God's Prescription for Health — Part 1

Hey there everybody and welcome to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. And whether today is your first time tuning in or if you're a regular listener, we're really excited that you're here. Well today, Pastor Rick is continuing his series called Discover Your Destiny. So get ready to explore the practical steps to grow in all areas of your life, spirit, mind, body, relationships, and even your career. So stick with us as we uncover God's incredible plan for your future. So let's get right to Rick with part one of a message called God's Prescription for Health. This week I want us to look at your physical health. And we're going to look at God's prescription for physical health. Now before we look at this, I need to begin with a confession. I grew up in a family where we were taught you don't drink, smoke, cuss, chew, or run around with girls that do. So in my life, I've never smoked a cigarette. I've never tasted alcohol. I've never taken an illicit drug. But I love pasta. And that's why they call me Pastor Rick. All right. Now we all have our drug of choice and my drug of choice has been food. Now I grew up in a family with a centerpiece that literally dominated all the other furniture in our house was the dining room table. Now I'm not just talking about a little kitchenette. This thing was 12 maybe 14 feet long. It was at least 5 feet wide. I'm not making this up. It was a 4 inch thick slab of a single piece of redwood. I grew up in Northern California in the redwoods in a little town called Redwood Valley. And we had a lumberman who actually milled this from a single tree. The dining room table at the Warren home dominated not just the dining room, but the living room and every other room of the house. And every major function of our house revolved around that table. Every happy memory in my life growing up was connected to food. Every sad memory in my life was connected to food. Everything between those two extremes was connected to food. And so while we didn't drink smoke custard, we certainly did enjoy a lot of food. My mom liked to cook. My dad grew at least an acre in garden. We raised her on cattle and there was always plenty on the table. And I have to be honest with you. I've never really paid much attention to my health. Until my mid 20s I was as skinny as a beanpole. I mean I was one of those guys you hate who you could literally eat everything and not gain an ounce. And that's where it was. And then I got married. Now I'm not blaming Kay. She has no responsibility for this. She's an incredible cook. But I don't know something slowed down in me and I started packing on the pounds. And honestly never really did pay much attention to my health. Until this year I had a little epiphany, a Damascus road experience. The light kind of finally clicked on in my mind. And it happened the day that a few months ago I baptized on a single day over 800 of you. Now, by the way at the end of that day I think I'm going to become a Catholic. I like this thing about the sprinkle little water. This thing about dipping them under water. Shoot. Methodist, a Presbyterian. I like that. Forget what Jesus did. Let's just do it the easy way. Let's just throw a little water on them. Let me get a fire hydrant and maybe we'll throw in a car wash with it. No, we're not going to do that. But after baptizing 800 people in our church by immersion I realized we're all getting heavy. This isn't your father's saddleback. And so I started doing a little research on this and I discovered that nearly seven in 10 Americans, 69% of Americans are overweight. Overweight. I discovered that diabetes and heart disease have exploded as pandemic diseases because of weight-related issues. We now have 80 million people in America who are diabetic or pre-divetic. That's phenomenally large number compared to even just 10 years ago. I studied some CDC Center for Disease Control Statistics and learned that in 1995 there was not a single state in all 50 states that had more than 20% obese in their state. Today there's not a single state that doesn't have at least 20% obese in their state. We are packing on the pounds. And then as I thought about globally, as we've traveled around the world in these 195 nations in the last 70 years and you know peace stands for plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, educate the next generation and the sea and care for the sick. We have focused almost exclusively on infectious diseases for the past seven years in the peace plan. And so we've helped people with measles and mumps and malaria and yellow fever and typhus and polio and AIDS and other infectious diseases, waterborne eye diseases and things like that. And I discovered that actually infectious diseases in the world are actually going down and chronic diseases are going up. In other words, by the end of this decade, 20 million people a year will die from infectious diseases in the world. And that's unacceptable. But 50 million a year will die from weight-related diseases. More people are going to die from diabetes and from heart disease than from infectious diseases. A totally manageable problem. And then I discovered another amazing statistic that right now globally in the world, as many people are dying from obesity as are dying from malnutrition. First time in history, 1.1 billion in each category. As many people today are dying from being overweight as are dying from malnutrition in the world today. So I'm thinking, I cannot ask our church to get healthy if I don't get serious about this. If I don't do something about myself, I cannot, I've never asked you to do anything that I haven't already modeled. Now, the truth is you already know what to do. This is not rocket science. It's not brain surgery. To get healthy, you've got to eat healthy and you've got to eat less. You've got to get moving. You've got to move it. Move it. Okay. Okay. You've got to get proper sleep and you've got to lower the stress and get more rest in your life. You know this. So there's nothing I can teach you on that today. But what I want to do