Michigan Camp Meeting 2016: The Harvest is Great

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

You and Your Forgiving Heart

Laurie Snyman

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this opportunity to be at Camp Meeting.

We thank you for this special session that we can hear the words of wisdom from you, from Lori.

We pray that we can take home things that will help us with our daily lives.

And We thank you for all your many blessings.

Did you know that this is the last seminar session of camp meeting?

But here we are at camp meeting, and everybody's got happy faces.

Remember, we've been talking about smiling this week.

Only the problem is that even though that we're happy, did you know that 85% of you, according to the statistics, 85% of you are holding a grudge against a parent, a brother or sister, a spouse, an ex-spouse, a friend or ex-friend or someone else in your area.

How many of you agree that that's probably true?

What are some minor things that we forgive people for?

Rudeness, those are annoying things, aren't they?

There's a difference between annoying and things that are done intentionally.

So give me some things that people do by being, that are annoying.

Lying could be very devious, I don't know, but being late would be another.

Yes, that's why I'm asking where my person is that was supposed to come here.

You ever had people who correct you when you're talking?

No, that wasn't that day, it was this day and it had nothing to do with the story, right?

Women, they love to do that to their husbands, right?

Jealousy about somebody who got a degree that you didn't get, or notoriety, or a prize, or you thought that you had something coming to you, or something like that.

What about people who hurt our feelings, like have you gone to camp meeting and somebody you know doesn't know your name?

Or they don't know, they don't act like they know you?

You go up and go, hi, and they go, hello.

Or how about you go up to people and you walk up to a crowd and you think that They're your friends and they just kind of, and you're right back here and they just start talking and they just kind of ignore you.

They can also tease you about your religion, they can tease you about your weight, tease you about your clothing, tease you about your hair.

You ever tried to turn around and ignore them back because that's how we feel when we're hurt.

Or you never let them in your circle again.

What about people who've done things that have been really hurtful, like taking your job away?

Or said something to another person that caused a huge ripple in your family or whatever.

Or somebody who shuns us and we don't know why.

Or people who don't think well of us or demean us or say, you know, way to go, or, you know, that's kind of like you, or I'd expect that of you.

That kind of behavior, you ever had that?

Getting really quiet because most of us can remember those things, right?

And here's 1 of the encouraging things that we're going to talk about today is that God has come to this earth.

He sent his son to this earth and he's here with us to help us get through these things.

If someone says I love God but hates a Christian brother, can I say or sister or husband or neighbor or boss or friend?

If we don't love people, we can see, how can we love God whom we've not seen?

Anybody can say that in a different language?

I mean, you know, kind of our personal language?

If I say that I love God, but I shun people or throw insults at them or gossip about them or hurt them or annoy them or agitate them on purpose, then I'm really not a Christian is what it's saying, is that not?

So how many of you can recount something that's happened to you that was really traumatic?

How many of you, I'm a woman, how many of you had a mother bear experience where somebody said something about your kid?

I'm going to tell you about, there was a man at my church and he was annoying, right?

When they'd get up to the pulpit, he would start, you know, doing this, like trying to get them going faster.

You and Your Mental Health

Our Father in heaven, we ask that you would send your Holy Spirit now as we contemplate our mental health.

Please help Lori to explain and to make it understood and clear as to the things that she has that she wants to share and open our minds that we may be able to understand the things that she so dearly wants us to understand and know, and we ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.

Anybody who needs a card to write on if they choose?

I would like you while I'm talking to jot down an idea that you feel that impacts you.

Now they've done some surveys on how it is that we listen and we get the message.

They found out that when I'm talking, just like I'm talking right now, most of you will probably forget, I'm not a statistic person, it was something like 85% of what I will say.

If you write something down and you review it later, you'll kind of more, you get it more maybe like 65% and that was pretty good.

But if you say, when I look at that about forgiveness, we'll give that as an example, and it remains to me this because when this happened to me, whatever.

And then you tell somebody else about it, just like when we witness to people about what Christ has done for us, it really touches our hearts so much more and we get it in our brain better.

So I will only ask for a couple of people at the end to share something that they got out of our talk today and how they can apply it in their life because we just don't have that much time.

And so if you would just jot something down that impacts you that you think would be really helpful that would be great and I'll ask you at the end of class.

And if you don't get to share you'll get to bring that little card home and remember it.

You know there are prisons out there made out of concrete.

They're in those little cells and they are stuck.

And we go, thank goodness it's not me, right?

