Well, good evening everyone. Happy almost Sabbath. Let me just get this up on your screen.
I hope you're doing well and I hope you can see the screen.
So this is supposed to be more an interactive session so we can by all means feel free to talk and ask questions and things like that.
Thank you Kevin. I've been communicating with Kevin about coming here and it's a blessing to be here in Ringgold.
I have driven past Ringgold once. I have a friend who lives somewhere past the bridge.
If you keep going further up, I don't even know what the area is called.
So yeah, I didn't know the church was here so that's a blessing.
My name is Tapio. I did grow up in Zimbabwe. That's in southern Africa.
Right next to South Africa, like up north.
And grew up also in England but the British accent is more or less gone by now. Sometimes it pops up.
So today we want to discuss, let me grab my Bible.
We want to talk a little bit about health.
And I know you're going through a health series. You've been dealing with the physical, the mental, and the spiritual.
I think you did the mental. So today we're more going through the physical aspect.
And again, the text that we've been looking at is Luke chapter 10 and verse 27.
Where it says, and he answering said, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul,
with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.
So what does it mean? Now we're going to focus on all your strength.
What does it mean to love the Lord with all your strength?
What do we think it means?
Okay. Energy, ability, passion, all these things.
How many of you have ever woken up in the morning and you're like, I'm just so drained. I just, I'm done, right?
Okay. So imagine that now and you open your Bible and you see love the Lord your God with all your,
now praise God, God says all your strength.
So if you've got 10 percent strength at that moment, God is like, okay, 10 percent, right?
But all your strength, we want to dig into kind of like the basis of this.
Now, I was curious, I started looking at what impacts our strength.
And, you know, I just put in, I just selected just two verses. I didn't go into a lot.
But in Ecclesiastes 10-17, it says, Blessed are you, O land, when your king,
sorry, when thy king is the son of nobles and thy princes eat in due season.
Now notice they eat for what? For strength and not for drunkenness.
So one thing we learn from the Bible is eating affects our strength.
One way or the other. That's what the verse points that out, right?
But also another aspect is we have, but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.
So you have, you know, the princes, they eat for strength and not for drunkenness.
So our physical strength also is impacted by what we eat.
But also our relationship with the Lord impacts also our strength.
So keep this in mind. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.
Okay? Now, I want to go to something very basic.
What is health? How would you define health?
You're doing a health series. You need to talk about health.
So how would you define health? Well-being? Okay.
Anything else? Oh, thank you.
Health, well-being, could be good or bad. Okay.
That's a good point. Anything else? We'll take one more.
Health.
Okay. Yes. Go for it, sister.
Okay. Being physically able to do things.
All right. Very interesting. So we have very different definitions of health.
Notice how the World Health Organization defined health.
Okay. I found this very interesting.
They said health basically said freedom from disease,
a state of complete physical, mental, and spiritual, and social well-being,
and not merely the absence of disease.
Who thinks that's a very good definition?
It's okay, right? It's a fair definition.
Physical, mental, spiritual, and social well-being, which I found interesting that they included that.
But let me cast your mind back to Genesis.
How would Adam and Eve define health?
Okay. All right. Now, do you get the point that she's made just there?
Okay. Go for it, my brother.
Uh-huh.
Okay. Very good point. So before the fall.
I didn't think that it might go to after the fall. That depends on the point.
So keep in mind, in our world, we tend to define something based on a negative.
So we will say, for example, health is the absence of disease.
Now, but for Adam and Eve, when Adam was created, when Eve was created,
if you asked Adam or Eve, what is health, Adam would probably say health is normal.
Like, he cannot define it based on disease because he's never had disease.
So this is why when we talk about health, health is something that in God's plan,
health was always to be the normal.
So now in our fallen world, when we talk about health, health is to be restored and regained.
Health is not something that, you know, is just like, ah, it just happens by chance.
So mankind was created healthy, perfectly healthy.
And part of God's plan is to restore man to his original creation.
That's why health is so important.
But also we need to ask ourselves, why would God make humanity healthy in the very beginning?
What role does health play in terms of our own relationship with God?
And also, what is the state of mankind?
Well, we already kind of answered that.
Now, I want to share with you a story first about my good friend, Jonathan.
He's one of my best friends over there in Wildwood.
Jonathan, when he was 22 years old, he's 6'3", his height, but he weighed 379 pounds and his BMI was 47.
He was severely obese.
Okay.
That was Jonathan's story.
Now, four years later, Jonathan had dropped to 255 pounds.
He was at 379, then he dropped to 255, and he was on this journey where he wanted to basically get to a certain weight.
Now, the question always is, well, how did he do that?
Everyone wants to know the how, but really the why he did that is also very important.
Okay.
And so, and I'll share that a little bit as we go on.
