It won’t take you long as you wander around our grounds and buildings to encounter the fact that Loma Linda University Health is a place built on stories. These are stories about common people with uncommon dreams.
They were ordinary people doing seemingly impossible things. Men and women from diverse backgrounds, with distinctive skill sets, united together by an audacious dream -- “To continue the teaching and healing ministry of Jesus... to make man whole.”
Time and again, the “experts” told them it could never be done. Yet it was. How? Because they believed their dream was God’s dream for them. Our forbearers did what they could do and took what little they had and asked the Dream Giver to supply the impossible.
Nehemiah believed the promises of God that Israel would return to their homeland. He believed and dreamed the audacious dream of rebuilding the Temple. But before he laid a plan or made a brick, Nehemiah prayed!
Just what does it mean to pray? Ellen White, the one to whom God gave the dream to establish Loma Linda, defines it like this:
“Prayer is the opening of the heart to God as to a friend. Not that it is necessary in order to make known to God what we are, but in order to enable us to receive Him. Prayer does not bring God down to us, but brings us up to Him. (Steps to Christ, p. 64)
Why do we pray? We pray because of who God is. Because of His faithfulness and love, we can dream audacious dreams -- dreams that are far beyond our resources -- and wait for God to show up and keep His word.
Our prayers can “bring us up” to Him. There is nothing we can’t do or achieve if we collectively follow God’s dream and honor Him by our faith and our lives.
Nehemiah said it this way:
“We are your servants, the people you rescued by your great power and might. O Lord, please hear my prayer! Listen to the prayers of those of us who delight in honoring you.” (Nehemiah 1:10 to 11, NLT)
Starting in April, join us as Loma Linda University Health unites in our prayers and fasting for focus and dreaming God-sized, God-given dreams. It’s only natural. It’s in our Loma Linda DNA.
Together as One Loma Linda we will prayerfully see the next chapter of the story develop in and around us, for we are the people of His stories.