There are many people, even in this room, that have a prison in their mind and they truly are imprisoned by the way they're thinking, the way they're living their life, the way that they can't get over some traumatic difficulty, the way that they are stressed over some situation, they are in a self-made prison.

Like when you're in a prison without walls that your husband puts you in.

Okay, so maybe you're very distressed over a marital situation and all you can do is think about, ugh, how can I, you know, just like this constant thought?

When you have that fear, actually fear is like the root of many of these things.

Remember that saying that we used to have when we were growing up?

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

How many of you remember when you got your knee hurt?

That's because I have my foot in my mouth all the time.

How many of you know somebody who said something that was very demeaning to you and discouraging and you just never got over it?

And I don't really need to even have you put your hand up because you know it, right?

How about when somebody complimented you, wasn't that really nice?

But actually the bad things can outweigh the good things in our mind.

Who would want you to remember all the bad things?

He just continues to hammer you and push those nails into your head, right?

Physical illness, I had a really bad Christmas.

And I got pancreatitis, and I lost my gallbladder.

But I had a big problem on the operating table.

And then we decided that we would go on vacation anyway.

We decided to go to Mexico where we had reservations.

Oh, by the way, I got home and I had a kidney stone.

So 2 days later, we went to Mexico and I got the worst case of food poisoning.

And I got it on the way home on the plane.

And I got home and my mother was having eye surgery and my husband was gonna take her, but he got food poisoning that day.

So I had friends that had to help me, and my mother had a complication.

She would, you know, when you're in your 80s, you can get really loopy over the anesthesia, and her cataract all crackled in her eyes, so they had pieces in there, and they had to go back in and have another surgery.

And I'm still nauseated, and she gets a bug.

So I end up going to the hospital with her.

It was just, it just happened, you know how?

And You know that the devil's out to get you, right?

It took about a month to get over that pancreatitis and you get all that nausea done, and I'm fine.

But up here, people are going, how are you doing?

And I'm like thinking, well, I don't know, maybe I...

And they're going, your coloring's looking a little better than it used to.

And what I notice is like, I'm fine physically, but the trauma of what happened can stick with you.

And you keep thinking, I just can't believe that happened, right?

You and Your Self-Esteem

Thought we would go through self-esteem today and I'm going to divide it into a different topics.

1 is the psychological way of looking at it, how our upbringing impacts us, the media and how that has impacted us from television to movies to radio, newspaper.

Masculine versus feminine because there are ideas that have come up in our society that has impacted us as a nation regarding What a man does and a woman does and what the perspective is and how they fulfill it.

And if any of you die, please let me know somebody next to them so that.

And then we're gonna talk about how possessions, many times people think possessions are what make them important.

And then we're gonna end it with God's perspective.

So Hopefully you brought some of your Bibles, because that will be very helpful.

How many of you, you don't have to put your hands up, just think about it, have ever had a family member or a friend say something very unpleasant about who you were, what you looked like, or to somebody else that you didn't want them to say that to.

Have you ever had something that you wanted to do?

You really were hopeful that you could get it accomplished, and then you didn't finish it?

I would say that, or maybe a teacher said something about the way that you were processing things or didn't do something lots of people have heard you know they're so They're so good or they're so smart, but they just don't put themselves into their work or whatever.

And if you answered yes to any of those, probably those things have started to impact who you think you are, because that's exactly what happens.

Everyone in their life has encountered some disappointments and frustrations and it contributes to how we see ourselves and how we value ourselves.

We all have some form of self-esteem whether it's positive or negative.

Anybody can tell me what positive self-esteem would be?

Feeling good about yourself, seeing yourself in a positive light, actually liking yourself.

Don't feel good about yourself, feel disappointed, feel frustrated, not good enough and how does it impact somebody when they have low self-esteem?

That would be like the terrible major issue, but another thing is the way that you cope, The way that you see things, your attitude, can all be very much impacted by your self-esteem.

Low self-esteem is tied with poor coping skills, poor attitudes, poor follow-through, limited success in school, in relationships, in their work.

It impacts how you feel about the world, isn't it?

It's amazing that people don't always know all about you, but a low self-esteem person will often remind people about all the bad things about them.

Oh you probably don't like me because and they go oh really I didn't know that was an issue.

It is a lifelong process it often begins in childhood.

If a mother or father Neglected you and we have a lot of fatherless families now actually 60 to 70 percent are fatherless families So even though maybe they had a significant mother in their life, they still feel the pain of that.

These children are hurting inside and they really are comparing themselves with what they dream is the right thing.

And they're finding out that actually kids who are neglected are having more self-esteem problems and those who are having physical abuse at the hands of a parent.

