SWYC 2018: Abiding in Christ

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GYC Southwest

Plenary

Andre Waller

Samson, Sex and Salvation

Our Father in heaven, just thank you again for the privilege of opening the word.

Please arrest our minds, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

If you can open your Bibles to the book of Judges, the book of Judges, And what we're going to try to do in the limited time that we have is to peruse 3 to 4 chapters covering the story of Samson.

As we go through these passages, Just have your mind open as the Spirit speaks to our minds, all right?

In Judges chapter 13, we're going to begin reading at verse number 1.

Judges chapter 13, verse 1, the Bible says, And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord.

And the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines 40 years.

And there was a certain man of Zarah of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah, and his wife was barren and barrenot.

And the angel of the Lord appeared unto the woman and said unto her, behold now, thou art barren and barrest not, but thou shall conceive and bear a son.

Now therefore beware, I pray thee, and drink not wine nor strong drink and eat not any unclean thing.

Verse 5, for lo thou shalt conceive and bear a son, and no rager shall come upon his head.

For the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb, and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.

Now I've entitled our talk tonight, Samson, Sex, Sin, and Salvation.

Song of Solomon 2 verse 15 says, catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards.

Keep that in mind as we're going to study tonight.

Now, I wanna go back to Judges chapter 13 for a moment.

I want you to analyze what we've just read.

We see that God has an issue with Israel.

Israel is constantly rebelling against God.

And in their acts of rebelling against God, God is now looking for someone to help deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines.

And in this story, many times, I've heard this story many times over, but in my observation of the text, I saw something I never saw before.

In the text, you'll see there where it says, Now therefore beware, I pray thee, verse 4, Drink not wine nor strong drink, And eat no unclean thing, For lo, thou shalt conceive and bear a son, And no razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite from the womb.

And I was thinking about it as I was reading it, always as a child as I read this story, I knew Samson was a Nazirite, right?

That was clear to me that Samson was a Nazirite, but did you know that his mama was a Nazirite?

Go with me, hold your hand here in the book of Judges.

I want you to go to the book of Numbers, the book of Numbers chapter 6.

And I want you to see and observe what is required to be a Nazirite.

In Numbers chapter 6, beginning at verse 1, the Bible says, And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When either man or, what's it say?

Man or woman shall separate themselves to vow a vow of a Nazarite.

To separate themselves unto the Lord, he shall separate himself from wine and strong drink, and shall drink no vinegar of wine, no vinegar of strong drink, Neither shall he drink any liquor of grapes, nor eat moist grapes or dried.

Verse 4 says, all the days of his separation shall he eat nothing that is made of the vine tree from the kernels, even to the husk.

All the days of the vow of his separation, there shall no razor come upon his head until the days be fulfilled in which he separated himself unto the Lord, he shall be holy and shall let the locks of his hair of his head grow.

Do you notice that if you were a Nazirite, oftentimes, you were a Nazirite by choice?

Say, you know what, I'm gonna be a Nazirite for 21 days.

I'm gonna consecrate myself to God for this many days.

And you could choose to do that, male or female.

But do you know that Samson did not have a choice.

Remember the angel said, I want you, the mommy, I want you to take on this vow.

As you take on this vow, when this boy is born, he will be born into this covenant relationship.

So interestingly, you are not supposed to eat anything from a vine, whether it's a moist grape, whether it was a grape juice, whether it was wine or whatever, whatnot, you could not do that.

It says, all the days that he separated himself unto the Lord, he shall come at no dead body.

Verse 7, he shall not make himself unclean for his father or for his mother, for his brother or for his sister when they die because the consecration of his God is upon his head.

All the days of his separation he is holy unto the Lord.

And if any man died very suddenly by him and he after found the head of his consecration, pay attention, then he shall shave his head in the day of his cleansing on the seventh day shall he shave it.

Now if you are a Bible student you should already know the rest of the sermon.

Now that now that we've read the text Let's go back to the story.

Judges chapter 13, go back to that story now.

This woman has been encountered or has encountered an angel of the Lord.

The angel of the Lord says, you're going to raise this child in a particular way.

I've been married now for, let's look at the numbers here, 11, 12 years.

Had to calculate, my wife will hear this.

Now I don't care if a man comes to my wife and says, you know what, this is how you should raise your child.

Nobody gets to come into my house and tell me how I'm gonna raise my children.

But here, this woman says, someone from the Lord has come, look at verse 6 of chapter 13.

Then the woman came and told her husband, saying, a man of God came unto me and his countenance was like the countenance of an angel of God, very terrible.

But I asked him, not whence he was, neither told me his name, but he said unto me, behold, thou shalt conceive a barren son and thou shalt not drink any wine or strong drink, neither eat on any unkind thing, for the child shall be a Nazarite to God from the womb to the day of his death.

Please note, Samson does not have a choice whether or not he's going to be a Nazirite.

Then Manoah entreated the Lord and said, oh my Lord, let the man of God, which thou didst send come again unto us, and watch what it says, and teach us what we shall do unto the child that shall be born.

