GYCSE 2018: Focused - When All Else is Blurred

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GYC Southeast

Plenary

Wes Peppers

The Word Only

Dear Father in heaven, we thank you so much for the great privilege we have of being here together with you, and we just ask, Lord, that your Holy Spirit would come now, would work on our hearts, Lord, and speak to us, and Lord, that our hearts may be open to the truth that you have for us, that we would be changed, that we would be transformed, that our lives would be something new, something alive, Lord.

The Bible says that we are dead in our trespasses, but that Christ has the power to make us alive again.

And so I pray tonight that as we begin this week, as we begin this GYC Southeast, that our hearts would be reaching out to you, that we would be longing for you, that we would be desiring you, and that you would be found by us, Lord, because our hearts are open to receive the beauty of everything that you have for us.

So we ask, Lord, to draw close to us tonight, speak to us in a very special way.

Pour out your spirit upon our hearts and cause us tonight to make a decision for you.

A number of years ago and back in 2008, I was preparing for a mission trip.

I used to work at Amazing Facts, and I taught Bible classes there, similar to, very similar to SALT here.

If you haven't gone through SALT, I wanna encourage you to do that in 1 of your semesters here at Southern.

And I was teaching at Amazing Facts, the Bible school there, and at the end of every session we would take students on a mission trip.

And this particular year we were going to go to Honduras.

And about a month or so before the mission trip was to take place, I actually had some strange sensations in my stomach area, and I had this, kind of just this warm sense, it was just a weird feeling that wasn't normal, and it continued for several days.

And so my wife told me, she said, hey you should probably go to the doctor before you go on this mission trip.

So I went to the doctor and he said, oh it's just some kind of little minor infection and I'm going to give you some antibiotics and you should be good to go in about a week to 10 days.

So off I went on the plane down to Honduras and we landed and and I was going to preach 19 nights for an evangelistic series and I had a team of students that had just graduated and they also were preaching evangelistic meetings.

And so as I continued in the trip, the pain that I had, or actually the strange sensation that I had, began to turn to pain.

And It was very difficult to focus on my sermon.

It seemed like almost every hour the pain was getting worse and worse until I hardly could stand it.

There were times when I would work on my sermon through the day and I would be laying on my bed just kind of doubled up and doubled over and it was a very interesting thing because the pain was so severe as I mentioned it was difficult to concentrate And yet I would still somehow manage to get my sermon prepared.

And then in the evening, I would go down, we would take a 45-minute drive down into the town where I was preaching, and I would be sitting in the church going through the preliminaries, and My pain would be so severe I could hardly stand it and they would go through all the song service and all the announcements and all that stuff and then when I would get up to preach all the pain would suddenly go away And I wouldn't have any pain and I would preach that sermon and I would call people to make decisions to follow Jesus and that people would would choose people were raising their hands and and Then at the end of the night I would go to the back of the church to shake the hands with the people and I'm not kidding you that when the last person would shake my hand and go out the door, the pain would start again.

The next day I would get up, and the same thing, I'd have that pain, work on my sermon all day, drive down 45 minutes, sit through all the preliminaries with the pain, stand up to preach, and the pain would go away.

When I finished shaking the last hand, the pain would start again.

Now, somebody would say, well, that just seems to be a coincidence, and you know, somebody has a right to say that, but it happened 19 nights in a row.

And by the grace of God, almost 30 people gave their lives to Jesus and were baptized during that series.

Well, I knew that something was wrong, so when I flew back home for Christmas, I called up my doctor and he said, well, after the first of the year, we'll get you into a urologist.

I noticed that I had a little knot in my groin area that was, you know, it was not very big, but that thing continued to grow and it was actually a tumor.

And so in just, not even less than 2 months, that thing almost got the size of my fist.

And so when I got home, he gave me the number to the urologist.

I called the office, and they said, yes, we have your referral and we'd like to get you in.

They said, but it's going to be about 3 months before we can get you in.

And I thought, man, I don't have that long to wait and I'm in a lot of pain every day.

So I said, okay, you know, whatever you can do.

So I hung up the phone with them and I began to pray.

And I said, Lord, I don't know what's going on here.

I don't know what the problem is, but you do.

And if this is going to be something that is serious and I need to get in to see this doctor, you're gonna have to intervene here.

And so within 5 minutes the phone rings again and it's the it's the doctor's office at the urologist and they said you know the strangest thing happened because this never happens because it takes so long for people to get in, but just after I got off the phone with you, someone called in and actually canceled their appointment for tomorrow, can you come in?

