AMEN 2006: The Right Arm, the Right Approach, Right Now

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Adventist Medical Evangelism Network (AMEN)

AMEN 2006 Friday Morning Breakout Sessions

Don Mackintosh

What’s the Connection?

Father in Heaven, today we just again confess our need of You, and that's what has brought us to this conference.

And we don't know how to go out or to come in, But the problem is sometimes we think we do.

And we just ask today that you would give us a new experience with you.

Everything I'm going to share today I've learned from the people that have gone through the programs and I look forward to learning today.

So we ask again for your spirit and we come in Christ's name, Amen.

Do you find that's true that you learn much more from the people you're serving than they learn from you?

Well, I want to talk to you today about what's the connection.

You know, there's a preacher that was, I was reading a sermon the other day that he wrote.

And he said, God is most glorified when I am most satisfied in him.

God is most glorified when I am most satisfied in Him.

The problem is that we many times as people and in society we get satisfied in things other than the Lord, and things other than the Lord's way.

And when we do that, we can go for a while.

He was driving down the road 1 day a little boy.

They were in a Model T And they were just having a great time And he looked out the window and there was this wheel that just came right past It wasn't hooked in anything.

And they looked around, and there's no other cars there.

And the grandfather put the brakes on a little bit.

And sure enough, a wheel went right past him and went out into the field.

And then Grandmother says, you know, that looks a lot like our wheel.

And he stopped the car and it went, poof.

The pitcher is broken at the fountain, right?

And this is what happened with people, you know, they go along and and and then they they need help and they many times don't recognize it till They get out of the invincible 20s you know or 30s and The wheel comes off and they come And we get the chance to show them how they can be satisfied in the Lord.

And this is Schmookie, or Elizabeth is her real name, and Schmieke.

Schmieke is now 2, so you can tell I need to update my pictures.

And she is quite something a little sneaky and then this is my newest this was an early shot probably too early to be taken and you can tell that it can you tell what it is by looking?

Well, then just look up in the corner, it'll tell you.

You know, I was reading an article the other day.

If your church was shut down, what would the community notice?

What program or service would they demand you continue and why?

And maybe this isn't the best thing if you're here because you want to do things out of your practice, but if your practice was shut down, what would they remember it for?

What was it that your practice has that no other practice has?

I think we're coming to a time when the defining difference will be spiritual things.

And we're in a time when people are more and more open to that.

We stand on the shoulders of a lot of other people, but people now are much more open to that than they were in the 60s and the 70s.

And in the postmodern era, people want experience.

This guy's talking, and he goes, oh, they just want experience.

I said, when they get sick, do they want an experience?

They want to make sure you had some training.

I was a rebel rebel in his seminar, but Well, I want to tell you a little story about our church there, this is our church and we we've done a number of programs over the years And 1 of the things the physicians in my church was, is Dr.

Phil Mills was there for 13 years with me till he was raptured with a capital C.

And then I worked also my, his compatriot, my head elder now, is Kevin Bryan.

Kevin Bryan is a physician and gerontologist.

And we were just really partnered together.

And they would invite their patients to different things, and we would work together.

And over the years, we started really developing.

Well, we just made a bunch of mistakes together, to be honest.

And through making those mistakes and stumbling through those, we started to learn a few things.

If ever the Lord has spoken by me, we're told, He speaks when I say that workers engaged in the educational line and the ministerial line and the medical missionary lines must stand as a unit, all laboring under the supervision of God, 1 helping the other, each blessing each.

I have got to tell you, the last 13 years was just a blessing.

I mean, a lean, mean, glorifying God machine.

It was just, you know, I just couldn't wait to get up in the morning.

Phil Mills

Lyndi Schwartz

Strengthening the Home Base

We are very grateful for the presenters that we have this morning on what is perhaps the most important presentations of the seminar.

If you look at what God called Noah to do, it says he was called on a mission to build a boat to the saving of his household.

If God has called us to medical evangelism, he's called us to the saving of our homes.

