GYC 2018: To The End

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Keys to Growing a Powerful and Vibrant Prayer Ministry

Gem Castor

1. From Contained Mediocrity to Contagious Christian: Gem’s Story

This message was presented at the GYC To The End in Houston, Texas.

For other resources like this, visit us online at gycweb.org.

For those of you at the back, can you see me?

That's why when I introduce myself to people, and people who know Mel, I tell them I'm Mel's half-brother.

And I know some of you comes here and who came here wanted to start up a prayer ministry, started to have this prayer ministry going in your church.

Were you inspired in the prayer session that we have every morning?

The reason why I'm so excited to lead out every morning's prayer session is because my life was changed in a prayer room, in 1 of the prayer sessions, and I'll tell you more about it this morning.

And by the way, who among you here are second or third or fourth generation Seventh-day Adventists?

Who among you here is first generation or converted into Adventism?

So there's more second or third generation Adventists.

And I think it could relate to what I'm going to share this morning.

As we have been involved in the prayer ministry, I don't feel adequate if I don't pray.

So I'd like to request those of you who are here are able to kneel down, please kneel down with me for a word of prayer.

Our great God, our dear loving heavenly Father, Lord, thank you so much for giving us this opportunity to lift your name up.

And, Lord, we pray in a very special way that you please be with us right now.

And, Lord, I pray that you please hide me behind the shadow of your cross, that I may not be seen or be heard, but Jesus and Jesus alone be seen, be heard, be lifted up, and exalted.

Your Father, please teach us how to lift Jesus up.

And Lord, I ask that may every word that will come out will be words that are anointed by you, will be words coming straight from the throne of grace.

Thank you so much, Lord, for giving us this chance to talk about Jesus.

We give you back all the praises, the glory, and the honor.

We ask this in the loving name of your Son, Jesus.

Yes, for those of you who raised your hands, second and third generation Seventh-day Adventists, I think you could relate to what I was feeling when I was young, younger.

Every time I see people who are converted into the church, when I see their fire, when I see their passion, I get jealous.

And you're thinking, Why don't I have that fire?

And they seem to know more of the Bible than we do.

They memorize verses after verses, and they could quote scriptures, and I'm thinking, I can do that.

And I'm even frustrated at 1 point, I'm thinking, how will I ever have a testimony to tell if I don't have this type of conversion?

I'm thinking, should I go out of the church first?

And people might well thought that I'm a prayer leader now, or Melody is a prayer leader, that we started off in life that we are just so into prayer right away.

Oh no, my dear friends, some people think that I came out of my mother's womb when my hand folded and my first word was, amen.

My dear friends, it did not start that way.

I thought even that prayer was not necessary.

As I told you this morning during a prayer session, I felt like I'm an energizer bunny.

But praying for me is such a waste of time.

When you are not doing something, you are not accomplishing something.

I think it all started with a training that I had back home.

I'm a faithful Seventh-day Adventist kid, not because I want to go to the church, but I'm afraid of my mom.

And some of you second and third generation could relate to that.

I tell you, my dear friends, be happy that you have a strict mom.

I tell you, when you are my age, you'll be happy that you have a mom like that.

And I, if my mom will somehow allow me to make my choice at that early age, I would not be a missionary right now.

I would not be here standing in front of you telling about the goodness of God.

So, again, going back to my mom's fault, my mom trained me to somehow, if you want to have something in your life, you have to work for it.

So I was trained to lean on my own strength, not to lean on the Lord.

And as you have heard this morning's devotion, Leaning on the Lord is very, very important.

And she somehow trained me, if you want to do or to have something, you have to work for it and you have to earn it for yourself.

And friends, at an early age, at the age of 6, I was already a businessman.

Even before I know how to count money, I already sell things.

And I remember my mom would always bring me to the market at the age of 6 to help her carry things.

We have a food shop back home and when we go to the market I'm the 1 who carries stuff.

Some of them are heavy stuff and I think that's the reason why I did not really grow tall.