Now, I want to begin by giving us a reality of what our world and what our country is going through right now.
That's supposed to say the cost of health, but when I transferred it, it messed up the screen.
Now, this data is now a little bit old because it's from 2021, but I want you to notice the national health expenditure grew 2.7%
this is 2021, to $4.3 trillion, okay, national here in the States, okay.
Then Medicare spending grew 8.4%, it's at $900.8 billion.
Now, would you say health care is a costly business?
All right. Look at the figures we're talking about, like, $908 billion, $900.8 billion.
Then out-of-pocket spending also grew to just over $430 billion.
That doesn't stop there.
Prescription drug spending actually also went up, it's now $378 billion,
and the national health spending is projected to grow at an average rate of 5.4%.
They're projecting up to 2028, and they're saying that it would be about $6.2 trillion.
That's a lot of zeros to deal with, but as you can see, health comes at a cost, at least on a national perspective.
Also, of the millions of dollars spent each year in the United States, or for Medicare,
it is estimated that 3% or less is actually spent on prevention of disease.
So keep this in mind. Over 97% is spent on someone's already sick, and we're dealing with that.
Less than 3% on prevention, right?
Now, what this means is simply put, money is being spent when people have actually become sick,
when it should have been spent before they become sick.
And in simple words, an ounce of prevention is always better than cure.
Does that make sense?
Now, think of it practically this way.
How many of you would rather get cancer and then be healed from cancer,
or you'd rather just, I'd just rather not even get it in the first place, right?
Any sensible person would say, it's okay, I don't need to get it, I'd rather not get it.
So that's this aspect of prevention is always better than cure.
Now, praise God, God will work with us and God wants to cure us if we find ourselves in that position,
but God would rather his children not go through it in the first place.
Now, Proverbs 27, verse 17, I put the New Living Translation.
It says, a prudent person foresees the danger.
The danger ahead and takes precaution.
The simpleton will go on blindly and basically they will suffer the consequences.
So we see, basically imagine you see a tornado coming.
The prudent person sees tornado, shelter immediately.
Now, it's saying the simpleton or the one who's not wise is going to keep walking towards that tornado
and things are not going to end well.
Now, we need to take the same approach when it comes to health and sickness.
We need to be, again, being prudent, looking ahead and seeing what causes disease
and then by God's grace, we want to say, Lord, help me to be proactive, not to wait and then become reactive.
So I want you to imagine you leave this meeting, you get home and this is what welcomes you as you open your front door.
Can somebody, I don't know if you can see the picture clearly, but you have like a flood in your home.
Now, I once asked some lifestyle guests, we have some guests that come with health issues,
so I asked them, what would you do if you got home and this was the case?
One lady says, I would simply shut the door and walk away and I'm not coming back home.
Now, what would you do?
This was your home?
Turn off the faucet.
Now, why would it not make sense for you to, first thing you do is run, you grab a bucket and you grab a mop and you start mopping.
Okay.
It keeps coming back and that's the key right there.
Whenever we deal with anything to do with health and disease, we want to actually address the cause.
Now, unfortunately, most times we address the symptoms, we address the water that's flooding the floor,
but you want to actually get to the tap and turn the tap off because here the faucet is running.
That's the main issue there.
So when we think of disease, we want to understand what causes disease and how can we address that?
And why should we even care?
What's disease got to do with Luke 10, 27?
Why does God tell me to love him with all my strength?
Now, notice this from a book called Ministry of Healing.
I recommend this book.
It says disease never comes without a cause.
So disease will never come without basically a cause.
It says the way is prepared and disease invited by disregard of the laws of health.
So imagine this.
I'm here today as your guest speaker.
I had to be invited in order to come.
Now, what this is saying is the same principle works with disease.
Disease actually needs to get an invitation for it to come, whether it's intentional or unintentional.
Now, there is a promise that I find very interesting in the Bible.
Again, this is the New Living Translation.
This is God speaking.
It says, if you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his sight,
obeying his commands and keeping all his decrees,
then I will not make you to suffer the diseases I sent on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord who heals you.
Now, I came from an area where I very much was interested in science.
When I read this verse, I wondered, well, what are the diseases of the Egyptians in the first place?
What is this talking about?
Now, in this world, there are people that have invested their life in studying these things.
I say, God bless them.
I would never want such a job where I spend time looking at mummies and things like that.
But over in Manchester in England, we have Dr. Rosalie David from the University of Manchester.
All they did was basically they've been taking all these mummies that they can find.
There's also a French doctor called Claude Rufius who is basically doing more or less autopsies.
They're doing pathology studies on it.
They've come up with a list of top 10 diseases that killed the ancient Egyptians.
Very, very interesting.
Now, does anyone know the number one cause of death in America?