to date is to focus on the motivation, the why. Why do you not stick and why do I not stick with getting shaped programs, get healthy programs, diets, exercise, and whatever? How many times have you said a resolution to get in shape and a month later, it's out the window? And the reason why is if you don't have the right motivation, you will not stick with it. You've got to have the reason. If when you figure out the why in your life, God will always show you how. So what I want to do today is three things. I want us to look at what God says about the importance of your body. It's first thing. And then I want to share with you a couple of areas for health that you may have never thought of that you won't find in a nutrition book and some things like that. All right. First, let's look at what God says about the importance of your physical health. And the Bible says this. First Corinthians chapter 6 is the classic passage on the body. Here it is on the screen. Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible for me. In other words, I got the freedom to do anything. But I will not be mastered by anything. What does God say here? He says, you know, some things in life that are just not necessarily wrong. They're just not necessary. Does that make sense? Okay. You're free to do whatever you want, but not everything is beneficial or, and I'm not going to be master, but I'm not going to let it dominate me. I'm not going to be addicted to anything. Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food. [BLANK_AUDIO] God's gonna destroy both. In other words, they're not gonna last forever. So that's not the real reason you're here. Then he says, "The body's not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power, God raised the Lord from the dead, and he's gonna raise us up. He's gonna physically raise up your body. Do you not know that your bodies or members of Christ themselves?" Now, flee, the Bible says, from sexual immorality. All other sins the man commits are outside his body, but he just sincerely sins against his own body. It's a different class. Do you not know that your body is a temple? This is where that phrase comes from. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who was in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own. You were bought at a price. Jesus paid for you. Therefore, honor God with your body. Now, this passage teaches us six radical, counter-culture things about your body. You need to write these down. This is the exact opposite of what culture teaches you today, what the media teaches you today about your body. Okay, here they are. Number one, the first thing is that God expects me to manage my body. God expects me to manage my body. Now, I'm not the owner. I'm the manager. God is the owner of my body, but I am the manager. The Bible word is the word steward. Stewardship is the old English word for management. And we're talking about the stewardship of health today. In other words, I cannot blame other people for how I use or misuse or abuse my body. I can't blame anybody else. I'm the manager. My body is a gift from God on loan. God owns it, and then he loans it to me. And one day I'm going to give an account. One day I'm going to stand before God, and he's going to say, "What did you do with what I gave you?" Okay, we've talked about this many times. That life is a test. It is preparation for eternity. And God is seeing what He can trust you with. What did you do with the help I gave you? What did you do with the mind I gave you? What did you do with the opportunities, the abilities, the freedom, the wealth, all the things? What did you do with what I gave you? And one of the things that he's going to say is, "What did you do with the body that I gave you?" And God is watching to see what you do. So I'm a caretaker of my body. God expects me to manage it. Number two, my body is God's property. Now, that's fighting words here in America. Because all of us were taught growing up. My body is my own body, and it's my body, and I'll do what I want to with it. And God says, "No, you won't. It's not your body. It's my body. I just loaned it to you. It's not yours because you didn't create it." Everything that you see was created by God and the creator owns it all. You don't own anything. It's loaned to you, just like we talked about your money. Last week, you don't own your money. It's loaned you for about 80 years. If somebody else before you were born, it's going to be somebody else after you die. You just use it while you're here. He owns it, and he loans it. And my body is God's property. The body, the Bible says, is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord. Why? Because it's his. And the Lord for the body. In other words, I don't have the right to just share my body with anybody and neither do you. Now, that's a radical concept. See, what Americans do today that make the common mistakes that the Greeks did, which is called dualism. Back in the days of Aristotle and Socrates and Plato, the Greeks believed in dualism, which was, we separate the mind and the body. And they said, you know, really what matters is just that your spirit or your mind, your spirit is right with God. And if your spirit is right with God, that really matter what you do with your body. They devalued the body. In fact, they taught the body is evil. So really it doesn't matter if you mess up your body, because it's just evil. What only really matters is your spirit. And the Bible says that's absolutely false. Your body is not evil. Your body is holy because God made it. And everything God makes, he makes for a purpose. God has never made anything else without a purpose. And so don't compartmentalize that. You know, all it really matters is my spirit, not my body. It both matters. That's a myth. Now, I have to admit that growing up in a church home, I never in my entire life heard a single sermon on the body. Not one, I've never heard one. I've heard him talk about the importance of your spirit, the importance of your soul, the importance of your mind, the importance of your character, the importance of your