GYC 2015: Called. Chosen. Faithful.

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Mini-skirts, Mothers, & Muslims: On Being Called, Chosen & Faithful-Even to the Ends of the Earth

Homer Trecartin

1. Risk Takers

2. Even THEM?

3. Miniskirts, Mothers, & Muslims

4. Approaching Footsteps

5. Open Your Eyes

6. Small Beginnings

This message was presented at the GYC 2015 conference called Chosen Faithful in Louisville, Kentucky.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

Dear Lord, I want to thank you again for your promise to pour out your Holy Spirit on each of us and I pray that on each seminar, everybody that's going to the different seminars, the speakers, the leaders of GYC that have been organizing all this fantastic event.

Help the atmosphere that surrounds this place to change not only our lives, but the lives of the people around this city who interact with us in different ways.

We pray that you'll be here with us now this afternoon, in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, come on in, those of you that are coming.

I told you that I was drawing the title and a few of the illustrations from a couple of books.

Familiar to Foreign by Sarah Lanier, you're welcome afterward to come up and look at these.

And Miniskirts, Mothers and Muslims by Christine Maluhi.

I think I checked recently, maybe in the last couple of months anyway, and I could still find some used copies on Amazon.com.

But wonderful books on how to deal with the culture of the Middle East and North Africa especially, but really applying to many of our intercultural relationships.

We have a gentleman here who is from Ethiopia, where there are a lot of Christians and a lot of Muslims, and he was just mentioning to me that the culture is really that.

It's the culture of the area, not the culture of Muslims specifically.

The Christians and the Muslims will do many of the same things.

He was saying how he almost starved when he came here to America too, for the same reason.

He politely refused everything that was offered to him and then they didn't offer it again.

So yes, it's cultural whether you're Christian or Muslim to do many of the same things.

All right, you can come up afterward and look at the books if you'd like.

If you wanted to ask your roommate, and remember we're talking about direct and indirect conversation and the purpose of words.

If you wanted to ask your roommate if your music bothered them, you wouldn't go to your roommate and say, does my music bother you?

Because they will always say, no, no, it's fine.

If you have a Middle Easterner move in next door to you, and you decide that you want to hose down your driveway.

So you ask him if you could park your car there for a few minutes.

He's going to say yes, even if he knows that just around the corner, he's got a group of 5 cars coming to park in his driveway and he doesn't know where he's going to put them, but he can't bear to say no to you.

You know, we're really interested in the truth.

How do you get the truth from a Middle Eastern friend or neighbor?

How do you not be perceived as offensive when you're talking to them?

And again, I want to emphasize, first and foremost, pray a lot.

We need God's guidance as we go into these situations.

But back to the illustration about the post office.

If you're in Turkey and you want directions to the post office, how do you get directions if you know that even if they don't know where it is, they're going to give you directions to some place?

Well, you could ask a man on the sidewalk next to you to go ask that man on the corner how to get to the post office.

Okay, this man next to you, If he knows where the post office is, he's going to say to you, oh, I know where it is and he'll tell you.

If he doesn't know, he's not embarrassed because you didn't ask him where it was.

You asked him to ask that man where it was.

So he'll go ask that man where it is and if that man knows, he'll tell him.

If he doesn't know, he's not embarrassed to say to his fellow countrymen, I'm sorry, I don't know where it is.

He's not telling you he doesn't know, he's telling his fellow countrymen.

Well you could ask them what kind of music do you like to listen to instead of a yes or no question.

Ask them what kind of music do you like to listen to.

Or better yet, ask 1 of your friends to ask them if your music is bothering them.

Your friend won't be embarrassed, and they won't be embarrassed to tell your friend, and then your friend can come back and tell you, yeah, you know, they really don't like that kind of music that you're playing.

As for parking in your neighbor's driveway, what you could do is go over and knock on his door.

He would, of course, invite you in for tea.

And after you've talked for a little while about weather and politics and family, then you could casually ask him what he has planned for the rest of the day.

Of course, by then you could have moved your car 3 times and washed your own driveway without having to bother him at all, but then think of the wonderful interaction you would have missed.

So we need to be careful about direct questions in dealing many times.

It might seem strange to us, but it's their way of trying not to offend somebody.

They don't want to hurt a neighbor or a friend.

In most of our Western societies, we've been taught from babyhood to be individuals.

But your new neighbor will probably be from a group culture.

I may not take time to go through this illustration, But let me just say that if we have a group of people, and this is a real problem at GC session time.

It can be a problem in any big gatherings.

If we have a group of people from many different cultures, And we ask everybody to vote individually what they think.

If you go to a family and you say, well, let's see, what do you think?

They just kind of listen and talk and watch each other.

And once they kind of know how the whole family feels, then they're okay to have the oldest 1 or the father or somebody make a statement for the whole family.

That's why we often see whole families come into the church at once.

No 1 of them will make a decision until the whole group is ready to make the decision.

We, let's see, you know, I'm just seeing what I can skip on through here a little bit.

Let's assume that in your office, a new immigrant from Syria, maybe they're highly educated, Many of the Syrians are highly educated and then they're coming and they're doing dish washing jobs and other things.

But let's assume that 1 of them comes into your office and they're working in the same lab that you're working in or whatever it happens to be.

And your team has been together for several years.

So you all know what each other likes to eat, you know what you like to listen to for music, and maybe as a group you've gotten comfortable with having music playing while you're working.

If you ask your new Syrian co-worker, do you like our music?

The co-worker is not going to be comfortable answering that.

He's going to look around and see, well, okay, you all seem to like it.

He's more interested in what the whole group wants than what he as an individual wants.

They're willing to sacrifice their own feelings and desires to make sure that the group is happy.

That's not a bad trait, but as with any human trait, Satan comes in and we can have problems with any of the cultures or characteristics.

General Conference session, how many of you were there?

At General Conference, it was a very interesting time, a very blessed time in many ways.

I spent most of my time out in the nominating committee room and then would rush into the platform and then rush back out again.

But you know, standing there on the platform, waiting for them to finish a particular discussion, Les Pollard and I often got to see some very interesting dynamics that nobody out in the audience would have noticed.

1 of the ones that we noticed several times as we came out were discussions on whether or not to use secret ballots.

It was interesting from our perspective because it was almost totally divided based on what culture people came from.

Series

Mini-skirts, Mothers, & Muslims: On Being Called, Chosen & Faithful-Even to the Ends of the Earth

4. Approaching Footsteps

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Revelation 10 and Daniel's Little Book

Revelation 10 and Daniel’s Little Book, Part 6

44m

GYC 2012 Seminar: Power to Change the World - Jesus, Arabic, and Kale

Gospel Shoes: One Size Fits Some?

56m

So…What Would it Take?

4. To Put Prophets Before Profits?

1h 6m

Annie Morgan, Kevin Sears, & Wes Peppers: Unashamed in Your Neighborhood

Four Ways to Awaken Spiritual Interest

1h

Personal Evangelism 1

Small Group Evangelism: A Longing for the Real Christian Life- Part 2

1h 18m

We Are Still His Witnesses

56m

Health

Depression and Anxiety - Blessings in Disguise

1h 34m

Ron du Preez: The 'Day' that Changed the World

From Telegraph to Tell-A-Vision: Sharing a Sanctuary with Sinners

41m

Our Urgent Call: UNDERSTAND the Three Angels' Messages

Justification by Faith in the Three Angels’ Messages

1h 5m

The Flood Story as an Illustration of Historical Typology

58m

Plenary

The Issues of Life

32m

Unlocking Prophecy

18- The Best is Yet to Come!

59m

Sound Doctrine