Heart disease.
In fact, in the world, heart disease.
That's the number one.
Cancer is there on the list.
Now, guess what was the number one cause of death for the ancient Egyptians?
Heart disease was top.
And they found cancer, vascular diseases, arthritis, hepatitis, tetanus, and there's others.
There's others that make up that top 10.
Now, the thing now that's interesting about this is why do we find the same diseases in ancient Egypt as in now our modern, especially the modern Western world?
Okay.
There is something similar about ancient Egypt and our time.
Yes, go for it.
Definitely.
And you know, it's interesting.
The Bible tells us there's nothing new under the sun.
And so does anyone know the lifestyle of the Egyptians?
What?
Sorry.
Lavish.
Okay.
Sedentary, right?
Now, keep this in mind.
In ancient Egypt, remember they had the Israelites doing the work.
So the Egyptians were very, they were living a good sedentary, relaxed life, very lavish as well, right?
And you notice our time, the big challenge we have is we also now are going more towards a very sedentary lifestyle.
In fact, there was a study that came out where they found that sitting down for long periods of time has a detrimental effect on you more than smoking 600 cigarettes.
The moment I heard that my friend I work with, he went and got a treadmill.
And he has a treadmill in his office.
So then I was saying, Esteban, you've got to lend me your treadmill.
I don't want to sit down that long.
But I was shocked by that.
But again, we are made to move.
Our bodies are actually made to move, right?
And again, here's the top 10 at least disease causing in the United States.
Now, this is from, I think, 2021.
Now, COVID was in there, but COVID really was not.
It's a whole big story.
So just ignore COVID at number three there.
But heart disease and cancer are the top.
Heart disease has always been an issue.
Now, I want to illustrate some of the laws.
Remember the quotation that was there, it says that disease basically is invited by disregard of the laws of health.
Now, in the Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln made a very interesting statement.
He said, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,
that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Now, we're not going into independence and all this kind of thing,
but I want you to notice this little word he uses is truths which are self-evident.
Now, guess what?
Within nature, God has also put truths which are self-evident, which are natural law.
So we have, for example, the stars in their orbit.
So later when it gets dark and you look outside, you're going to see the stars, if the sky is clear enough.
And guess what? No one tells the stars, hey, by the way, can you please be out in your position at certain time tonight?
It's there, the law is set, the stars, you will see them at that time.
Also, they're changing seasons.
Now, where I came from, you can have, in England, you can have basically, now you can have all seasons in one day.
So, you know, in your car you just take your winter coat in there, you take your summer thing as well.
You just never know what's coming.
But the seasons also are set by natural law.
We have migrating birds in winter.
So, you know, you see some geese show up and when winter is kicking in, they disappear for a while.
Also, caterpillar to butterfly.
These are just things that naturally will take place.
Then you have the duffel deals in spring, for those of you that love the flowers and the beauty, right?
So, this is natural law.
But guess what? Our bodies also, God has designed them with certain physical laws, natural laws.
So, for example, our body needs nutrition, proper nutrition.
Also, we need to move.
If you ended up, say, in hospital and you were lying still for, let's say, one week, in fact, you don't even need to be in a hospital.
If you sit on your hand for one day, don't take it off, just sit on it, what happens to your hand?
Yeah, falls asleep or it goes numb and things like that.
Now, why does that happen?
Circulation is cut off, right?
So, again, your blood is supposed to be servicing all parts, but if you just, say, took your entire body and you lay there for an entire week, did nothing,
sometimes you develop what they call bed sores because, again, you've been stagnant.
You need it to move.
Then also, we need water, we need sunshine.
These are just basic things.
My wife, you can tell it's summer because my wife, she's just so happy because she loves the sun.
She's out in the sun.
I even think sometimes that you're a different person in summer than you are in winter, but my wife grew up in Canada where it's very cold.
And so she's done with winter.
She just wants to be where the sunshine.
Also, we need to avoid harmful things and use wisely the things which are good for us.
These are natural laws.
We need oxygen, we need a rest, and believe it or not, many people miss this, but we also need trust to trust in God.
It's actually critical when we talk about health, and I'll share a scripture at the end.
Now, I want you to think about this.
I saw a sheriff's car out there.
So I want you to imagine this road out here, the speed limit is, I don't even know, but let's say it's 20 miles per hour.
And let's say you're driving along this road and you're driving at 60.
The sheriff's car is right there across there.
What might happen and why?
Okay.
You get pulled over because you broke the law.
Now, it may be your lucky day.
The sheriff may come and say, listen, don't do it again.
I'll just give you a warning this time.
And you got away with it.
I had a friend from New York.
He was pulled over.
The police officer asked him for his license.
He gave it to him.
And the officer was like, ah, New Yorkers.
