Canadian Christians Reading This?

This letter came to me earlier today. If you are in Canada and can sponsor a man, let him know.

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

We have several Arab families in our congregation, and we have been attempting to help a Christian man from Syria and his family come to the United States for almost a year.  He is a farmer and was shot on his own farm last year.  In the process I have discovered from my U.S. Senator's people (who attempted to help over a period of a couple of months) that the United States is completely shut off for legal immigrants from Syria.  However, Canada is open.

If you are a Canadian and are willing to consider helping sponsor this family, please e-mail me, and I will send you the details.  Money is not a problem, only sponsorship.

Cordially in Christ,

Bob

Robert Benn Vincent, Sr.

Grace Presbyterian Church 

4900 Jackson Street

Alexandria, LA 71303-2509

(318) 445-7271 Office

bob@rbvincent.com

                     
                      Galina and Gary teaching in Moscow.

Dr. Galina Chentsova, M.D., Psychiatrist and Christian Psychologist, will arrive from Moscow on Sunday evening, November 9 at 11:00 PM. The next day, Monday, 11/10  is for rest and recovery. We are available on day or night Tuesday through the next Friday, 11/19/2014. 

I take her to various churches and homes and stay to enjoy the dialogue. Our usual set up is a two-hour time block with a group of six to 15 people we think are willing to support the Life Route Ministry with prayer, conviction and finances. Life Route Is located all over the Russian Federation.  She just returned from Ukraine and leaves for Kursk in Siberia today.

Galina loves to interact, answer questions about being reared in Moscow under Communism and how things became so different after Perestroika. She also has strong views about Putin.

We have been Equipping God’s people in Russia since 1992. She has been the Director and chief trainer for over 20 years.  Galina is a Christian with a Russian Orthodox conviction. She was secretly baptized as an adult but came to Christ in a miraculous manner as a child. 

Contact me at gary@sweetenlife.com if you are interested in meeting Galina, donating to their cause. We already have some discussion groups planned to hurry!

See our web here.

Better Data for Better Health

Does more knowledge about healthcare data really make us healthier? What are the things that really count to foster better health? In my last post I called it "The Blockbuster Medical Drug!"

Is that hype or hope?

Here is the answer from many health researchers: Better, more caring communication and mutual support.

Is That it?? Better relationships?

YEP, that's is.


Take a look at this short video about data. Interesting isn't it? But without a better reason to live, why try to extend life by hooking ourselves up to digital readouts?

How to Lower Medical Costs

The medical world is aflame today because of all the changes in Obamacare. Everybody is looking for the "New Miracle Drug". Well, I think I have discovered it. I don't mean I invented it just that I can see rather clearly what it is.

One Medical authorities call it "The Blockbuster Drug of the 21st Century". Want to guess what it is? It is a not a complex genetic compound. Nope, it has been around for thousands of years. It comes highly recommended by the Bible.

Think it over. Take a guess.

Ministry in Dark Places

I am on a discussion group of Christian's from around the world. One said he lives in a dark culture that has many rules and policies that are contrary to godliness. He wanted wisdom on how to touch the society.

The other post mentioned he was teaching classes at a Christian school on the difference between Islam and Christianity. He wanted wisdom and guidance.


Here was my response.

Blessings and power and love as you face the fallen world. Your notes caused me to think about the challenges we face as Bible steady believers in every culture. One thing that has helped me is looking at the history of the Christians who lived in the various eras of the church to see how they behaved. I have read many articles and books by Christian's involved in Sociology and evangelism. It seems that the challenge is always being salt and light in a dying and dark society. 

My pondering how the early Christians managed to thrive in cities with temples dedicated to having sex as a way of worshiping yet there are few biblical sermons warning members to stay away from sexual sinners.  Sexual sins today are rampant but go to Italy to see how the people decorated their homes and cafes with pornography! 

One of the greatest challenges of my life as a Christian came when I was teaching in Asia. I attended a conference on domestic abuse with some of my Pastor friends since my topic was marriage, family and healing. I asked God to connect me with someone that He wanted me to meet and develop a relationship with. That person was a Muslim Counselor who headed a large Counseling center for Muslim women. 

I worked with her and the Association of Muslim Professionals for three years. I trained their Peer Helpers. I trained their leaders and coached them how to deal with abuse. I wanted to be light and salt. 

In one instance we invited her to attend our classes in the Faith Community Baptist Church.  Two ladies and one man, a religious leader, came to the classes. I asked my class to welcome them in grace and mercy with no theological confrontations. Build trust and openness with love. 

At the end we had testimonies. The leader said with tears, "I have never seen such love and caring before. I wish my Muslim community knew how to do this." 

I started out as a scared American. A fish out of water! I only got involved with her and the AMP because the Holy Spirit told me to. In retrospect it was a wonderful experience with interested people. I learned how to plant seeds of the good news in the midst of some very hard ground. 

See my book, Hope and Change for Humpty Dumpty to learn how to minister to these hard to reach people. 

May you, _____, teach those young people to show that which Islam finds impossible to imagine: grace, mercy and love.

May you, _____, learn to love your broken neighbors. 

