Your Body Is a Temple Episode 9 :The Restoration

In Episode 9 of The Temple Series, Derek and Sarah stop adding practices and start receiving the harvest. This is the testimony episode. The photograph being taken in your body right now — even if you cannot see it developing yet. This episode covers: • The photograph that was never taken: Derek's sister's rehearsal dinner, the bread basket, and the toast he missed — and what the locust actually steals from diabetics • Joel 2:25: "I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten" — what restore actually means • Nehemiah's method: testimony before strategy, witness before blueprint — why Episode Nine comes before Episode Ten • Ezra 3:12-13: the weeping and the shouting were indistinguishable — and why restoration feels like both at once • Jerry's complete arc: A1C 8.4% → 5.9%. Fasting glucose 187 → 94. Eleven years of managing → remission. His doctor called him personally. And then cried. • Margaret's testimony: "He stopped sighing." Her own blood pressure dropped 14 points in six weeks. Frank walked 340 miles. • Sarah's arc: A1C 6.8% → 5.9%. Sat in the waiting room without fear for the first time in six years. • Research Citation 1 — DiRECT Trial, Lancet 2018: 46% Type 2 remission at 12 months. The #1 differentiator: belief that change was possible. • Research Citation 2 — Cell Metabolism 2019: beta cells don't die in Type 2 diabetes — they enter protective shutdown. The right conditions wake them up. • Research Citation 3 — Nature Reviews Endocrinology 2020: sustained glucose normalization reverses epigenetic markers in 12-24 weeks. • Research Citation 4 — Nature Neuroscience 2021: new prefrontal cortex pathways form with sustained behavior change. You are not getting more disciplined. You are getting new wiring. • The Five Stones of Restoration: Honest Assessment, Joel 2:25 Declaration, The Rebuilding Team, The Sanballat Response, The Completion Celebration • The Tower of the Ovens: the practice nobody claps for — and why it matters • Restoration herbs: berberine (AMPK activation, 20% fasting glucose reduction), turmeric/curcumin (100% pre-diabetes prevention in 2013 Diabetes Care study), cinnamon • The 52-Day Nehemiah Tracker: the exact number of days it took to rebuild Jerusalem's wall — and your structure for holding everything Episodes 1-9 built The locust gave back the years. The print is developing. You just have not held it yet.

Transcript

The Photograph You Missed

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Udavetwe tak. Real Tal Real Helly Ho.

SPEAKER_02 0:16

There is a photograph that was never taken. Someone listening right now is thinking of a specific moment, a family gathering, a vacation, a dinner table with people they love, their daughter's birthday, their son's graduation, their sister's rehearsal dinner. They were there physically, present in the chair, present in the room, but they were not present, because they were calculating the buffet, running the carb math in the back of their mind while someone they love made a toast, negotiating with themselves about whether the bread basket was worth it. Their body was at the table, their mind was in the disease. That was me, my sister's rehearsal dinner three years ago. I sat at that table and I did the math. While someone gave a toast I will never remember, I stared at the bread basket and calculated whether I was allowed, and the moment passed, the laughter happened, the toast was given, the wine was raised, and I was somewhere else entirely, in a private war with a dinner roll that had already won. The locusts took that night, yeah they did. I have been thinking about that photograph, the one that was never taken because the person in it was not fully there for three years. And today, episode nine of the temple series, I want to tell you about the photograph that is being taken right now, in your body, in your bloodstream, in your beta cells, in your marriage, in your laugh, even if you cannot see it developing yet. Welcome to episode nine of the Temple series, the restoration. Nine episodes in, two months of building. Today we are not talking about more practices, today we talk about what all of those practices have been building toward, the restoration itself. Before we begin, this podcast is for educational and spiritual encouragement only. The restoration protocols and clinical frameworks we discussed today are adjuncts to your diabetes care, not replacements for your medication or medical supervision. Your temple deserves expert care at every level.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Joel 225. Notice what that verse does not say. It does not say, I will help you cope with what the locust took. It does not say, I will give you peace about your losses. It says restore. Restore means it comes back. The years, the moments, the numbers, the presents, the photographs that were never taken. They start being taken again. That is why we are here today.

What Restoration Really Means

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Nine episodes. You have cleansed the soil of your life, you have learned the temple plate, you have reclaimed Sabbath rest, you have built community walls with Frank, you have sat in the tool shed with God, you have laid your fear on the altar, you have held the lampstand through the dark week, and today the wall is almost up. Today we look at what the building has been producing.

