Episode Transcript
And here is today's presenter, Pastor Daniel Przyzbylko.
So, salubrious people, how many of you are looking up Google to see what that means? I'll explain it further as we're going along. So when we think of the word extinct, most of the times we think of maybe dinosaurs or dodo birds or perhaps being Australians, we might think of the Tasmanian tiger, right? Most people, however, don't really think when they think of extinction, they don't think of soil extinction. However, it's probably one of the most serious environmental extinction crises of our times today.
If we don't have good soil, we can't feed ourselves, right? We have no food, water, sunshine and soil. Good soil is what we need to produce food. There's another issue that many of you may have heard of also is that soils today are missing key ingredients that used to be in the soils.
I see Eva nodding over here and that's why a lot of people take supplements, because, you know, they're not getting the vitamins, the minerals that they need that used to be in the soils that used to be in the plants as used to be. So it's just another one of those signs of planetary stress today. People today are becoming unwell even in wealthy countries like ours, having plenty to eat but not knowing that they're actually being malnourished or nutrient deficient because they choose to eat the wrong foods, or simply because the soils that the food is growing in doesn't have what it needs in it.
In 2022, it was estimated that because of our modern agricultural practises, one acre of land, okay, one, that's a fair bit of land. One acre of land is becoming a desert area every second in the world. Can you imagine? Did you catch that? One acre? This was reported in the Time magazine 2020, 22.
One acre. Every second is being added to land where we can no longer grow food anymore. The organic matter is simply not there anymore, or it's become too salty because of overproduction and over watering and stuff like that, causing the groundwater to come up and salinity issues, etc.
So at this rate of soil degradation, if this rate of decline was to stay the same, planet Earth would need. 11. I just did the maths.
On this planet Earth would need. Assuming that Every acre of land on earth today is arable, which is not. But we would need over a thousand years to get to zero.
Now, today, knowing that a lot of land on the earth is not arable, it's desert already. We don't need a thousand. We haven't got a thousand years.
True. So it's just another reason to recognise that we are living in what the Bible calls the times of the end. And Jesus needs to come back soon.
God created us to live, to be healthy. Genesis tells us what to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and to subdue it. He created us to have good health.
Everyone wants good health, isn't that true? Health is more important than money, because you can't buy your health back once it's gone. And that's why God gives us operating instructions, if you like, in the Bible, which promote health. How many of you today would say that when you think about your health, you're a 10 out of 10? Anyone? Anyone? A 10 out of 10? Come on.
Not even the kids? Kids are up the back not listening, right? What about an 8 or a 9 out of 10? Anyone? Okay, 8 or 9? What about a 6 or a 7? All right, maybe I won't go any lower than 5. You know, in 3 John, verses 2 and 3, third John, the letter of John, right at the back, just before Revelation, we read there. It's only got the one chapter.
We read there in verses two, three and four. Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health just as your soul prospers. For I rejoice greatly when brethren came and testified of the truth that is in you, just as you walk in the truth.
I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in the truth. Walk in the truth is important. But to have real joy in the journey.
John understands here that we also need to enjoy good health, the abundant life as Jesus referred to it. And that's why God's original plan, before sin came into this planet, was for life and health. Now, obviously, today, some people are born unwell, aren't they? Like that little girl Imogen that we've been praying for up in Newcastle for the last number of years.
She's born with a brain tumour. Some people are born with brain genetic DNA, you know, defect issues or simply just living here on this earth. The sin affected world, you know, we.
We get different diseases, etc. But God's original plan before sin was to have life, to have health. And that's why there in Genesis 1.
As Chloe read earlier Genesis 1 and verse 29, we see there that God said, I have given you every herb that yields seed, which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed, so it shall be food for you. God gave us plants to eat, basically. Plants.
Today, of course, science is catching up to where the Bible has always been in terms of promoting good health. I watched our livestream last week after the event and saw that Alan mentioned the Netflix show live to 100, is that right? And on that show, I haven't seen it, but my wife's been watching it as well. It looks apparently at Adventists living there in Loma Linda that have been part of studies and looking at why they live longer than the general population, but also they have a better quality of.
Of life in their older age. Ernie's just come back from California, maybe. Ernie, you've come back with a little bit of that longevity and health maybe is being infused from California.
So science is catching up. And, you know, I believe that the promise made to Israel in the Exodus is just as pertinent in our day today if we follow the directives that God has given for living our lives today. You know, in Exodus 15, Exodus 15 and verse 26, God says there, if you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his sight, give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord who heals you.
