Healthful Living

A time to celebrate.

May 18 - 25 2013

The Adventist denomination this year is Celebrating 150 years since Ellen G White one of our founders had a couple of visisons given by God about living healthfully.  She guided the church back to a more biblical based diet and also encouraged more exercise and how to dress for the climate rather than for fashion.

In reading about the good old days of medicine, smoking was good for lungs disease, sunlight and fresh air caused germs.  Plus no one really washed that well.  Some people I've read never actually had a bath in their entire life. Then medication was a hit and miss with opium being used, mercury (yes that's right), leaches and what we call from the old western movies snake oil.  (Don't forget Coke cola started out this way.)


She actually had 5 visions about healthful living.

The 1st vision was about keeping away from smoking or chewing tobacco her and her family healthy so they could continue ministering to people.  (Her husband actually had serious depression and a stroke for a time and had to give up his ministry. Two of her sons died from illness, which could have been prevented by following a good diet, lots of fresh air etc).

The 2nd vision involved cleanliness & the avoidance of fatty food.
The 3rd vision was about the lack of faith & education of healthy living in the church. (The importance of the mother in providing for her children).

Then the 4th & 5th visions were about the work of the church.  This vision changed the churches direction and promotion of health.  Now big food producing factories around New Zealand, Australia produce healthy foods, soy milk etc.  Plus running  triathlons for children.  There are also others around the world.   World class hospitals (that teach nurses and doctors etc) and small clinics in the Pacific (now being supported by churches in the 1st world). Professionals that give up their time to volunteer on ships or do surgery in various countries that can't afford this type of intervention.

Not only that but those some churches are influencing their own local community running health programs such as Vegetarian cooking classes, CHIP programs and walking or sporting events.

Yes she and people like Joseph Bates (against alcohol, tea and coffee) have influenced how Adventist's have eaten and lived for years.  

Some people still have problems with where this information came from at that time.  An Australian GP made a study in the early 2000's about her healthy guidelines and he wrote up his findings in a book "Acquired or inspired?"  He discovered that 78% have been verified by science in the 20th and 21st Century.  Yet she wrote the book back in about 1871.

The only thought I have now is just how many of us actually still maintain those healthful practices?  Have they actually given up this cause for  convenience of getting food quickly onto the table?

What mixed messages are we giving our kids about the importance of a healthy lifestyle, not just in diet, but do we think about the impact we have on the environment?  Do teach them how to make health choices, live a life of integrity?  What about living a balanced lifestyle between work, rest and play (to take on the Mars Bar ad).  To do things and eat or drink in moderation, where can they get support?  Yes what is the message that you are passing onto your family?

NOT ALL CALORIES ARE EQUAL

When you sit to dine with a ruler, note well what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to gluttony.  Do not crave his delicacies for that food is deceptive.  Prov 23: 1-3 NIV

I was flicking through books in my library to which ones I would give away and discovered a devotional on health that came from a while ago, so I decided to browse through it.  The title caught my attention.

You can’t just cut your calories and expect to lose weight.  Here’s why: by nature, your body is highly efficient in storing fat calories.  It uses only about 3% of the fat calories you eat to digest, transport, and deposit fat into your body’s fat storage areas.  That means you must exercise to vast majority out of the body if you don’t want to gain weight.

In contrast your body metabolizers from excess protein, and excretes the by products rapidly.  You can have problems with excess protein of course because it stresses your liver and kidneys by forcing them to work overtime.  But excess protein doesn’t usually add to obesity.  You have no efficient metabolic pathway in your body by which you can turn protein into fat for storage.

Calories from CHO also rarely get stored as fat, because the metabolic pathways that you body uses to convert extra CHO into fat then than store them demand that you burn a lot of calories to do the job.  It takes 24% of the calories in CHO to do this – a highly inefficient use of the energy for CHOs.

In studies in which researchers put radioactive CHO markers in food, they learned that the body converted and stored less than 1% of the CHO load as fat.  Even when people ate CHO excessively, they generally burned them up in “wasteful” metabolic processes that tended to increase the body’s metabolic rate, not reduce it – as happens in calorie – restricted diets.

Another way to put this is that 1g of fat contains 9 calories, while 1g of protein or CHO has only 4 calories.  The moral of the story is avoid fat calories – they stick to your bones! There’s an interesting bit of advice in Proverbs 23:3 about overeating.  It say’s don’t crave a ruler’s delicacies, because that food is deceptive.  How true!  Most rich food is filled with fat calories that may be tough to get rid of. 

Sin is deceptive, too.  It may look and taste good, but the consequences on indulging may be harder to get rid of than fat calories.

Watch your moral diet, “for the wages of sin is death.” (Rom 6:23)

Fit for My King Part 4

 Don’t you realize that in a race everyone runs, 

but only one person gets the prize? 

So run to win!  

All athletes are disciplined in their training.

They do it to win a prize that will fade away, 

but we do it for an eternal prize. 

1 Corinthians 9:24 - 25 NLT

We have just finished the Olympic summer sport year and this year the winter Olympics is on later.  So we are well aware of what lengths athletes go to, to be their best.  Some of them use drugs to get there, others are clean.  

As I write this my hometown is gearing up for the Tour Downunder.  The bike riders have all come in for the week long event.  They have spent time training, riding on the road for months to get fit and ready for the start of the year of cycling events.

The same goes for us as well. God through Paul is asking us to train our minds and our bodies like athletes.  To prepare for the eternal prize and to glorify God.  We are to win lives to Christ.

Sheri's prayer for this reading 

"Dear God,

I commit to practice self-control over the next 30 days.  

May this 30 day commitment I am making to You turn into a life

 that runs the race of my faith with endurance.

In Jesus name I pray.

Amen. (p.21)

May God bless you as go throughout this coming week as God prepares, your heart, your mind and your spirit to experience his touch like never before ... the abundant life you were destined to live in him. (p.21)

The Church Pot Luck of Spiritual Gift

"I want very much to see you, 

to give you some spiritual gift to make you strong.

I mean that I want us to help each other with the faith we have. 

Your faith will help me, and my faith will help you." 

Romans 1:11, 12 NCV

This sabbath I read an article in the RECORD my church's magazine about the importance of Potlucks in the church's ability to bring people together.  At one church I know one of the attendees would visit each church in the area when they were holding a luncheon.

Some young financially strapped student's that I know regularly decide where they will go to church for the day to get a meal.  (Sometimes they choose which church depending on which hospitality groups is cooking.)  Other churches I know of provide lunch for these students.

Some people I know will avoid them at any cost.  What is the importance of having potlucks or luncheons at a church?  The following sermonette brings light to this subject.

Covered Dish - A DEVOTIONAL from jimcf on GodTube.