So My mom will always put money on my piggy bank as a reward for what I have done.

And that money, friends, that money is not for me.

So I have to work for the half of the price of my birthday gift.

And when my birthday comes, you know what friends, my birthday gift comes and I'm just so, so shocked, especially when I was already studying.

And later on I found out that my mom was really teaching me some values in life.

So I was somehow trained to lean on my own strength, to lean on my capabilities, and leaning on the Lord was not really in my intentions.

So, I grew up having a mindset like that.

If you want to do something, you have to work for it.

Is a waste of time, and prayer is only remembered in desperate times.

When things aren't going my way, then I bend my knees, and I cry to the Lord, Lord, please help me.

Melody Mason

2. From Spiritual Laodicean to Daring to Ask for More: Melody’s Story

For other resources like this, visit us online at GYCweb.org.

Okay, well this is part 2 of the seminar, Keys to Growing an Effective and Vibrant Prayer Ministry.

And today Jim and I are specifically sharing some of our testimonies, behind the scenes testimonies.

I know some of you said you've already heard my testimony, so you're going to hear some repeat today because, you know, our testimony is our testimony.

Of course, God is adding to it as we go along and there's new things that he's doing in our lives but still how it started and things along the way it's still the same story there is going to be some some overlap and repeat today Hopefully we can keep this microphone up here.

So let's just pray 1 more time before we begin.

And Jim, at some point I need your phone or something up here because I have no sense of time.

And I think I have far too much to share.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for the privilege of prayer.

We just praise you that even when we were not seeking after you, you were seeking after us.

And we would not be here, Father, if it were not for the beautiful gift of the Holy Spirit who is drawing our hearts and pulling us to desire you and to hunger for you and to thirst for you.

We thank you for answering our prayers even before we knew how to pray those prayers.

And I just pray that you will bless this presentation.

Give me the words to say, Father, I'm struggling to know what to share.

And there's a lot what to focus on and what not to and I'm just asking that you would be with my words and that you would be glorified and lifted up.

Thank you, Father, in your precious name.

So a little bit behind the story of daring to ask for more.

I grew up in a Seventh-day Adventist home, and I'm very thankful for that.

I consider myself very blessed because I know many don't have that privilege as a young person.

But I have a wonderful family and God has been very good.

It's not picture perfect, we always have our struggles, but I've really seen God's goodness and his leading over the years.

But I, you know, 1 of my favorite verses comes from John 10, 10.

I'm come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly.

I believe that this is what God is calling us to.

But you know the first part of this verse, what it says?

The enemy comes to steal, to kill, and to destroy.

And so his purpose and desire is to keep us from experiencing that abundant life.

And 1 of the ways that he does it is just the culture that he leads us in, And that is the wilderness experience.

And Jim shared some of this in his own testimony.

In fact, I was thinking as I was listening, and I've heard his testimony before, but there were new things that he reminded me of today as he was sharing that there's a lot of similarities in our testimonies because we were in the church and all those things, but we were lacking that deeper experience.

I really believe that, you know, what happened with the children of Israel being called out of Egypt, we know God called them out of Egypt, but his purpose was not to leave them in the wilderness, right?

His purpose was to take them to the promised land and that is the ultimate goal.

However, there's some of us that grow up in the church and you know we're pretty proud of the fact, well I was never in Egypt.

So you know this I mean doesn't really apply, right?

You know I haven't been living in the world and, you know, I was 1 of those good model students, really.

I was a little crazy as a youngster wearing all my friends out, but I was a good kid.

It wasn't like I was off doing crazy things.

And so you don't really relate to those that have been in that Egypt experience and in the world.

And there's kind of this subtle spiritual pride that begins to develop in your life as a result.

I think many in the church, especially like Jim talked about, third, fourth generation, second generation, we just become complacent.

We're used to things as they are in the church and we grow up in this culture, especially if we're in the West, where we're just comfortable with the life we have, we're not pushed too much out of our comfort zone.

1 reason that I think it's so important that we actually do leave and go other places is because it pushes us out of our comfort zone, right?

