Rest for the Rushed pt. 2

Mark Finley: I can lift up a God to you that knows, a God that loves, a God that cares, a God that some way is going to get you through all that because there's a peace that he wants to give you tonight that passes all understanding.
Guest (Male): This is Hope Lives 365 with Pastor Mark Finley. Today's message Rest for the Rushed Part Two. Enjoy and remember you can always catch up with past messages and stay up to date with Hope Lives 365 and Pastor Mark by going to hopelives365.com. And now Pastor Mark Finley.
Mark Finley: Herbert Benson is right. Now I don't buy everything Herbert Benson says, you know, you go down some of these pathways and they may lead you to New Age contrary to biblical values, but Benson was a great researcher and he says our genetic blueprint was made believing in an infinite absolute and that's part of our our nature. Dr. Harold Koenig of Duke University studied the relationship on faith and depression in people over 55. His research was published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. Here's what he says, among depressed patients, depression severity was associated with lower religious attendance, less prayer, less scripture reading and lower intrinsic religiosity. In other words, if you want to have a positive, cheerful spirit, go to church. It's healthy for you to do that. That's what Dr. Koenig said. Less prayer, less scripture reading, less intrinsic. If you want to live to a healthy 100, faith is not simply something for wild-eyed religious fanatics and cooks. Faith brings health and life to the body. Why? Because we sense that we can trust a loving creator fashioned us and made us. Koenig goes on, in summary, older, medically ill, hospitalized patients with depression are less religiously involved than non-depressed patients are those with less severe depression. I love the way the Bible puts it. Can you read it with me, please? Philippians 4 verse 6. Let's read it. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God. In other words, stop worrying. There's a God that loves you and cares for you. Proverbs 12 verse 25 reads, anxiety in the heart of man causes depression. In other words, if you're filled with worry and anxiety, simply going to cause you to be more depressed. David Larson, who was the former president of the National Institute for Healthcare Research, talks about the relationship of faith when you go through catastrophic events in your life. And Larson says this, catastrophic events can bring on so much stress in your life that you end up with illness. So the ability to handle that stress with a worldview that interprets it in a way that lets you say God is teaching me through this is beneficial. What I might view from one side as pain and suffering is from God's side an opportunity for us to be closer to him. If the situation is reinterpreted as something where I get to know God in a better way or as a situation which deepens my spiritual life, that's taking the cutting edge off stress. What is Dr. Larson from the National Institute of Health saying? Here's what he's saying. If when you go through a traumatic experience, the death of a spouse, cancer in your life, a divorce, do not look at those events as good. Those events may be part of a world of evil. So we do not think everything in life is good, but we reinterpret it and we say even when evil occurs in this world, I can still trust God. Even when I face sorrow, I can still trust God. In all of this sorrow, I reinterpret it because God is going to work in my life in some way to draw me closer to him. Isaiah 26 verse 3 and 4. Let's read it together. Thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever. There is a peace that passes all understanding. Proverbs 3 verse 5 and 8. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he'll direct your paths. So when we have that trusting heart, what does it do for our health? Do not be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord depart from evil. It will This is this idea of trust. It will be health to your flesh. So trust according to Proverbs brings health to your body and strength to your bones. You know, I wondered what that meant, strength to your bones. One of my physician friends explains that your bones are not hard, they're porous and there's fluid movement through every bone in your body. When you are stressed out, it interrupts the very delicate fluid movement through your bones and can bring arthritic patients who are under stress and anxiety and tension have more pain than arthritic patients who are not. Some researchers believe that that's because of fluid movement through bones. So notice what scripture says, it'll be health to your flesh, strength to your bones. A trusting heart is healthy. Psalm 37 verse 7 and 8. The Bible says a lot about physical health. Rest or trust in the Lord. Wait patiently from him. Cease from anger. Do not fret. What does it mean to fret? What's that fretting business about? What's fretting? Do not fret. Do not worry. Do not be filled with anxiety. Why? Read it with me. Do not fret. It only causes what? Harm. So worry, anxiety, intention break down the immune system. A trusting heart builds up the immune system. Worry, stress, intention break down our ability to fight disease and prepare us to receive disease. A trusting heart is health for the entire body. Now what does trust mean and what it doesn't mean? Trust does