WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.680 I don't think that it's so much what we do as it is the kind of people that we become. 2 00:00:06.680 --> 00:00:10.480 So today I want to talk about how to have a maximum impact life. 3 00:00:10.480 --> 00:00:18.760 How to have a life that God can bless, God can use, God can empower and make a difference 4 00:00:18.760 --> 00:00:25.640 in your world. 5 00:00:25.640 --> 00:00:33.360 Whether you're someone who is working in a laboring job in construction or maybe as a 6 00:00:33.360 --> 00:00:39.720 mechanic or maybe as a lawyer or a doctor, whatever your field, that God wants your life 7 00:00:39.720 --> 00:00:40.720 to have an impact. 8 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:48.480 And I want us to look at 1 Thessalonians 5.23, 1 Thessalonians 5.23 is one of those unique 9 00:00:48.480 --> 00:00:49.480 verses in the Bible. 10 00:00:49.480 --> 00:00:57.160 There's probably only probably seven or eight quite like it where the writer, in this case 11 00:00:57.160 --> 00:01:05.080 Paul is talking about the power that comes through being synergized with God mentally, 12 00:01:05.080 --> 00:01:08.520 emotionally, relationally, and even spiritually. 13 00:01:08.520 --> 00:01:11.440 So here's what 1 Thessalonians 5.23 says. 14 00:01:11.440 --> 00:01:16.960 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely. 15 00:01:16.960 --> 00:01:22.560 And may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our 16 00:01:22.560 --> 00:01:24.160 Lord Jesus Christ. 17 00:01:24.160 --> 00:01:26.440 Sanctify means to be set apart. 18 00:01:26.440 --> 00:01:30.680 So Paul is saying at the end of his letter to the Thessalonians, my prayer for you, my 19 00:01:30.680 --> 00:01:37.200 hope for you is that you would be set apart completely and that your whole spirit, soul, 20 00:01:37.200 --> 00:01:39.960 and body would be preserved blameless. 21 00:01:39.960 --> 00:01:44.880 So this to me reminds me so much of Jesus saying the greatest commandment is to love 22 00:01:44.880 --> 00:01:48.880 me with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. 23 00:01:48.880 --> 00:01:50.280 That's in Mark 12. 24 00:01:50.280 --> 00:01:56.160 Because God's given us our heart, God's given us our soul, which is our personality and 25 00:01:56.160 --> 00:01:57.160 our emotions. 26 00:01:57.160 --> 00:02:01.320 God has given us our mind and God has given us our spirit. 27 00:02:01.320 --> 00:02:05.880 And he's also given us a body to encase all of that. 28 00:02:05.880 --> 00:02:11.400 We have tended in the evangelical church over the last few hundred years to really 29 00:02:11.400 --> 00:02:15.560 kind of make kind of a Greek looking church. 30 00:02:15.560 --> 00:02:22.000 And what I mean by that is that there's kind of this dualism of body and spirit that we 31 00:02:22.000 --> 00:02:23.000 hear from the pulpits. 32 00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:28.800 I mean, how many times have you actually heard a sermon about staying in shape, working out, 33 00:02:28.800 --> 00:02:32.840 getting out on the sun, taking good vitamins and supplements for your body? 34 00:02:32.840 --> 00:02:40.280 How many sermons have you heard on becoming mentally proficient and working on your mental 35 00:02:40.280 --> 00:02:43.120 acumen and your IQ? 36 00:02:43.120 --> 00:02:48.080 How many sermons have you heard on EQ, about your emotional quotient, about relating to 37 00:02:48.080 --> 00:02:49.080 people? 38 00:02:49.080 --> 00:02:54.360 It seems like what we've done is kind of a modern version of Gnosticism. 39 00:02:54.360 --> 00:02:59.580 And if you don't know what Gnosticism is, it's basically the idea of the separation 40 00:02:59.580 --> 00:03:06.740 of matter and the spirit, and that matter's bad, that matter's not good, that it has very 41 00:03:06.740 --> 00:03:12.340 little consequence in the spiritual realm, and that everything's about the spirit. 42 00:03:12.340 --> 00:03:17.300 Some even said in Gnosticism in the early first few centuries that Jesus was not really 43 00:03:17.300 --> 00:03:19.260 physically even here. 44 00:03:19.260 --> 00:03:24.340 It was just an apparition of his spirit that we saw, but he wasn't physically here, which 45 00:03:24.340 --> 00:03:26.940 goes completely against the resurrection. 46 00:03:26.940 --> 00:03:32.540 In other words, Jesus literally was physically crucified on a cross and then physically rose 47 00:03:32.540 --> 00:03:33.840 from the grave. 