The study of Egyptian mummies and so forth, their writings, etcetera, shows that Egyptians had all sorts of infectious diseases. You know, they had tuberculosis, they had leprosy, they had various worm infections, but they also had various chronic diseases. I guess having the Israelites do a lot of their work for them, perhaps they were just kind of, you know, living the life, living high on the hog, so to speak.
And, you know, and they got the same diseases back then that we're getting today in a sedentary kind of lifestyle where we, where we, you know, the food that we eat sometimes is not as nutritious as it should be. And so many people in wealthy countries today are also getting chronic illnesses. It's estimated that in Australia, 50% of Australians suffer from chronic disease of some sort.
50%, that's huge. You have coronary heart disease, there's diabetes, there's hypertension, there's cancer, there's depression, there's arthritis. These are all chronic illnesses.
You know, you can't get that by touching somebody. You can't get that by somebody breathing on you. You know, you generally get that.
These are lifestyle diseases. These are diseases that we get, generally speaking, because of choices that we make in life. Right.
Genetics is generally about 5%, but yeah, it's there. How many of you today would like to say, I'd like to do all I can to avoid these diseases. I think every hand should go up.
Right. Perhaps, however, perhaps you already have one of these and you'd like to reverse, you know, some of these chronic illnesses, like, for instance, diabetes, type 2 or coronary heart disease, even some forms of depression, et cetera, we know can be reversed by the lifestyle choices we make. Others, of course, cannot be reversed.
Once you've got them, you got them. You just kind of have to treat the symptoms. But as Christians, we also believe in the miraculous, don't we? The miraculous, gracious healing of our creator God, a God who can provide healing, this sort of healing, I imagine when it happens, it must stun the physicians, the unbelieving physicians anyway, when it happens, because it can't be scientifically explained.
Now, the Bible gives us examples of healing and not healing. According to Matthew, chapter 4, verse 23, we read there about Jesus, that Jesus went through all the land of Galilee teaching and preaching the Gospel and what, healing all kinds of diseases amongst the people. In Matthew 10:1, we also see Jesus sent out the disciples and he gave them power over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal all kinds of diseases, sickness and disease.
Of course, we see evidence of healings in both Old and New Testaments. And I want to just go through some of these here today. We see, first of all, in the Old Testament, King Hezekiah, he's a classic, right? Second kings, chapter 20, we see that Hezekiah has a terminal illness.
He's told by the prophet he's going to die, but he doesn't want to die. So, you know, he prays to God that he's healed and he's given assurance then that he would live. But he had to do something, didn't he? Do you remember what he had to do? Yeah, he had to get a poultice, made it figs to put on the.
On the boil. That's right. Then there's Naaman, the Syrian commander, who comes down and talks to Elisha.
And Elisha sends him off to dip himself seven times in the River Jordan. He's miraculously healed of leprosy. But again, he had to do something, didn't he? He had to Go into that water and listen to the message that he'd been given about going in seven times in the New Testament.
We see the lame beggar that Peter heals. He's going up into the temple area through that gate called Beautiful in Acts, chapter three. And we see that Peter says there in verse six, he says, silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have, I give to you.
In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. Clearly this man who from birth could not walk, needed some faith to do that, right? He'd never walked. And Peter's telling him, get up and walk, and he did.
So these are just three examples of miraculous healings. But, you know, there's also examples where the sick are not miraculously healed. And sometimes we don't look at these and we wonder why.
You know, we don't always know why. Why? Why is one person healed and another person not healed? We don't know. We know that Job, we read in the first couple of chapters there, Job was struck with sickness as a direct attack by Satan.
That we do know. So Satan does do these things to people. It's not always the environment around us.
It's not always our genetics. Sometimes Satan attacks people with Elisha. Elisha asked for what twice the portion of God's spirit that Elijah had.
You remember that. And if we look at the miracles that those two prophets did, Elisha did actually do twice the number of recorded miracles in the Bible that Elijah did. But at the end of his life, Elisha got sick and died.
He died of some sort of illness that we're not told what it is, but he had some sort of illness. And even though he had performed very many miracles, he himself died of an illness. The Apostle Paul had something that he asked the Lord to take away from him.
And there's various opinions on this because we're not told exactly what it is. Some people think it might have had something to do with his eyesight or something, something obviously to do with his health. And yet God's answer to him in 2nd Corinthians 12, 9 was, My grace is sufficient for you.
