankful that he was willing to step out on the limb.

I was very skeptical, my wife was somebody that would give me a hard time about my diet for for several years and by God's grace and persistence in her I'm able to give a talk at GYC, so this is great.

We talked about, we talked yesterday about tools you could use to bring the health message to the masses and within your own practice, with one-on-one and some larger groups using your church, if you're a healthcare practitioner, if you're a physician, to be able to use these tools.

And I'd like at this time to give a few minutes to a gentleman that actually has a program he'd like to talk to you about.

Do you want me to just give him the 1 I have?

Now Don is a good friend of mine, And he's at Weimar Institute, and he's going to talk to you guys about their program.

Thank you for the graciousness with your time.

And thank you for coming to this seminar.

I have to say that this is 1 of the most important seminars to come to if what I'm about to say is true.

In Isaiah 58, you have a chapter that begins with the Day of Atonement.

It's the loud cry day of atonement message.

And in the middle it says that there's a problem and that problem is that prayers are not being answered and God is not revealing himself.

And then it says that the righteousness of God would go before you in the middle if you basically do medical missionary work.

Walls were broken down at the end of Isaiah 58.

And what breaks the walls down is gospel medical missionary work.

Now when I was a pastor for 13 years, I worked with a physician that was committed like Dr.

Shives is and some of your other presenters.

We had over 1, 000 people come through our health programs and about 10% of those people joined the church.

And now I'm running a school that does the same thing.

We had atheists, we've had, he mentioned worldly people, he mentioned wealthy people, people you normally would not reach.

And as they've come through our program, I'll just tell you 2 stories.

Our program is a four-month program that basically does what every church or doctor's office should be doing all the time.

And it gives a flavor of how walls are broken down through personal interaction with people concerning practical issues.

I like to call the health message the practically prophetic message.

Because remember, God said, or Daniel said to his friends, if you do this, you let us do this for 10 days, there's gonna be a difference, and that prophecy came true.

And when those prophecies come true in people's lives where disease is stopped or reversed, then they have confidence in you.

In our first class, we send our students out to learn how to do health coaching.

We have them go and we prepare them how to cook, how to do natural remedies and teach in the homes and whatnot.

Anyway, these people were going to a restaurant.

They were doing a little restaurant ministry that day.

And they went into this restaurant and they said, could you give us some Thai food without fish sauce?

They said, we don't know how to do that, and they talked, they said, but we want you to be our customers.

So they said, well, we'll fix that for you on Friday night, you come back.

And they said, we can't come on Friday night because that's our Sabbath.

We've been thinking about the Sabbath day.

We don't know much about it, but we watched a YouTube video.

Would you come and tell us about the Sabbath?

And we won't charge you any money on Friday night, and you just come.

02-Applying the Right Hand

This message was presented at the DYC 2013 conference, Before Man and Angels, in Orlando, Florida.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.dycweb.org.

We have 1 more tomorrow afternoon, a Sabbath afternoon.

Just for way of a review, the first 3 messages dealt with tools to reach the 3 W's.

The wealthy, the worldly, and the well-educated.

And the things that you learned with David Kim will tie right into reaching people with a health message as well.

And so, I'm not going to try to repeat that, but I really just want to, if you could, for those, how many were here during those 3 talks with David Kim?

I'm just going to review, there was 1 slide that I really liked and I'm wanting to get it from him.

It's the little schematic with the circle.

Talks about your own personal conversion, heart conversion of yourself, which leads to stimulating interest in other people, which leads to spiritual conversations, to bible studies, and then conversions, and then you're converted again.

And that cycle really does, and it's something that's been happening in my life as well.

I didn't put it down on paper and hopefully I'll see him again and I'll get that and see if he'll let me use that in my presentations.

But that's excellent because it really comes down to You, we're going to talk about some tools today, but you are the best tool to reaching other people.

It's, because we are those living epistles.

Do you guys remember what we did yesterday before we got started?

Yeah, today you're going to get plenty of exercise on outreach.

So I thought we'd do something different.

And it's early in the morning and I already did my exercise this morning and I don't want to get sweaty again.

But how about singing a song, a scripture song?

How many of you have heard of 1 Peter 2.9?

Yeah, this is actually, do you know the Morris's, Bodil and Derek Morris?

They always sing scripture songs before their, yeah?

I think they've done this 1, but I guess I'll, for the sake of you guys learning, I'll go ahead and try it, but this will be recorded.

So for audio-verse or whoever else is listening to this, I apologize ahead of time if I miss a note, but let's go ahead and try this.

You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, his marvelous light.

All right, and it really encapsulates what GYC is about.

And So why don't we do it together and we'll do it through twice.

You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.

His own special people that you may proclaim The praises of Him who called you out of darkness Into His marvelous light, His marvelous light.

You are a chosen generation, A royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light, His marvelous light.

Father in heaven thank you for allowing us to start this day with you.

And as we're here at GYC, the third day, I pray that you'd help us to gain tools that would help us to be successful and winning souls for your kingdom.