Oh, that the parents of this day would do what Samson's parents did.

Lord, show us how we should raise this child.

Show us how we should guide this young person in the way of righteousness.

Oh, if parents would have done or do what Samson's parents have done.

Now I want you to jump down, because we're just perusing carefully through the text here.

It says in verse 12, this is now the man of God has come back, in verse 12, and Manoah said, Now let thy words come to pass.

How shall we order the child and how shall we do unto him?

And the angel of the Lord said unto Manoah, of all that I said unto the woman, let her beware.

She may not eat of anything that is coming from the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing.

All that I commanded her, let her observe.

Verse 15, and Manoah said unto the angel of the Lord, I pray thee Let us detain thee until we have made ready a kid for thee So I want to observe for a moment do we have and I'm having a conversation with you Do we have any word from the Lord in regards to how to raise children.

Do we have any word from the Lord like that?

Now if we were to peruse the Old Testament and we would go through a step-by-step study and figure out who the angel of the Lord was, you would find in your detailed study that the angel of the Lord was none other than Jesus pre-incarnate.

So what we have here is the testimony of Jesus directly to Manoah and his wife in how to raise children.

Do we have anything called the testimony of Jesus or the spirit of prophecy amongst us that teaches us how to raise children?

Dwayne Lemon

The Motivating Factor

Let me go ahead and say Happy Sabbath to everyone.

It is truly a privilege to not merely be back in Southern California amongst so many friends and familiar faces, but it's a special privilege to be back at SWYC.

On behalf of my family and I, we want to say thank you for apparently listening to the voice of God and extending the invitation.

And I'm glad that we were able to answer the call.

Lord has something very important and very special to share with each of us and I need you to pray that God will give you ears to hear.

The message that I heard last night, it had very deep impact, very, very deep impact.

And throughout the night, this morning, and I was on my knees saying, Father, I'm not inclined to do what was originally prepared.

I believe you want something more, something deeper.

And the Lord brought something to my attention.

When I joined this movement 26 years ago, I'm a kid coming out of hip-hop culture, very much ingrained in the industry.

And then on top of that I'm in the industry and I'm literally dancing with the stars.

And this message, this movement, saved me from that industry.

And so when I came out of that, coming into this, I was on fire because I didn't think I had the ability to understand things from books.

I was not a reader, I was not studious, the great, all of my memories in school was having fun.

I cannot remember passing classes, I cannot remember doing well or anything like that.

I just had absolutely no interest whatsoever.

And so this movement got me interested in reading.

It was like, For the first time in my life, I said, hold up, I can actually understand, not merely what comes from books, but I can actually understand what the Bible says.

The book that I thought was the most confusing, uninteresting book on planet Earth.

And that thing began to hit me so hard that before you know it, when those grooves just started working in my brain, and here it is that I'm like, wait a minute, I know what Daniel says, I know what Isaiah says, I know what Peter says, and James.

I taught that 1 truth like I knew the whole Bible.

Me and my friend Lance were talking about it the other day, and I said, he's trying to tell me about a bunch of stuff.

He said, well, what's that 1 gift you have?

I said, I have a gift to help people see and to do what God says.

I said, that is literally how I summarize my gift, to help people see and do what God says.

And so I've been exercising that and doing Bible studies from early on.

1 verse all I knew, I preached it like I knew the whole Bible, and people were coming to Jesus.

Now here it is fast forward 26 years later, and I'm working at a church, and part of my duties is to go ahead and reach all those folks who are unchurched in New England.

I get to sit at least with 23 non-Christians every week.

And I get to show them all sorts of things from the Bible.

And there was 1 person that I studied with that went through a very traumatic experience, and this is how God shaped what he wants me to give you all this morning, and I'm thoroughly appreciative of it.

I've been studying with this 1 person for a long time.

It's been at least, you know, a good 2 and a half, 3 months.

And I was like, Lord, where's this going?

And, you know, I make appeals at the end of every study like we're told to do, but it was just this struggle.

So I remember in our last study together, I sat down with her, showed her the gospel, again broke it down, the Word of God, love of Christ, and I asked her, I said, will you surrender, not some, not most, Will you surrender all of your heart to Jesus today?

I felt we got at that place in our study that we could do that.

And I remember she leaned back and she said, I can't do that.

She says, I hear everything you're saying to me, Dwayne.

And I said, what makes you not trust him when he's showing himself so trustworthy?

And she said, if he's so good, Why did he let me go through what I went through?

I must admit, this young lady has a story that's not probably connected to the majority of the women in here story.

If he's so big and so loving and all these other things.

So when she said that, I thought about it and I said, well, I understand.

And in truth, I didn't understand, but I'm like, I'm hearing your argument.

And so I've learned in ministry sometimes when you, first of all, when you don't have an answer, please do not make up 1.

God must prompt every word that comes out of the minister's mouth.

I said, I'm not saying anything unless you put something in my mouth.

And I'm going to tell you, the person who most clearly brought this point to me that I'm about to share was my wife.

