Michigan Camp Meeting 2017

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Flight Plan

Steven Conway

Tamara Conway

1. Departure

2. Connections

3. Destination

Our kind and gracious and loving Heavenly Father, we are so grateful this morning for your mercy, Lord.

We're grateful for the hope that we have that in the sweet by and by, Lord, our plan is to meet you there.

But until then, Lord, there are some things here down on this planet earth that we must work through, that we must allow your Holy Spirit to contend with us with.

And today our topic will be on relationships, Lord, and some different things that we encounter, whether it's from our past, our present, and also looking towards the future.

We are asking that you will be here with us and dwell with us here.

Open up our minds and give us wisdom and understanding because it comes from you.

And you said, Lord, that when we ask that you want to give it liberally.

We don't stand here as ones who profess to know everything there is to know about relationships Lord, but we know that the experiences that we've all had here are put together to help us to be able to learn more about who you are and more about who you want us to be Lord.

So again we praise you, we thank you Father and we love you and bless our time together here is what we ask in Jesus name amen amen all right come on in have a seat and we will get started here But we are gonna be stepping in a little bit and we're gonna be sharing with you guys a kind of a three-part series in regards to relationships.

And the name of the presentation, or what we've dubbed it, is called the flight plan, right?

And so how many of you have actually gone on a flight, gone on a trip, right?

It is a very great experience to be able to go all these different places, but it takes some preparation, correct?

Getting there for some of us can be a bit of a challenge, right?

And so that is what we're going to be discussing and talking with you all about today, the flight plan of our lives and when it comes to relationships.

It's pretty much a three-part plan to what it is that God has in store for us.

So I'm going to ask my husband to come on up here, and he is going to help me with this.

Matter of fact, let me ask before he's doing that, how many of us are married here?

Okay, all right, and the rest of us are sort of single, maybe dating, right?

No, just loving it, like living the life, right?

So this is going to be relevant to all of us, because even though we may be in relationships, there are still many things that we can learn that can help us to grow, amen?

Let me tell you, I've been married for 16 years and I feel like I'm learning something every single day.

God is shaping and molding our characters.

So 1 of the things that we are gonna be talking to you guys about is the process before marriage.

How many of you know that the place that we come from, it molds us and shapes us, right?

Our parents or our grandparents, the people who are in our lives that give us the image of relationship, right?

For me, I actually grew up in a single parent home for most of my life.

My parents divorced when I was around the age of 9.

You know, that was, I didn't expect it, didn't know really what to make of it.

And so as a kid, you just kind of roll with it.

You know, it's not like you actually have a say so, you know.

And so in that process, though, you are learning a lot of different things.

And a lot of those experiences ended up actually showing themselves later on in my life as a young adult, even as a single person, and also going into marriage.

And so, partly those experiences have a lot to, have a lot of impact on us as we go into seeking or trying to have a healthy relationship?

Yeah, I want to, first of all, I want to let you know that Pastor Bentley had some circumstances come up and that's why he's not going to be able to be here with you to do part 2 of his presentation.

But hopefully we've done like, I grew up watching wrestling and we, you know, okay, the ultimate warriors, nobody knows about them, but anyway, tag team, you know.

So like 1 partner's reaching out like, and the other 1 comes and taps his hand.

So we're rushing in to kind of fill in for Pastor Bentley.

As my wife said, the title of what we're gonna be sharing with you is flight plan.

Every 1 of us is on a journey and there are several things that every journey has in common.

And we're going to be looking at 3 crucial elements of every journey, and we're going to, by the grace of God, help you to discover how our beginnings affect our journey, how our baggage can keep us from reaching our destination, and the benefits of not taking the direct route.

I once was going out to the West Coast flying from here in the Midwest and I had 2 stops on the East Coast first.

So I flew from Detroit to like New York to North Carolina, then out to California.

But we're going to be looking at some biblical principles, biblical principles that don't just deal with marriage, but they deal with life, and these principles will give us insight into navigating some of the most challenging twists and turns.

First thing I want to do is ask you to...

Anyway, this is Psalm 139, verses 13 through 16.

Says, certainly, you made my mind and heart, you wove me together in my mother's womb.

I will give you thanks because your deeds are awesome and amazing.

My bones were not hidden from you when I was made in secret and sewed together in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw me when I was inside the womb.

All the days ordained for me were recorded in your scroll before 1 of them came into existence.

So how well, according to the 139th Psalm, how well or how intimately acquainted with us is God?

Would you say that he's more acquainted with us than we are with ourselves?

This 1 is in Jeremiah chapter 1, verses 4 and 5.

It says, the Lord said to me, before I formed you in your mother's womb, I chose you.

Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee.

And before thou comest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

Alright, so if the 139th Psalm reveals God's intimate knowledge of us, then Jeremiah chapter 1 tells us that, while affirming that God has an intimate knowledge of us, It also tells us that God has a plan for our lives, right?

I ordained you, I sanctified you, and I ordained you to be a prophet unto the nations.

In the New Testament, The Bible goes on to say something else.

Jesus answered and said unto him, verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

So if you're following with us, first God says, I am intimately acquainted with who you are I know everything that there is to know about who you are God says not only do I know everything that there is to know about who you are, but I have a plan for your life And then in the New Testament God says by the way Let me say I want to say this right Because I'm so intimately acquainted with your birth and who you are, I'm gonna say that you need to be born again.

In other words, your first birth is not enough.

Your first birth was so jacked up that you need to press restart and you need to be reborn, all right?

Now, even in that context, I know some of us may think, well, you know, from what I know, my birth was actually pretty decent, right?

You know, everything went pretty well for us.

But the Bible is true and it says that all have sinned, right, and come short of the glory of God.

So even in the best of circumstances, we still need God to come in and transform us, to recreate us as it were.

Now, 1 of the reasons why God says that we need to be born again, we need a restart on our lives, obviously he knows us better than we know ourselves, So in spite of the fact that we may not think we need a restart, God says we do.

1 of the reasons why God says a restart or a rebirth or a new birth is so important is because each and every 1 of us will stand before God in the judgment.

Everyone's gonna stand before God in the judgment.

I wanna read 1 of my favorite passages to you.

Series

Flight Plan

1. Departure

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Plenary

Radical Practice

1h

Going ABOVE and BEYOND

Daring to Ask for More - Part 5

53m

03 Waiting

48m

Lessons from the Life of Paul

Hermeneutics

43m

Crisis At the Close: The Mob

47m

The Parables

The Rich Man and Lazarus

43m

ECYC 2012 Seminar: Leading People from Health to Him

Health and the 3 Angels’ Message - His Robe Not Mine

1h

Bold unto the Throne Seminars

Sanctuary in Relation to Mission

57m

Families

The One Thing

1h 9m

Emmanuel Training Sessions

23. Bible Study Reformation

54m

Finally It’s Over

1h 25m

Plenary

Sabbath School Q&A Panel

57m

Sound Doctrine