GYC 2025: Seeing the Invisible

GYC Conference 2023: But If Not

Plenary

Kelsey Unruh

Andrew Park

Allison Toktogulova

Ted N.C. Wilson

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Interview with the Wilsons

This morning we have a very special programming element that we really wanted to have before Elder Wilson and Mrs.

We have the privilege of interviewing both of them just to get to know them as human beings as they reflect on a life of ministry, asking questions about that, and also asking questions about any advice that they may have for us as young people.

We know this is a privilege and we are expecting to have a blessing.

So why don't we have a word of prayer and we want to utilize as much time as we can to ask all the questions we were able to.

Father in heaven, we thank you for the ministry of Elder Wilson and Mrs.

And as we go into our interview time, we invite the presence of Christ.

We desire for the Holy Spirit to be abiding among us.

And Father, we have a longing to have direction in our lives and you have placed those of experience in our midst that we may receive counsel and direction as we walk the Christian pathway.

So please bless our time and we pray this in Jesus name, amen.

I remember as an attendee the impact of seeing church leadership at GYC, just walking the halls.

And I think it makes a big impact for all of us here.

I wanted to know how many GYCs have you guys attended?

I think I have been at least at 3 if not 4.

Nancy, I'm not quite sure, not that many, but.

Do you remember which years you attended?

I can't remember exactly, but I know 1 specifically was in Baltimore, because that's very close to where we live.

I think I remember seeing you in Phoenix.

And I remember seeing you in Houston in 2016.

Well, you have better memories than we do.

So next question, this is a controversial question in Adventism Today.

How do you order your, how do you layer your haystack?

Nancy is the real cook, so she can at least give her view on that.

Well, I don't think it's very unusual, but we do chips, beans, lettuce, tomatoes, olives, onions, And we add a little extra thing.

I roast sunflower seeds and put nutritional yeast flakes with them and put that on top with some Italian dressing that I make.

And do you crush your chips or do you leave them whole?

Andrew is not a chip crusher, That's what we learned.

It says, if your 20-year-old self were sitting in the audience, what would you tell him or her?

If your 20-year-old self was sitting in the audience.

You know, at 20 years old you have your life before you and It's 1 of those periods of time where everything seems possible.

And the devil is also pulling you in certain directions, so you have to really make a concerted effort to focus on what God wants you to do.

And if you're 20 years old, 18, 19, 21, whatever it is, this is a time when really the Lord is helping to direct you for your entire life.

I think if you are in attendance at GYC, this is 1 of the best things you can do to make sure that the compass is set on Christ and on what He wants you to accomplish.

So your being here in Orlando at this GYC has helped you, whether you recognize it or not, to really get a bearing on what it is God wants you to do.

And slowly He adds certain things into your life to reveal to you what His plan is for you.

Don't just push ahead with everything you think you ought to do.

I had my whole life planned when I was 20.

Asheville, North Carolina, it's a beautiful area.

I was going to get my education, and whoever I married would move back to Asheville with me and I would live there the rest of my life.

I come from a very close family, but the bottom line was I always wanted to do God's will.

I just figured that would be his will, But I would like to tell all of you 20-year-olds and younger and older that you're missing out on an incredible life if you don't let God lead.

I remember we had just gotten married and Ted knew how close I was to my family.

Application, I mean, and I was writing thank yous.

But I will tell you, if the bottom line is that you know you're only happy doing God's will, He will give you the heart to do it.

Yeah, it took about 5 years, so be patient.

And then circumstances happened, and Nancy was much more willing to accept the fact, yeah, let's think about mission service.

I think it actually happened before that, but that 1 fell through.

But anyway, Another thing, I never thought I'd marry a minister, and it was actually when he was past, he pastored a year before we got married, and it took me a month or 2, and I thought, Oh, I have to be a certain way.

And I had been working and I was very adventurous.

And it dawned on me 1 day, the Lord just wanted me to love these people.

And when we left that church, I just cried and cried.