And he told him, look, you're not in New York.
You're in Georgia.
So I'm not going to give you a ticket, but I need to remind you, you're in Georgia.
Drive like you're in Georgia.
Don't drive like New York.
And my friend got away with it.
Now, unfortunately, when it comes to the physical laws of our bodies, we cannot get away with it.
It's set.
So here's an example for you.
So I want you to imagine this sister, she's offered this amazing plate.
Now, what do you think will happen when she eats it?
She gets very full.
Okay.
You're going to say something?
She gets sick.
It's too much food.
Okay.
She gains weight.
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
Now, I'm surprised none of you actually mentioned this, but if she really likes this, the first
thing that's going to happen is she's going to have a great time.
She's actually going to enjoy.
She's going to be like, oh, the initial thing is it seems like it's good.
But after a few hours, so let's imagine you eat a double cheeseburger, large fries, milkshake.
Basically, after a few minutes, guess what?
Inside, our blood sugar shoots up.
And then also what we find also is your cholesterol levels also are going up over time.
Right?
So that is the sure result of the cause.
You know?
So, again, a lot of times it was good at the time, but the effect will come.
So there's a cause and then there's an effect as well.
And, again, the issue of the sure result, if you exercise, your heart basically is going
to become strong, especially if we're doing the cardio ones.
And also it helps us with our weight, helps us with sleeping, and in general we're going
to be happier.
It's just like some sure results.
Of course there's other things we'll deal with that.
And also if we go to bed early, just simple little tips and simple little habits, our
bodies will produce enough of the hormones that actually will help us in the long run.
Okay?
Now, health does not depend on chance.
So the whole point of us meeting tonight, one of the things I need to try to convey to
us as a group is health is not something we leave to chance.
It's something that we need to be intentional about.
Okay?
So it says it's a result of obedience to law, Ministry of Healing 128.
And what's the remedies?
We're told pure air, sunlight, abstentiousness, rest, exercise, proper diet, the use of water,
trust in divine power, these are the true remedies.
Every person should have a knowledge of nature's remedial agencies and how to avoid them.
And how to apply them.
They sound so simple, but actually it's the simple things that actually give you the results.
Think about Adam in the Garden of Eden.
Adam did not have Erlanger.
Adam did not have memorial.
Adam did not have any system that he could turn to.
He didn't have Wildwood.
Yeah, none of those things, right?
Think of the Exodus.
When God took them out on the Exodus, God put them on a healthcare program.
That, again, there were no lifestyle centers.
There were no hospitals.
There were no, you know, you couldn't say, well, okay, I'm going to go to my physician on that Exodus.
But what's interesting is on the Exodus, did they have a lot of air?
Oh, yes.
They had a lot of air, a lot of sunlight, a lot of self-control actually because guess what?
God was the one feeding them and guess who was in control of when the lights went out?
It was God as well, right?
So you notice that God actually was moving his people along the way, but he was actually giving them all those remedies.
And what is incredible, if you ever read in I think in Psalm 178 or Psalm 105, no, Psalm 78 or Psalm 105,
when he comments on the Exodus, it says there was not a single feeble one among them.
The other word for feeble days, there was not a single sick person.
And again, I was interested.
I was like, okay, so how many people in the Exodus?
And they estimate if you calculate by what the Bible gives you, it's around two million people on the Exodus
with no lifestyle center, with no hospitals, with no physicians offices, and there was not a single sick person.
So God was demonstrating his health care plan.
God was taking them and they were fine.
Now, who is the healthiest person to ever live and die?
I hope I asked that question correctly.
The healthiest person.
Moses. Okay, we have Moses in the back.
Who?
Christ. Okay. Okay.
I think we have to give it to Christ because, you know, who could have been more healthy than Jesus?
And again, and I'm going to pull up something here.
Usually, whenever we see pictures of Jesus, they tend to picture him as someone who who was weak or something.
But Jesus was a carpenter.
Jesus walked everywhere.
Jesus's body would have been strong and healthy.
And in Hebrews 10, verse five, speaking of Christ, it says, Wherefore, when he cometh into the world, he saith,
sacrifice and offering you would not, but a body has thou prepared me.
Now, I want you to keep this in mind.
When Jesus came in the flesh, a body was prepared for him, a physical body.
And the question I want you to ask yourself is, so how did Jesus care for his physical body and why?
Because, remember, Christ is our example in all things.
We want to be like Jesus.
That is our goal.
So if the father prepared a body for Jesus and then Jesus came and took care of that body,
the question always is, why did he invest time in taking care of that body?
If after everything, I mean, hey, he can easily just make another one.
But he took care of it.
Now, in this world, people pay good money to go and see paintings by famous artists.
This is in France in the Louvre.
This is the Mona Lisa.