Because yeah, maybe my own backyard needs to be cleaned, but you know, it's a familiar territory and we're more complacent, whereas if we follow God by faith to another place.

We recognize, I don't have what I need to relate to this culture.

You go to a place where they speak a different language and all these different things, and so it's a whole new set of circumstances that really challenges you to trust God in a new way.

But He's calling us to start with where we are, to be faithful with where we are.

And so that's a lesson that he's really been seeking and growing in my life.

But I believe we live in a culture of Old Testament Christianity that has moved into modern day wilderness Christianity.

And we really need to pray for God to awaken us to our condition, to our poor, poor wretched, poor naked condition that we're told in Revelation 3.

Many Christians are just barely surviving spiritually.

Here's a quote that I have from councils for the church.

Most professed Christians have no sense of the spiritual strength that they might obtain were they as ambitious, zealous, and persevering to gain a knowledge of divine things as they are to obtain the perishable things of this life.

Many are satisfied to be spiritual dwarfs.

That's the reality of our culture and our church and our society.

We grow up in a church and things are comfortable.

Everybody's, I mean, it's kind of the cool thing to be part of youth group, to do this, to do that, but there's not really any definite stands that we have to take.

We're not really challenged, and we just become kind of wimpy Christians, really, lukewarm Christians, And I believe God wants to bring us out of that to be really strong for him.

Growing up in the church, I, you know, like I said, I was a good kid, but I struggled going to church as a young person because I just felt like it was a dead environment.

I saw people professing, da-da-da-da, but I didn't really see them living up to that in their lifestyle.

That hurt more than anything, watching professed Christians, how they related to 1 another.

And as a result of that, some of my family members actually walked away from the church.

Like you say you're whatever, you know, trying to reach the lost and you can't even be nice to each other and love 1 another.

And so seeing that and we see that even today was so difficult.

And if we focus on what everyone is doing around us and how we're treating or how we are imperfect Christians because we all are, we're gonna lose our way.

We have to learn to keep our eyes on Jesus because He is the only 1 that will not fail us, that will not forsake us, that will not let us down, that is always who he's supposed to be.

Because we are imperfect, we live in an imperfect generation, we live in an imperfect church.

And I praise the Lord that he doesn't cast us away because we're not the perfect role models that we're called to be.

But I struggled going to church growing up.

Honestly, it would have been more attractive to do some other things, except the fact I loved God.

I gave my life to Christ when I was young and I wasn't really, you know, attracted to go off and live for the world.

So it was kind of, you know, not really sure what to do.

But I did decide to give my life to Christ and I decided I was going to be a missionary and I was going to start working for him.

So I started traveling, doing mission trips here, mission trips there, and some of you have heard this testimony before, you know, a lot of the joy of the missions was just the adventures that I had and the pictures that I brought home and the tales I could tell my friends about being in the jungle and doing this and doing that.

But it wasn't really necessarily because my heart was for souls.

You know, I thought I was doing a good thing because I'm getting stamps in my passport and all these different things, but it wasn't really for the love of souls.

I mean, I felt like it was, but deep in my heart there was something missing.

This quote from Christian Service has really opened my eyes.

It says, could we see all the activity of human instrumentality as it appears before God?

3. Preparing Our Hearts for Tsunami of Blessings in Prayer Ministry

I don't know why I want to get up here and say happy Sabbath.

That just is what came to mind when I stand up.

The starting GYC on Sabbath is throwing me off a little bit.

But anyway, it's been such a such a blessing.

So this morning we're going to talk more about heart preparation for prayer ministry and just really how to prepare to have an effective prayer ministry.

And So let's bow our heads for a word of prayer before we begin.

Dear Heavenly Father, we just thank you so much for the privilege of prayer.

We thank you that we can come into your presence and you are here.

And as we gather together in a group, you tell us when 2 or 3 are gathered together, you're in their midst.

And so we claim that promise as well, and we thank you for this.

