Join this seminar to learn ways to simplify your financial life and be on the same page with money. Explore several strategies to help reduce overall stress in your financial world. Whether married or single, you will find valuable takeaways from this workshop.

Michigan Conference Campmeeting 2021: How Much More?

<p>Join this seminar to learn ways to simplify your financial life and be on the same page with money. Explore several strategies to help reduce overall stress in your financial world. Whether married or single, you will find valuable takeaways from this workshop.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Marriage

Laurie Snyman

How Keeping Your Vow Benefits Many Lives!

You are about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2021 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

Father in Heaven, thank you so much for this opportunity to be here.

I know that marriage is very important in your eyes, and Maybe not everybody here is married, but we know that whatever is going to be shared today is something that is going to be a blessing to us and help us to be able to take away what each of us individually needs to have.

Thank you so much for Lori and her willingness to share.

I pray that you will just speak through her.

And again, we just thank you for your presence here and for your spirit.

Now, I know she won't want me to say it, but Gail is married to the president of the Michigan Conference, and we love her.

She's very involved in family life and marriage and she's the 1 who puts on our beautiful marriage retreats every year.

1 at Crystal Mountain in the Cadillac area and 1 at Camp Azabo.

How many of you have taken advantage of some of those?

And we are really appreciative of all the work that she does and she makes them really special for everybody.

So today we're going to be talking about marriage commitment.

But first of all, I want to just tell you a little story.

In the summers, we sometimes got to go on wonderful family vacations.

I hope that you get to go on family vacations.

And 1 summer, my folks got some really good friends from the Detroit area that asked them if they would like to go to their cottage in Tupper Lake, New York.

Well, it is an area with lots of islands.

And we had to go by boat to this little island.

In the morning, I mean there was no gas, there was no electricity, there was no sewage, and yet we loved being out there.

We would play games by kerosene lamp at night, and in the morning my brother and I would have to swim over to a little island that had burned because when it burns, I guess blueberry trees, wild blueberries grow on those islands.

So we would take our bucket on our head and we'd swim over to that other island.

We'd pick all these blueberries and then we'd swim back with that bucket back and then we would make blueberry pancakes in the morning over the fire.

But the worst thing, I mean, if you could say the worst thing, was that they all wanted us to learn how to water ski.

I don't have 1 of those bones in my body that would stand up on a water ski.

And they were sure that they could teach me how to water ski.

And so every time that they would pull on the cord, I'd be trying to stand on that thing and I'd go head first.

Any of you ever, never got up on water skis?

They said, no matter what happens, don't let go, even if you feel like you're falling.

And so, 1 time I held on so long that I don't know why I didn't get whiplash because I was holding in the water with my head down and I was going head first along with the boat.

And they said, you need to learn when to let go.

I think that there are lots of people who are just merely holding on, but they aren't really living what they need to live in a marriage.

And if you have a partner that's willing to come for the ride, it can be really good if you really work on it.

But when you are just going for the ride, and you aren't really working on anything, you actually add to your marriage's demise.

And so we need to be very cautious because this is an institution that was created by God where we simply don't just ignore the signs of a breaking marriage, but we actually get very involved.

Can you tell me what some words some other words are for the word commitment?

Whoa, that's not what we always think about when we're talking about a beautiful wedding and how I'm going to look in my gown.

Loyalty to this specific spouse that we've chosen.

Do you think that that is not as evident and important to people today?

And so really, people who are willing to go through a marriage, actually a lot of people go, well, I don't really want to commit to somebody.

They're often thinking about themselves, aren't they?

Like if it goes wrong, I don't want to be stuck in a marriage.

And so, you'll see that a lot of people are not getting married.

And a lot of people who are getting married are not sticking in for the long haul.

If you know that you've made a marriage commitment, it's very serious to God about your commitment.

I mean, making a vow with God is very important.

And if you are needing to work on your marriage day by day, aren't there many days when we mess up and we don't do what we're supposed to do?

I mean, Royce and I, every day, we're supposed to be working on it.

And there are days when we have not done a very good job of it.

But we know that we can keep on working on it, right?

Every day is a new day to do the right thing.

So I believe that God believes in vows and he takes them very seriously.

When you vow a vow to God, Do not delay paying it, for He has no pleasures in fools." Did you get that?

So people who are wise will hold on to their vow.

But people who are foolish don't hold on to the vow.

It is better that you not vow, than you should vow and not pay.

It's better that you should not vow, and you should make sure that you're keeping your vow.

When you vow with your mouth, don't let it lead you into sin.