And as you see there, people taking pictures and all this kind of stuff.
I have friends that love art.
For me, honestly, God bless you if you like art.
I just don't get it.
I just don't.
I just see paint on a wall.
But, you know, some of you appreciate that.
Now, what's interesting is the artwork, like when people look at it, they're like, oh, like Picasso.
He must have been thinking about this and that.
And they're fascinated by trying to figure out what the creator of that piece was thinking.
But have you ever wondered the greatest masterpiece ever made, which is the human body?
That's the greatest.
I don't want to call it an artwork, but it's a masterpiece from God.
Now, what is interesting is obviously God made, you know, made the male and female,
but also within the human body, especially because we're talking about all thy strength,
there is mysteries about the human body and facts that are just so amazing.
Like if you just take time to wonder how does my eye actually operate?
How does, you know, why does it affect my balance if I were to lose my toe?
Why is it when my ears are affected that also can affect my balance and how do I move my fingers?
All those things, God, when he created the body, God thought about that.
And God designed it that way.
And when you think about all the organs in the body, guess what?
They all work a certain way.
They have a certain function, a certain purpose.
And disease disrupts that.
OK, so again, Christ was given a body which had organs and just like we do.
Now, what's interesting is I started looking at Jesus and the laws of hell.
Now, what you will find is Christ had godly trust.
Would we agree on that?
So if there was ever a person who depended on his father, Jesus did.
So Jesus had godly trust.
Jesus breathed the open air.
It's very interesting.
Jesus spent a lot of time in the open air.
He fed the multitude and Jesus got daily exercise.
You find Christ was walking everywhere with his disciples, right?
Also, Jesus received sunshine by default.
He spent a lot of time outside and Jesus got proper rest.
It's amazing that even during a storm at sea, Jesus was sleeping peacefully.
Also, he drank lots of water.
In fact, the story with the woman at the well, Jesus asking for, give me some water.
And also, Christ was always temperate.
And Christ ate food that was nutritious.
They did not have food like substances in Jesus' day.
Jesus ate proper food.
I had one time, just a quick story with you.
My grandmother, she passed away recently, but before time she came to visit us in England.
And when my grandmother came, I was so excited, I wanted her to try out some food from England.
So I went in and I got a pizza and I said, Grandma, here's some pizza.
My grandma grew up in a very rural area in Zimbabwe, like a village kind of rural area.
My grandmother sat there and she's scratching her head and she's like,
You couldn't find any food for me?
And I was like, I'm so confused.
My grandma, that's food.
And it's almost like she couldn't recognize it as food because for her, when she thought of food,
she just thought, oh, you know, potato, corn, and those kind of things, what she's used to,
that's not necessarily processed.
That's what she thought as food.
And I just started laughing because I thought to myself, wow, like, man,
I have food that my grandmother does not recognize.
And so, you know, they always say, when in doubt, just ask yourself,
would my grandma recognize this as food?
When in doubt, okay.
And, you know, so Twinkies and things like that, it's not necessarily food.
It's a food-like substance, okay.
So notice this.
This is a quote from Desire of Ages.
Again, a great book. If you've never read it, I encourage you to read it.
Very, very good book.
It says, the offerings presented to the Lord were to be without blemish.
These offerings represented Christ, okay.
And from this, it is evident that Jesus himself was free from physical deformity.
He was the lamb without blemish and without spot, 1 Peter 1, 19.
His physical structure was not marred by any defect.
Now, this is the interesting part, the part in yellow.
His body was strong and healthy.
Christ's body was strong and healthy.
It says, and throughout his lifetime, he lived in conformity to nature's laws,
physically as well as spiritually.
He was an example of what God designed all humanity to be through obedience to his laws.
So, again, keep this in mind.
Jesus is our example in everything.
We tend to just think of Jesus as our example just when it comes to, okay, just prayer life, just, you know, okay, ministry wise.
But no, no, no. Even in how he lived, Jesus was an example for us.
Why? Because Christ is our forerunner and Jesus actually is preparing us to follow him where he's gone.
Okay. So in the same way, Christ came. In fact, I'm going to read Isaiah 53 really quick for us.
There is an important text there that is often overlooked in Isaiah 53 and in verse four.
It says, Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. Right.
And then verse five says, But he was wounded for our transgressions.
He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him.
And by his stripes we are healed.
Now, it's very interesting that some versions, the Hebrew, therefore, he has borne our griefs.
It actually says he has borne our sicknesses.
And what you find is Christ loves us so much that Jesus says, Listen, even your sicknesses,
I'll take those upon myself so that you don't need to go through them.
That has always been God's plan.
God has always wanted his people, his children.
Imagine those who are parents. You would not want your own child to go through something.
We have a baby boy like, you know, he had fever a few months back.