not mean we'll always understand. Many times in life things happen to us that we don't understand. Trust doesn't mean that we're always going to like what's happening to us. A lot of times we're not going to like what's happening to us in life. Trust doesn't mean that I deserve what's happening. Have you ever had a person say this is not fair. Why did this happen to me? I don't deserve this. Trust does not mean that you're going to like what's happening. It doesn't mean that you're going to understand what 's happening and trust doesn't mean that you believe you deserve what's happening. Trust doesn't mean that you believe that God caused what you're going to go through. We're in a battle between good and evil. There are two forces in the universe, the forces of good and the forces of evil, the forces of Christ and the force of Satan. So God wants only good for you. God desires only good for you, but even when there is evil that occurs, God works for your best good in harmony with that. What is trust? Trust is believing. Read it together with me from the screen. Trust is believing that God loves me and always desires my best good, that he is the creator God that made you and fashioned you. Trust is understanding that God will cause me to triumph even in life's most difficult times. When you are going through a difficult time in your life, say to yourself mentally, God loves me and desires only my best good. This stress-filled difficult time is going to pass and I am going to come out of this triumphant. Can you say with me tonight, I will triumph by God even in difficulty. Together, I will triumph by God even in difficulty. Again together, I will triumph by God even in difficulty. Trust is having confidence in God's care even if I don't understand what I am going through. You know, the Bible talks about a peace that passes understanding. One of my colleagues when we were there at his written television is Sandy Weiman Johnson. Sandy sang for us on the air and sang across America with her magnificent contralto voice. Sandy's son, Trevor, got a very strange case of blood cancer, one of only a very few cases in America. And this little boy at 7 years old was dying. And Sandy tells how people over America prayed for him, but he was still dying. She tells the story of holding him in her arms and rocking him back and forth and back and forth. And she said, is there anything I could get you, Trevor? And he said, yeah, mama, you could get me something. You know one of those things that have those little cocoons where the butterflies hatch? Mommy, I'd like one of those. And so she got that butterfly set with a little cocoons and put it in Trevor's room, this little boy dying of cancer. And the day came that they were going to hatch. And he said, Mommy, they're going to hatch today. Can we take them up on the roof and watch the butterflies fly away? So they took the little boy and put him in a wheelchair and the nurses came up and Sandy held his hand on the top of the roof, Southern California, beautiful blue sky day. And one butterfly hatched and another one hatched and another one hatched and they began to fly away. And Trevor looked over at his mom and he said, Mommy, don't worry about me. 7 years old. Mommy, don't worry about me because I'm going to be like one of those butterflies. One day when Jesus comes, my grave is going to open and I'm going to fly away. Mommy, don't worry about me. Sandy told me later she said, Mark I just cried and cried and cried. And then I read in the Bible, you can have a peace that passes understanding. And I knew that I could never explain what happened to my little boy, but I could trust God and God has given me a peace although I don't understand. You may be going through something in your life right now that's traumatic. You may be watching my Hope Channel. It's really traumatic. You've been diagnosed with cancer. That lump on your breast is cancer and it's become malignant and you have little time to live. You've been diagnosed with that. I want to talk to your heart today. You may go through the trauma of a divorce. You may be laid off and you don't know how you're going to handle all that. I can explain all that to you, but I can lift up a God to you that knows, a God that loves, a God that cares, a God that some way is going to get you through all that because there's a peace that he wants to give you tonight that passes all understanding. What is trust? It's resting in his love. It's experiencing his peace even in the toughest times of life. You can have that joy and that peace in your life. Trust is depending on God as my best friend knowing he'll never let me down. The God that causes the sun to rise and set every day, the God that causes the flowers to bloom and the birds to sing, the God that causes the tides to come here and come no further. This almighty, all powerful God has not forgotten you.
Guest (Male): We'll be right back with Pastor Mark Finley. We thank you for listening and hope you're enjoying today's message. Our mission is to attractively present the Christ-centered biblical truths of scripture in a practical, relevant way to people around the world so that they may experience the abundant life that Christ offers and effectively share with confidence his life-changing truths with others. You can support this ministry and help us reach even more by going to hopelives365.com/donate. And now back to Pastor Mark Finley.