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Nehemiah 217, 18. Nehemiah arrives in Jerusalem after four months of prayer and fasting. He has surveyed the ruins at night, riding a donkey through the collapsed gates and the burned walls, seeing the full extent of the damage before he speaks a word of the vision. And when he finally calls the people together, he does not open with a plan. He does not open with a strategy or a resource allocation or a construction timeline. He opens with three things the name of the ruin, the hand of God that had been upon him, and the invitation. He says, Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem so that we will no longer be a disgrace. And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me.

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The evidence comes first, testimony before strategy, witness before blueprint, because people will build toward what they have already seen God do more than they will build toward what they hope he might do. Nehemiah did not ask the people to believe in the vision, he asked them to believe in the testimony, and that is why episode nine comes before episode 10.

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The dedication comes last, the testimony comes first.

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You cannot dedicate a wall that has not been tested, and you cannot receive a dedication that has not been earned by someone staying at the altar during the dark week. Today we bring the testimony, not to the walls, to the people who might need to start building theirs.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Ezra 312, 13. When the foundation of the second temple was laid, the older priests who had seen the first temple wept, and the younger people who had never seen the first temple shouted for joy. And Ezra says, No one could distinguish the sound of the shout of joy from the sound of the weeping of the people. The celebration and the grief were the same sound.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

That is restoration, not the absence of grief. The grief and the joy arriving in the same moment in the same body at the same altar, indistinguishable from each other. That is what Jerry felt when his doctor said the word remission. That is what Sarah felt in her last doctor's appointment. That is what the photograph that is being taken right now will look like when you finally hold it in your hands.

Jerry’s Nine Stones To Remission

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Let me tell you about Jerry, all of it, from the beginning. Jerry is 68 years old, retired contractor, 43 years married to Margaret, type 2 diabetic. He started this series with an A1C of 8.4% and a fasting glucose of 187. He had been diabetic for 11 years. He had been managing, white knuckling, monitoring, negotiating for 11 years without a single sustained win. He had tried diets, he had tried exercise programs, he had tried supplements and faith declarations and grocery store overhauls, and every time, after a few weeks of early momentum, the wall fell back down. He had become a man who no longer trusted his own capacity for change. He showed up to episode one not because he believed it would work, but because his doctor told him his kidneys were beginning to show early signs of nephropathy, and a man who spent 43 years fixing things for other people was not ready to become something that could not be fixed.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

That was Jerry at episode one.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

That was Jerry at episode one, standing at the ruins, deciding, for what felt like the hundredth time, whether it was worth trying to rebuild. Episode 2, the cortisol altar. Jerry learned that his stress response was making glucose his body never ate. He added the morning breathing practice, three minutes, five days a week, a 1c, 7.9%, fasting glucose 162, first stone. Episode 3, the eating window. Jerry stopped eating after 7 p.m. No dramatic dietary overhaul. Just a gate closing at the right time. A 1C, 7.6%, fasting glucose 148, second stone. Episode 4, the Sabbath stone. Jerry turned off his screens on Friday evenings. He sat on his porch. He heard crickets for the first time in years. Margaret sat with him. They did not talk much. They just were. His fasting glucose the next morning, 112, lowest in six years. Third stone. Episode 5, The Frank Principle. Jerry met Frank, not a nutritionist, not a trainer, a deacon at his church who had lost 30 pounds and was willing to walk. They started at 2 miles. They built to 5. Frank brought accountability. Frank also brought bacterial diversity. They ate together, laughed together, argued about whether oatbread counts as covenant carbs. By the end of episode 5, a 1c7.2%, fasting glucose 131, fourth stone. Episode 6, The Holy of Holies. Jerry built his prayer closet in his tool shed, between the fishing gear and the socket wrenches, among the proof that he was a man who fixed things. He gave God 20 minutes before the world started demanding. He learned the John 6.35 question, what am I really hungry for? His stress eating stopped almost completely. A 1C, 6.8%. Fasting glucose 119, fifth stone. Episode 7, the Altar of Surrender. Jerry named his specific fear that he would end up on dialysis like his brother. He wrote it on a piece of paper. He read it aloud in the toolshed. He laid it on his workbench and said, Lord, this belongs to you, not me. You built this temple. You know every pipe and wire. I trust the builder. Fasting glucose the next morning, 104. Down from 127 the day before. Sixth stone. Episode 8. The lampstand. Jerry's A1C crept from 6.4 to 6.8 after his grandson got sick. He texted, Maybe I'm just one of those people who cannot get better. He held. Brussels sprouts voluntarily. Three weeks. The lamp was low. The lampstand never moved. Seventh stone. Eighth stone. And this week, this week, Jerry's doctor called him personally, not a nurse, the doctor, and his A1C was 5.9%, fasting glucose 94, and his doctor used the word that 11 years of managing had never produced. Remission. Jerry's response, are you sure you ran the right sample? You sure that's me? He could not receive it immediately. 11 years of walls falling had trained him to distrust the win. But his doctor said, That is you, that is your number, and Jerry cried. And then his doctor cried. Jerry made his endocrinologist cry in a phone call about an A1C, and that is the testimony.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