People we can take with us, Father, when you come.

And we ask for your Holy Spirit to be with us today.

Refresh our minds and help us, Father, to do your will, in Jesus' name, Amen.

I'm gonna try to make this talk a little shorter than yesterday's, cause I didn't have any time for questions.

And there were some really good questions at the end of last night's talk that I think would have been benefited, or the whole group would have benefited from.

But, the right hand, the right hand to their heart.

Okay, so, and I'd mentioned yesterday, really, the health message needs to be put in its proper place.

It needs to be something that assists in sharing the gospel, not the gospel itself.

And I think many times we can get excited about this.

I remember even myself having a conversation with, when I was a resident, talking to 1 of my attendings in my training, you know, it seems like many times, even in my own church, I have more in common with the people that are healthy, you know, outside of my faith than I do with people in my own church that care nothing about their faith, or care nothing about their health.

And he sat there and said, you know what?

Those people don't have Jesus and you should be careful because the health message, there have been people in our church that have been right on health but that went right out the door.

You know, we talked about Kellogg yesterday.

The health message is just a tool to point to Jesus.

And obviously it helps us to stay focused on our relationship with Christ.

So let's see if I'm, I want to share a few quotes from the Spirit of Prophecy.

The evangelization of the world is the work that God has given to those who go forth in his name.

They are to be co-laborers with Christ, revealing to those ready to perish his tender, pitying love.

God calls for thousands to work for him, not by preaching to those who know the truth, going over and over the same ground, but by warning those who have never heard the last message of mercy.

Work with a heart filled with an earnest longing for souls.

The way will be prepared for more decided proclamation of the truth.

You will find that relieving their physical suffering gives an opportunity to minister to their spiritual needs.

I could end the talk here because that really just sums it up.

You do medical missionary work, you help people with their health to win access to their hearts, to spread the gospel to the world.

This is called the medical evangelism, page 7, paragraph 2.

And Jesus went about all the cities and villages teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.

But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd.

We see that the way to reach their hearts, you know, it's to do this medical missionary work, but our hearts need to be at a place where we're wanting to help them.

Sometimes it's very easy in my field of work to just get frustrated with these people for making these bad decisions but then when you stop for a minute and look and see what the condition they're in I mean it's you know I mean they're like you know what I I hear this often you know doc I don't really want to change the way I eat or the way I live because you know I've given up so many things can I just have this 1 thing of happiness?

But then they don't realize this 1 thing of happiness for them is actually ruining the rest of their life.

You know, they're like sheep without a shepherd and they can only see a better way.

So you have to have that compassion and the patients can tell.

I don't know how many times I've had patients tell me, you know, you're the, I've never had a doctor pray with me before, I've never had a doctor actually take time to talk to me about these things, you know, they just want to prescribe medications and you actually talk to me about how to get off of medications and So take the time, show that you actually care, because you do care.

Spend time, it's all about spending that time in the morning with the Lord, and He'll guide you.

Verse 37 and 38, Then saith He unto His disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few.

Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labors into his harvest." So what is medical mission work?

Medical mission work, we should ever remember that the object of the medical missionary work is to point sin sick men and women to the man of Calvary who taketh away the sin of the world.

So if you are involved in the healing arts but not pointing people to Christ, you're not doing medical missionary work.

No matter if you are on a mission trip and people can't tell that there's an ulterior motive involved, you know, it doesn't have to be blatant, but they can't see Christ in you, then it's just it's not missionary work.

I'm sad and I was when I was a medical student, it's very possible to go through medical training, nursing training, any of the allied health professionals or even any of the other medical missionary training programs and come out and just heal people and not heal the soul.

Okay, so I told you yesterday I'd share a little bit of my testimony and why I'm even interested in health.

By way of review, let's see here, How many yesterday took the Daniel challenge?

How many people, this is their first seminar of mine.

Yesterday we talked about living a purposefully healthy life and we went through the Adventist health message, talked about you know why we even have a health message, you know we talked about the beginning, oh hey Gabby good to see you, all right it's good to see some familiar faces, how we have a health message because God was trying to show we had a message to share.

01-Purposeful Healthy Living

How many of you were just in David Kim's last talk?

Yeah, I actually, to be honest, I've never met David before and we talked a few months ago when we found we were kind of team teaching this seminar.

And I thought maybe I'd just come to 1 of the lectures and listen to 1, just kind of get a feel for his style and then come back later.

In fact, a lot of the things that he said are really going to segue into the things I'm going to talk about.

Don't feel like you're going to get the same thing just rehatched in a medical environment.

But there's a lot of great principles, the things that David talked about are going to be useful in any sphere, any career, any, you know, if you're in college or just your family that don't know the Lord.

In much the same vein, this first talk, his built upon each other, Mine are going to be 3 separate talks.

First talk, I'm really going to share with you the first talk is going to go into my experience with the health message.

Just a background, I wasn't raised in Adventist.

I was converted into church when I was in high school.

Actually through a prophecy seminar at a local Seventh-day Adventist church.