Mark Finley: Here are three steps to increase your faith if you're going through trauma. Number one, daily meditate on the fact that God loves you and desires you no harm. Say God, you love me. Even in spite of what I'm going through, you don't desire me harm. I love Romans 8:28. We know that all things work together for good. To those that love God and to those that are called according to his purpose. I don't understand that text, but I believe it. I do not understand it, but I believe it. It doesn't say all things are good, does it? Because there are many bad things that happen. It says all things do what? Work together for good. My head does not understand it, right? But by faith I believe it that even in the darkest trauma of life, God is capable in ways that my mind cannot understand to bring good out of it. Secondly, consciously surrender your deepest cares to God. What care are you facing tonight? What difficulty are you facing tonight? Do you want to rest? Why carry that burden? I love 1 Peter chapter 5 verse 7. Casting all your care upon him because he cares for you. My minor in college was Greek. This New Testament is written in Greek and casting all your care upon him. The word for casting is throw the full weight of your anxiety on him. Have you ever come to bed one night and you stand by the side of your bed and you destroy yourself and plop? It's kind of like I'm glad this day is over. Throw yourself in bed. That's the word here. Casting, throw the full weight of your anxiety on God. What are you going through tonight? Let him carry that burden for you. Throw the full weight of your anxiety on him. Thirdly, believe that he's lifting the burden off your shoulders right now. So come to him. Believe that he believe you can trust him. Believe that you can love him, that he cares for you. Believe that he loves you. Throw the full weight of your anxiety upon him and say to him, God, I know you're lifting this burden right now. We can rest in his love. We can rest in his care. And there's something else about rest that is incredibly amazing. I call it the creator's time clock, the creator's time clock. You may or not be you may or may not be aware that built into every cell and tissue in the rhythm of the body, there is the creator's time clock for rest. There's a new study, a new science called chronobiology. Now that's a big word. Let me explain what it means. Chrono is time biology. Weekly rhythms known in chronobiology as circaseptan rhythms are one of the most puzzling and fascinating findings of chronobiology. Circaseptum literally means about seven. At first glance, it might seem that weekly rhythms developed in response to the seven-day week imposed by human culture thousands of years ago. However, this theory doesn't hold once you realize that plants, insects, animals and other humans also have these cycles of seven. In other words, built into living things is a cycle of seven. It's fascinating. Biology therefore not culture is probably at the source of our seven-day week. In other words, God created Adam and Eve with a seven-day cycle built in their mind and their bodies because that's the way God created them. He then gave them the seven-day week with the seventh day Sabbath to rest, to renew these cycles at the end of that seven-day week to restore them mentally, to restore them physically, to restore them biologically. The the leading researcher in this is a man by the name of Franz Halberg. He proposes that the body rhythms of about seven days far from being passively driven by the social cycle of the calendar week are innate, autonomous and perhaps the reason why the calendar week arose in the first place. It's in a book by Jeremy Campbell who who quotes Halberg. The seven-day cycle is built into the very fabric of our beings. I'll show you that tonight from anatomy and physiology and I'll show you also show you from history some fascinating things. Look. Each of the following tends to follow a seven-day cycle. The rejection of organ transplants tends to follow a seven-day cycle. The immune system response to infection tends to follow a seven-day cycle. The regulation of blood and urine chemicals, the regulation of blood pressure, heartbeat, common cold and coping hormones, researchers that are dealing in this field of chronobiology that did not exist 15 years ago are looking at the rhythms of the body. Campbell says in his book The Importance of Time quoting Halberg's research, this circaseptum or about weekly rhythms are one of the major surprises turned up by modern chronobiology. 15 years ago, few scientists would have expected that seven-day biological cycles would prove to be so widespread and so long established in the living world. They are of very ancient origin. They sure are of ancient origin. They come from creation. God put them in our bodies. Appearing in primitive one-celled organisms and are thought to be present even in bacteria, the the simplest form of life now existing. Now you think about it. Where does the week come from? Is the week based in astronomy? Look, the year is the amount of time everybody that the Earth does what? Orbits the sun once. The month is the amount of time that the moon Come on now. Orbits what? The Earth. The day is the amount of time that what happens? The Earth revolves around its axis. So you have four basic elements of time, the year, the month, the day. What's the other one? The week. What is the week? Where do you get that from? The week has no basis in astronomy, right? Where does the week come from? The God that made us to function in rhythms of seven and built that into the biological structure of our bodies, gave to us the seven-day weekly cycle so our minds and our bodies and our spirits could rest in him and we could be renewed physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally. Our loving creator has built into the structure of our beings a biological time