Michigan Camp Meeting 2016: The Harvest is Great

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Own It

Steven Conway

Own It- Part 2

Loving Father, we are so thankful that as we call upon You, we call upon You in the name of Jesus.

And Lord, we are thankful that we don't just serve a king, we serve the King of kings.

And it's because of His amazing love that we are able to have any hope in this world.

So Father, I thank you for the Sabbath we've enjoyed.

It's been a hot 1, but Lord, it has been a blessed 1.

So many things have been happening today, so many moving pieces, and Lord, you've allowed us to play a small part in this grand machinery of your Sabbath, so to speak.

But Father, as we come tonight to close out the Sabbath, Lord, we're not here just to spend time.

And so Father, as we begin tonight, I want to lift up Pastor Steve Conway.

Lord, you know that I love that brother, love his family, and just thank you for the ministry that he has.

Lord, he blesses so many lives, he and his family.

And so we ask that you would speak through him.

We ask that your Holy Spirit would anoint his lips.

Father, we want to figure out how we can own our faith just a little more deeply, maybe even some of us for the first time.

So Lord, encourage us, draw us closer to you by the power of your Holy Spirit.

And Lord, may we leave here deeper in our faith commitment with Jesus because of having to listen to Pastor Conway.

So we thank you, Father, for this blessing in Jesus' name, amen.

So Pastor Steve, I'm gonna invite you to come on up.

If you don't know Pastor Conway, you're in for a treat tonight.

For those of you who do know him, you know that I'm telling you the truth.

Pastor Conway, he pastors down in the Detroit area.

I have the privilege of having him as 1 of my district pastors down there that I get to serve with.

He pastors the Detroit Northwest Church and the Cherry Hill Church.

And of course his First Lady sitting right there, she's not paying me, there she is, I've got I've got Mrs.

That's his first lady there that serves by his side and I tell you, you need to spend some time with Miss Tamara too tonight.

But it is an honor to invite my brother to come up and share with us.

And brother, I just want you to know what a blessing you are to me as a brother in Christ, as a fellow laborer in our field down there, rolling in the big D, doing our little part, right?

Right, so bless us, brother, and God bless you.

Tonight, I was asked to share with you a little bit about my testimony since we're talking about Own It.

And I've tried to break this up into 4 different portions or 4 parts, and the first 1 is resistance.

Just by way of introduction again, Stephen Conway, pastor down in the Metro Detroit area in District 12, Detroit Northwest, Cherry Hill.

My wife is Tamara, and we have 4 children, Israel, Abigail, Gabriel, and Angel.

And been here in Michigan for about 10 years.

Prior to that, was in New York and in New Jersey as a youth pastor.

Prior to that, was down at a self-supporting school in Tennessee called Lower Brook Academy for about 4 years as a boys dean and outreach coordinator and everything else you do at a self-supporting institution.

But I'm going to begin sharing my testimony a little bit before that, And I start with resistance because of a profound passage of Scripture.

Jeremiah, this is 1 of my, has become 1 of my favorite passages in the scriptures.

The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have love with...

Sabbath lunch must have been real good, huh?

You're still involved in the lay activities.

Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love.

Therefore with loving kindness, have I done what?

So I wanted to begin by talking about resistance because I think before any of us is ever 1 to Christ, our very existence begins with resistance to that which God longs to do for each and every 1 of us.

According to this Bible passage here, God says that he has drawn us with loving kindness.

And yet, if there are unconverted men and women, it means that we have been resisting what God has been attempting to do.

In my family, my great-grandmother married a Seventh-day Adventist man.

My great-grandmother married a Seventh-day Adventist man, and so Adventism was introduced into my family.

Obviously, at that time, I wasn't even thought of, and neither was my mother, in fact, but she would come later on.

My mother was not raised as a Seventh-day Adventist, but her grandmother, being my great-grandmother, of course, took her to church like many grandmothers do.

And so my mother's only recollection of church was the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

And so when My mother had her conversion experience and was prompted that she needed to return to church.

And at this time she had 2 sons, my older brother, Antonio, we call him Dante, that's his middle name, and then me.