And I said, yeah, I'll be right in tomorrow, and I got off the phone, and I was so happy, I was thinking, man, the Lord worked, and I thought, wait a minute, this could be serious, right, because I prayed that prayer.

So I went down to the urologist and he sent me to get a ultrasound and when the results came back sure enough I had I'd had cancer I had a form of very aggressive cancer that was very treatable if treated, but if left untreated, it's 1 of the deadliest cancers.

And so They told me that I would have to have surgery and then possibly chemotherapy after that.

And so they scheduled me for about 3 weeks out to have the surgery.

Well, during those 3 weeks, it was some of the most intense 3 weeks of my life.

I could not sit down, stand up, or lay down.

The only relief I had was when I'd take ibuprofen to reduce some of the inflammation.

And then about 10 days before my surgery They told me if you're taking ibuprofen you have to stop So I didn't have anything so I just endured that pain I would wake up with night sweats and and it was like somebody took a whole bucket of water and just threw it right on me.

And so it was just a miserable experience.

And then finally the day of my surgery came, so I go down to the hospital for the surgery.

I'm prepared to do that, and I get through the surgery fine.

And they come in and say, well, we've discovered that the lymph nodes, or I'm sorry, the cancer has actually spread into some of your lymph nodes of your of your chest and abdomen And so we're going to actually have to do some chemotherapy.

They said but hey you're young don't worry It's going to be easy for you.

You're going to take it very well And we're going to start that here in just a couple weeks.

And they said, yeah, you're gonna lose your hair.

And I said, well, that's really not that much of a problem.

But they said, you'll have some side effects.

But because you're young, you'll be fine.

So I went into the hospital after a couple of weeks.

And I got my first round of chemotherapy, and it was at the UC Davis Hospital, University Research Hospital in Sacramento, California.

And I got my first round, and everything went fine.

And they said, hey, you can do whatever you want, as long as you stay away from sick people and they said don't get into crowds and they said but if you have energy to do whatever you want to do just go ahead and do it so after that first round I thought man you know I don't know what people who take chemotherapy think complain about because I feel pretty good And so I didn't realize that the more you take it the worse it gets But so I got out on a Sunday evening From the hospital.

So the next day on Monday, I felt pretty good, so I went to work.

And I was hanging out with my students, and I noticed that some of them had a bit of a cold, and I tried to stay away from them, but I thought, well, they told me to stay away from sick people, but I'm doing pretty good.

Well, the next day, I woke up, I wake up, and I don't feel so good.

I went into work, I had a teaching, a class I was gonna teach, so I was teaching that class, and I was very hard to finish that class.

I actually had to pull up a chair and sit in a chair to finish the class, and my students told me, they said, man, you don't look good.

And I looked at myself in the mirror and my face was literally like gray.

And so I went up to my office and I remember that it was very cold.

And so I turned my heater on and I laid my head down on my desk, and I laid there for probably about 2 and a half to 3 hours.

My legs began to get stiff, I was freezing cold, and I almost got to where I couldn't move.

So finally, I mustered up enough energy, and I told my co-worker, hey, I'm going to go home, I'm going to just rest, the rest of the day I'm not feeling so good.

So I I honestly to this day have no Recollection how I got home.

I think like I don't even think my hands were on the Siri I literally think an angel was probably driving my vehicle, but somehow I made it home, 15-minute drive, and I walk into my house, and when I did, I blacked out and I almost fell down the staircase, but I managed to catch myself.

I went over and I just fell straight down on the couch.

And in my mind I'm thinking to myself, well, these are just the normal side effects of chemotherapy.

I'm just going to take a nap and I'll be fine.

But something was telling me you need to call your doctor.

So I called my doctor and I told him my side effects or my symptoms, and he said, you need to go to the emergency room right now.

And so I said, okay, I'll do that, and I hung up and I called my wife who was working, and I didn't really think it was that serious.

So she said, well, I have about 30 minutes left of work left to do.

She says, when I'm finished here, I'll drive home and I'll take you to the hospital.

I said, okay, I should have called an ambulance.

So I laid there and she came and she took me to the hospital.

When they saw me, they took me right back, they took my vital signs.

The Atheist Who Found God

Father in heaven, we thank you so much for the great privilege that we have to be here together with you.

And we ask your blessing to be with us, to draw close to us, to help to open our eyes and our ears to everything that you want us to know.

And Lord, everything that you want us to be.

So draw close, we pray, in a very special way, and let your spirit speak to our hearts.

As I mentioned, I didn't grow up in an Adventist home.