And Paul was not healed. He continued life with this thought, you know, thorn in his side. When we look at the man that Jesus healed at the pool of Bethesda, there In John chapter five, this man had been there for, what was it, 38 years or something like that, right? Lying there.
And Jesus healed that man. It was a Sabbath day. But we don't read anything about the other people that were there.
There must have been other people lying there. And generally when the Bible speaks about Jesus healing, it says he healed all of those people that came to him. Right.
But we don't read about what happened to the other people lying around the pool that day. Jesus just healed one. And then Timothy, it seems he had some sort of ongoing health problem that was not healed.
And Paul writes in First Timothy 5, 23, Use a little wine for your stomach's sake and your frequent infirmities. Some people probably use this verse to use a little wine and then a little more wine and then a little more wine. Right? Why wasn't Timothy healed? So many others were, you know, during the early church time.
Paul's advice here to Timothy reminds me of a time when Ellen White sent some advice to a Dr. Daniel Kress. She was.
She'd been living here in Australia, but she had moved back to California. And Dr. Daniel Kress was the director of the newly established Sydney Adventist Hospital up in Wurrunga.
And he got really sick. He was very health conscious. And most likely today, reading his symptoms, people think most likely he was anaemic.
And he was probably deficient in B12 because he was just purely, you know, plant based. Which is what happens when you go plant based, fully vegan, right? I'm not vegan, by the way. I'm vegetarian.
I'm not vegan. But just putting it out there, I see some of you laughing, but look, yeah, I mean, if you go fully plant based, you do need to take some B12 supplements because the B12 in your body will be depleted over about three years and then you'll need to take some supplements. That's just how it is.
And so Ellen White wrote to him from California and she said that he ought to drink fresh cow's milk and to daily have a raw egg with grape juice until he gets better. Well, the man got better. So much so that he lived for another 56 years and died at the age of 94.
And they thought he was going to die. He was so sick, they thought he was going to die. So maybe that's that wine that the Apostle Paul was talking about, grape juice with a raw egg.
He just didn't put that part in for Timothy. You know, God doesn't want us to continue life as normal and expect us to be healed of our diseases if we don't look after ourselves. Isn't that true? I mean, sure, we can pray over people when they're sick and that's fine, but God expects us to do something in our lives, not just to, like, you know, I'm not changing anything in my life and I expect, I expect God is going to bless me and heal me and I'll live to a hundred.
When I say we, I'm referring to, you know, myself here as well, because there's things that I need to remedy in my life too. None of us live the perfect healthy life, isn't that true? We've all got things that we know we could do better and we are all accountable for the amazing knowledge that we've been given in the area of health. So I believe that God has given Seventh Day Adventists a special message, a health message for the end times.
It's a message that now is, you know, 160 years old. He's given it to us so that for two reasons, so that we can be blessed, but also so that we can be a blessing, right? We're to be a people of health and a people of healing. We're to be salubrious people.
In 1863, the same year that our church took on the name Seventh Day Adventist, Ellen White got a vision of major health reform. And prior to that, prior to 1863, Adventists were sick. I mean, not in the cool sick meaning, but they were sick.
They were sick people. They were dying young, just like the rest of the population. They were eating, you know, fatty foods and all sorts of stuff.
The average lifespan in America in the mid-1800s was around 40 years old. If you live to 40, that was a good innings. Today that has doubled to 80.
And if you're living around Loma Linda, I guess it's 100, right? But two years after this vision, Ellen White's husband, James White, had a stroke. So this is 1865. Now, he was overworked, he was stressed, and years of unhealthy living, etc, unhealthy eating had a toll on his body.
So Ellen took him to the country, got him moving, got him throwing the hay, you know, in the country, fresh air, getting the sunshine, healthy living, all of that. And the guy recovered, James recovered, but he was never quite the same person again. You know, before that.
He was an amazing preacher. He was never the same preacher again. His personality was a little bit different after the event and he lived for another 16 years after that.
He died at the age of 60. And Ellen, after he died, Ellen went on to live for another 34 years. So, you know, even though the church set up different health centres and here's like one of those, you know, historic pictures where they get them out doing Breathing exercises.
I love how they were all dressed up like that, you know, pressed white shirts to do their exercise. Anyway, so the church set up various health centres and for many years there were all sorts of challenges for this Adventist health message. And guess what, the pastors were the worst offenders.
Is it still the same today? Most probably in some places. You know, the past is a funny story. One of the great advocates, of course, of this health message, the Adventist health message, was Dr.