And as a father, I sat there and I wished that I was the one with the fever and not him.
And then I thought, if I, being an earthly father whose evil would want that, what more for God?
Right. So don't think that God is doesn't care whenever we're sick.
God actually cares. God would rather. No, no, no. I took it upon myself.
I don't want you to go through that. That's how God views it. OK.
And then David writing says, I will praise thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Again, just thinking about this human body that God made, that God made it for help.
But now comes the foundations of health or the foundations at least for your theme.
You're dealing with physical, mental and spiritual.
Now, what is interesting, this is from a book called The Christian Experience by Julius Gilbert White.
And what is interesting is in Psalm 11, it says, if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?
Now, what is the role of foundations?
Support. OK. Stability. OK.
So notice that the verse says, if the foundations are destroyed, basically, yeah, you're going to have a problem.
In fact, in 2016, there was an earthquake in Taiwan and something incredible happened.
There was one building. I think it was about 11 story building or more, if I'm not mistaken.
And this was the only building to collapse in that town. Completely the building was ruined.
And as the disaster response people and about 116 people lost their lives, as they were looking at this situation,
they were confused as to why did this building collapse? It was a relatively new building.
All the other buildings around the old buildings were still OK.
And so as they were digging through the rubble, they found something interesting.
The foundations were not built properly.
In fact, the builders had put empty oil cans instead of concrete in the pillars in order to cut corners.
And when the earthquake hit, guess what? It all crumbled because the foundations had been manipulated.
Now, it's very interesting that when we when we think about physical, mental and spiritual,
there is one way to actually access the mind or to access the person and literally is through your senses,
your sense of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. Those are the avenues that basically would affect your physical health,
if I can put it that way, which in turn would impact your mental powers, which in turn would impact your spiritual experience.
That's the connection that we're dealing with.
And again, we are told that when one organ is injured, all are affected.
Now, one of the challenges in health care that we have nowadays is if one day Kevin came and said,
well, my liver is hurting me, we're going to send him to a liver specialist.
And the liver specialist is just so focused on the liver that he's like, OK, I'm going to do everything it takes to stop whatever is happening with your liver.
And he will do or she will do whatever it takes.
And maybe that stops that. But according to this, when one is injured, all are affected.
Guess what? They do everything for his liver. But now it creates a problem for his kidney.
So then now he's like, oh, now my kidneys bothering me. We can solve that. We'll send you to a kidney specialist.
So he goes to the kidney specialist, does their thing, and it's another thing, another specialist.
And the challenge is we have separated or we've divided the body into parts and we have experts for each part.
But the experts all need to be in one place in order to have the big picture. Does that make sense?
And that's the challenge that we have in our approach nowadays.
Now, I want to just jump onto another reality. Now, for the men in the room, you'll be slightly shocked with this.
I don't share this to discourage you, but this is what the health studies are showing.
They're finding that there's a health gap between men and women, just like we're different in how we're created.
Health wise, the outcomes in America are different.
The Harvard Health Publishing says men die younger than women and they are more burdened by illness during life.
They fall ill at a younger age and have more chronic illnesses than women.
It's just in general in the population. Now, it doesn't stop there.
It says American men are about four times more likely to be hit by gout.
They are more than three times more likely than women to develop kidney stones, to become alcoholics, or to have bladder cancer.
And they are about twice as likely to suffer from emphysema or duodenal ulcers.
This is just what the data is showing them, just from research.
Then, interestingly enough, there's a health gap. There's gaps between the sexes in health.
Now, also interesting enough, the Pew Research, which deals with researching spiritual condition in America,
they also found that there is also a gender gap when it comes to religion around the world.
In general, women tend to be more spiritual than men, is what their study found.
And is it just by random coincidence that physically, physical health wise, the ladies are doing better,
and spiritual health wise, the ladies seem to be doing better?
Would that be just by chance, or is there actually something to it?
Is the physical and the spiritual connected, and the mental as well?
So notice here it says, in the United States, for example, women are more likely than men to say religion is very important in their lives.
And they're saying 60% versus 47%. And also women outnumber men in the pews of many US churches.
Those are just facts. It's factual, right?
And now, there is one thing where the men seem to be ahead.
It says, although women see doctors more often than men, men cost our society more for medical care beyond the age of 65.
Jeff found it. I was like, what?
But, so, us as men, after the age of 65, we cost more to the medical system than the ladies would,
even though in life the ladies see doctors more often.
Now, you may be wondering, well, what's the reasons for that?
So they're saying biological factors, social factors, and behavioral factors.
We're not going to go into those.
But we are different, and those differences play a role also in some of the choices that we make.
So, for example, yeah, lack of routine, lack of medical care.
Normally, men will, we will only go to a doctor if we're dying or if our wife pushes us to go, at least in my case.