She had 2 sons at this time and the only church that she knew to return to was the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

And so she brought my 2 brothers, excuse me, my brother and I to church, her 2 sons, and we began attending church.

That is a picture of me at about 2 or 3 years of age, looking like I was trying to do something with a hairbrush and some nappy hair, but the Lord is good anyhow.

And so that was about the time that I began attending church.

So I say all that to say that I have been going to Seventh-day Adventist Church for a very, very long time.

But even though I was going to church, I was ignorant about surrender.

Now, growing up in church, and I grew up at a time when churches were packed, at least I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio.

There was not 1 church that you could go to on Sabbath morning that was not overflowing.

I mean, literally from wall to wall, sometimes if the choir wasn't singing, there were people seated in the choir loft, we had an extra sanctuary in our church, you would have to open 2 massive doors and people would be seated there.

I mean, I heard, I believe, some of the most powerful and dynamic preaching ever as I was growing up.

And so I cannot tell you how many times I sat in a church service and tears filled my eyes as I was convinced and convicted that Jesus was coming, and I was convinced and convicted that if he were to come, that I would be lost.

And yet, throughout all of that time, there was a tremendous amount of ignorance about what it meant to surrender.

So even though I was coming to church and even though I was hearing powerful sermons and even though I would go home weeping with new a new zeal to get my life together and be ready for the return of Jesus Christ, the truth was that I was ultimately resisting the work that God needed to do in my life.

I was resisting the work that God wanted to do in my life.

In fact, my experience was somewhat like a quote, and I have to apologize I didn't have it for you this evening.

But in this quote, it talks about a patchwork religion, a patchwork religion.

Now, I know what patches are, because I have 2 boys.

And the oldest of them, the oldest of them, thank you, is he'll be turning 14.

And these brothers know how to wear out pants and they wear them out right in the knees and so if you want to fix that without buying a new pair of pants you got to do what?

But in this particular quotation it says that a patchwork religion is of no value.

Many hope or wish to become Christians by correcting this or that habit.

So the concept of trying to change this or that in one's life is an erroneous idea.

You know, the preacher is preaching about wasting time.

Jay Gallimore

Own It- Part 3

Our loving Father, Lord, we are privileged that we have a knowledge of You, the God of the universe, the 1 true God, the God who creates, and therefore You are the God who has the power to recreate.

Father, this week so far, just our first few days here of camp meeting, Lord, we've been blessed, and we just thank You for that.

And tonight, Father, we've come that we might receive yet another blessing, and so we thank You that we could gather here, that we could sing these songs, these hymns, these words of praise and adoration to You.

And so, Father, we just pause now to invite Your Holy Spirit to please be with us.

Father, we're not here just for the sake of conducting a meeting.

We're here that we might be challenged to own it, to own our faith, to not stand on the sidelines and watch other people have a faith experience, but to step into the water, so to speak, and take Jesus for ourselves.

And so, Lord, tonight I pause to lift up Elder Gallimore.

Lord, you know the words that you've placed upon his heart, which you've inspired him to share with us this evening.

And so, Father, we just ask that you would speak through him, that he would be but your mouthpiece, your vessel.

And Lord, we thank you for him, for his commitment to you, for the example.

And Lord, we just ask for your blessing this evening as we pray in Jesus' name.

We feel very blessed this evening to have our conference president with us.

Elder Gallimore, thank you for making the time for the young adults.

And so I do have the privilege of introducing our speaker this evening.

And I tell you, Elder Gallimore, he is our Michigan Conference president, but he's also a friend.

I appreciate your friendship, I appreciate your mentorship, and so those of us that work here as pastors in this field, we know that our Michigan Conference leadership loves us and cares about us, and I tell you it makes a big difference when you know that your leadership is supporting you and that they're behind you and they're also willing to give you the push in the right direction when you need it.

But without any further delay, I do want to invite Elder Gallimore to come up.

And again, Elder, thank you for spending the time with us.

The time is yours, and preach as long as you can keep them.