Medical evangelism is not out of our home.

It's not 1 more thing that we have to add to our plate.

It's the 1 thing that can save us and those who hear us.

Beginning our presentations will be a very thoughtful, helpful presentation from Dr.

Schwartz, who is a wife and a physician, And will share with us the key ingredient to a strong home and strong medical evangelism.

I thought this was going to be just women, so if this sounds kind of feminine for some of you men, just bear with us.

How many of you in here are physician wives?

Not physicians wives, but how many of you are physicians as well as wives?

Okay, so we have something in common, physicians as well as wives.

And as I thought about what I was going to do about this, I really was, as Phil will tell you, quite a reluctant participant today because I didn't think I really had anything to say since I'm a physician and I'm always on the other side of the fence, as I told Phil, it was hard to think about this particular side.

Although, the Lord has really impressed me over the years that there is 1 thing that's really important.

And that's what I want to talk about today.

I'm going to start with prayer, but I want to just point out 3 texts before we do.

And I'm sorry again for the men, but for the men, you can go home and tell your wives that there are 3 texts that wives now know about.

I don't want you to open your Bibles yet.

But there's a hard book to find, and I have a hard time finding it, it's Proverbs.

And I'm sure you're not surprised that these 3 texts are found in Proverbs, but the first 1 is found in Proverbs chapter 18 verse 22.

And my Bible has really suffered from travel and is now the loose leaf edition.

In fact, there were some looser leaves this morning.

I really don't know what to do about that.

Proverbs 18, verse 22 says, he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.

Then verse chapter 12 Verse 4 says, an excellent wife is the crown of her husband.

An excellent wife is the crown of her husband.

But she who causes shame is like rottenness in his bones.

And so certainly I think we all want to be the crowns of our husbands.

The last text in Proverbs is Proverbs chapter 31 verse 10 and 11.

The heart of her husband safely trusts her, so he will have no lack of gain.

So What I want to notice is that it says there, who can find a virtuous wife?

And as we are wives, we don't want to be just the rottenness in the bones wife.

And sometimes I can be the rottenness in the bones wife.

But we want to be excellent wives and virtuous wives.

And so the question I want to explore a little bit is how do we become this virtuous wife?

In my margin, it says, under Proverbs 31, it says a woman of valor.

Then it says, in the sense of all forms of excellence.

I'm going to have you open to the Gospel of Paul.

And as I have come to appreciate the writings of Paul, I believe it is the Gospel of Paul.

Don't have time to go into today to why that is the case, But Paul is 1 of the Gospels, and he is the fifth gospel in all his writings.

But in Ephesians, especially, I want you to look over in chapter 1.

And we'll be looking at from verses 15 to verse 18 very quickly.

But Paul has explained very carefully, I believe, in Ephesians chapter 1 from verse 3 to verse 14 the incredible, incredible, indescribable riches that we have in Christ.

And then he is so enthralled and overwhelmed by everything that we have in Christ that Then he proceeds to have a benediction, and this particular prayer is a benediction.

And he says, verse 15, Therefore, I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.

The eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling.

And I believe that the hope of his calling for us as what we read in Proverbs is to be excellent, virtuous wives.

The hope of his calling is many things, but we have been given a job to do, and the job we have right now is to be excellent, virtuous wives.

And before we go any further, I want to have prayers as we get started.

Father in heaven, I praise you for who you are to us and for all your attributes that are just past comprehension.

And as we, as our group begins to look into the word today to find out what it means to be a virtuous excellent wife I just pray that you'll send your Holy Spirit to enlighten the eyes of our understanding that we will understand the hope of this particular calling today for Jesus sake, Amen.

Okay, I want you to stay in Ephesians for a minute, because I want you to go over to the second prayer in the Gospel of Ephesians.

And it's the prayer in Ephesians chapter 3.

This is 1 I think that's worth actually memorizing.