Right now, as I share, I just ask for your wisdom, for your Holy Spirit to give me your words and that you would truly hide me behind your cross, that you would be exalted, and that our hearts would be touched, Father, as the Holy Spirit convicts us and draws us closer to you.

This is what we pray in your precious name.

Some of you are probably, maybe have even heard the story.

I've shared a number of times, but it's about a group of explorers back in the early 1800s that were traveling through Africa, and they were making their maps of the territory and just scouting out the land.

But something unique happened during this time.

Each day they would come back to their camp and they had a camp set up and they'd build a campfire and cook their food and all these different things and then go to bed and then the next morning they'd get up and do the same thing again.

But after a few days they came back and they started noticing around the camp were little, little stacks of fire, wood.

And they couldn't figure out initially what was going on.

They'd come back and there'd be more little stacks around the camp.

Like someone's trying to start a fire, but they couldn't figure out why.

But after a few days, they realized, you know, there's monkeys all around and the trees and they were watching them.

So each day, as they were building their campfire and cooking their food, the monkeys had been watching them.

And they decided, we want to start a fire too.

So they put the stacks together, but they couldn't start a fire.

Anyway, I love to share this story because I think it really illustrates what often is the problem in our church.

We are very good at building a form of godliness.

You know, we see such and such happening, we're like, oh, I'm going to do that too, da-da-da-da-da-da, you know, and put it all together.

But it's often the form without the power of the Holy Spirit.

It's done through our own strength without God.

And so that's what I want to challenge us this morning as we're beginning this seminar.

What are the ways in our life, and this is something you just have to ask, You know, you and the Lord, you know, Psalms 139, 23, and 24 says, search me, O God, and know my heart.

Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me.

And so we need to be praying and asking the Lord, you know, because we all have these areas where there's a little struggle, there's a little bit of discrepancy between what God is calling us to do and what the Word and the Holy Spirit is calling us to do and what we actually do.

We're actually told in the Bible, I believe the form of godliness is the most popular religion at the end of time.

And I get that from 2 Timothy 3, 1 through 5.

It talks about in the last days, what we're gonna see.

And we see all these things happening right now.

This is the attitude and the spirit that we have here in the last days, having a form of godliness but denying the power from such turn away.

Carl Bates, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, said, if God were to take the Holy Spirit out of our midst today, think about this, this is really serious to consider, 95% of what we are doing in our churches would go on.

And we would not even know the difference.

Yet if God had taken the Holy Spirit out of the midst of the first Christian community, about 95% of what they were doing would have ceased immediately.

Lord have mercy upon us for working in our own strength and thinking that we are working in His.

You know, over and over Ellen White talks about our desperate need of the Holy Spirit.

And you know, it's because this topic is little thought upon and little contemplated that we see so much drought and dryness in our church today.

The Holy Spirit, when it comes, it brings all other blessings in store, in train with it.

I love this quote from Review and Herald.

"'The descent of the Holy Spirit upon the church is looked forward to is in the future, but it is the privilege of the church to have it tomorrow." Is that what it says?

It's the privilege of the church to have it now.

Seek for it, pray for it, believe for it.

We must have it, and heaven is waiting to bestow it.

And I love what Pastor Gary said in the message on Sabbath about Acts 1-8 and the Holy Spirit.

It's not something we achieve, it's something we receive.

But there's something necessary that has to happen before we receive it.

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Series

Keys to Growing a Powerful and Vibrant Prayer Ministry

1. From Contained Mediocrity to Contagious Christian: Gem’s Story

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

1. From Contained Mediocrity to Contagious Christian: Gem’s Story

1h 3m

2. From Spiritual Laodicean to Daring to Ask for More: Melody’s Story

1h 13m

3. Preparing Our Hearts for Tsunami of Blessings in Prayer Ministry

1h 14m

4. Practical and Engaging Tools for a Thriving Prayer Ministry

1h 11m

5. How NOT TO Lead a Disastrous Prayer Ministry

1h 15m

6. The Most Vital Keys to Long-term Effective Prayer Ministry

58m

Sound Doctrine