Christian Natural Health

Barbara Samuels is an international speaker, transformational wellness coach, CEO, and life strategist. She operates a successful lifestyle coaching company  "Living All Alive", that empowers individuals to take control of their health and reverse type 2 diabetes, and she is the author of the book, Reverse Type 2 Diabetes Naturally. Barbara has over 27 years’ experience working in the field of nursing as a registered nurse. Her experience in this field spanned on two continents. She has worked in England, Jamaica, and the United states. During her time as a nurse, she was deeply grieved as she witnessed the pain/suffering and untimely death of her patients from type 2 diabetes complications.  She knew there must be more that she could do. She wanted to have a greater impact, and so she decided to become actively engaged in improving the health of others through education and wellness coaching. She left the hospital setting and has been making a major impact in helping to restore the lives of individuals with type 2 diabetes. Barbara is married with 3 children. She is passionate about sharing the gospel, through avenues of health and wellness. Barbara’s mission is to help others live and experience the abundant life that they were created to have, enjoying all the blessings that God has for them. For more about Barbara, see her website, Living All Alive, or find her on Instagram @LivingAllAlive. For more on our sponsor, Let's Get Checked. go to trylgc.com/cnh, and enter the coupon code CNH20 for 20% off your order. Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Introduction Shinar was in what is now modern day Iraq. The land of Babylon got its name from the Tower of Babel, so named because the Hebrew word Bāḇel means confusion. Presumably the etymology of the English word babble comes from its Hebrew equivalent. It’s interesting what is not in the text in this story. The people of the earth built a fortified city and a tower, intending for it to reach up to heaven. We know from God’s reaction that what they did was somehow evil, but there’s nothing inherently evil in building a city or a tower. What was the problem?  I think the clue is in the phrase, “…a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” Remember that this was only one hundred (and one) years after the flood—Noah and his sons were still alive. Could the point have been that their descendants were trying to protect themselves against a future act of God, even though He had already promised He would never again send a flood upon the earth? Was the problem that they were trusting in their own might and seeking their own glory, leaning on “their own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5-6)? Did the tower up to the heavens imply that they saw themselves as equal with God?  Ultimately I think the issue was pride—and the fact that, left unchecked, the people might actually achieve their ends. God had to intervene once more; He had to make sure that the people of the earth did not once again become corrupted beyond redemption, beyond the point where He could bring forth a savior. The fact that He went about it by confusing their language is profound, though. He said, “the people are one and they have one language, and… now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech” (Genesis 11:6-7). What a powerful statement about the power both of the tongue (Proverbs 12:14), and of agreement of vision and purpose! The Hebrew word for “nothing they propose to do” is zāmam, translated elsewhere as devise, imagine, or plot. We do nothing without first imagining or considering it, conceiving it in our minds. In the same way, the writer of Proverbs tells us to guard our hearts (or our minds or imaginations), “for out of it spring the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23), and “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7). First comes the thought; then comes the word, and this translates into the deed or the action itself. We are created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27), and God spoke the world into being (Genesis 1:3). In the same way, our words have great power (Proverbs 18:21). When God saw that the descendants of Noah used this power to pursue their own ends and to forget Him, He dealt with it by confusing their language. He could not change their thoughts without violating their free will, so He intervened at a later stage in the process. Their words, lacking understanding, also lost the power of the unity of vision. Even with the loss of a huge percentage of his workers, Nimrod son of Cush, the son of Ham still went on to found Babylon, Assyria, and Nineveh, as well as many other cities (Genesis 10:8-12). Imagine what he could have done had they maintained the unity of language! In the same way, think of all the seemingly impossible advances in knowledge, understanding, and technology that have occurred even within our own lifetimes. All of these began as an idea, an imagination, a vision—which were subsequently communicated to others who caught the vision and could then add their own skills in pursuit of a common purpose. God Himself said of this process, “now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them” (Genesis 11:6). What a statement! What incredible power He has given to mankind, to use for good or ill.  I also find it interesting that while this initial incident of producing different tongues divided and scattered... Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Today's podcast comes from this blog post: Excitotoxins, MSG and Aspartame. Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Today's meditation is on Luke 18:1-8, the Parable of the Unjust Judge (or the parable of the persistent widow) Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Denise Sultenfess lives in Maryland with her husband on the family farm where they raise grass-fed and grain-finished beef, wool sheep, and organic laying hens and grow organic herbs and cut flowers. She has six children, all grown and on their own except her caboose kid who is 14. Twelve years ago, Denise received a diagnosis of acute Lyme disease. She battled the illness for a decade. In 2018, she eradicated the disease through a skilfully curated integrative Lyme protocol which she continues today. Denise is a writer and is a faith-based certified integrative health and wellness coach who helps women with a health crisis or challenge build new habits and overcome obstacles so they can live life from a place of wholeness. Learn more about Denise at denisesultenfess.com  Our sponsor info is trylgc.com/cnhomega, and enter the coupon code CNH20 for 20% off your order. Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Today's podcast is a meditation on 1 John 5:14-15: "And this is the confidence we have in Him: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, in whatever we ask, we know that we already possess what we asked of Him." Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Teresa Shields Parker has lost more than 250 pounds, more important she is keeping it off. Sweet Surrender: Breaking Strongholds is her sixth and most powerful book. She leads Overcomers Academy, a Christian weight loss group, that has numerous courses available to members. She also loves doing one-on-one freedom coaching. With more than 40 years of experience as a journalist and publisher, Teresa lives in Columbia, MO with her husband, Roy, where they are active in their local church. They have two grown children and have also been foster parents to 10 behaviorally and developmentally challenged young adults. Learn more at teresashieldsparker.com, get her free ebook What Is a Stronghold? here, or get her book Sweet Surrender: Breaking Strongholds here. Her podcast is called Sweet Grace for Your Journey. Our sponsor today is trylgc.com/cnhthyroid, and enter the coupon code CNH20 for 20% off your order. Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

As mentioned, Messiah: Biblical Retellings is here. Daughters of Zion: Biblical Retellings is here. Covenants: Biblical Retellings is coming soon. Introduction:  I put the story of Job in a book about covenants, even though God never makes a covenant with Job, because I believe the only way to properly interpret the events in the story is within the context of the covenants that did (and did not) exist at the time. Most scholars place the story of Job after the flood and before Abraham’s covenant with God in Genesis 12. This means that the only covenant Job had with God are those of Adam and Noah. When Adam sinned and obeyed Satan, God was left on the outside of the world He had made, looking in—like a landlord whose tenants had turned Him out. Satan was now the god (little g) of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4). While God had promised to bring the promised Seed of Eve (Genesis 3:15), He would need a people willing to more or less play by His rules in order to do so, and then the cooperation of generations of prophets to speak Him into existence. He hadn’t gotten that far yet. Job is a righteous man, and so clearly favored by God that Satan takes notice. It’s actually God’s blessings that paint a target on Job’s back. While Satan of course comes to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10), in this story he does so not for the sheer pleasure of it, but to prove his point to God, almost as if in a courtroom drama. He aims to establish that our love for God is contingent upon God’s blessings. If Satan can establish this for the most righteous man on earth at the time, it would follow that the same is true for all the rest of us.  In Job 1, God brings up Job to Satan before Satan mentions him, which seems to indicate that it was God who placed Job in Satan’s crosshairs. But God is omniscient, and Satan’s immediate rejoinder showed that Satan was already thinking about Job. I suspect God just knew what Satan was thinking and cut to the chase. Many translations of Job have it that God “allowed” Satan’s attack against Job, which would seem to make God complicit in Job’s misery. But the context of the covenants in place at the time indicates that God allowed it only in the loosest sense of the word. Job lived at a time when God had not yet established a reciprocal covenantal protection for His people. God had to allow Satan’s request, even though He hated it. Did He have the power to refuse Satan? Technically yes, but He did not have the authority to do so—because He had given that authority to man in the garden. Man, in turn, had given it to Satan. At that point, Satan became the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4) and the prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2). By nature, all of Adam’s descendants were slaves of Satan (Ephesians 2:3). So legally, Satan had the authority to do what he asked to do to Job. Had God refused, He would have violated the integrity of His word. The writer of Hebrews tells us that it is the integrity of God’s word that holds the very universe together (Hebrews 1:3). While in Job 2:3, God said to Satan, “You moved Me against him,” God only moved against Job in the sense that He withdrew the “hedge of protection” (Job 1:10) that He had placed around Job when Satan complained about it. Ecclesiastes 10:8 says, “whoso breaks a hedge, a serpent will bite him.” Without the hedge, the serpent had access to bite.  Satan’s challenge put God in a very difficult position. Satan (meaning adversary in Hebrew) is only mentioned by name 18 times in the Old Testament, 14 of which are in the book of Job. He isn’t even mentioned as Satan in Genesis (maybe because he wasn’t the adversary yet—this was the story of how he became the adversary), or in Isaiah 14, where the story of his fall appears (there he is called Lucifer, meaning “Light Bringer”—his angelic name). As mentioned in the story, I suspect God did not warn mankind about Satan and his angels because there was nothing they could have done about them at this... Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Nate Palmer is highly passionate about helping humans perform at a higher level. He also happens to be a dad, husband, and the #1 bestselling author of Passport Fitness and The Million Dollar Body Method. Nate helps business owners and entrepreneurs improve their physique, finances, and family time using fitness and nutrition as force multipliers. Nate is a coach, speaker, and writer, whose work has been popularized in media outlets such as The Huffington Post, Testosterone Nation, Ask Men, Breaking Muscle, STACK Media, and Thrive Global. For more about Nate, go to https://n8trainingsystems.com/groups or pick up a copy of his book, The Million Dollar Body Method here. Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Today we're meditating on the relationship between forgiveness and justice.  Verses:  Matthew 6:14-15 Genesis 37-50 Colossians 3:13 Psalm 37, 103:6, 59:10 2 Thess 1:6-7 Heb 10:30-31 Isaiah 30:18, 35:4, 49:25, 54:15-17 Luke 18:7-8 Prov 20:22 Romans 12:19-21 Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.