And we're not a lot in number, And I really want to make this something that's valuable to you.

And so I want to be able to entertain some of your questions as you go along.

Could I get you in about the first 3 rows here?

Would you be so kind as to do that for me?

And if I've got you right here, then you can hear each other, I can hear you.

My ears are not as good as they used to be for some reason, Julie, and I don't know what that is.

I think it's because we're all old age positive or something.

Man, just coming right in here like this.

Now I know that you have been dealing with people's testimonies this week, and I got to hear part of Pastor Steve's last night, and I was blessed by that.

I'm not going to get so much in that except to talk to you about my active testimony, what is going on on a day-to-day basis.

I want you to any time to raise your hand and wave and raise your hand and say, Hey, I'd like to know more about that.

And because when you leave here tonight, I want you to be able to take something away.

What I'm gonna share with you tonight is something that I'm using on a daily basis.

In fact, I'm using it on an hourly basis.

That's how practical what I'm talking about is tonight.

I'm so tempted to, you know, you don't know how valuable you are.

Ellen White says that 1 human being is more valuable than a world.

I love to talk, you know, evolution has got 1 foot in the grave and another on the banana peeling.

It's just that it's all gonna come crumbling down and the world will have nowhere to go except to spiritualism.

And that's where we're headed with all of this stuff.

Because the facts are that the scientific evidence is so powerful for design that they're desperate.

The high priest of evolution, trying to remember their names, At any rate, they're so desperate, they're saying, yeah, well, that's true, because what happens is that they get pressed back, and they say, okay, where did the intelligence come from for the DNA?

Where did the power come from to put all of that together?

And they're so desperate that they're now saying, well, maybe some alien came here to the world.

Well, they're getting a little closer, you know, kind of a thing.

1 of them, I'm trying to remember those guys' names.

Yeah, they, he's saying, well, this is how desperate they are.

They're saying, well, the universe does appear to be designed, but it's not.

And you look at them and you say, listen, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.

I said, no, your little brain can't handle that.

But there's never been a time when God was not.

God created the heavens, space, and the earth, matter.

And that's what the universe is made up out of.

And the greater you get, just your genetic code, Did you know that your genetic code, that it not only reads, this is simple terms, but it helps explain it.

It's a book, it's letters, made up of 4 letters with billions of things in it, billions of words, instructions.

It not only reads from left to right, It reads from right to left, and it has codes in it that you draw out.

There's about 5 different ways that that so if you start messing up the code you don't mess up just a little bit of something, you mess up everything.

And that's why all of us down here on the end of the creation, I tell the Lord, Lord have pity on me because I'm nearly 6, 000 years away from the creation.

I got all those ancestors and every ancestor is passing on genetic defects.

In fact, John Sanford, who was the author of the gene gun, he's a person who put together a lot of this ability to, you know, make grain and all that kind of stuff.

He was basically an atheist evolutionist and became a Christian.

Because he said it's impossible, because evolution says, you have to have all these minute changes and they all have to be good in order to get us going this direction.

He says, no, everything in the genetic code is going like this.

He says in fact the whole human race is going to collapse because what's happening is that all in our genetic code every generation is piled more and more defects and he says it goes like this and it levels out and then it crashes.

And he says it's not going to be that long before the whole human race crashes.

Darryl Bentley

Own It- Part 4

Father in Heaven, we're in love with your presence, and we're in love with you, because where you are, hearts are healed, broken lives are made new.

And we are so humbled and so thankful that you would stoop so low just to save us because you love us.

So Father, as we come before your throne tonight, as we have come before your throne, we ask that you would accept our offerings and music.

We ask that you would accept our broken lives tonight and that you would heal us and that you would make us new.

That you would touch our hearts with the words that will be spoken in just a couple minutes.

That you would anoint the lips of who speaks, that you would anoint our hearts with your Holy Spirit, and let us be open to what you have to share with us specifically, Lord, because you have called each of us to a specific purpose, and you want us to make a choice.

You want us to choose to accept that purpose that you have given to us.