John Kellogg, who came here to Australia to open up the Adventist Hospital here in Sydney. He'd come in, do a bunch of operations and then the hospital was open up and running. And he was an amazing surgeon and a great advocate for, for health reform.
And what would happen? The brethren would have camp meetings and because the pastors at the time were not paid very well, sometimes not at all, the pastors would bring to the camp meetings, they'd bring meat to sell meat and Kellogg would get so upset he'd say go. Because he was wealthy, you know, he'd take his wallet, go buy all the meat and take it down to the dump and that's what he would do, take it down to the dump. And then sometimes they'd go and fetch it from the dump because nothing wrong with it, and bring it back and try and sell it again.
So as I said, the pastors were sometimes the worst offenders. Today, health is still not very popular amongst some in our churches and often people say, oh yeah, heard it all before. But as seen on the Netflix show, those living the SDA health message live a salubrious life.
They are salubrious people, they are healthy and they are promoting health. You know, we often think we know better. Yeah, I know that, you know, the church says this, but I know better.
But you know, the wise man said in Proverbs 3, 5, 8, what did he say there? Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes.
Fear the Lord. Depart from evil and it will be health to your flesh and strength to your bones. God wants you to be healthy.
How many of you have heard of G bombs? Anyone heard of a G bomb? No. You've probably heard of the A bomb, right? The atomic bomb. Well, let me tell you about the G bomb.
Some years ago There was a Dr. Furman who put together a table of high and low density nutrient dense foods. Sorry, it's called the Andes Score table and I haven't put it up there because maybe there's some copyright issues or something, but you can look it up the andi score table and it looks at nutrient density, the nutrient content in foods per calorie in various foods.
I wonder how it would turn out if it was nutrient content per gramme. That might be different, but it looks at nutrient content per calorie. And so for instance, I just took a comparison here.
Broccoli, for instance, has 52 times more nutrients than french fries. That's pretty obvious, isn't it? Per calorie. Spinach has 27 times more nutrients than chicken per calorie.
Lentils have 5 times more nutrients per calorie than white bread or pasta. So in his book Superimmunity, Dr. Joel Fuhrman advocates implementing these things called G bombs.
And he writes that if you're looking for the biggest bang for your caloric buck, you need to remember the acronym G bomb, which stands for greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries and seeds. Doesn't sound too much different to what Adventists have been saying for 160 years, right? Fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. Correct.
Geebombs. And now when I look at that, I thought, well, it all sounds very much similar to the programme we just ran here at the church on. It was called enhance your gut health.
And we were looking at both prebiotics and probiotics. And often when people talk about gut health, they think that it's the probiotics that are important. But the most important is the prebiotics.
The prebiotics, probiotics have their place, but prebiotics are so important and we get those in all of these foods that God made. And today it's been scientifically shown that there's a connection between our gut and between our brain, goes both ways. These plant based foods, they provide protective nutrients, phytochemicals and things to support your immune system to fight these chronic diseases.
And particularly they help with prevention of heart disease, cancer and various brain diseases. Of course, when we look at this list, right, we see that it's all straight from God's garden, isn't it? It's the plant based approach that was shown to Ellen White 160 years ago. God wants us to have a healthy body and a good mind.
We read in 2nd Timothy 1, verse 7. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but what a power of love and a sound mind. Another One in Proverbs 12:25 says, Anxiety in the heart of man causes depression.
But a good word makes it glad. You know, as Seventh day Adventists, we need to give Ourselves the best possible chance of having positive thoughts, healthy bodies, positive conversations and influence on others. Isn't that true of all people? We ought to be salubrious people.
There's that word again. So even I had to look up this word and it was popular apparently a couple hundred years ago in the English language. It means healthy, health, giving and pleasant.
Okay, salubrious. That's what we ought to be. Not only healthy, but health giving.
Okay, health giving. In our interactions with people, we need to be salubrious people. Pleasant words are like health to the bones.
Solomon writes, we've all heard these pearls of wisdom, right? In the proverbs, a merry heart does good like medicine. But you know, knowledge does not always equal health. True.
We need to put it into action. So what can we do? We need to implement our biblical knowledge and our health that's been imparted. Knowledge that's been imparted from spirit of prophecy.
We need to follow God's natural laws. And we can see some of them here in this newstart acronym. You know, where N stands for nutrition, which is the original diet, the diet, the genesis diet in the Garden of Eden.
We need to be exercising. We need to have plenty of water, Clean, clean water. And even the water, as we learned in the Gut Health Programme, if possible, try to avoid chlorinated water, because what does chlorine do? What is chlorine good for? It does it very well.