And do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake.

Why should God be angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands?

How many of you would say, very important?

James 5.12 But above all, my brothers, do not swear either by heaven or earth or by any other oath, but let your yes be yes and your no be no so that you will not fall under condemnation.

If you break the vow to God, you will fall under what?

Tamara Conway

Steven Conway

Communication & Conflict Resolution

All right, so she told you a little bit about who we are.

We do, we, my husband pastors the Detroit Northwest Church and We are in the District 12 area that is in the metro Detroit area, which is by the best area, okay?

And we've been there for about a little over 15 years.

I love you, Oh my goodness, he saved our life a few years ago.

But we've been married for a little over 20 years.

And that is truly a miracle by the grace of God.

Not only because marriage is hard, right?

But, and we both love the Lord and when we married we loved the Lord, but loving the Lord isn't all you need, amen?

It's okay to admit that folks, it's all right.

It takes a lot to make a marriage work And we also came into our marriage with baggage.

Like, it could be nice baggage, name brand baggage, but it was baggage.

The truth is, I didn't really have much baggage.

Everything I own could be fit into 1 vehicle.

I did, I had cute baggage and he had a dysfunctional vehicle.

And but as I said we came in that and and there were a lot of things in our trunks or our baggage that we weren't even aware of, guys, right?

There were things that we both grew up in, you know?

We talked to couples a lot about culture, and when we think about the word culture, we often think about this, right?

We can be honest, tell the truth, shame the devil.

Me and my husband, though we share the same color skin, we came from 2 different cultures.

The homes we grew up in were different, right?

He grew up in, what type of home did you grow up in?

And my home was also dysfunctional as well.

My father and my mother married when my mom was 8 months pregnant with me.

My mom had 2 children prior as well, and they divorced when I was around 9 years old.

My father was a generational alcoholic, a generational alcoholic, okay?

So that means that his father, his father, and his father, and Lord only knows how many before that.

So I was kind of set up for that in my genes.

My mother was also the product or from a family of alcoholics, her father was an alcoholic, his father was alcoholic, so marrying my dad was kind of normal for my mom.

With that came some abuse and those were things that I watched growing up in my home.

I heard certain types of speech and language, and you can only imagine what those type of things did, as well as I experienced abuse, whether it was sexual abuse or physical abuse.

So my baggage was pretty deep and pretty wide.

We had all of the Spirit of Prophecy books in it.

And, you know, we were a Seventh-day Adventist family.

We went to church on the Sabbath, and you know, we were all preparing for translation.

But in reality, despite all of the red books, blue books and every other color books, and in spite of the fact that we were going to church, we were, I came from a blended family.

And there were a lot of challenges, as you can imagine, that were there as a result of that.

And not only that, I had a, 1 of my parents was hypercritical.

And That's something that I picked up on and I've carried with me and I've had to battle against.

But I thought I was ready for translation and I thought I was on my way and then I got married and this funny thing happened when I got married.

All of these problems that I never knew I had just started to...

And so, you know, in my prayer time, because again, I'm preparing for translation.

In my prayer time, I'm like, Father in heaven, thank you for revealing what the problem is.

And I open 1 eye and look towards my wife.

Thank you for calling me to this high and holy purpose.

You know, but really maybe you don't come to that conclusion in your prayer life, but at some point in your marriage, no matter how many seminars you've been to, how much pre-marriage preparation you've had, at some point, all of us, to a greater or lesser extent, just want the other person to change, right?

It's like, man, if they would only do this, then everything would be okay.

And so you have 2 people with baggage, as every marriage has 2 people with baggages.

And my wife mentioned, and I was telling you how perfect my home was.

The crazy thing about marriage is, you're bringing together 2 people who have, as she mentioned, cultures or ways of doing things, right?

Now, we're merging our ways of doing things.

Whose home had the better way of doing things?

And so what we tend to want to do is impose the way that we were brought up doing things, the way our family functioned.

Even if our family was dysfunctional, we want to take the best elements of our family and bring those in and impose them on our new family.

And so there's a, that's 1 of the areas of conflict where conflict can arise.

So we are gonna present from a little bit of a different perspective.

We have a lot of different ways that we could talk about conflict resolution and communication, but we're going to come from a little bit of a different perspective.

Hopefully it doesn't, you know, it's not repeated.

So this 1 says, and this is a part of a presentation, but anyway, you don't need to know all that.

Understanding and surrendering our baggage and accepting God's chiseling work in our lives produces authentic relationship with Christ and those around us.

Okay, let me just press pause right there.