Because as you begin to look into this particular prayer here in Ephesians chapter 3, I think it'll give us strength and courage for any situation that we find ourselves in.

For this reason, I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, verse 14, from whom the whole family in earth and heaven is named, that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might through his spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in agape, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height and to know the agape of Christ, which passes all knowledge.

And there's a reason that he wants us to be able to grasp this incredible agape.

It says that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

So he said, he wants us to be filled with all the fullness of God.

Just let me just real quick, just get a little interaction here.

When you read this, and he says that he wants us to grasp, he can't even describe the agape, but he said that this agape is so wide and so high and so broad and so immeasurable that we need to comprehend this so that we can be filled with all the fullness of God.

And that's the central ingredient of the character.

Okay now for the next few minutes I just really want to really delve a little bit more deeply into this concept of the fullness of God because I believe we've been called to to be these virtuous excellent wives and he asked us to be have the fullness of God somehow they may be 1 in the same thing.

Michael Duehrssen

In Troubled Times

Heavenly Father, our chart in heaven, Lord, we'd like to thank You for this Amen Conference, God.

May Your Spirit touch our hearts, Lord, and how we should do outreach in our practice and overseas and everything we do, Lord.

Please be with me with this presentation.

It just kind of snapped on there a second.

Alright, well I'm going to give you a little bit of background my background and then we're gonna go ahead and get into a little bit of disaster and we're getting a disaster response and I hope to have it a little bit of a discussion later on because this is all new it's new for the United States it's new for the Adventist Church So let's go ahead and get started.

Well, when I was at Union College, which I am now, But back in 84 when I graduated, I was waiting to get into medical school.

I was waiting from Nebraska University and from Loma Linda.

Lord, don't you want me to get into medicine?

You know, I'm waiting and waiting as we all wait for that letter to come.

And I remember having a strong inspiration from the Holy Spirit saying that Michael medicine is not to be your primary job I'm gonna get you into medicine but it's not gonna be your primary job and in my lifetime I've only had 2 very strong inspirations and that was 1 of them I know we walk daily by the Holy Spirit, but that was so overwhelming and so strong that I knew I was in medicine.

And I knew it was not going to be my primary job.

And for many years, I kind of forgot about it.

Until now, until just a couple years ago when I started working with Union College and doing disaster work.

Well, I ended up graduating from Loma Linda in 89, went off and did obstetrics and gynecology and then switched to family practice, still didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up.

So I ended up doing all my lectures in emergency medicine, decided I liked emergency medicine, and then went and skied freestyle mogul competition for 3 years.

And started working at a little trauma center in Cortez, Colorado and later became the director for that trauma center.

And so for 12 years I was in Cortez, Colorado working.

And how my life changed about 8 years ago was that I went back to Union College to do a mission trip on the Amazon on a launch down there with Rich Carlson and when I was down there I noticed how poor these people were but yet how happy they were as Christians And yet I had boat, plane, 131 acres, a beautiful home, all the toys you ever wanted, time off doing ER.

You work a couple days, you can take a couple days off, or a week off.

And yet I wasn't as happy as these people were down in the Amazon.

So I started studying the Conflict of the Ages, the 5 books by Ellen White.

And in the Desire of Ages, she recommends that we should study the life of Christ at least an hour a day.

I said, God, I'm gonna make a commitment.

And then I become uncomfortable working on Sabbaths.

I did a lot of Friday night and Sabbaths.

So I went and talked to my wife and it doesn't matter how much money you can make and I don't know if you're like me but we're in debt.

We don't have any extra money to put aside and yet we already put 10% tithe, and yet working on Sabbath is another 10 or 15% of our income.

Yet we put God to the test, and God loves to be put to the test.

So we said, Okay, Lord, for 3 months we're going to give you 25% of my income.

Okay, that's tithe and the 15% for Sabbath and Fridays that we're working.

And we started doing all kinds of things and I don't want to get into this because that's not what this lecture is about but I would like to mention 1 thing that you might want to try too is we took the desire of ages and we go around to the neighbors and we hand it to them But in the desire of ages we put a hundred dollar bill.