48 00:03:33.840 --> 00:03:39.980 So Gnosticism started to get some momentum in the first few centuries of the church because 49 00:03:39.980 --> 00:03:42.100 there wasn't any clear doctrine yet. 50 00:03:42.100 --> 00:03:47.820 The scriptures were being written in letter form, but the canon, the combination of all 51 00:03:47.820 --> 00:03:52.380 the writings of scripture had not been decided yet to form what would later become the New 52 00:03:52.380 --> 00:03:53.380 Testament. 53 00:03:53.380 --> 00:03:57.380 So there were a number of heresies that were popping up at that time because the church 54 00:03:57.380 --> 00:04:03.100 was still sort of codifying what they believed. 55 00:04:03.100 --> 00:04:10.140 And with the council at Nicaea, there was the beginnings of putting creedal statements 56 00:04:10.140 --> 00:04:16.140 as well as a creedal church together based on the New Testament books that we have today. 57 00:04:16.140 --> 00:04:23.340 What I'm thinking about in communication today is the fact that we've been commanded by God 58 00:04:23.340 --> 00:04:25.880 to live with our whole spirit, soul, and body. 59 00:04:25.880 --> 00:04:27.340 And I'm going to show you this diagram. 60 00:04:27.340 --> 00:04:34.780 On this diagram, you can see with these concentric circles what makes up who you are. 61 00:04:34.780 --> 00:04:39.620 If you look at the middle where the concentric circles all come together, that's who you 62 00:04:39.620 --> 00:04:40.620 are. 63 00:04:40.620 --> 00:04:48.380 You are part mental, part emotional, and relational, and spiritual, and physical, and all those 64 00:04:48.380 --> 00:04:50.260 make up who you are. 65 00:04:50.260 --> 00:04:56.780 And so if any one of those areas of your life is out of kilter with the kingdom of God, 66 00:04:56.780 --> 00:05:00.060 out of kilter in health, it's going to impact all of you. 67 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:06.640 the others. So just like the four wheels on a car, you can't do very well if one of your 68 00:05:07.360 --> 00:05:12.960 tires is flat. You're going to kind of hobble along. I think that's true in all of our lives. 69 00:05:13.520 --> 00:05:19.360 If you are constantly, let's just take for example, eating junk food, you go out and eat junk food 70 00:05:19.360 --> 00:05:25.280 or tons and tons of processed sugar, you're going to get headaches. And when you get headaches, 71 00:05:25.280 --> 00:05:29.760 it's going to affect your Bible reading. When you're walking with headaches, it's going to 72 00:05:29.760 --> 00:05:35.760 affect you emotionally and relationally. If you jump off a bridge and break a leg, 73 00:05:36.560 --> 00:05:41.920 a broken leg is going to affect all the other areas. By the same token, if you go through a 74 00:05:41.920 --> 00:05:48.080 time in your life of rejecting God and being in rebellion to God, that's the spiritual circle, 75 00:05:48.080 --> 00:05:52.880 that's the spiritual realm of your life. It's going to start affecting your relationships. 76 00:05:52.960 --> 00:05:59.520 That lack of faith in God, that lack of belief in the kingdom of God is going to affect you 77 00:05:59.520 --> 00:06:07.840 in all the other areas. So what I'm advocating right now is that you be healthy and you walk 78 00:06:07.840 --> 00:06:15.440 in kingdom alignment with the Lord and with his kingdom in all four of these areas of your life. 79 00:06:15.440 --> 00:06:21.600 So I'm going to be talking about what this is all about. So I think alignment to the design, 80 00:06:22.320 --> 00:06:28.160 aligned to the design is another way to say this, that if you have a car or vehicle, 81 00:06:28.160 --> 00:06:34.960 you go in for an alignment. Because if you don't, then the treads on your tires are going to wear 82 00:06:34.960 --> 00:06:41.360 thin on particular sides of the car and the front and the back of the car. And so we need alignment. 83 00:06:41.360 --> 00:06:47.760 Well, all of us need that. You know, I go to a chiropractor weekly because I need alignment 84 00:06:47.760 --> 00:06:54.800 on my spine. I need alignment on the center part of my body because that's where all the nerves 85 00:06:54.800 --> 00:07:00.080 go out. That's where the emotions are affected. That's where chemicals and toxins are released 86 00:07:00.080 --> 00:07:04.800 according to whether I'm in adjustment or not. So we get alignment. So another way to think of this 87 00:07:04.800 --> 00:07:13.280 is this is about having the maximum impact by being aligned to God's design for your life, 88 00:07:13.280 --> 00:07:18.000 mentally, physically, emotionally, relationally, spiritually. So here's my thesis. Here's my 89 00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:25.200 