clock. In fact, that's what Genesis 2 verse 2 and 3 means and on the seventh day, the seventh day, God ended his work which he had done and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it he rested from all his work which God had created and done. When we rest on the seventh day Sabbath, our minds are renewed because that's the way we were made. When we rest on the seventh day Sabbath, the organs of our body, the tissues of our body are renewed because we function in those seven-day cycles. And we rest, our relationship with him is renewed. When we rest physically, mentally, spiritually, we're drawn to him, to one another. We are whole, whole in our family relationships, whole in our physical, mental and emotional relationships in an age of stress, in hurry, in an age of tension, in an age where we're breaking down. We are called to rest in him, to trust our creator and to discover that Sabbath rest in him. A new secular rational week of 10 days was devised and approved by the ruling convention in October of 1793. It was in France, the 10-day week. Why? Because they wanted to get away from the Bible, away from this weekly cycle. Notre Dame Cathedral was renamed the Temple of Reason. What happened? Our creator knows best. At the end of 3 and a half years of the 10-day week in France, people have a nervous breakdowns, work productivity went down, divorce was at an all-time high and the friend says, wait a minute, we don't understand why, but this 10-day week business isn't working. We better go back to the seven-day week. The creator knows best, doesn't he? Well, this is what Stalin did and here's a calendar from Russia in 1930. He established a five-day work week and this is the way it worked in Russia in 1930. Society was divided into groups of people and your group was assigned five days to work. So your group may work Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Another group might work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Another group may work Tuesday, Wednesday. So you work five days off one, work five off one, work five off one. At the end of 11 years, production was so disappointing and the epic of irresponsibility in the workplace was so great. Stalin called it quits and he said, forget it. I'm going back to the seven-day week. God knows what? Best. When he gave that seven-day week at creation, built into the fabric of our being these great health principles. We come to rest on the seventh day Sabbath and trust in him. It makes all the difference in our lives. We were made to trust in the arms of a loving creator. His arms are wide open for you tonight. He says, come unto me all you that are burdened and heavy laden and I will give you rest. I love that song. It is well. It is well with my soul. When peace like a river attendeth my way, sorrows like sea billows roll, thou hast taught me to say it's well, it's well in my soul. Recently I was in Jerusalem in the American Colony Hotel. The American Colony Hotel was founded by Horatio Spafford and the original copy of It Is Well With My Soul was handwritten by Spafford and it was in that American Colony Hotel. Spafford went with a group to become missionaries to Israel back um in the um early 1900s. The story It Is Well With My Soul is really an amazing story. Horatio Spafford was a wealthy businessman in Chicago. And in 1871 the Chicago fire took place and it destroyed most of the city of Chicago and many of the business holdings of Horatio Spafford were destroyed. He spent two years working to help rebuild the city with his family, ministering to the homeless. There were 100,000 people homeless after the Chicago fire of 1871. And Spafford worked to rebuild that city. After two years, he was physically, mentally, emotionally exhausted. He was a good friend of Dwight Moody. And Dwight Moody and Ira Sankey, his singer, were in London holding a large evangelistic campaign for the British and so Horatio Spafford and his wife Anna and his four children, four living children, four daughters. He had a son that died. So you can imagine it. He lost most of his business holdings in the Chicago fire. He had a young son that died. So he said to his wife Anna, look, let's go to London, join Dwight Moody for this evangelistic meeting and let's get away. Right at the last minute, a business appointment kept him from joining his wife. He sent Anna on the boat and as the boat was off to Finland, the Haverdeville it crashed into another boat and sank. Almost everybody aboard was killed. The four daughters of Horatio Spafford were drowned. Anna clung to some debris and finally was rescued. She wrote a telegram to her husband Horatio, saved and saved alone. He got a boat. Next passage, went to meet his wife. And as he came to the place where his children were killed, he said to the captain, I want to know where this was and he showed him. That night he went down and he began to write these words, when peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say it is well, it is well with my soul.
Guest (Male): You've been listening to Hope Lives 365 with Pastor Mark Finley. We hope you've enjoyed today's message and remind you that you can find more in our many ministry resources at hopelives365.com. And you can support this ministry by going to hopelives365.com/donate. And now a final thought from Pastor Mark.
Mark Finley: It is well, it is well with my soul. Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, let this blessed assurance control that Christ has regarded my helpless estate and shed his own blood for my soul. But Lord, 'tis for thee. For thy coming we wait. The sky, not the grave is our goal. Oh trump of the angel, oh voice of the Lord, blessed hope, blessed rest of my soul. And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight and the clouds be rolled back as the scroll. The trumpet shall sound and the Lord shall descend. Even so, it is well. It is well with my soul.