Cross Cultural Communication

Where is this?

I read an interesting story this morning in World Magazine. (A good magazine by the way.) The story focused on the difficulty of teaching English As a Second Language (ESL).

What were the biggest problems? Want to guess?

Some possibilities:

The foreign students cannot understand the English language

The students balked at being taught by white people

The books were too hard?

The students could not relate to the stories covered?

Students did not work very hard at learning?

The Christians did not understand the ESL materials well enough?

Those who want to share the gospel must learn...?  Go to our eBook store online and get the book by Donna Thomas, the founder of several great missionary organizations!

Restoring Christ

Most of us have seen photos of Christ of the Andes, but his view will take your breath away. 

Why The Apple Watch is A Bad Idea

People are agog over the Apple Watch. Of course,many people are agog over anything from Apple. Why else would they pay so much to get an Apple product?

I would like to have a Porche. It would be a great status symbol to have a car worth $120,000. It would run 120 MPH and sound like a jet taking off. But it is useless to me other than giving me pride and causing my neighbors to be covetous.

Where in Mason, Ohio can I drive 120 MPH?

Do I need a status symbol to feel good about myself?

Do I want to make my neighbors sin by coveting?

Can I spend $120,000 better someplace else?

It would be useless in daily life.

What about the Apple Watch? It is supposedly a digital health factory. Will it save my life? Will it make me healthy? Will it draw new business to me? Will it cause my hair to turn back brown and lose this gray stuff?

Nope! I am afraid not.

It is likely to be useless as a source of health. It is another opportunity to waste money trying to get healthy quickly and glamorously. It will likely end up in the basement with my treadmill and weights.

But hey, it is a great status symbol to match my Porche.

See our web for more information on health practices. 

How to Prepare for Obama-Care

I talk a lot to people concerned about Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act. However, most are concerned about

1. The increased costs of insurance and the lies fact that the government told us a lie about the costs. We were promised that premiums would decrease.

2. The difficulty of getting insurance. Yes, some new people have gotten covered but many can not get help.

None of them are concerned about the greatest shock of all.These issues make up only 15% of the new requirements. Yep, 85% of the new rules demand that Doctors and Nurses and Hospitals make radical changes in how they deliver care.

Imagine this parable. You just received a nice promotion so you and the spouse make reservations at a five star steak house. When you arrive, the hostess tells you to go strip off your fancy duds and put on an apron.

When you come out of the dressing room, they lead you to the kitchen where you are informed of your choices of food based on your Health and Wellness Fitness Scale. You are given the food approved and mandated the Federal guidelines and led over to the grill where you are instructed about how to fix your food.

This is how 21st century health care will be delivered.

Are you ready?

See our new web page with materials we prepared for training health care professionals.

Obamacare Penalizes Hospitals When Patients Get Sick At Home

Our new tools help professional clinicians do a better job of supporting patients at home so they do not return to the hospital. If they DO return, and are re-admitted, the Doctors and hospitals will be fined! 

While great strides have been made in the reduction of 30-day all-cause hospital re-admissions, CMS still penalized more than 2,200 hospitals in 2013 for exceeding 30-day readmission rates for heart failure, pneumonia and myocardial infarction.


In 2015, CMS penalties will extend to acute COPD and elective hip and knee replacements. 

See our new web for information.

How to Live in the Post Christian World

The team developing the Family Resource Builder and Patient Home Advantage. We taught at Xavier University

We just started a new organization to deal with the government insurance programs. Obamacare is corrosive. The new rules are difficult to follow so I read the research and rules and started a Christ-centered organization to help families with a chronic disability or illness. It is called Patient Home Advantage. Go to the web and (www.patienthomeadvantage.com) you will see it comes across as a very neutral group. However, it is controlled by our non-profit ministry. Why? It can fly under the government radar to do ministry with the sick and downtrodden. 

In Cincinnati there are about 5,000 churches. How many reach out to the families with a disabled child or sickly elder? Not many. About 5 focus on the disabled. How many have healing prayers or services? A very few. Even the Pentecostals do not pray for healing much anymore. How many have AA or NA or Al A Non? A few liberal churches and Catholics. Even the inner city ministry groups surrounded by addicts do little prayer and healing or sponsor drug recovery groups.

Get our books at Sweeten Life Systems and learn how to start ministry to heal the broken hearted and set the captives free. We also have numerous free videos on ministry. 

How Can We Live in a Secular Society?

Dear Dr. Gary,

I live in a Socialist nation that hates God and forces me to send my kids to a godless school. What can I do as a Christian?

Dear Chris:

I guess that 90% of all Christians have lived in an oppressive, secular, God rejecting society. Many have been persecuted. Here in the US we have enjoyed the freedom of living in a society that outwardly embraced and promoted most Christian values legally and emotionally but not deeply. Now the worm is turning and we are soundly rejected by the world, the flesh and the devil.

What than shall we do? In My Opinion (IMO) we learn to act like a minority rather than a majority. I was an Associate Dean at a secular university. I was a definite minority. I became used to being subversive rather than aggressive. I had to be very humble and do a lot of listening. I became known as the “Spirit Filled Counselor Professor” but I had to fly under the radar most of the time.