But God can change your heart, and He knows you better than you know yourself.

And I'm very adventurous, I love people, and I realized God gave, He directed our lives just the right way.

Joshua Ahn

Stephen Lee

Thomas Mayhew

Junior Vertus

Anna Wood

ECOM Sabbath School

So this morning, we are going to study the Bible a little bit together.

So GYC, it started not as this big movement of thousands of people, but it actually started as several young people coming together with a desire to get into the Word of God more and to study it as friends with the deep desire to know more of God and to know more about His Word.

And so of course we as the leadership team, this is something that we love to do not just as the leadership team of GYC but we do it as friends.

Right, yesterday I told you a little bit about some of the things that we like, and as we are sharing about those things, we also love to get into the word of God together, and we would love to invite you to do that with us this morning.

And so, just wanna make a quick note and a caveat before.

We do have some wonderful pastors up here.

I am a humble high school teacher, and I don't have a PhD in the Bible or theology or the chemical composition of manna in the book of Exodus or anything like that.

But I do believe that the Holy Spirit can still teach me.

And I believe the Holy Spirit can teach all of us.

And I believe that as we are studying together, we can see the invisible in what we are studying this morning.

And so, you've had a little bit of a preview of what we're gonna study.

You've seen it actually behind us right here.

And we are going to look specifically this morning at the story of the burning bush.

And so we're gonna be looking at Exodus chapter 3.

So I invite you to turn with me in your Bibles or flip there in your phones to Exodus chapter 3.

And as you turn there I'm going to give a little bit of a rundown of Exodus chapter 1 and 2.

I'm sure most of you already kind of have an idea of what happens but there's this guy his name is Moses but before Moses there are these people called the children of Israel and the children of Israel historically were the people of God and they are in captivity in the land of Egypt And so there's this promise that was made a long time ago that God would surely visit his people and raise up a deliverer and Moses parents know this and so does some other people and at this point in time the Pharaoh is trying to slim down the population of the Hebrews and so Moses parents in faith decide to hide Moses in the basket.

Moses has an adventure through the water and eventually lands at the doorstep of the Pharaoh's daughter who adopts him.

And eventually we see this progression of Moses becoming a leader within the land of Egypt.

And so he thinks in his mind, I'm going to now deliver my people from the land of Egypt.

He goes and he makes an action, kill somebody to protect somebody else, And that action is not, essentially it doesn't turn out the way that he wants it to turn out.

And so now he's on the run, Pharaoh's mad at him, the other people are mad at him, and he finds himself in Midian, and that's where we find ourselves in chapter 3.

So that was a quick spark notes version, a rundown of chapters 1 and 2.

I encourage you to read it for yourself if you want some more context from it as well.

But we are now gonna start reading in chapter 3, and we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna read 1 verse at a time starting in chapter 1.

The executive committee doesn't know where I'm gonna stop them, So we're just gonna read until we reach a point and I will let you guys know when.

So we'll start with Andrew over here, starting in verse 1, and we'll just read 1 verse at a time.

Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, And he led the flock to the backside of the desert and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.

And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire, out of the midst of a bush, and he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.

Then Moses said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush doesn't burn.

So when the Lord saw that, he turned aside to look.

God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses.

I was so excited that I forgot that we need to pray before we read the Bible.

I was too excited to get into the Bible, but we need to invite the Holy Spirit.

Heavenly Father God, we thank you so much for giving us this time that we can read your word.

Lord, we want you to be here in this moment.

And so, Father, as we read your word and as we read the pages here, may it not just be pages and words in a book, but Lord, may it be the living word of God that has power to change lives and does not come back to you void.

May it bear much fruit in our lives and in our hearts.

And Father, may the soil of our hearts be prepared to receive the seed of your word.

Please teach us about Moses, teach us about the burning bush, teach us about what all these things that are seemingly confusing mean.