Chlorine kills bugs. And if you're drinking chlorinated water all the time, it's going to kill the good bugs in your tummy right through. Through your gut system.
And so if you can, try and filter your water to take out that chlorine, okay? Sunshine. We need enough sunshine. And in a place like Australia, you'd think people get enough sunshine.
But often people are vitamin D deficient because they're trying not to get skin cancer, right? Temperance. I had a whole sermon on that just recently, didn't I? Not too much of a good thing. Like those green beans in the kids story today and avoiding what's bad.
Fresh air, rest. And we need to trust in God, you know, something that I've been doing just this month, the Sydney conference office here, they started something for the employees here and they've got us involved in this challenge called Steptember. You probably, some of you may be into it, right? I don't know.
Step. Timber. So I started this year.
Well, I was doing 10,000 or more steps a day in January and February. Started on a good roll when I Was on holidays, kept that going for a little while, but then I kind of progressively went down, down, down, down, down. And I don't know, you know, maybe I was doing an average of maybe only 7,000 a day, 8,000 perhaps.
So my goal was, okay, in September, I'm going to raise the bar. I'm going to make sure I'm doing 10,000 a day. I've been doing an average of 12,000 a day, praise the Lord.
And I've been getting up a little bit earlier, getting in those 4,000 steps before I get going for the day. So we need to put knowledge into action. The other thing, of course, that we need to do for both prevention and healing is we need to pray.
I think I pray for that every day. Thank God for good health. But we pray for prevention from sickness, right? And I think even praying about it makes us more conscious and helps the Holy Spirit to help us, to make us decisions through the day.
Of course, our health may be too far gone for prevention, but it's a good thing that we serve a mercy God, isn't it? And so we read there In James, James 5, verses 13 to 15, is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing songs, psalms? Is anyone sick? 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 will save the sick and the Lord will raise him up and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. This sounds like both physical and spiritual healing, right? And what you probably have experienced, and myself too, is that sometimes God can heal people immediately. Sometimes he heals them over a period of time.
Sometimes he heals with the intervention of people, treatments, etc. Like the poultice of Hezekiah, right? Sometimes what is prayed for remains. But the promise is for salvation and resurrection.
And that promise is there that the Lord will forgive and the Lord will save. That's the ultimate healing, isn't it? The ultimate healing. We need to remember that God knows best.
God knows best. When I think of the case of Hezekiah, his life was mercifully extended. But had it not been extended, then the wicked king Manasseh would never have been born.
True. And what did Manasseh get up to? Manasseh was a most wicked king. He was an idolater, he was a murderer.
He practised witchcraft. He even sacrificed his own sons to a pagan God that was the son of Hezekiah. Mercy.
I'm sure some people probably wished that he was Never born. When facing life and death situations, I think we need to be like Daniel's three friends, trusting God that he knows best, that he may ordinarily may not choose to act right. You remember when Daniel's three friends were faced with the fiery furnace, bow down or get thrown into the fire, what was their response? In Daniel chapter three, verse 18, we read there, but even if they said to the king, but we will not bow down, they said, but even if God does not save us, we want you, O king, to know this.
We will not serve your gods or worship the golden statue that you have set up, meaning we're going to continue to serve God irrespective of what he chooses to do or not to do in our lives. The ultimate restoration, of course, is the one that will come on the new earth. And we read about that in Revelation chapter 21.
The Bible is basically like a book that has bookends. You know, it starts off all perfect and well and then everything goes pear shape and you have all this suffering and troubles. But it also gives us a roadmap of how to return to what was lost.
And that comes in right at the end of the Bible In Revelation 21:4, we read there, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There shall be no more death. That's the way that God intended originally.
There will be no more sorrow, no crying. There shall be no more pain. For the former things have passed away.
Over the years in pastoral ministry, I've had the privilege of running various health programmes in recent times. They've probably been more targeted towards the emotional well being type of thing. Like, you know, you see up there, the, the Live More project which we've run here a couple of times at the church, or the de Stress and thrive programme which we've also run here.
Forgive to live we've run. And the depression and recovery, Depression and anxiety, sorry, recovery programme we've run here. But other programmes that we've also been able to run and focus more on the physical and the nutritional aspects of health.
Like the recipe clubs which some of you are involved in. And they're great. We run those every month on a Tuesday at 6.30pm,
on the third Tuesday of the month every month. The CHIP programme which was very comprehensive, complete health improvement programme. It runs for about a month and you meet like every two or three days.