So I thank you Lord for bringing us all together tonight and again I pray for your mercy and your grace as we are but poor little children coming to sit at your feet.

It is a blessing to be here with you this evening.

And I want to invite you, you guys were so kind and so gracious last night to come and sit a little closer for Elder Gallimore and I recognize I'm not the conference president but I'm wondering if I might impose upon your mercy and graciousness and just ask you come sit a little closer.

We're a few in numbers And so it'll save my neck a little bit of a workout if you come and just sit with us and I would invite you to do so if you don't mind.

I want to share with you tonight, and I've counted a privilege to be able to do so.

For those of you that do not know me, my name is Pastor Darrell Bentley and I have the privilege of serving here in the Michigan Conference going on some 9 years now.

So I love being in the Michigan Conference.

But if you think that you hear something, it might be because I'm from North Carolina.

And so you may catch me occasionally coming out with some Southernisms.

I do speak English and Southern and so I can communicate in most areas of the country so that's that's a tremendous blessing.

But we counted an honor to be here serving in Michigan to be able to spend time with Michiganders.

Michiganders are some hardy folk, have you noticed that?

I mean, you guys survive these winters and just act like it's regular.

You know, for those of us that are imports, We have had to adapt to these things.

I remember the first year coming to Michigan and I had to buy a winter coat.

I mean, I did not remember, I got by down in North Carolina, most winters with just a sweatshirt.

So had to invest in a winter coat and learn to dress in layers.

So because you may be freezing cold in the morning and sweating in the afternoon in Michigan isn't that strange we've seen it just this camp meeting haven't we there's been nights where you're laying in your campers shivering and then Sabbath I thought if I was a candle I would have melted into a puddle.

But it's a blessing to be here and we love serving in the Michigan Conference, love serving the church families, we've had the honor to serve and so it's a blessing to be able to share with you tonight.

Now this evening I'm going to share with you my spiritual journey.

I'll tell you a little bit about my childhood and some of those things.

And my goal tonight is not to just tell you a story.

I want you to keep in mind our theme for this young adult camp meeting.

We're asking the question, will you choose to own your faith?

Will you take ownership or will you sit on the sidelines of a spiritual experience with God?

And of course my desire is that somehow tonight through my testimony, at least this portion of it, that you would choose to own your faith as well.

I just want to ask the Lord to speak through me before I begin to share with you.

Loving Father, I thank you so much that we can be here tonight, that I have the opportunity to share with my friends, with those that are gathered.

And Lord, I don't want anything about me to be glorified.

I want those that are here listening, those that may hear this via recording, to seriously take a look at their faith, at their journey, and look at how you have been leading in their life, and ask themselves the question, will I own my faith or will I simply watch others have an experience with God?

Father, tonight I ask these blessings and these mercies in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, I am from North Carolina, but I was not born there.

Yeah, we've done all we can to help marriages.

I was born, not in North Carolina, I was born in Virginia, in Manassas, Virginia, famous for some various battles in our country's history.

But before I was born, my dad decided that he did not want to be married to a woman with children.

And so my dad left before I was ever born.

And my mother, who was living with her parents in Virginia, moved back to North Carolina when her mom and dad moved back to North Carolina.

Interestingly enough, my grandfather and his family had moved to Virginia some 20 years previous, running from the law on alcohol making charges.

So I come from an esteemed background of moonshiners.

My grandfather actually did time in prison for running shine and making moonshine.

And of course, you know anything about NASCAR.

NASCAR was born out of the moonshine industry.

My grandfather felt that it was safe to go back to North Carolina, and so there we went.

So less than a year old, we moved back to Carolina, and there I am living with my mom and my grandparents up until the time I was about 3 years old.

About the time I was 3 years old, my mom thought it was a good thing to get remarried.

And so she marries my stepdad, and my stepdad was pretty nice guy at first.

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Series

Own It

Own It- Part 4

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

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Recorded

Parts

Own It- Part 2

1h 8m

Own It- Part 3

1h 12m

Own It- Part 4

1h 10m

Own It- Part 6

55m

Own It- Part 7

50m

Own It- Part 8

29m

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