Michigan Camp Meeting 2019: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Going ABOVE and BEYOND

Melody Mason

Daring to Ask for More - Part 1

Daring to Ask for More - Part 2

Daring to Ask for More - Part 3

Daring to Ask for More - Part 4

Daring to Ask for More - Part 5

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much again for the opportunity to be here together with my brothers and sisters.

And as we talk and review a few final things in this session, Father, we just ask for your Holy Spirit to be with us.

I just ask for your words, your anointing.

Father, pray that you would hide me behind the cross and that you would be exalted.

You know how desperately I need you this morning, Father.

I don't have what I need to share, but I know that you have a message that you want to be shared, and so I'm just asking that you would speak through me.

Thank you so much for hearing and answering this prayer and for giving us what we need today.

I wanted to to do kind of a little bit review of what we've already done, but you know as I've been talking about this week, I could talk about, I could talk about, you know, you want to start a prayer ministry in your church, for example, or you want to do this and that, and I could give you bullet points, you know, do this, go to your pastor, write out this plan, do this, This is how you lead a prayer time, etc But you know nobody ever did that with me.

It was never a process of You know, this is what you need to do to have a prayer ministry This whole prayer ministry that God grew in my life and is still growing in my life, grew out of my walk with Him.

It grew out of my own time on my knees, where I'm just crying as I'm reading my Bible and I'm saying, Lord, I want more.

I don't, you know, so it's just my own personal walk.

And as that personal walk is growing, and I'm asking him, you know, what are the breaches?

How, how can I have a pure heart towards you?

He's showing me things in my life and it's a surrender process and sometimes I surrender today.

I'll share some stories as I go through this morning.

Some things I surrender today I take back tomorrow, you know, and then I have to resurrender and so it's a continual process but it's through this process that God's been growing in my own life that then he began to open up doors for prayer ministry and then he began to bring people on board and give opportunity to share.

And so it's been a growing process, you know.

Different people will come to me and say, I want to have a prayer ministry.

I want to have a prayer ministry like you do.

Or how do I, you know, you have a book that's published and that's been successful, how do I write a book?

And I'm like, it's not like I can just tell you how to do this.

It comes out of a life of obedience and really consecration.

And I'm not holding myself up as an example.

I'm not meaning to do that because I'm very faulty and I fail and I'm having struggles every day just like you guys do.

But it's just a continual process in our walk with God.

And so that's why I'm emphasizing so much over this week.

Not necessarily a bunch of do's and don'ts.

I have another series that we did back at GYC in December, myself and Jim Castor, he's another amazing young man, little Filipino guy just on fire for God, and he has a prayer ministry all around the world as well.

We did a series together on prayer ministry, kind of do's and don'ts in prayer ministry and how to ruin your prayer ministry and how to grow.

And we talked about dealing with problem issues and different things.

And that series is on AudioVerse if you look under the GYC sessions from this last year.

So there are more do's and don'ts, obviously, but my really big burden in this week is really to see us go deeper in our own walk with God, deeper consecration, because that is where your ministry is going to grow from.

Our ministries aren't necessarily all going to look the same.

But even if God does not call you to a public prayer ministry, He's calling you to prayer.

And he's calling you to work through the power of his spirit And you're not going to be able to do that in whatever capacity you're serving unless you are in prayer And how do we have success in prayer?

It's through that life that is really desperately holding on to God and seeking to surrender to His will.

So I have the title Above and Beyond Surrender, but what I'm actually going to be going through is, I have 7 keys but I've changed this, like I said I was just changing everything here at the last minute this morning.

It's actually 9, 9 keys to daily revival and abundant living.

And basically, it's 9 things that we're going to remind ourselves as we go forward that must be part of our life.

Man can accomplish nothing without God, and God has arranged his plans so as to accomplish nothing in the restoration of the human race without the cooperation of the human with the divine.

The part man is required to sustain is immeasurably small.

The part that we are actually given is immeasurably small.

And yet we are told in the plan of God it is just that part that makes the work a success.

So God gives us a part, but Lord have mercy, forgive us for our puffed up attitude about the role that we play in the work.

And you're like, they just do not have an ear to listen.

And unfortunately I've met prayer ministry leaders that are this way, you know, this is my prayer ministry, I know how it goes, I'm not going to, You know, and we kind of get a little territorial with things, and I'm like, what's the point?

So no matter what you do, if you're wanting to start a prayer ministry or whatever, I'm saying stay at the foot of the cross, stay humble, and don't be a know-it-all.

You know, you can come back from camp meeting and you can say, I learned such and such in seminars, and I did this, and we experienced this prayer time, and this is, you know, we have to have a spirit of humility and we really demonstrate it by our life it's not necessarily by what we try to teach pride listens yes I'm learning all this and how am I going to go back to my church?

But I'm going to really spend a lot of time in prayer and get people on board, share the book and see how the Lord leads.

And I tell people, you know, don't go back with a big plan to, we're going to just make all these changes, or we're going to do this, or You know, whatever.

My thing is really find another sister or brother or a couple people that have a similar mindset and that really have a burden to go deeper, to see your church go deeper.

And don't try to revolutionize your whole church at once.

Just start with those couple people that are on board and then just start praying, humbly praying, and then humbly as God leads, you know, invite more people and make sure your pastor is on board and understands what you're wanting to do.

So often we go forward because we know we're right and we know we've seen and we go forward and we plow people and then we lose the fruitful soil.

If pride and selfishness were laid aside, 5 minutes would remove most difficulties.

Ellen White writes that God cannot bestow His blessings in fullness, for 1 because we're corrupted with the practices and spirit of the world, but also their spiritual pride.

And should the Lord work as His heart longs to do, it would but confirm in those people their self-esteem and self-exaltation.

Okay, number 2, and at the end, at the very end, I'm going to have a slide that has all 9 points.

And I cannot emphasize this strongly enough either.

It is not our willpower that is going to gain the victory in our personal life, in our ministry, in anything we do.

We don't have enough grit and determination to be the Christians that He's calling us to be.

We don't have enough grit and determination to be patient, to be loving, to bite our tongue.

And like I said yesterday, we can bite our tongue, but inside we're still fuming, and that's what we're judged by, is the heart.

God looks on the inner, man looks on the outer, so give God our will.

Daily surrender is kind of like peeling an onion, and I'm continually finding, God is continually peeling away new layers, and I'm thinking, Lord, didn't we just, you know, and he says, yes, but now we need to go a little deeper, or now we need to, you know, and it's like an onion.

I remember a conference we had a big prayer room at, after 1 of the prayer sessions, we found this watch on a chair, and we thought somebody had left it.

It's a very, very beautiful, kind of ornate watch.

Series

Going ABOVE and BEYOND

Daring to Ask for More - Part 5

Transcript

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Sponsor

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