And Father, may it not be me teaching, or us teaching, or us sharing just our own thoughts but Lord may it be you speaking through us and to us and teaching us through your Holy Spirit please be with here be with us here help us to fill your presence we praise thank you so much We pray all these things in Jesus name.

Then he said, do not draw near this place.

Take off your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.

Moreover he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.

And the Lord said, I have surely seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.

So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites.

Now therefore behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me.

And I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppressed them.

Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.

I know they don't really look excited, but trust me, we're all super excited.

And we're going to stop there and look at the first 10 verses together.

And, you know, I have a bunch of questions, but you know what, is it okay guys if I just leave it open?

Can I just like ask you guys, what do you guys see in the first 10 verses?

The first thing that jumps out to me is that this is happening on Mount Horeb, which later in the Bible we see with Elijah and also Mount Sinai.

The mount, which is Mount Horeb, which is Mount Sinai, and that mountain actually comes back a little bit later.

So I do have a point that I saw, but I can't get ahead of myself.

I'm the 1 who set the thing, so I gotta stay within 10%.

So thank you for bringing that up, Kelsey.

I guess a point that I can bring up is this great call that Moses is getting.

And I guess what this speaks for me, and I think for any young person here, is the calling that God has for your life.

It may not come after a worship service per se.

It may not even come in the midst of a Bible study.

It may come in the midst of you just doing simple, ordinary things in life.

And I can go so much further, but for now I'll just throw that in there as discussion.

I was going to say, I know that you have so many other things that you could say with that, and I just want to kind of play off of that a little bit.

You know, it's not only that he wasn't in like a very, you know, well he was in a holy place but it's not necessarily that he was in a temple.

In fact, Moses thought that he was supposed to be the deliverer and when he was in Egypt or should I say the University of Egypt and a graduate from there and in the best position that he could be in.

I mean, when you're thinking to deliver a people, I would rather take a top graduate than a guy who is tending sheep in the middle of nowhere, you know?

And so I think that's so encouraging to me too, where in this sense, Moses thinks that he's ready, but obviously he was not at that time.

And Moses comes, or God comes and visits him when he is tending sheep, when he is seemingly in a very normal, kind of unprepared position.

And we'll see a little bit more of how this plays out as we continue reading as well.

I love that, Josh, because when people look at us and in these positions, they only see the position and the title, and they say that, oh, wow, they're up there on the stage and doing all these things.

But I remember back in the day of my first GYC at Baltimore, I was just sitting in 1 of these seats and looking up.

Kaili Kimbrow

Garhett Morgan

Sabbath School Panel on Daniel 3

We're so happy that all of you are here, and we're especially happy that all of you are here together to join us for Sabbath school today.

So we're going to go ahead and we're going to start by introducing ourselves.

I'm the general vice president of GYC, and we'll just go down the line this way.

My name is Hannah Klingbeil, and I am the executive secretary.

I'm Alison Tortogullova, And I'm the treasurer.

I am Kylie Kimbrough, vice president of marketing.

Hello everybody, my name is Kelsey Unruh, and I am the vice president of logistics.

Good morning, I'm Junior Verdis, I'm vice president of evangelism.

Hey everybody, my name's Garrett Morgan, and I'm the programming guy.

Doesn't really need to be said, but he is our president.

It seems like a minute goes by so quickly, no?

I feel like it happens like that, especially at our retreats.

And something that I wanted to share before we start our study this morning is that every year as an executive committee, we have at least 1, if not 2 or more retreats where we come together and we plan together about what we're gonna do at the conference.

But it's actually not just about the schedule, about the logistics, or about the programming, about the evangelism.

All of those are important things for sure.

But we spend a large portion of our meetings in Bible study.

And actually 1 retreat we spent like what what was it guys like 10 to 15 plus hours over the span of 2 days studying maybe 1 passage and It seemed like the time was not enough.

It seemed like there's so much more that we could uncover.

It was a glimpse, I believe, of the atmosphere of heaven.

And so today, what we want to do is we want to invite you into our planning process.