values. I'd never heard a single sermon on the importance of your body. So most Christians have no theology of health. But the fact is, God owns your body. He's the boss of your body. You may not like it, but it's the truth. God owns it and expects you to manage it well. Number three. The third thing this passage teaches is that my body will be resurrected after I die. My body will be resurrected after I die. Now God never waste anything. He never waste the hurt. If you'll give it to him, he'll take even the hurtful things in your life and turn them around and use them for good. He doesn't waste any, God recycles. And God says, you think that body gave you that? Just didn't know. We're gonna recycle it. Right now, you're living in version 1.0. In heaven, you're gonna get version 2.0, but you will have a body. Some people think that when you get to heaven, you're just gonna be this amorphous spirit just kinda floating around like, may the force be with you. Other people think they're gonna be angels. You're not gonna be an angel. Angels are angels, people are people. A lot of times people, their idea of heaven is white robe, wings, playing a harp, sitting on a cloud. Friends to me, that would be hell. (audience laughing) I can't think of anything more boring than that. Now why does heaven all white? Now who do you think created color? God did. Who do you think created taste buds? God did. Who do you think created all the sights and sounds in gave us music? God did. Who do you think created all of beauty and gave us eyes to see it? God did. And if the world is broken and it's this beautiful, what do you think heaven's gonna be like? Multicolor extravaganza like you can't believe. Not some white cloud thing. (audience laughing) All right. Now the Bible says this, first Corinthians 6.14, by his power God raised the Lord from the dead and he will raise us up also. Do you see how important your body is? God says, I'm not through this. I'm gonna resurrect your body. He said, well what's it gonna get all the cade in the ground? Well yeah, or he might be cremated, but God says I'm still gonna resurrect it. I'm gonna put it together in version 2.0 and he can do anything if you created a universe. Well what does that, he said, what's my resurrected body gonna be like? Well we don't really know. We do know that after Jesus was resurrected and he walked around Jerusalem for 40 days. One time was seen by 500 people and talked to them, different people. That he could actually, his body had some kind of capability to dematerialize because he could appear in a room without walking through the door. That'd be kind of cool. Okay, kind of like Star Trek, you know dematerialized. But everybody recognized him. They recognized him. And so that gives us a clue that when you get to heaven, you're gonna have a different kind of body than you've got right now, but everybody's gonna know who you are. You're still gonna be you. You're just gonna be you, version 2.0, with no blemishes. Perfect in every form. You're gonna be you in perfect format. Now, I want you to circle on this phrase, the phrase by his power. By his power, God raised the Lord from the dead. See this is one of the three reasons why we don't stick with diets. One of the three reasons we don't stick with our Get Healthy Programs. And the first reason is we use willpower instead of Godpower. Now willpower friends works for about three weeks. And then you get tired and you go off the diet, you start smoking again, because willpower is not enough to change. Willpower is fantastic in the short term. But the entire time you're doing something to my willpower, you're forcing yourself to do that your natural brain does not want to do. And pretty soon you're gonna get tired, you're gonna let go of the steering wheel. And the autopilot and the boat's gonna take it back the other direction. And that's why resolutions by themselves don't last. You need more than willpower, you need Godpower, because willpower alone is exhausting, you get tired. Now, whatever your weakness is, you're gonna probably struggle with it the rest of your life. And so you're gonna need more than simply your own energy. You gotta plug into God's power. (upbeat music) Hey everybody, thank you so much for joining us today on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. You know, just a short time back, God put it on Pastor Rick's heart to connect with a team of leading health experts and they created the Daniel Plan. Meet Joel. - I tried to lose weight, I tried to make the changes and nothing seemed to work because it was all based on my willpower. when I started. Under what the program, I immediately noticed changes mainly because I wanted to be healthy. I had the tools to eat properly. I understood exercise and I had motivation. I saw that I could get healthy finally, that I could make the changes that I tried my whole life to make. You know more than 180,000 people are following the Daniel plan. Yeah, to lose weight, increase their energy and improve their relationships and all while growing closer to the Lord and they're doing it with the Daniel plan. I've lost 75 pounds and I've reached what I think is my ideal weight where I feel healthy. In fact, I just recently competed in an Ironman triathlon competition. That's 140.6 miles of racing when I found the Daniel plan and its principles. I was given the tools to finally make the changes. I sure hope you'll let Pastor Rick send you a hard-covered copy of his best-selling book, The Daniel Plan Today. It's his way of saying thanks so much for your financial gift to this listener-supported ministry. Just go to pastorrick.com to get your copy of this great resource. That's pastorrick.com. Or, you can just text the word "hope" to 7-0, 30, 9. Just the word "hope" to 7-0, 30, 9. And thank you so much for your support. Your gift to Daily Hope really helps us share the hope of Christ with people all over the world. Be sure to join us next time as we look into God's Word for our Daily Hope. This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your generous financial support. (gentle music)