What did Margaret say?

SPEAKER_02 8:45

Margaret said, he stopped sighing. Not that his A1C improved, not that his glucose stabilized, he stopped sighing. She said his laugh changed, not lighter, deeper, like it was coming from somewhere further down, from a place that had been closed for a long time and was finally open again. And Margaret has been walking with Jerry three times a week. She does not have diabetes, she just loves a man who is no longer afraid of becoming his brother. And in six weeks, Margaret's own blood pressure came down 14 points. The restoration was not just for Jerry, it was contagious. And Frank has walked 340 miles with Jerry since episode 5. Every single one of those miles lives inside that 5.9%.

Sarah’s Win Is Fear Leaving

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Sarah, tell us.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

I want to read something. Week one of the series, I wrote in my journal, I am a temple, not a patient. I wrote it because Derek told me to. I wrote it before I believed it. I wrote it on my bathroom mirror in dry erase marker so I would see it every morning before I saw my glucose number. And for the first six weeks, every time I saw it, I thought, that is a nice sentence. I hope it becomes true. When we started, my A1C was 6.8%. Diabetic range. I woke up every morning and checked my glucose before I said good morning to God. I called myself the diabetic one. I did the carb math at my sister's table. I was afraid at every meal, every appointment, every morning reading. I did not know how afraid I was because I had been afraid for so long it felt like air. It felt like just the way things are. After episode two, the cortisol practices, my A1C came down to six point five percent. After episode four, the Sabbath Stone, the sleep, it went to six point three percent. After episode six, the Holy of Holies, the John 635 question, the 9 p.m. prayer journal, it went to six point one percent. After episode seven, the altar, the named fear, the transfer of custody, it went to six point zero percent. And this week, five point nine percent. Normal range is five point seven percent and below. I am one decimal point away from the border. But Derek, the number is not the testimony, the number is the evidence. The testimony is this I had a doctor's appointment last week, and I sat in the waiting room and I was not afraid. For the first time in six years of diabetes appointments, I sat in that waiting room and I was not afraid. I did not know what the number was going to be. I just knew that whatever it said, I was a temple, not a patient. And the temple was being tended by a priest who walks among the lampstands. And that was enough.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

Ezra 312, 13. No one could distinguish the weeping from the shouting. Sarah, I want to tell you something. The photograph that was never taken at your sister's table three years ago, it is being taken right now. Your body is holding still long enough to be in it. You just have not held the print yet.

The Science Behind Restoration

SPEAKER_02 11:40

I want to give you the biology of what happened to Jerry and Sarah, not to reduce it, to expand it, because the science of restoration is as stunning as the theology, and when you understand the mechanism, the miracle does not shrink, it deepens. The direct trial, published in The Lancet in 2018, is the most consequential study in type 2 diabetes care in 20 years, with intensive lifestyle intervention, no medication changes, no surgery, no pharmaceutical intervention. 46% of type 2 diabetic participants achieved clinical remission at 12 months. The extended 2019 follow-up showed 36% maintained that remission at 24 months, and the number one differentiating factor between those who achieved remission and those who did not was not age, not starting A1C, not duration of disease. It was belief that change was possible. Belief came first, then the biology changed to match. That is the temple series in one sentence.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

46% achieved remission, and belief was the variable that separated them from the other 54%.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