People in life send you messages and opinions on how they think you are and they tell you whether they like you or they don't like you or they they can tell you can tell whether you can join them or if they want to be around you or if they look away when they're you're talking all of that gives us a little thing in our mind about if we feel that we're important or significant.

We all want to feel significant, don't we?

We can be sure of it because humans are humans, right?

The only person that we can really depend on is God.

Women have also been hoodwinked about false facts.

There's Betty Friedan, do you remember who she is?

She wrote the feminine mystique, redefining the roles of women.

She says that they're so angry because they've never been, you know, treated the correct way and they limit your roles of who you are and what you can do.

And do you remember the advertisement, you come a long way baby?

They were talking about what they did is that women never wanted to smoke at that point in life It was considered on ladylike So they tried to come up with an advertising gimmick to make it look like Now that they've arrived and that they can they no longer are doing dowdy things like household chores and things like that But now they can smoke because they have arrived and it was 1 of the most successful cigarette campaigns ever People started taking up smoking and they started to sell a lot of Virginia Slims at that point at 1 time Well, I'm just going to go through this.

Next to those ads there were things about dowdy women that were scrubbing floors and all kinds of things.

There was just a lot of stuff all sudden.

I'm thinking that I might have Grabbed the wrong talk here.

Let's see Wouldn't that be interesting no.

This is the right 1 just looks Different to me isn't that how that goes, huh?

Throughout the years TV and media showed that passe were women's roles were you know you can't do dowdy things like Laundry and taking care of children they were trying to say that you had to have a career you remember all the TV programs like Murphy Brown Mary Tyler Moore it was like getting out in the world and doing things.

So they were trying to say that if women did those dowdy awful things they really hadn't grown up.

And so women started thinking am I really an important person if I don't do certain things remember back then also this is 50 years ago chastity was considered a virtue now it's like you know if you don't have experience you're shameful right Babies were born to committed parents mostly 50 years ago.

Actually somebody was just telling me, I don't think it was somebody in this room, They're telling me that 75% in their area where their wife works in the maternity ward are from Children who have have no father involved or have a have a boyfriend that isn't committed Really sad isn't it?

40% of our children see this this kind of lifestyle and thinking that this is feminine this kind of lifestyle also says that the 40% of the children tonight that sleep will have some male in their house that they're not related to.

So what does that also put a big risk at?

50 years ago, marriage was considered for life.

Actually, the highest growing segment of divorce is within the first 2 years of marriage isn't that sad yeah and it was uncommon to have homosexuality gay and lesbian issues and now it's very very common and it's trying to become a household word Supposed to have bathrooms now that are accommodating us right We've come a long way haven't we baby Yeah How about men Men if you look at the literature and how men are acting when you talk about rapping in the movies, etc., what is glorified for men?

Yes, like the wife is so smart and the man is just like an accident that he's in that household.

And so what has happened is that men have risen up and they've been trying to become more masculine by using violence, substance abuse, and fathering children.

I Had somebody who came in for counseling She told me that her father was in Benton Harbor, and he had 34 children Not with 1 mother that I mean all of them had different mothers And she said I really didn't get to know my father, and she said and I she said that's pretty common over there and it is that way in many countries Ireland somebody came here to camp meeting it's been working in Ireland and they told me that the majority of children do not know their fathers and that the fathers really believe in the more you can father the better it's a big deal.

So what we see is it's kind of like a irresponsible thing I just want to have fathered children but had no responsibility.

So you see masculinity and femininity have gotten really mixed up and that has impacted our self-esteem too.

We just don't really know what we're supposed to be doing unless we're Christians and then that really changes doesn't it?

Women that get misused and abused, there's no commitment to them, it's a one-time thing.

Men, because they feel so unempowered, they can feel very powerful when they look at pornography.

And so that has been a rapid increase in our society.

I probably don't need to tell you that it's everywhere, right?

I mean, probably you've heard about it, that women are coming forward all the time talking about Husbands that are talking on the internet to other people who are engaging in pornography it has it has whitewashed our society in many ways It's really sad, and there's violence in that and when you do something small to get the next excitement you always have to make it bigger.

So we have seen a huge increase in children being snatched off the streets and people being misused, et cetera.

The Bible seems to endorse the personality that says Humility is really important.

Remember, we're supposed to have good self-esteem.

Or how about service to others, you know, putting others before yourself.

Like, doesn't it kind of throw everything around?

Isn't that just alien to what's going on out there in society?

Series

You and Your Forgiving Heart

You and Your Self-Esteem

Transcript

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Parent Conference

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