Michigan Camp Meeting 2018: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Breakthrough Series

Sung Hyun Um

Breakthrough Series - Part 1

Father we come before you in our brokenness but you already know who we are in our inner core.

So Father we just take down our mask and we are ourselves and we admit that we are human beings and we're prone to making mistakes and we need help and we're not God.

So help us not to play God and just be ourselves and to enjoy being the human being that you created us.

Help us to stop all the doing, Father, but to find peace who we are in our relationship with you.

Thank you for each and every person that is here.

Father, may they hear your voice and you calling their name.

And once Again, may they know that they're a special child of God.

The more I study about God, the more I study about psychology and theology, the more I study about how God works in terms of healing and everything.

God is an amazing God, and the gospel that we have is a beautiful gospel.

And With that in mind, let's go to our first text that I mentioned here.

Okay, keep you awake so that you can follow along and everything.

To prepare God's people for works of service may be built up until we all become mature Attaining to the whole major of the fullness of Christ, then we will no longer be what?

We will no longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves Instead speaking the truth in love we will in all things what grow up into him who is the head that is?

Christ from him the whole body and joined and held together by every supporting ligament grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work.

I mean it just takes a whole hour to talk about it.

But I'm going to just run through it very, very quickly and what this passage has to say about breakthrough and it has to say about maturity and so forth.

First of all, it says the Christian life is a life of pursuing what?

Christian life is a life of pursuing maturity.

And then the goal of maturity, Because it is talking about what?

Being built up and being growing up and growing and build and leading away the childhood issues and infantile stage and all that.

It is about growing up, it is about maturing.

And then what is the goal of our maturity?

Full, whole, major of the fullness of God.

So I always tell my wife that, you know, you better hang out with me because Beth is yet to come.

To see the product of your labor, so you better hang around, you know?

So then Christian life is a journey of maturity, growing from eternity to eternity.

So don't be so dismayed or disappointed when things don't work out.

Sometimes I felt like, oh, I messed up on my sermon.

I really, really didn't do a good job and all that.

But whenever I do that, I have to remind myself to realize what?

So it's an ongoing journey of growth toward what?

We're going to grow from eternity to eternity.

How many of you believe that even after we go to heaven we'll continue to grow?

Somebody says that I don't give up on me because I am not finished yet.

So it's an ongoing growth that God wants us to experience.

This is a very important aspect I want to mention.

It says, number 1, it's ongoing, like I said.

And here, built up and grow up and growing and building up is a perfect hour is tensed in Greek which means it has been it is it is ing and then it will continue there's an ongoing thing ongoing thing okay so it is ongoing and then second 1 what's the nature of our Christian growth and maturity?

If you get that, I'm going to have to give you something.

In that, our growth in Jesus Christ is something that is what?

Breakthrough Series - Part 2

Dear kind loving Father in heaven, we count it a rich blessing to be in this place this week and in this place right now.

We ask for your Holy Spirit, Lord, to be upon our speaker and upon each 1 of us.

May we have hearts that will understand and accept and embrace and receive all that you have for us today.

Thank you in advance for all that we will walk away from here with in Jesus name.

So let's do a little bit of review on the sheet.

There are many questions, but we're gonna go through pretty quickly, okay?

And if you can answer them, that would be great.

Christian life is an ongoing, okay, and Circular, because it is ever getting deeper, right?

Ongoing, not only it's ongoing, but ever getting deeper.

Circular and corporate, or corporate or communer.

I mean, you can use any words that are appropriate, communer or corporate journey.

So because we are all doing this together and that's an important message I want us to get.

We're going to do it together as a family, amen?

We're gonna do it together as brothers and sisters in the Lord.

So that means that we need to make ourselves what?

We need to make ourselves vulnerable to 1 another.

We need to make ourselves available to 1 another.

It's sometimes it's easier for us to go to God and deal with God, but it's harder for us to really be open to 1 another.

Okay, ongoing circular and communal journey toward what?

And goal of which is to keep reaching, keep reaching what?

You know how much of a God-given potential that he would have for each and every 1 of you how much do you think you can straight you can be stretched in terms of your capacity and potential how much you know you know my life has been an ongoing nylon stretch because I came from Korea at the age of 20 and then little did I know that Lord would put me in a ministry you know having to speak in English all the time.

And I remember first time in my life ever giving Bible study to an American person in English.

Because at that time my level of communication was like 5 minutes with somebody and that's it how are you and you know all that but then I had to speak 30 minutes to this lady while she was just waiting for me to speak ongoingly.

I even came up with a manuscript, right, for my Bible study, but I couldn't even read them because I was so stressed out.

So God stressed me And God allowed me to marry my wife who came from Korea at the age of 8.

She came at the age of 8, so she doesn't have any kimchi sound in her English.

And for me to juggle my relationship with her was another stretch of my life.

So then God kept stretching, stretching, and stretching us.

So I want you to know today that our goal is to reach, continue to reach what?

God-given potential which there is no limit amen amen and then given what potential for all of us and we begin this process in a place of what immaturity We begin this process in a place of immaturity, which means that what?