So I'm reflecting back on something my wife said to me that I'm now giving to this sister.

And I said, sister, I said you were innocent and you suffered terribly.

I said there's somebody else who came to this earth that was innocent, didn't do anything wrong, And he suffered terribly.

And she said this, and when she said this, that's when I said, I see.

Not merely the problem with her, I said, this is the problem with us.

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but she says, even Jesus did not suffer like how I suffered.

We talked a little bit more, we prayed out, and I had to go back into the prayer chamber.

In business, in school, in whatever it is that we pursue in life, your why is more important than your how.

In business, in school, in whatever endeavor of life that you have that is important to you, I mean important, your why is more important than your how.

There's all sorts of classes, YouTube videos, and all sorts of talk about how to do this and how to do that, and I'm sure we can even walk through it today.

I'm gonna do it, Brother Waller did a little bit last night, Pastor Marat did it, you know, and I'm sure we'll do it again even more.

We talk about this is how you abide in Christ.

But there's a very important question that needs to be answered.

I hear what you're saying, but it's not making the connection.

And if you don't know why you're doing something, you can know from front to back how to do it.

Anthony Czaja

Questions & Answers

Heavenly Father, we again turn to you for answers.

Lord, we pray that you would be with each of the speakers here on this stage, that you would give them the wisdom needed And the discernment as well as far as how to answer the questions.

And that their list may be anointed as well.

That nothing would come out of their mouth that is not from you as far as answering the questions.

As well Lord if there be anyone among us that has any questions on our heart, that you would give us the courage to write it down because someone else may need the answer to that question as well.

So with this Lord we look forward to your blessing us in this section as well.

Alright gentlemen, so the first question for tonight.

You're supposed to ask God to take your heart because you can't give it.

And then you ask him to keep it because you can't keep it for yourself.

And then you ask him to save him from yourself, your un-Christ-like self, And then ask him to lift you into his holy atmosphere where the rich currents of his love can flow through your soul So you can't really give God your heart, but you can Give him access You can give him permission to do for you what you cannot do for yourself.

1 thing I will add to that is remember in Revelation 3 and Jesus says, behold, I stand at the door and knock.

And then he says, if any man will open, that's the context of giving permission.

You know, when you think of the, you know, my son, give me thine heart.

It's not that you can give it, that's very clear, but you can give him permission to take it.

And you can read that in Christ Object Lessons, page 159.

This next question is a continuation of the first it seems.

Okay, so I guess the questions was asked twice.

So I think that was answered pretty good.

Why do I feel burnt out while doing ministry?

I no longer feel driven to work in ministry.

I'm just going to concur that I agree with that feeling.

I've felt it many times, but I'm not going to answer the question because I've already talked.

So I'll wait till someone else tries to answer then I'll try.

Oh there's many things you can do but I can I can sympathize with that feeling?

1 time I'll share just a personal testimony really fast.

It seemed that all of my joy in life had left me.

I would look at my children and see no joy.

So 1 day I was out in the garden by myself laboring and every movement just was eating away at me.

And just there in the dirt, I fell on my knees, you know, holding my tool and just an utter cry to the Lord asking him to return unto me the joy of my salvation.

And I acknowledged what was true and for those of you that have been coming to my talks, you know that that's the thing.

And I just said, Lord, I don't sense your presence.

I don't feel good about this, but I know that you're faithful.

And your word says that you will give that to me.

So reconnecting with God, realizing your dependence upon him and coming back to him.

Because sometimes we give, give, give, But we stop realizing that we're actually giving what we have received and we start only to give of ourselves Instead of going back to the 1 who can give us something to give.

I think I got the answer for this 1 as well and Ministry of Healing page 51.

The Savior's life on earth was a life of communion with nature and with God.

In this communion, that communion with nature and with God, he revealed for us the secret to a life of power.

Then it says, Jesus was an earnest, constant worker.

Never lived there among men another so weighted with responsibilities.

Never another carried so heavy a burden of the world's sorrow and sin.

Never another toiled with such self-consuming zeal for the good of men.

Physically as well as spiritually, he was represented by the sacrificial lamb without blemish and without spot.

In body as in soul, he was an example of what God designed all humanity to be through obedience to his laws.

Now, the reason I give that is because in gospel work, the devil's master trap of getting gospel workers is to damage our communion.

We become so busy doing gospel work, we become so busy doing good work that we begin to neglect our communion time with God.

And it becomes slowly but surely a very creeping compromise.

It becomes very shallow and our communion becomes rushed and it doesn't have some of that impact the way it used to because now we're weighted with greater responsibilities.

And so whatever happens, we must be careful as it relates to guarding our communion time with God.

Because we were already told it through the pen of inspiration.

This is the example he left for us of a secret to a life of power.

And that's how we will not get burnt out.

Because we're getting our spiritual gasoline in our communion with him, and therefore we have the wherewithal to serve our family, our fellow man, those who we come in contact with on a day-to-day basis.

Guard carefully your communion life with God.

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