Not discipline, not perfect dietary compliance, not the best supplement protocol, belief, the conviction, earned across nine episodes of small faithful daily acts, that this body can change, that the temple is rebuildable, that the locust does not get the final word. A landmark 2019 study published in cell metabolism changed the fundamental understanding of type 2 diabetes pathophysiology. For decades, the standard teaching was that type 2 diabetics lose beta cells, the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, irreversibly, progressively, permanently. The cell metabolism study showed something different. In type 2 diabetes, beta cells do not die, they enter protective shutdown. Years of compensating for insulin resistance exhaust them and they go quiet to protect themselves, but they are not gone. The right conditions, reduced glucose load, reduced inflammation, reduced cortisol, increased rest, wake them up. They were not dead, they were sleeping. The lampstand was not extinguished, it was waiting to be refilled.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Jerry's beta cells have been sleeping for 11 years, and he spent nine episodes creating the conditions to wake them up.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

Every practice in this series was a condition. The cortisol management reduced the stress signal that kept the beta cells in protective mode. The eating window reduced the glucose load that had exhausted them. The Sabbath rest gave them the repair time they had been denied for years. The community walls reduced the isolation that chronically elevated cortisol. The Holy of Holies created the presence that metabolically regulated the entire system. Every practice was the angel saying, get up and eat, and the beta cells slowly were getting up. Nature Review's Endocrinology, 2020, demonstrated something that was once considered impossible. Sustained glucose normalization reverses epigenetic markers within 12 to 24 weeks. Epigenetics, the expression of your genes, not the genes themselves, can be rewritten by sustained behavioral change. The genes that were being expressed as insulin resistance, as chronic inflammation, as cortisol dysregulation, they begin to express differently. The body's software begins to rewrite itself. Your DNA is not your destiny, your obedience is writing a new story on top of the old code. Nature Neuroscience 2021 confirmed that new prefrontal cortex pathways form with sustained behavior change. The neural pathways associated with the old habits, the late-night snacking, the morning news, the fear-driven glucose checking, weaken from disuse, the new pathways, the prayer journal, the temple plate, the tool shed 20 minutes, strengthen with repetition. You are not getting more disciplined. You are getting new wiring. The brain that started this series and the brain that finishes it are structurally different from each other, not metaphorically, neurologically.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

9 episodes of practice. 9 episodes of wiring.

Build The Unsexy Wall Sections

SPEAKER_02 15:25

And the harvest is 5.9%. Nehemiah chapter 3 is one of the strangest chapters in the Bible to read. It is a construction record. 41 verses of who built which section of which wall, next to which gate, next to which house, priests and rulers and merchants and goldsmiths and perfumers, all building. One verse stops me every time. Verse 12. Shalom son of Halohesh, ruler of a half district of Jerusalem, repaired the next section with the help of his daughters. His daughters rebuilt the wall. In verse 27, the Tekoits repaired another section, even though their nobles would not put their shoulders to the work. They built in spite of opposition. They built in spite of absent leadership. They built because the wall needed to go up.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

And somewhere in that chapter is a verse that I love for completely different reasons. Verse 11. Malkijah, son of Harim, and Hashab, son of Pahat Moab, repaired another section and the Tower of the Ovens. The Tower of the Ovens. Someone in the restoration project was specifically responsible for the Tower of the Ovens.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