It's a lot of programmes. And then there was the enhance your gut health programme which we recently completed, you know, and as I think of those, some of the testimonies that I remember hearing from personally from people that attended the programmes. One guy, he was only about 29 or 30 years old and after a couple of weeks he came in, he says it's amazing.
He said I can play ice hockey now without using my asthma puffer. He said ever since I was like 15 I've needed an asthma puffer. When I play ice hockey I don't need it anymore.
So you know, when you implement healthy things in your life it begins to change, your body begins to change. There was a 45 year old mum who came along and she said when I go out now the food in the restaurants tastes really salty and I don't like it so much anymore. Really salty.
Then there was a programmer an IT guy again around 45 years old. He says it's amazing. He said the arthritic pain in my fingers, it's all gone away.
You know, wonderful testimonies from people that come to the health programmes that we're able to run as a church. Other people that I've seen video testimonies of or whatever have included, you know, reversal of their heart disease. Some people even get their hearing is better.
Some people say that there's a fog that's lifted from their mind, you know, their thinking is like a fog and suddenly that fog just kind of lifts off and you know, next Sabbath there's going to be a lady who came here to Wallowa some time back a couple of years ago and this was, this was her first Adventist church that she ever stepped into. But in a week's time what brought her into the church was her research on, on health and the Adventist church. In a week's time she's getting baptised up in Queensland.
Isn't that good? You know, so people take. God takes people on a journey. God wants to heal people's diseases and he also wants them to hear the good news about Jesus.
So what's the take home message for you all today? I think the take home message is we all can make some changes. Isn't that true? Pray about it. Pray about what changes you could make.
What's missing for you? When you look at that newstart acronym, what's missing for you? Is it your trust in God? You know, if we don't have enough trust, then what happens? Then we become fearful, don't we? God doesn't want us to fear. Are you sleeping enough? Resting enough? Do you have enough time to smell the roses as they say? Do you have enough time to spend with your family? Do you spend time in fresh air when you Think about your house. Is your house well ventilated? Is it smelly inside? Does your house have mould? You know, back in the day, back in Moses day, what did they do with houses that have moulded? If they cleaned up the mould and the mould came back, they would destroy the house.
Today, sometimes people don't even know why they're sick. And the reason why they're sick is they live with mould in the house. Are you temperate with both the good and the bad? You know, we need to be moderate with the good things and abstain from things that are bad.
Are you spending enough time out in the sunshine? The blue and green outdoors is meant to make us happy, right? It's life restoring. Are you drinking enough water? Water is always best. As well as that grape juice that Ellen White talked about and I believe the apostle Paul talked about.
How much exercise are you getting? You know, if you're not getting much, start with small steps. Don't go too much, otherwise you might hurt yourself. And.
And what are you eating or what are you not eating? Is it nutritious? Give some thought to those G bombs. Okay, what was the G bombs? Greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries, berries and seeds. Very good.
Good. Students, you know, a wonderful promise is given to us in Psalm 103, 2, 4. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his daily benefits.
Who forgives all your iniquities and what and heals all your diseases. Who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies. There's a promise here, isn't there? But with every promise in the Bible, we need to look at the condition.
Every condition, every promise has a condition. And I see the condition here right at the beginning. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.
You know, are we blessing God? Are we grateful to God? Are we thanking God for all the good things? And as we go through life with an attitude of gratitude, you're in a better position to be healed. Jesus said, come to me. Come to me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly and hard, and you will find rest for your souls. May that be your experience. May you be in good health as John wrote.
And may we implement the things that we've been privileged to know from the scriptures, from the writings of Ellen White, which are given to us for times like this. End times. Who would have thought that we would be living In a time where the nutrients in the soil would be so depleted, where so, so many, so much area of arable land is disappearing every second.
It's just crazy to think that we live in a time like this. But we're given this advice so that we can thrive and so that we can be a blessing to other people. May God bless you, Lord God, we thank you that whatever we face in life, we are never alone.
You are there every step of the way for us and we thank you for that. Lord, today we want to praise and bless your name. We thank you for all the.
All the good things that you bless us with, for the health message that you have blessed us with as well. Forgive us, Lord, for where we fall short. And help us, Lord, to change where we can.
Help us to be the best that we can so that we can be a blessing to others and live a life of joy. Have joy in the journey with you. Looking forward to that great day when you return and when all things will be made right.
We pray in Jesus name, Amen.