All of us as humanity, as humanity, as co-humanity, we share enough sense of immaturity to 1 another.

None of us are fully mature and have it there.

How would you like to hear a sermon speaking from someone who sounds like he's all there, have it there, up there, and then talking to somebody else, all of the, you know what I'm saying?

No, no, according to this study, I came to realize that all of us are in this thing together.

All of us have enough sense of immaturity to share, and we mature from a place of immaturity and break down as most likely as in what we learned this yesterday.

Well where are we in terms of our place of immaturity?

All of us likely being in this place of infancy.

All of us are developmentally likely to be in this what place of infancy.

I don't care if you're 40, 50, 60, I don't care.

You know we just barely be gone and that's okay.

And then somebody said, don't give up because God has not finished yet with you and me.

Philippians chapter 1, verse 6 to 13, tells us that he will begin a good work in you.

OK, so someone tell me, someone tell me, since you were here yesterday, many of you, someone tell me about the truth about grieving.

Truth about grieving and truth about healing and shame.

What is likely to be the missing ingredient?

If we did it alone then crying by yourself at night would have you know gotten you through grieving but we can't do it alone.

We can't do it alone So no matter how much you grieve on your own, it's not going to get you anywhere.

It's not going to allow you to come to a place of healing.

Yeah, and then you start going through the maturing process.

As soon as you open up, you break free from shame.

And so as soon as you make it open, of course, you have to be in a place where you can be secure and be safe, right?

Breakthrough Series - Part 3

Father, we are so grateful that we are a child of God and I realize more than ever that it is a big deal to be a child of God and I claim this and I want to nurture it in this group setting in this safe place with the people I love who doesn't judgment.

And I pray right now if there's any judgment about ourselves, about other people, that we would release it and that we would just really be so awed by your love.

We want to be born again, and we want this child to regenerate and have vitality in our spiritual life.

And so Lord, just we ask for your Holy Spirit to be here and just infuse us with your presence in Jesus's name.

The challenge I have is that the more I dig deeper into the infantile and childhood issues that play out in our adult life without us realizing it.

So then the child within, infant within, the immature being within dictates Every actions, every thoughts and emotions and the way we set boundaries and inability to set boundaries, all of that are affected by the inner child.

And yet we do not know about it, do not have the awareness of it, you know.

So all of these things are done unconsciously.

And so I believe in unconscious level that much.

So then we as Christians, our, 1 of our goal is to bring the things that are on the unconscious level to a conscious level and that takes the Holy Spirit because sometimes like a lot of us we don't even remember what happened but we feel very you know sad about ourselves and we feel anger we do not know where it's coming from and so forth.

And so I want you to know that all of the human, most of the human misery, including marital difficulties and hardships and all that tragedy that goes on with marriage and relationship, almost 95 percentile and more are stemming from early on, even from mother's womb.

And so, without being able to have an awareness of that, work of the Holy Spirit and all that we desire, and righteousness by faith, and all that we desire to learn, and all that, unless it really, really goes Deeper enough to touch the core of who I am how I'm you know made to be and all that It's not gonna have as much as impact that is supposed to have in our lives and So I want you to know That psychology has has a lot of help we can you know We can gain a lot of help from psychology.

But I want you to know that in psychology, there is no salvation.

In psychology, there is no transformation.

Yes, psychology come up with a lot of tricks.

You know, you can come up with all kinds of tricks that may seem like working, that may help us to do to modify our behaviors and all that but it doesn't transform so in that sense what Ellen White says about transformation is really really powerful human education is there to modify people but God's word and gospel of Jesus Christ is there to what?

And what we need is not modification, the transformation in our lives.

But, but, psychological concept and psychological languages are very, very helpful in terms of explaining the gospel.

Because the gospel language is too difficult for us to understand.

Like righteousness, sin, and you know, all that we want to know, and we have to explain all that we have to know the Greek and all that so so I'm using psychological language and the concept as much as I can because it explains the reality of our lives and then allowing the Bible to integrate with psychology in such a way that it will be used as a means of explaining the reality of our lives.

And you know, we'll just have to move on.

Hopefully, you'll be able to continue to catch on with it I'm gonna begin with this this words from John Brescia The natural or wonder child is present when you meet an old friend You know when you meet an old friend how how would your facial expression turn out to be?

And then would you like to give them high-five?

And then would you like to give them a bear hug?

And then you are already happy and your tone of voice changes, right?

When you meet an old friend, your tone of voice changes like acting like a little kid, you become so happy and you know go crazy right and that's where the wonder child comes out.

That's how we need to be when we meet our God every day.

And after all, after all God doesn't know any adults coming to Him.

Because all of us have our own immaturity to deal with.

You know, If you have fully mature, we don't need God, right?

The natural or wonder child is present when you meet an old friend, when you barely laugh.

When was the time you had that barely laugh?

You know, 1 time I met this couple to be there, it looks like they're couples you know, old couple.

They're laughing, they're waiting in the Arizona Airport, they were laughing and laughing.

You know I do this kind of work, I pay attention to those things.

And they're like, wow, how can you live together so long and you're able to laugh like that?