I was on a mission trip, and I got sick on the mission trip, and my wife was not there, and I was texting her,
telling her, my wife called me, and she said, you need to go to the doctor right now.
And I said, no, no, no, let me just go another week, see how, and she was so persistent, insistent that, no,
if you don't do something, I will call someone else, and I will get the physician there.
And it's very interesting, my wife, any little thing, she just wants a checkup.
She wants to go see, I know you were asking before about Dr. Sherman and Dr. Grievous.
She just wants to go and see them.
I just want the doctor just to, you know, just make sure everything.
I, on the other hand, no, no, no, no, only if I'm at the point of, okay, I think I'm dying,
which is a little exaggerated, then I will go.
Okay, but there are all these differences, but also how we are approaching even the laws of health is key.
So notice what some studies are showing us.
Exercise is more effective than medication for mental health.
Exercise.
And there is study after study after study, and we're not going to go into it because I know you've covered
a little bit on the laws of health already.
And again, just backing this up also from Australia, physical activity is known to help improve mental health,
yet despite the evidence, it has not been widely adopted as first choice treatment.
Physical activity.
So back to my friend Jonathan.
Jonathan went from 379 to 255.
Now, remember that there's a cost for health care.
Now, Jonathan before, when he was 379, he told me that actually he had gym memberships, but he never went.
He told me that we just started going through his laws of health.
So nutrition, Jonathan said like, yeah, he survived on McDonald's and KFC.
That was his nutrition.
Like, okay.
Then when it came to exercise, he said he was paying for gym membership, but he never got the benefit of what he was paying for.
Water, he said he didn't drink water.
He only drank soda.
That was what he was having.
Then when it came to sunshine, sunshine, he said, well, you know, in Chicago, whenever he got some, that was it.
Then temperance, he said that, yeah, that's something that was nonexistent.
He said he started eating in the morning and basically continued eating until he fell asleep.
That was him.
Then air, he was living in Chicago, not the best kind of air.
Rest, he said, you know, he was on his computer all night, so he wasn't getting any rest as well.
So I asked him, okay, what about your trust in God?
This is very interesting.
He said that even though he had been brought up in a religious family, he had no relationship with God.
He said, in fact, he even stopped going to church on Sabbath.
And I found that interesting.
So now for his journey to get to 255 and beyond, it was very interesting.
He took those very same areas.
So nutrition, we started working with Jonathan like, okay, nutrition, let's give you something better.
Let's, you know, let's turn around from the KFCs and let's try the diet that Adam was given.
Let's try a plant-based diet and see how that works out for you.
So he started doing that.
And with that as well, Jonathan had a simple challenge.
So, you know, we didn't tell him, look, you need to stop your plate, the size of your plate.
We simply said, Jonathan, you need to match your plate with your salad and you eat your salad first.
So if his plate was going to be like that, his salad needed to be like that and he needed to eat his salad first.
And what's interesting is he would eat his salad first and he realized he didn't actually eat much of his plate because the salad was filling him up.
And eventually his portion sizes even started coming under control.
Exercise, Jonathan started walking, started doing 10,000 steps a day.
That's what he, that was his goal.
He started doing that.
Then water, Jonathan started drinking water.
He put aside the sodas for a bit and started drinking water.
And just from that he started seeing physical changes.
Sunshine, as he's walking outside, he's getting that as well.
He moved from Chicago to Georgia, so that made a big difference.
Temperance, he decided to try, I think he wanted to try two meals a day, but he did three meals a day.
But he did a light meal in the evening.
Then air, of course he's down in Georgia, good air, walking the trails.
Rest, over time he found he started sleeping better.
And as he started sleeping better he started having a regulated sleep schedule.
And trust in God, guess what?
If he slept well, he found that he was able to wake up in the morning and he wanted to open his Bible.
And that developed a relationship.
Jonathan actually got rebaptized.
But it's very interesting that his journey began from a physical and it went all the way to his spiritual well-being.
Now I have two more slides, then we'll close with some questions here.
It says, mental and moral power is dependent upon the physical health.
So it matters.
Physical health is actually very, very important.
I was working as a Bible worker and I would come to people and I want to study the Bible with them.
And they had a migraine.
And I don't know if you've ever tried to study the Bible with someone who has a migraine.
You can't do that.
The migraine is in the way and that's a physical problem that is hindering them from being able to study their Bible.
So we had to actually address them.
And I would always get so frustrated, I'm like, Lord, I'm just trying to give a Bible study,
there's nothing I can do.
And again, I did not appreciate the relation between the physical, mental and the spiritual at the time.
So notice it says, since the mind and the soul find expression through the body,
both mental and spiritual vigor are in great degree dependent upon physical strength and activity.