I do not know what that means in 500 BC, but I respect it deeply. Every restoration project has a tower of the ovens. The section that looks undignified, the practice that does not make a good social media post, the habit nobody claps for, the 12-minute post-meal walk you take alone in a parking lot. That section matters. Build it anyway. Stone 1, the honest assessment. Nehemiah did not start with a motivational speech. He started by riding through the ruins at night, alone, quietly, without announcement, and seeing the full extent of the damage before he spoke a word about the vision. The honest assessment is not pessimism. It is the courage to name what the locust actually ate, so you know exactly what you are asking God to restore. Write it down, the specific thing, the dinner you were not present for, the year you spent afraid, the number that has not moved in three years. Name the ruin. That is how restoration begins. Stone 2, the Joel 2.25 Declaration. After the honest assessment comes the prophetic declaration, not positive thinking, not visualization, a covenant declaration of what God has promised. Joel 2.25 is spoken aloud specifically over the named ruin. I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten. Not, I hope to recover some of what was lost. Not, I will try to compensate for the damage. Restore. The years. Speak it over the specific ruin you named. This is the theological act of pointing God's own promise back at your specific loss. Stone 3. The rebuilding team. Nehemiah did not rebuild the wall alone, he assigned sections, he identified who would build closest to their own house, because people build with greater care and greater urgency when what they are building protects the people they love. Your rebuilding team is the people who know your number, not everyone, the Frank, the Ruth, the person who will walk 340 miles beside you without being paid to do it. The rebuilding team does not need to be large, it needs to be present, consistent, willing to eat Brussels sprouts with you on the hard days. Stone 4, the Sanbalat response, Nehemiah 4.1.3. Sanbalat heard that they were rebuilding the wall and he was furious. He mocked them. What are these feeble Jews doing? He said. If even a fox climbs up on it, he will break down their stone wall. Sanbalat is the voice that says, You have tried this before, you know how this ends. You are too old, too damaged, too far gone. And Sanbalat sometimes wears familiar faces. The family member who brings the dessert plate to you personally at every church event. The friend who says you have been really good lately, which contains within it the implication that the good will not last. Name your Sanbala, not to retaliate, to prepare. Because if you have not identified who or what is coming for your wall, you will be surprised when it arrives, and surprise is the mechanism Sanbalat relies on. Stone 5, the completion celebration, Nehemiah 12, 27. When the wall was completed, they brought the Levites from all their towns to Jerusalem to celebrate the dedication with songs of thanksgiving and with cymbals, lyres, and harps. They divided into two choirs and walked in opposite directions on top of the completed wall, singing and celebrating as they walked the full circumference of what had been built. The celebration was not an afterthought, it was an act of consecration. The wall was not just complete, it was dedicated, claimed, marked as belonging to God. When you receive your restoration number, your 5.9% comma, your doctor's phone call, your moment of standing in the waiting room without fear, do not minimize it. Do not immediately move to the next goal. Stand on the wall, walk the circumference, sing, weep, shout. Let the celebration and the grief be the same indistinguishable sound. The locust gave back the years. Name the moment, mark it, dedicate

Three Tools For Glucose Support

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it.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Berberine, the most clinically validated botanical in diabetes care. A 2008 meta-analysis in metabolism confirmed that berberine activates AMPK, the same cellular pathway activated by metformin, reducing fasting glucose by an average of 20%, and A1C by 0.9% in type 2 diabetics. It is not a replacement for medication. It is a garden tool for the restoration season. As your numbers improve, berberine helps sustain the cellular sensitivity your practices have been building.

SPEAKER_02 20:39

Turmeric, curcumin at 500 to 1000 milligrams daily with black pepper for absorption, the anti-inflammatory compound that clears the path for restored insulin signaling. A 2013 study in diabetes care found that curcumin supplementation over nine months prevented pre-diabetics from progressing to type 2 at a 100% rate compared to 16.4% progression in the placebo group. 100%. The inflammatory clearing that curcum provides is the equivalent of sweeping the temple quartz before the restoration, removing the debris so the glory has room to fill the space.

SPEAKER_00 21:14

And cinnamon, always cinnamon, the faithful daily practice from episode 1, still working in episode 9. 3 grams of cassia cinnamon is not a supplemental afterthought in the restoration season. It is the continuity thread. The small, unremarkable daily act that tells your cells, we have not stopped. The temple plate is still being honored. The priest is still coming every morning and every evening.

The 52 Day Rebuild Plan

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Nehemiah. On the 25th of Allul, in 52 days. Not 52 months, not 52 years. 52 days of disciplined, daily, faithful building. And the wall was up.

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Here is the structure. Days 1 through 7, the honest assessment. You are riding through the ruins in the dark like Nehemiah. You are naming what the locust actually ate. You are writing down the specific moment, the specific fear, the specific number. You are not minimizing it. You are not spiritualizing it. You are looking at it clearly, so you know exactly what you are asking God to restore. Days 8 through 14, foundation stones. The four essential practices from episodes 1 through 4, soil cleansing, the temple plate, the eating window, the Sabbath rest. These are not new. You have been building them. This week you recommit to the foundation, you assess which stone has shifted, you reset it. Days 15 through 35, the wall sections. Each practice from episodes 5 through 8 is assigned its section of the wall. Community walls, the Holy of Holies, the altar of surrender, the lampstand tending, you are not starting over, you are building on what is already there. Days 36 through 42, the sambalat season, you identify your opposition, you name your sambala, the voice, the person, the habit, the fear that is most likely to come for your wall during the final push, and you prepare your response, not with anger, with strategy, specific, named, rehearsed. Days 43 through 52, the completion sprint, the final 10 days, the wall goes up, Jerry's sprint looked like Brussels sprouts, Sarah's sprint looked like sitting in the waiting room without fear. Derek's sprint looked like 10 minutes of walking instead of Netflix. Whatever your sprint looks like, it is the daily decision to lay the last stone, not the first stone, the last one, because the last stone is the hardest stone. The one laid when the excitement of starting has long faded and the celebration of finishing has not yet arrived. That stone, that is the one that closes

The Years The Locust Ate

SPEAKER_02 23:49

the wall.