Be aglow in the Spirit! Humbly look for ways to serve others in the outside world. Many of my friends live as you describe. They carried on a very strong relationship with Jesus but the schools and culture were corrosive. They had to have strongly spiritual homes and fellowships groups but keep a low profile. 

See my book, Hope and Change for Humpty Dumpty.

Developing Spiritual Peace and Joy 5

Know God Experientially ⁶For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. ⁷For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. II Timothy 1

For many of us, knowing God is an institutional arrangement. We go to church with about as much enthusiasm as we go to the Dentist.  Since 1958 my life was rocked when the Holy Spirit came upon me in a personal, experiential manner. It was scary but life changing in a positive manner. 

I was driving from my home in Ina to a larger town about ten miles away.Just south of Ina, very near the County Line Road that 57 Ford Fairlane was filled with a glowing light and I heard a voice say, "Gary! Choose this day whom you will serve!"

I knew it was the voice of God. I replied, "To you, Lord because only you have the words of life". This experience was a baptism of fire and Spirit that gave a new meaning to the term "Know God". Before that I had known about God but now I knew God from experience. 

To know in Hebrew means to experience! That night I was introduced to God in a new way. From then on I was never satisfied with just knowing ABOUT God. I want to know him in my mind, my heart, my feet, my hands my feelings, etc. 

Communion on the beach after baptisms of hundreds of people. See my book, The Healing Release of the Holy Spirit.

How to Assist Special Families

Do you ever think about how tough it is to rear a child with a special need. The need can be emotional, mental, physical, educational, behavioral or interpersonal. Any type of a problem can result in impacting the parents and siblings in ways to numerous to count.

Our research delved into the deepest needs of parents and came up with some surprising needs. We spent a year and over 7000 hours of research asking families about their stresses, joys and challenges. Here are some of the things they said.

No body asks the parents or siblings how they are doing. This is despite the fact that rearing a typical child is difficult, having a child with a serious delay or illness can push every possible imaginable in the other family members.

Do you know anyone with a special need child? Do you tune in tho their needs, feelings and joys? Have you ever taken them aside and probed into how they are doing?

What percentage of families in Ohio are impacted?
How many families is that in Ohio or your state?

Go to our new web site to see how we are working to support all involved. Watch the great video on the landing page.

Go to the Sweeten Life web link and donate generously to support our cutting edge ministry.

Impacting and Influencing Health Care for Children

There are huge changes in health care delivery and services coming. These changes are in addition to to the dramatic changes in insurance. We were promised a lot of things about insurance and doctors that have turned out to be untrue. When it comes to getting medical care, we have not seen anything yet.

We have worked so hard to start an organization designed to help parents of special kids get the treatment and services that is best for them. It is called Patient Home Advantage and you can read about it at this web page link.

Take a look on the landing pages at the fantastic 90 second animated video Bob Brubaker made for us. It shows how parents can access Social Workers and other Case Workers and get the assistance they need. We are training the case workers and giving them as well as the parents tools to better understand the needs of the kids and the families.

We are overjoyed that Xavier University has agreed to partner with us on training students going into these fields! That is amazing but we need your support. The money to support us has not been adequate. Can you help?

Send your donations to support this work to Sweeten Life Systems by clicking this link. 

The Art of Marriage

John Wesley United Methodist Church is holding an Art of Marriage event on October 10th and 11th at:

927 West Kemper Road
Cincinnati, OH 45240

They are even providing childcare for the Friday evening session!! 

This is a wonderful event for couples who are struggling or for couples who just would like to "rekindle the romance" in their relationship.

Please consider coming yourselves and also passing the word on to people you know who might be interested. This is a high quality DVD based event which can easily be duplicated in your own church or community.

Go to the following site for details:

Desiring Every Home Be a Godly Home,

  Scott and Cymp Stemple

Seeking God: Steps to Meditation

Building Individual Power Lines to God

Meditation: Contemplating God, His word world. Psalm 27:1-4, John 14 and 15

1.           Get Comfortable

a.           Music is optional but usually helpful. 

b.           Reduce interruptions as much as possible. 

2.           Yawn and Stretch. This is one of the best ways we know of getting good oxygen into our bodies and allowing the peace of God to descend. 

3.           Breathe Deeply

a.           Breathe Out Anxiety

b.           Fears

c.           Worry

4.           Breathe in God’s Love, Peace, Blessings

5.           Allow a Prayer, Song or Blessing to rise up from within

a.           Sing or hum

b.           Serenity Prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, etc

c.           Focus on a scripture or biblical experience

d.           Find one with an image attached

1.           Jesus Shepherd

2.           Living water

3.           Upper Room

6.           Allow your imagination to see, feel, hear and interact with the event 

a.           What does it say to you?

b.           Allow names and faces spontaneously flow

c.           Bless them with Love, Grace, Mercy, Peace, Forgiveness, Healing, Shalom, etc

d.           Enjoy the positive feelings and thoughts as long as possible

e.           Listen for guidance and write it down

7.           Move out and be “Aglow in the Spirit”