thesis today. To have a maximum impact life, we must line up with God's purposes, spiritually, 90 00:07:25.760 --> 00:07:31.760 emotionally, mentally, relationally, and physically. You will become healthier, 91 00:07:31.760 --> 00:07:37.920 more vibrant, and more resilient in hard times if you do this. I challenge you, men and women, 92 00:07:37.920 --> 00:07:43.280 that God wants you to care about all these different areas of your life. And that then 93 00:07:43.280 --> 00:07:49.920 gives you the opportunity to have maximum impact. I've trained with and watched the coaching of 94 00:07:51.280 --> 00:07:58.800 three of my sons in the arena of baseball. In baseball, we talk about being a five-tool player. 95 00:07:58.800 --> 00:08:07.120 And there's these five areas that major league and pro scouts look at in determining a particular 96 00:08:07.120 --> 00:08:13.680 baseball player's potential. And if they see four out of the five, they're pretty interested in that 97 00:08:13.680 --> 00:08:18.800 guy. If they see three out of five less interested, two out of five less interested, et cetera. Well, 98 00:08:18.800 --> 00:08:25.440 I'm talking about four areas of our life, maybe even five areas of our life, that if we will 99 00:08:25.440 --> 00:08:32.480 train ourselves and build habits in those areas of our life, we can have a maximum impact. And so 100 00:08:32.480 --> 00:08:38.000 that's what these circles show. These circles show that. So I want to begin with how do we get sick? 101 00:08:38.000 --> 00:08:44.880 So I'm going to start first of all with sickness because I think this has spiritual implications 102 00:08:44.880 --> 00:08:50.640 too. So here's the caveat. I'm not a health professional. I'm a doctor. I'm Dr. Steve Holt, 103 00:08:50.640 --> 00:08:55.840 but that's a doctor of divinity, not a doctor, medical doctor. Anything that I say here, you 104 00:08:55.840 --> 00:09:02.480 should take to your medical practitioner if you have questions, or you can certainly ask people 105 00:09:02.480 --> 00:09:10.880 you know, but don't do anything that I'm telling you or explaining that I do necessarily based on 106 00:09:10.880 --> 00:09:19.840 me. I'm not a medical practitioner, but over the past 150 years, medical science, health science 107 00:09:19.840 --> 00:09:26.000 has really, really been challenged by the knowledge that we have in the research of science 108 00:09:26.560 --> 00:09:36.560 related to the neurochemicals, the vitamins, the enzymes that make up who we are. And so there's 109 00:09:36.560 --> 00:09:43.200 become, there's more than just two trains of thought, but I'm going to give two trains of 110 00:09:43.200 --> 00:09:48.160 thought to simplify the whole thing. And I think we could argue, I think I could argue that under 111 00:09:48.160 --> 00:09:54.400 these two particular views of how to stay healthy physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, 112 00:09:54.400 --> 00:09:59.840 relationally, that they fall into two camps. So the first one, and the one that I advocate 113 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:05.680 are is what I'm gonna call the immune strong healing movement. The immune 114 00:10:05.680 --> 00:10:13.040 strong healing movement. That if we drink clean water, we eat God-made food, organic 115 00:10:13.040 --> 00:10:19.640 food, get the needed rest that we should have, staying in a strong emotional and 116 00:10:19.640 --> 00:10:25.400 spiritual support system, most of the time your body will heal itself. In other 117 00:10:25.400 --> 00:10:29.880 words, most of the time you will be strong. You will be healthy. You'll 118 00:10:29.880 --> 00:10:35.520 have the possibility of having a high-impact life. So that's strengthening 119 00:10:35.520 --> 00:10:43.040 our immune system. That approach is the approach we took during COVID in 2020 and 120 00:10:43.040 --> 00:10:48.040 2021 at our church and in our community here at Colorado Springs. And we were able 121 00:10:48.040 --> 00:10:54.120 to see 3,000 people healed of COVID. We lost no one to death. We didn't wear a 122 00:10:54.120 --> 00:11:00.120 mask. We continued to have fellowship and relationships with everybody that we 123 00:11:00.120 --> 00:11:05.840 were around. We did not follow the rules that the state and even health care gave 124 00:11:05.840 --> 00:11:12.320 us. And we were a super healthy church. We still are today. I would argue we're one 125 00:11:12.320 --> 00:11:16.480 of the healthiest churches in America because of what we, the protocol that 126 00:11:16.480 --> 00:11:20.920 