We want to invite you into our EECOM retreat.

And essentially what we want to do is we want to invite you into the last Daniel 3 study that we will do for this theme, but if not, for the calendar year.

You are the ninth 1 and you will be participating in the study together with us.

Before we open the Bible, we always want to invite the Holy Spirit to be our teacher and to be our guide, so I invite you to pray with me.

Heavenly Father God, we know that we don't have understanding within ourselves.

Lord, we know that we cannot understand these passages without you.

And so Lord, I pray that you will come to this place.

Lord, that you will come here in this midst, in Oregon Convention Center, here in Portland, Oregon, and Lord, that you will teach us.

Give us your word, give us a clear mind, give us understanding, and Lord, I pray that we will be able to feel your presence here among us.

Lord, may our worship be pleasing to you.

May it put a smile on your face and Lord, may this be a glimpse of what it'd be like to spend every single day with you.

Lord, I pray that you will give us courage, but not only give us courage, give us encouragement.

Lord, help us to trust in you, even when it seems like all else is dark.

And Lord, I pray that you will help us to truly gain a blessing from what we read today.

Thank you, and we pray all these things in Jesus' name.

So, the passage that we are going to be studying today is a passage that I'm sure by now you are all familiar with, and it is in Daniel chapter 3.

So I'd invite you all, including our ecom, to turn to Daniel chapter 3 with us, and we're going to take a look at the theme that we have been talking about, but if not, as you do that, I would like to do a quick summary, a little context for you of Daniel chapter 2.

So at the beginning of Daniel chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar has a dream.

The wise men ask, okay, tell us your dream.

And so the wise men are like, okay, well you should try harder to remember because there's no way we're gonna be able to interpret it unless you tell us.

And Nebuchadnezzar's like, I can't do that.

And in fact, because you cannot do anything about it, I'm very upset.

Kind of unreasonable, but by God's grace, God is able to interpret the dream via Daniel, and the dream is about a statue.

And so we see the statue, we see all the different medals that are symbolizing the prophetic history, and Nebuchadnezzar understands at the end of the chapter and praises God that he is a revealer of secrets.

And So when we get to Daniel chapter 3, this has just taken place in the chapter before, and we get to Daniel chapter 3 verse 1.

The way that I want to go throughout this study this morning is that I want to split it up into 3 major sections.

So I know the specific theme text is Daniel chapter 3 verse 18, but the 3 sections that we want to look at today is the beginning, which is the challenge, the second section I have labeled it as the stand, and the third section I've labeled it as the deliverance.

And so we're going to be looking at those 3 sections, breaking up Daniel chapter 3 into those 3 sections this morning.

So turn with me to Daniel chapter 3, verse 1.

We're going to start the first section, again labeled the challenge, and we're going to go from verse 1 all the way to verse 7.

So Andrew if I could ask you to read the first verse and then we'll just go 1 verse at a time all the way down.

Daniel 3.1 Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold whose height was 3 score cubits and the breadth thereof 6 cubits and he set it up in the plain of Dura on the province in the province of Babylon and King Nebuchadnezzar send word to get to gather together the satraps the administrators the governors the counselors the treasurers the judges the magistrates and all the officials of the provinces to come to the dedication of the image which King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

So the satraps, the administrators, the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the judges, the magistrates, and all the officials of the province gathered together for the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

And they stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

Then a herald cried aloud, To you it is commanded, O people, nations, and languages, That At that time you hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbutt, psalteries, dulcimer, and all kinds of music, you fall down and worship the golden image Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.

And whoso falleth not down in worship shall at the same hour be cast into the mist of the burning, fiery furnace.

All right, get ready for musical instruments.

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Presenter

Kelsey Unruh

3 Teachings

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Interview with the Wilsons

48m

ECOM Sabbath School

58m

Sabbath School Panel on Daniel 3

58m

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Sabbath School Panel on Daniel 3

58m

Interview with the Wilsons

48m

ECOM Sabbath School

58m

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