You could only use $100 bill because they always try to give it back to you.

They'll take the book and always try to give $100 bill back to you.

But we insisted that they keep the $100 as a bookmark.

And so we gave out thousands, 20, 000, I don't remember how much, but we gave a lot out.

And it was really neat to see the results of that.

But during this whole time we hired a youth pastor, Mike Lowe, and Mike Lowe was into survival and he taught for the Air Force for 8 years.

And so he said, how can we go ahead and minister to the youth in our church?

And so we came up with Wilderness Way Adventures.

In the summertime, we started training them in low- to high-angle rescue, swift-water rescue, confined space.

And then we started thinking, well, we really need to train the youth just besides our little group.

What if we come up with a four-year degree to train youth for disasters?

And so we put this four-year degree together with Doug Tallman at Campion Academy, and we pitched it to Southern University and Southern liked the idea but they were cutting back in programs and they said well come back next year.

So then we went to Union College where I graduated from we pitched it to them and later they accepted it.

But before they accepted it I figured I needed more mission work.

So we grabbed our little plane in Cortez, Colorado, and we threw the family in next.

And we headed down to Denver, and then on to Venezuela.

And everyone knows the hotbed of Venezuela.

Houston, we spotted more strange objects floating in space.

And then you have Iran's Perez and Venezuela.

I got this out of the newspaper yesterday.

So you always worry about dropping your kids off, going out in faith.

Because we're going to drop our children off in Denver, and we're heading to Venezuela to check it out.

It's the highest falls in the world, 1 of the 7 wonders.

And there we met David and Becky and they showed us their project down there.

And I was really convinced that God was going to open this program up to some school, maybe to Union College, maybe to another school.

And we decided that we'd like to bring our students down there for training.

Union College hadn't even gone with the program yet and I said, I know that God's going to do this program.

So I actually quit my job after 12 years.

You've got a good job, good income, you're the director here, we don't want to lose you." But I said, no, I really feel that God's leading.

And so I quit my work, and Union College accepted the program, but Union College said, we can't pay you for a year.

And I said, okay, we're going to sell our home, that's a whole other story, but we never sold our home.

David DeRose

Allen Lloyd

Lifestyle Evangelism

And 1 of the high points for me is meeting all of you, listening to your stories.

Today we're going to be embarking on a section together dealing with lifestyle evangelism.

Nedley and I spoke about this session, we were under the understanding from the, I guess the AMEN board who had talked about these themes, that we'd be looking at not so much how our lifestyle impacts evangelism, but the concept of ministering through lifestyle-oriented programs, how that would have a bearing on the evangelistic influence of the work of health professionals.

So that's what the theme for this morning.

He had a conflict earlier this morning, so if you looked at your schedule and you said, who is this guy up here?

And if you're like me sometimes, you're at a conference and you're saying, boy I wish I were in 6 places at once.

And if at any point during this presentation you feel like, boy, I'm in the wrong place, I didn't know what this was gonna be about, I'm not offended at all.

If you slip out and go into another room and if you then think, well, maybe I should be there, I heard that Tini Finley is going to share something and maybe that DeRose guy is done and Neil Medley is there and things have really picked up and gotten exciting, you're welcome to come back in.

Okay, but What we want to do is we want to invite the Lord to be with us here this morning because I don't know what you need and I don't know what I need to tell you, but we know the Lord knows why He's got us here together.

So if you would, bow your heads with me please.

Father in heaven, our minds have been drawn out to what you're longing to do through medical missionary work.

And each 1 of us to some extent is glimpsing that.

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Series

AMEN 2006 Friday Morning Breakout Sessions

Strengthening the Home Base

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

What’s the Connection?

1h 33m

Strengthening the Home Base

1h 32m

In Troubled Times

1h 21m

Lifestyle Evangelism

1h 29m

Sound Doctrine