we've developed at the road here at the church. But here's what the bottom line 127 00:11:21.120 --> 00:11:27.280 was for us. And this is the bottom line as I start this series for you, is God 128 00:11:27.280 --> 00:11:32.480 wants you to have a strong immune system. And that strong immune system is through 129 00:11:32.480 --> 00:11:37.160 doing healthy things, eating healthy things, having healthy relationships, and 130 00:11:37.160 --> 00:11:43.560 building up the immune system emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, 131 00:11:43.560 --> 00:11:48.360 relationally in your life. So that's the first line of defense as I would see it. 132 00:11:48.400 --> 00:11:53.440 The second, which has become very popular since around 1910, it was starting to, at 133 00:11:53.440 --> 00:11:57.640 the turn of the century, there was beginning to be some scientific research 134 00:11:58.040 --> 00:12:04.400 to support this idea of what I'm going to call the pathogen attack health movement. 135 00:12:04.720 --> 00:12:12.600 Pathogen attack health. These are my terms. The idea that pathogen being 136 00:12:12.640 --> 00:12:17.240 a pathogen is a term in reference to bacteria, germs, or other microorganisms 137 00:12:17.480 --> 00:12:22.960 that have the potential to induce disease. Into this arena came a man named 138 00:12:22.960 --> 00:12:29.800 John D. Rockefeller and the rise of oil-based pharmaceuticals. It was a shift 139 00:12:29.800 --> 00:12:35.280 from rest and eating and drinking better, utilizing herbs and plants to take 140 00:12:35.280 --> 00:12:41.520 medicines, pharmaceuticals, and it became a big business. So John D. Rockefeller, 141 00:12:41.520 --> 00:12:47.200 who's most famous for being the founder and CEO of Standard Oil, began to realize 142 00:12:47.200 --> 00:12:53.440 that there was a lot of money to be made by taking oil-based pharmaceuticals and 143 00:12:53.440 --> 00:13:00.800 creating those to block different pathogens that people had. As John D. 144 00:13:00.800 --> 00:13:06.360 Rockefeller got involved, he began to use petroleum to create pharmaceuticals and 145 00:13:06.360 --> 00:13:11.480 oil-based medicines. He gradually took control of 90% of all the oil refineries 146 00:13:11.480 --> 00:13:17.640 through Standard Oil, and beginning in 1910, working with Abraham Flexner, began 147 00:13:17.640 --> 00:13:23.200 research to promote his petrochemical medicines. And this was the birth of Big 148 00:13:23.200 --> 00:13:29.440 Pharma. So this is how pharmaceuticals began to enter into our medical schools. 149 00:13:29.440 --> 00:13:33.120 So the Flexner report, which I'm not going to go into a ton of detail here, 150 00:13:33.120 --> 00:13:39.400 I've done that on my blogs, but the Flexner report that came out subsequently 151 00:13:40.000 --> 00:13:45.400 convinced Congress also such that all the medical schools and all of the 152 00:13:45.400 --> 00:13:52.680 doctors, to get their licensing, had to start working with the Rockefeller 153 00:13:52.680 --> 00:13:59.040 Foundation and the Carnegie Institute of Education to subsequently begin pushing 154 00:13:59.040 --> 00:14:03.120 pharmaceuticals. So that was the beginning of pharmaceuticals, and with that was the 155 00:14:03.120 --> 00:14:08.280 pushing out of all holistic medicine, plant-based medicine, which had 156 00:14:08.280 --> 00:14:12.600 characterized at least half of the medical schools and at least half of the 157 00:14:12.600 --> 00:14:19.480 doctors up to that time. Those are the two avenues that we have today. We have a 158 00:14:19.480 --> 00:14:25.600 petrochemical, pharmaceutical, attack the pathogen view, which by the way, that's 159 00:14:25.600 --> 00:14:29.520 not all bad. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying that that's one 160 00:14:29.520 --> 00:14:36.280 particular version of, and this would be where most, probably 90% of all your 161 00:14:36.280 --> 00:14:40.440 medicine in America, the Western Hemisphere, goes. And then there's the 162 00:14:40.440 --> 00:14:45.280 immune strong movement of healing, and that's what I'm advocating because I 163 00:14:45.280 --> 00:14:49.160 believe it has implications even spiritual and emotionally. In other words, 164 00:14:49.160 --> 00:14:55.640 it's not so much attacking things in our lives, it's more about building up the 165 00:14:55.640 --> 00:15:01.320 good things in your life, building up the kingdom of God in your life. 166 00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:04.680 Next episode we'll take you to the next step of understanding how to do that in our lives.