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Download the 52-day Nehemiah tracker at bootdiabetics.com slash restore. Put your name on it, put your starting number on it, and in 52 days, come back and tell us what the wall looks like.

SPEAKER_02 24:02

Joel 225 is a verse about locusts, which means it is a verse about loss, specific, named devastating loss, the kind that strips a field bare and leaves the soil exposed and the community starving. And the restoration God promises is not generic, it is proportional. The years, not a few years, not most years, the years, the specific number of years the locust ate.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

The locust did not just eat food. For diabetics, the locust ate the dinner tables, the vacations, the morning routines that started with fear instead of gratitude, the weddings where they were in the room but not present. The years of math instead of joy. The years of negotiation instead of participation. Those are the years God is promising to restore.

SPEAKER_02 24:42

And the mechanism of that restoration is not supernatural intervention that bypasses human biology. It is supernatural intervention expressed through human biology. God restores the years by waking up beta cells, by reversing epigenetic markers, by rewiring neural pathways, by reducing cortisol through Sabbath, by activating insulin sensitivity through community, by calming the fear response through presence in the Holy of Holies. The restoration is biological because the body is the temple, and the temple is where God does his most intimate work.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

The locusts didn't just eat your years. They made you the kind of person who can receive restoration and know exactly what it cost.

SPEAKER_02 25:20

That is the testimony. That is the photograph being taken right now. You are not a ruin waiting to be mourned. You are a restoration already in progress, and the print is

A Prayer For Waking Beta Cells

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developing. Heavenly Father, we come to you with the ruins named and the testimony spoken and the practices built and the wool almost up. And we ask for the word you gave Jerry's doctor. We ask for the number that makes the endocrinologist cry. We ask for the morning in the waiting room without fear. We ask for the dinner table where we are present, actually present, while the toast is given. Restore the beta cells that have been sleeping, they have been waiting for the right conditions. You have been building those conditions for nine episodes, wake them, let them know it is safe to produce again. Restore the epigenetic expression that has been distorted by years of chronic glucose elevation, rewrite the code, not because we deserve it, because you promised it, the years, all of them. Restore the neural pathways that have been wired for fear, build the new ones, the ones that reach for the prayer journal instead of the crackers, the ones that choose the walk instead of the screen, the ones that sit in the waiting room and think, I am a temple, not a patient. For Sarah, who stopped being afraid and did not notice until the moment she was sitting in the waiting room and realized the fear was gone, meet them in that moment and let them hear, the locusts gave it back. For Jerry, who built a prayer closet in a tool shed and walked 340 miles and ate Brussels sprouts voluntarily and held the lampstand through the dark week and is sitting somewhere right now with an A1C of 5.9% and a laugh that comes from somewhere further down. Let him know, this is the year, this is the photograph, you are in it, fully. For Derek, who still skips the post-meal walk sometimes, who still does the math at the breadbasket sometimes, who is still one decimal point away from the sisters rehearsal dinner he actually wanted to be present for, meet him there too. For everyone who started this series with a ruin and is finishing it with a wall, not perfect, not complete, but standing, receive the dedication. The fire is about to fall. In Jesus' name, the name above every A1C, every fasting glucose, every year the locust ate. Amen.

Next Week And Your Next Step

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Next week, episode 10, the dedication, fire falls, glory fills, the wool is up, and the wool gets dedicated.

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You are not a ruin waiting to be mourned, you are a restoration already in progress.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

Come, let us rebuild. About that photograph that was never taken. The rehearsal dinner, the breadbasket, the toast I missed, there is a new one being developed right now. You just have not held the print yet, but it is you, smiling, unafraid, at the table, present, with crumbs on your plate and glory in your veins. The 52-day Nehemiah tracker is waiting at bootdiabetics.com slash restore. Five stones, 52 days, one wall. Download it now, put your name on it. Day one starts tomorrow. And the first 300 who download this week receive the restoration journal, a 52-day guided companion with daily scripture, honest assessment prompts, sandballot identification exercises, and a completion celebration page designed to be signed, dated, and framed.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

Stay strong, stay informed, you got this light. Where would you ever step doing it right? Boo diabetics, point.