SWYC 2005: Prepare to Meet Thy God

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GYC Southwest

Vicki Griffin: SWYC 2005 Health Seminar

Vicki Griffin

Health Seminar, Part 1

Health Seminar, Part 2

Health Seminar, Part 3

It's a real privilege I'm a little jet-laggy, but not too bad.

So I'm just it's just beautiful out here And I'm glad that we could gather together this morning, And I would like to just bow our heads before we begin this morning.

Dear Father in Heaven, thank you so much that we can come together on your Sabbath day.

We just are so grateful for this special time, these special hours.

And I pray that as We gather together that you would come to us and be our instructor and speak to our hearts.

Help us to be open to what you have to say.

I've been the health and temperance director for Michigan Conference for about 4 years now and it's really interesting.

It's sort of like being a periodontal surgeon.

People don't exactly flock to health and temperance meetings because of some preconceptions about what health and temperance really means, and you probably know what I'm talking about.

I remember speaking 1 time at a little church in Georgia, a little country church in Georgia, and a very dear little saintly elder got up to introduce me, and he said, we're so glad to have Sister Griffin come to talk to us about health.

And then he said, now health, that's important, but salvation, that's the thing.

And as I sat down, warming myself with that introduction, The scripture that came to my mind was, abstain from fleshly lusts, which what?

Can our fleshly habits war against our spiritual life today?

And another thing that I have to contend with is people look at me, I'll do some talks, and they'll say, well, yeah, sure, you look like a librarian, you know, all organized.

You probably have all your stuff color-coded in your closet and have your paperclips all organized according to color.

And I really smile because I was not raised in this denomination.

I actually came up in a very violent home.

I was raised, my family was in the wine business, actually.

And I was a runaway, and started running away from home when I was 5 years old, and developed a very, very severe eating disorder when I was 11.

I developed bulimia as a result of the chaos that I lived in and all of that kind of stuff, it's contributed to chaos in my mind.

And so I had that terrible disorder for 20 miserable years until I was 31 years old.

And so today I'm here to tell you that the gift of temperance is 1 of the gifts of the Spirit, isn't it?

It is a divinely implanted trait of Jesus Christ.

He's the only 1 that can help us to desire to do what's the best for us.

And this morning, the title of our discussion, of our message is, How Urgent Is This Message?

How many of us have this sense right now with all of the critical events that are occurring that the Lord's hand of protection is slowly being withdrawn from our beloved nation?

That things are happening at a pace which we can hardly keep up with.

Sudden unexpected changes are on the horizon and we feel it in our bones.

And in light of that, how urgent is this message really?

How urgent is the message of Sabbath keeping?

Is the message of Sabbath keeping urgent?

The message of Sabbath-keeping is urgent during this crisis hour.

But you know, when this message was given to that little group of youth in the early 1800s, the message of Sabbath keeping.

Did you know that there were already Sabbath keepers?

There were Sabbatarian Anabaptists, there were Seventh Day Baptists, and they were keeping the Seventh-day Sabbath.

They kept the Seventh-day Sabbath because Jesus and His disciples endorsed it.

They kept the Sabbath because they believed that the 10 Commandments have not been abolished.

They kept the seventh-day Sabbath because they believed that an apostate power had come onto the scene and tried to change the day of worship.

And yet when God came to our people, when God came to this little group who were anxiously awaiting the second coming of Jesus Christ, the message that came down to their hearts was that it was time for the Sabbath to be proclaimed more fully.

That is the question that we want to answer as we progress into our health message this morning.

Why were we called to proclaim the Sabbath more fully, not rejecting or ignoring the other truths which cause other Sabbath keepers to keep the Sabbath, but surely we are being given another dimension of Sabbath keeping.

And we will find that dimension if we look in Exodus chapter 31.

Exodus chapter 31, verse 13, it says, Speak unto the children of Israel, I'll wait until you get there, Speak unto the children of Israel, I'll wait until you get there, speak unto the children of Israel saying, Of a truth, or verily, my Sabbaths ye shall keep, for it, The Sabbath day, not a ceremonial Sabbath, but it, the Sabbath, is a sign between me and you throughout your generations that you may know that I am the Lord that does what?

So clearly, proclaiming the Sabbath more fully for you and for me means that it's an enduring sign that God can take nothing and make something out of it.

That He can regenerate the human heart, nurture it, grow it, and blossom it into Christian maturity.

And so the message of Sabbath keeping is a message about dominion.

I keep the seventh day Sabbath as a sign that God has dominion over my life the other 6 days of the week.

Sometimes, and I don't want this to be taken the wrong way, but sometimes I wish there was a sign over my door, over our office, that said seven-day Adventist.

Not to minimize the seventh day, because I want to be a seventh day Adventist 7 days a week.

And what I do the other 6 days a week is what shows whether God has dominion over my life those other days.

That's what the Sabbath is a celebration of.

It's a celebration that He is in control of every area of my life.

That I've given Him dominion over my life.

That I've given Him permission to come into my heart, into my life, and change me.

That means change my heart, that means change my habits, it means changing my thinking and my perspective and my motives, and what I do and how I do it, and what I watch and what I wear and how I present myself to the world as a child of Jesus.

And as I see the spiritual declension in terms of Sabbath keeping, I have a meeting coming up in another state in a few weeks, and they scheduled me for 2 afternoon meetings, and they wrote me a little email and said, we're grateful that you're doing a second meeting.

We want you to know that this is important because there are people who are delaying starting their vacations to come and hear you speak, Sabbath afternoon.

And I thought, well, what on earth compliment is that?

They should stay put until the Sabbath's over and then start driving on their vacation.

I'm not doing them a favor by speaking and making them stay there.

And as I see the carelessness of conversation, the carelessness of dressing the sanctuary of God, the carelessness of our attitudes about how we reverence the Sabbath day and what we do on the Sabbath, to me, it's just a sign of something deeper.

It's a sign that something is going on the rest of the week that isn't quite clicking.

And I think we need to find time for Jesus every day.

And we have a very precious man in Michigan.

His name is Jim Mitchiff and he is our youth director.

And he interviews young people every year to come and be camp counselors.

And he asks them a series of questions to qualify them for camp counseling position.

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Series

Vicki Griffin: SWYC 2005 Health Seminar

Health Seminar, Part 1

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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The Greatest Wakeup Call

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The Mount of Blessings

The Law and the Prophets

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Fill Me with the Spirit

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Tim Riesenberger - Christinity 101: How to Give Your Life to Jesus

The (Almost) Irresistable Witness

1h 35m

Morning Devotional

Purified & Preserved

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Established in the Present Truth

Sound Doctrine

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Israel and the Judges

33m

Encounters With Jesus

Jesus’ Encounter with Nicodemus

44m

GYC 2013 Seminar: The Most Important Book Outside of the Bible - A Deeper Look at The Great Controversy

02-Lessons From the Church in the Wilderness and the Reformation

1h

Prophetic Vision

1h

The Genealogy of Jesus

43m

Sound Doctrine