So we want to be well mentally, guess what?
We're dependent upon physical strength.
We want to be well spiritually.
It's also dependent on how we are doing physically.
And so it says, whatever promotes physical health promotes the development of a strong mind and a well balanced character.
And I want you to always think, there's a verse that's used for marriage because Jesus spoke it in the context of marriage.
What God has put together, let no man put asunder.
Well, God made man physical, mental and spiritual and what God has put together, let no man put asunder.
So you don't want to separate the physical, mental and spiritual.
It's one package.
And I'll close with this story.
This man on your screen, Muhammad Ali, he passed away.
He was a famous boxer.
Now, back in the day when he was still known, it's in the 1960s, there was a piece that came out in the,
let's see if I have it on my notes.
I think it's the Wall Street Journal or something like that or the Times Magazine.
But the story is he was on a plane, on a flight, and he was going to a big fight.
So the air steward is walking past and he was not wearing his seat belt.
He had it buckled up his seat.
So she told him politely, buckle up your seat belt.
And his response to her was Superman does not need a seat belt.
She looked at him and she said, well, Superman does not need a plane either.
And he quickly buckled up.
Now, I shared this story as illustrative for us that, you know, we may think like, well, you know, in heaven,
I don't need this body.
I'm getting a new body anyway.
But the reality is how can we get a new body if we can't take care of the old body?
You see, he that is faithful in that which is least will be faithful in that which is much.
So that's the principle.
But when it comes to physical health, God wants us to be healthy because God made us to be healthy.
And when we have all our strength, guess what?
We live longer, we are happier, and we can serve God even longer.
That's the ultimate goal.
Physical health is not just for, OK, we're just healthy for the sake of being healthy.
No, we're healthy because we want to serve God longer with all our strength.
But also our neighbors can benefit the most.
OK, so I hope that at least there was something that someone got and that you're able to take and apply.
Maybe you've been thinking about, maybe it's time I need to start doing more exercise
or maybe it's time I need to start looking at eating differently and things like that.
And I just want to encourage you that you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.
I grew up as a Burger King child.
I'm no longer a Burger King child by God's grace.
So God is able to help us on that path to regaining health.
And we need it more and more.
I was in a country called Madagascar just a few weeks ago.
And in Madagascar, they have these people, they have these carts that they load up to one ton
of like whether it's like grains or whatever.
And they have men pulling that in the street, one ton.
They had like four guys pulling one ton in the street for miles.
And I was looking at them and I was thinking, what in the world?
They're just so physically strong.
I saw a man in his 80s with a 50 kilogram bag on his head.
He's just walking in the city just with it on his head.
And I was marveling.
I was like, I didn't know the human body can do that.
The neck muscles can be that strong.
But again, God has gifted us a body.
He's prepared a body for us.
And by God's grace, God wants to help us to take care of that body.
And if we do that, we will reap the benefits not only physically, but mentally and spiritually as well.
And my prayer is that you would be healthy physically,
that you would prosper physically as you prosper spiritually, as the Bible says.
So I'm going to invite everyone to stand and we'll pray or are you coming back up here?
OK. All right. So let us pray.
Our Father in heaven, Lord, we thank you because as our creator in your wisdom,
you have given us, Lord, these masterpieces of human bodies, which you've not only just given them to us,
but you've also given us your wisdom in how to care for the body.
And Father, we pray that you would fill us with your Holy Spirit,
give us a willingness to actually care for the body, to actually desire health, Father.
And you know, Lord, that without you, we cannot do anything.
So we cannot even be healthy without you.
And I pray, Lord, that you help us, you transform our mindset,
that we would appreciate the gift of health, but not only just for our sakes, Lord,
but also even for those around us, Lord.
There are people that need help. There are people that need whether it's just a good neighbor that will help them,
whether even just simple things like carrying stuff or mowing yards or just being there for them.
And we pray, Lord, that you help us as a people to invest in physical health,
so that, Lord, we may be a greater blessing to those around us.
Please be with every person in this room.
Give them strength in all the areas that they struggle in.
And I just pray, Lord, that they may be able to experience the victory of Christ in those areas.
I also pray for every family that is represented, Lord,
that you would extend your healing ministry into our homes
and that even our parents, our siblings, our children,
everyone would be able to benefit from seeing you in our lives.
And I pray that, Lord, through the health of your people, we would become billboards for your goodness
and that people would see heaven in us and desire heaven as well.
So we thank you. And please bless this church.
Bless the program that is taking place.
And I pray even for tomorrow's program that you'll be with the speaker in a special way.
Be with every attendee as well.
And, Father, let it be that by the end of this series,
you would have a people that would embrace health and would be healthier in every aspect of their lives.
In Jesus' precious name we pray. Amen. Amen.