My parents were not Christians, And we didn't go to church very much.

But my grandparents actually were Christians.

My 1 set of grandparents were Methodists, and my other grandparents were Church of the Nazarene.

I used to go with them to church a little bit when I was young.

And my 1 set of grandparents, they were actually in a gospel singing group.

And my grandpa sang, and my uncle played piano, and they had a couple other people in the group, and my grandmother played the drums.

Now, you can imagine grandma sitting back there and my grandma was literally probably about this tall and she's back there playing the drums as they would travel around the Midwest and do concerts for people.

I actually learned how to play the drums by watching her And so I haven't done that in a very long time, but I did know how to play.

Anyway, as I was growing up, as you heard, my last name is Peppers.

And as I was growing up, I had fire red hair.

So you can imagine, I went to public school.

My first encounter with Adventist education was when I started working on my master's degree at Andrews.

I didn't go to Adventist elementary school.

I didn't go to Adventist Academy or Adventist College.

I graduated from a state university, so I had many experiences in the public realm but none in the Adventist realm.

So you can imagine growing up in a public school, having the last name Peppers and having fire red hair, how that went over.

Fortunately, God gave me some form of mercy because as I was growing up, I was always the biggest kid in my class and so most of those kids, whenever they would call it out, I would catch them on the playground later in the day and take care of it.

And so, you know, I at least had some form of help.

So as I grew up, my relationship with my dad was not very good.

My dad was not raised in a loving home and he didn't know how to communicate love.

And so, often times he would just yell and scream and he would be off doing his own thing and I really never connected with him very much.

And so that made things kind of difficult in our home and I'll tell you a little bit more about that later on.

But as I was growing up and I got into high school, I became a big football star, and I was very much involved in football and sports.

And there's actually a Bible text that I wanna share with you that really correlates to my entire life.

If you have a Bible or if you have it on your phone you can turn to it and it is in Jeremiah chapter 9 verses 23 and 24.

Jeremiah chapter 9 verse 23 and 24 the Bible says this Thus says the Lord let not the wise man glory in his wisdom Let not the mighty man glory in his might nor let the rich man glory in his riches but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me that I am the Lord exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth, for in these I delight, says the Lord." Now in my life, especially in my younger life, these 3 things were really the core of my life.

The Bible said, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom.

Well, when I was growing up in high school and in college, I was often at the top of my class or at least in the top 10%.

I rarely ever studied but I would always seem to do well on my tests.

The teachers really liked me and when I got into college I was usually on the dean's list or the president's list and I just literally gloried in my wisdom.

I had the ability to score high on academics.

And so that was something that I really took a lot of pride in.

The Bible says, let not the mighty man glory in his mind.

Well, when I was in high school, I mentioned that I played football.

And I'll just give you a little bit of background of that.

I'm going to show you some pictures here.

This is my wife and my son and my daughter.

And that's my wife and my daughter and my son, Levi.

But as I was growing up, I played football.

So when I was a freshman, I weighed about 205 pounds.

Now I don't recommend this, but football really consumed my life.

And I wanted to, my ultimate goal in life was to be a college football player.

And then I wanted to be a high school teacher and a football coach.

And so when I was a freshman, I weighed 205 pounds and I was the biggest freshman in the class and I was the only freshman to letter in football and very, something that happened to me between 9th and 10th grade was something that I really think impacted the rest of my life.

So between the 9th and 10th grade, my football coach told me that when he was playing college football, when they could not afford steroids, that they would go down and they would buy something called calf starter.

And I don't know if any of you grew up in the south but if you know what calf starter is, it's when a mother cow gives birth to a calf there's something called colostrum which is the first milk.

And colostrum is high in fat, high in protein, high in carbohydrates and will really allow that calf to grow very quickly and it puts the meat and it gives it all the vitamins and nutrients it needs to grow and to establish itself so it doesn't get sick.

Well, oftentimes when cows will sometimes give birth, they will also, sometimes the mothers die.

And so we have this man-made colostrum or sometimes if the cow can't feed.

So they had this stuff called colostrum or calf starter that was in a powder form and it's not intended for human consumption.

But nonetheless, I went down to the feed store between my ninth and tenth grade year and I said, hey I need a bag of calf starter.

And the guy said, wow you must have, you know, you got cows?

And I said, well not really but something like that.

And so I bought the calf starter and I began to take it.

And so from the summer of my ninth grade year to my tenth grade year, I gained about 25 pounds and I was growing very quickly, becoming very strong.

My junior year, I weighed about 250 and then my senior year in high school I weighed about 265.