And so I came home and then I explained that to our church members.

No, no, no, they are not, you know, couple, they're boyfriend and girlfriend.

Somehow when you get married and live long enough, then there's not much joy and you get into a rut of a functionality of relationship.

When you are creative and spontaneous, it's like, it's like, hey let's do this.

And when you are awed by the wondrous sight, you go to Grand Canyon.

What is your first expression when you go to Grand Canyon?

You know, when you have that simplicity of life, when you're able to be grateful and joyous over the simple things in life, And that's when you're in touch with the wonder of a childhood.

Somehow as you grow older, you know, get serious with life, and then we lose that.

So I have just several things that are affected by when your inner child is wounded, there's so many kinds of, you know, dysfunctions get developed in a person's life.

If you are not sure where we are, actually, we are actually left off from the second page, the Tuesday, Tuesday.

So second page of the Tuesday section, number 6.

What happens when wounded child is contaminated?

It's kind of interesting that they use this word.

When there's a wounded child, that wounded child becomes toxic, only knows how to destroy and become destructive, and because it's very unhappy, and have this really, like, constipating attitude, right?

And, of course, I don't have time to talk about all of this, whenever I have a seminar, you know, put some of them into it.

Codependent, you become codependent in relationship.

Today I will just take time to explain it.

This is, this explains why When you get abused, it is very likely you become the abuser.

Because the anger of the abuser, you ended up internalizing it in such a way, the identity of the abuser become your identity.

This person, the world is revolving around you.

You only know about your needs and nobody else's.

If you meet with a narcissistic person, you know, you don't get a chance to talk anything.

This person talks all the way all the way through and then trust issues, acting out, acting in behaviors, magical beliefs, this unrealistic beliefs that you have, intimacy dysfunction.

Oh I wish I can talk about this because nowadays people have false sense of intimacy with things, you know, with machineries, with the internet, or with cell phones, you know, with technological stuff, right?

People have this false sense of intimacy which is not a real intimacy at all non-discipline behaviors addictive incompulsive behaviors thought disorders and emptiness apathy depressions You can already see that when the inner child is wounded, it totally contaminates in almost entirety of your lives.

Breakthrough Series - Part 4

Heavenly Father, we just want to thank you for this time that we have together.

Lord, I ask that you pour your Spirit out upon us and help us as we are on our journey to be more like you.

Guide us and direct us and be with Pastor Sung too.

Did you know that growing up and then growing old is different?

You know, Growing up, growing old is a natural thing.

You don't have to do anything about it, right?

And no matter how much you do, I mean, you can't help but growing old, unfortunately, but growing up is not the same.

Yeah, you have to intentionally make it happen, right?

And then we are comforted by knowing, the Bible, it says, it is God who makes it grow.

In other words, there are agencies that God uses for our growth.

You see, God is not, you know, God is not left out there that, hey, you figured things out.

And so you just come to me, and I'll take care of everything.

No, God says that, you know, I have my agencies out there on this earth.

And how come you are not going to the resources that I have provided?

And so really, it's really important for us to be eye-opening about the resources that are available all around us, including ourselves.

And in that sense, we need to be resourceful about things.

So I put down quite a few things that we can do to help ourselves to grow up from a place of childhood breakdown, okay?

Someone can answer why do we need to grow up?

Because we are more useful when we are grown up.

When we are grown up, when we grow up, the more we grow up, we become more useful, more fruitful for the kingdom of God for other people we become impactful in our lives okay how many of you want to grow up up and all the time that you become you become a impactful person the way that God wants to use you amen amen yeah that's what we want to be right and so that's 1 reason another reason why we want to grow up is because being in a place of immaturity that's where all the dysfunction and that's where all the breakdown occurs.

And so immaturity and breakdown goes together.

Of course sometimes there is a calamity in your life that happens and that allows you to go through traumas in our lives.

But how do we deal with the trauma and then allow that to work for us even?

It really depends on our ability to handle them and it all has to do with what?

So we got to do everything we can to allow God, allow the resources around us to help us to grow.

We're going to go through it very, very quickly, OK?

And How many of you are interested in following these guidelines that are given to you?

You cannot be pregnant by thinking about being pregnant, right?

And then there is no such thing as half pregnant, right?

Either you're pregnant or not pregnant, right?

It's going to take investment on our part.

What's the difference between breakdown and breakthrough?

Bring forth breakthrough in our lives and then it is never ever too late amen never ever too late so let's go through this knowing that we're gonna follow through this okay number 1 daily what daily devotion daily devotion is so important if you don't if you cannot do a daily devotion, it's okay.

Don't beat yourself up by thinking that, oh, I'm not having devotion every day.

No, don't make it too guilty, you know, and responsibility driven.

But make a pursuit of trying to do it every day.

Reclaim and nurture your identity in Christ.

If you don't have a handout, get them, OK?

Bonding time with Jesus in the Holy Spirit through word, prayer, and deeper meditation is very, very important, OK?

The reason why we do Bible study is not primarily to discover who's right, who's wrong, which day is right, which day is wrong, but it's about your relationship with Christ.

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