The rest of my family, or my father came in through a Mark Finley seminar.

It was actually, I think the first time he did a NET, it was NET 94.

The same church, my father wasn't quite convinced the first time around and they followed up with a satellite evangelistic series and he gave his heart to the Lord.

He was in the Marine Corps and ended up eventually getting out of the Marines, is now a pastor and an evangelist as well.

It's really, and if I could sum up all the lectures, David's lectures and mine, it's basically, it's living the life that we should be living, following Christ, and it becomes infectious to people because when you're real and genuine, people want genuine realness nowadays.

There's a lot of fake, a lot of copycats, a lot of options, but when I see a genuine Christian out there that's happy, I think it really makes a difference.

And so, I was asked to give a, let me just introduce myself.

I graduated from Bass Memorial Academy, and after becoming an Adventist, I transferred to an Adventist Academy to finish off my high schooling.

Kind of went through the pipeline, Southern Adventist, well, CUC for a year, then Southern Adventist University.

And the whole way through, really never took, never even knew there was a health message.

I do remember, though, I did give up unclean meats at the Evangelistic series, but it never went beyond that.

Maybe I just wasn't interested as a teenager.

Then my father became a vegetarian and my mother and the rest of us would eat fried chicken when he wasn't at home.

And then we would hide it because we didn't want to tempt him.

And I kind of lived that type of a lifestyle.

I saw vegetarian options like when I went to academy and then to Southern, I went to college there.

It wasn't until I got to Loma Linda and was challenged in a few areas and I'll talk about that a little bit more tomorrow because that really ties into why and how I incorporate the health message into sharing the gospel in my practice.

But there's a lot of information out there about health today, right?

I think it's getting to the point now where health care is becoming more of an expenditure for our government than even our national defense.

And it's going to get more and more as Obamacare or the Affordability Care Act is implemented.

I think we should, we as Adventists are a unique Christian denomination, a movement that happens to have something to say about this.

And I think once you not just know about the health message, but actually see the beauty of it and start to apply it to your life, it gives you another, like David said, another interest or another way to cast out to these people because everybody, regardless if you are wealthy or if you are poor, wants to live longer.

I am going to preface this by saying that I am not, you know, they could have gotten somebody else to have done this seminar.

I'm not Neil Nedley and I'm not all these other, we have lots of doctors that have done programs, but I don't have to pay the extra hundred dollars yet, so I guess that's maybe why they asked me to do it.

But no, I'm just, this is, you can, if you have more, and there's other places where you can get more detailed information.

I'm not the expert on every field of health, but if I can answer some questions and share with you my experience, I hope it'll be a benefit.

And we've been married for about 10 years now and she's a teacher at Bass Academy.

We've got, we got asked to come back there a few years ago and it's a blessing to be able to help raise the next generation at a, you know, not just once a year but all year long to see the beauty of the health message.

1 more thing, I'm actually going to just, we're going to do a little exercise program because 1 of the things I hate about going to conferences is that we just sit around and eat.

And we have, we eat and then we sit and we eat and we sit.

And so we're going to do a little stretch, a little, little cardio and then we're going to get into the message.

But I was at, have you guys seen the documentary The Adventists?

When I was doing my residency at Florida Hospital here, I was attending Forest Lake Church.

And I remember they were giving the debut of the documentary.

This guy's not an Adventist, but he knew about Adventists, had a positive view of Adventism, and wanted to make a documentary showing that, he's like, this is such a small church, and it's got a huge organization of hospitals and healthcare and why?

He thought it would be very profitable for him and it has been.

And it's been good PR for our church as well.

Afterwards, he was taking some questions and answers and 1 of the things he said really stuck to me, he said, you know, you Adventists have got something really, it's like gold, and hold onto it.

I do have a concern though, as I've gone around the country and around the world and asked people about the Adventist health message, 1 thing we're finding is that it's not passing on to the next generation.

It seems as though that it's the, those that actually live the principles of the Adventist health message are actually aging and dying, and the next generation isn't adopting it as well.

There's probably some theories of it, but I'm hoping that things like GYC and the other youth conferences will start to, you know, there will be a kind of a revival in this, because this is something that we can really contribute that the world is wanting.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

03-Impact Medical Missions

1h

02-Applying the Right Hand

1h

01-Purposeful Healthy Living

1h

06-The Seventh-day Adventist Identity and the Raison d’être in the Culture of Emergence Christianity

1h 21m

05-The Emerging/Emergent Community Called Atonement

1h 24m

04-Spirituality or Religiosity? Why It Matters?

1h

03-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the Principle of Emergence: A New Worldview

1h

02-The Emerging/Emergent Church of the Second Vatican Council

57m

01-The Emerging/Emergent Church: What It Is, Where It Comes From, and Why It Matters

57m

06-Don’t Get Schooled, Get Educated, Part 6

1h

05-Don’t Get Schooled, Get Educated, Part 5

10m

04-Don’t Get Schooled, Get Educated, Part 4

1h 10m

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