Now by the time I was a senior in high school I was very dedicated.

I spent a lot of time in the weight room and I was bench pressing 450 pounds.

I was squatting 700 pounds and leg pressing 1800 pounds.

So I was, I still, not that I, I don't really, I tell you this with all my heart, I don't really care, but I still hold the county weightlifting record for our school and for the whole county.

And so I was very big, I was very strong, and I was very fast.

And I was the best football player that our school had ever had.

And I was the first player to ever have the opportunity to get a college scholarship to play college football.

So there were a number of things that actually impacted my life when I was in high school and I'm going to tell you just a couple of them.

Number 1, when I was in ninth grade, I began to hang around some of the older guys in the school and the juniors and seniors, and they would begin to invite me out with them to do a camp out or whatever for the weekend.

And that's where in ninth grade I was handed my first beer.

And so I began to drink some beer, I was handed my first joint, I began to smoke some marijuana, I was handed my first cigarette, and I started dipping Copenhagen and Skoll and all that kind of stuff, I used smokeless tobacco.

So by the time I was in 10th grade, it went, I had previously just on the weekends gone out with my buddies to go drinking, then when I was in 10th grade it got to where I would start bringing the alcohol to school with me.

I would have a bottle of liquor in my pocket, and as the teacher would be writing something on the board, during class, I would pull out that bottle and I would take a sip of it.

And I became, you know, I was often be drunk even during school, but my teachers never really knew it.

But other students knew it and I became known as the school drunk.

And so it became really out of control when I was in 10th grade.

I developed an alcoholic behavior and my coach finally found out about it and he sat me down and he said, hey listen, you have an opportunity that no 1 else in the history of our school has ever had and if you don't change the way that you're living then you're never going to accomplish that.

He said, you're going to throw your life away.

So between my 10th and 11th grade year, basically out of sheer willpower, I stopped drinking and I really focused on my school and I really focused on my football.

So by this time, There were quite a number of universities that were looking at me.

Here's me as a senior with the other seniors.

Here I am on the all state team, this is the Birmingham News right there in Alabama.

The year tells you my age, I'm not that old, not even 40 yet.

Faith Only

Father in heaven, tonight as we talk about faith, I pray that you would stir our hearts.

I pray that you would open our eyes and our ears and our hearts to the truth that you have for us.

And sometimes, Lord, the truth is cutting.

But I pray tonight that if you cut, you will bring healing as well.

That you may tear us down so that you may build us up.

And I ask tonight that you would just speak to our hearts, Lord, that you would convict our hearts, that you would change our hearts, and you would cause us to put our complete trust and faith in you.

So we look to you tonight, Father, and we ask your special blessing.

I want to begin by telling you a story, and I was going to tell you a story about Lauren.

I just put this slide on just a few minutes ago, but I changed my mind.

I'm going to tell you about Lauren tomorrow night.

But tonight I want to tell you about Andrew.

And Andrew, not this Andrew that was up here with me, a different Andrew, but Andrew was a young man that I met who came to an evangelistic series of mine.

And Andrew was an atheist, And Andrew had no interest in the Bible whatsoever, but he had nothing to do, so he thought he would come to my evangelistic meetings.

As I was preaching the Bible night by night, this young man became very convicted about the truth that he was learning.

He saw that there was concrete evidence for the faithfulness and the truthfulness and the validity of the Bible.

And he began to open his heart up to God for the first time in his life.

And he decided as the night, by night passed, that he was going to give his heart to God, and he was going to follow the truth that he found in the Scripture.

And his initial reaction was so full of joy, and so he went to his parents who were of another faith.

And he talked to his parents about the decision that he had made.

When he told them that he was gonna follow the Bible and its truth, they said to him, if you follow this faith and you abandon the faith of your family, we are no longer your family.

We will not claim you as our son anymore.

And if you try to come back to the house, we will kill you." And they were serious.

And so he knew that he had a decision to make.

And he told his workplace about the decision he had made.

And he requested to be off from work on the Sabbath.

And they said, sure, you can have off every Sabbath, but you're not going to work here.

They said if you decide to do this, we're going to fire you because we have 10 people that would like to have your job and they'll work whenever we tell them to work.

He went to his friends and he said, look, I found a new hope.

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Series

Plenary

Sabbath School Q&A Panel

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

The Word Only

1h 1m

The Atheist Who Found God

42m

Faith Only

55m

Truth Only

51m

Sabbath School Q&A Panel

57m

The Evolution Believing Creationist

1h

The Adventist Atheist

1h 1m

Sound Doctrine