And let me read that statement again because I want you to tell me what you think that means.

Understanding and surrendering our baggage and accepting God's challenging or chiseling work in our lives produces authentic relationship with Christ and those around us.

So what is that saying to us is the catalyst for a healthy and authentic relationship with the people in our lives.

Yes, yes, surrendering to God, surrendering self.

The catalyst for a healthy, authentic relationship with my wife is not my wife becoming a better person.

Marsha Beal

Relationships: Not for the Faint of Heart

Father in Heaven, we just thank You so much for this opportunity again today to be here and to learn more about Your plan for our lives, our homes, our marriages, the way that You want us to learn how to relate with each other and with others.

So today as John and Marsha present, I just pray for your spirit to be here, that you will speak through them, and that you will speak right to our hearts so that each 1 of us will hear what we need to hear.

Thank you so much for this beautiful day and for being able to be here at camp meeting.

We're just excited for what you're going to teach us.

Presenting is fairly second nature to me.

If I have a love or passion that I go home excited after doing it, standing up front here and doing it not because I like the the hog the attention or to have the spotlight on me is that I am always so excited to wonder what God's gonna do through these lips of mine.

I spoke In April I went up to campus Sabal to speak to the women's ministry leaders for the for the year and I Lost my presentation or my presentation went away on my computer.

I couldn't find it at all I couldn't pull it up on my cell phone, nor could I pull it up on my iPad.

And so then all I had was the PowerPoint that they were showing me.

And if you're gonna begin seeing, my PowerPoints are nothing like anybody else's.

This doesn't have lots of flowery words on them to remember everything I'm going to say.

So I literally prayed, God you gotta give me the word because I don't know and here we go.

Well after I got done and I went back and my mind was reviewing the stories I told, I realized I told none of the stories I had set out to tell.

Well come to find out there's somebody who was there that day that needed to hear a couple of those stories.

So that's why this is so exciting and I'm so excited to be here.

I did bring my husband kicking and dragging, or dragging and kicking, screaming, yes.

He's not a big upfront guy, but I do appreciate him, he very much so.

We have been married almost 33 years, sorry, I have to think about that.

So what gives us the ability to speak on conflict?

Well number 1, we've been married for 33, almost 33 years.

Number 2, we are, he's a man and I'm a woman.

That's another reason I can speak about conflict.

Let's see, in our married life, we've encountered infertility, depression, adoption, building a house, the death of a parent, to name a few, not to name all the other little things that we have to deal with, having nieces and nephews come and live with us who need help, knowing that you never know when a phone call is going to come and say, Aunt Marcia, I feel like I need to check myself into a psych ward, and I'm on my way.

Those are the things that we've had to deal with.

He's also, he'll tell you, I had no really gray hair until I got married and now I got a plethora of it.

But that also could do the fact that, what, I had how many emergency surgeries?

Not to count the ones that weren't emergencies.

So I think we've got enough baggage to say that I can talk a little bit about conflict.

Because we've dealt with it a little bit.

Not to say we don't have it all perfect now.

No, because conflict is just part of life.

So before I go any further I'm going to show you 5 animals and I want you to just in your mind or write them down and I'll come back to this which animal you feel you most relate to and I'm going to give you very little information about each animal, just the name of it, but just 1 of those animals that you think, wow, I really, really like them.

We're gonna pretend that this is the, well, we'll go to this 1 first.

Do you relate to being a fox or do you like the fox?

No, because the zebra is the same as the fox.

So pretend that it's not really a lion, but we're pretending it's a lion.

So owl, fox, teddy bear, turtle, or lion.

All right, so you got to keep that in mind.

So we will, I really probably need you up here moving things along maybe a little bit Okay, so let's take a look at some Bible texts as to what the Bible has to say about conflict so our first 1 and if you have your Bibles with you You can more than welcome pull those up, but Proverbs 14.29 says, A patient man has great understanding, but a quick-tempered man displays folly.

Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody.

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written, it is mine to avenge, I will repay, says the Lord.

Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against 1 another.

Aren't you glad that I have to live by that rule?

Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against 1 of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself.

You mean I can't hold a grudge against you either?

Even when I think you should be with me and not out running around in your golf cart visiting everybody?

So on Thursday night when we came here last Thursday night, it's, Proverbs 15.1, he goes, Oh, I'm going to run down and get my golf cart and my radio.

And I says, Oh, bye, I'll see you next Sunday.

And 1 of the other loop hosts gave me a dirty look and I said, listen here, I'm telling you the truth.

I don't see him a whole lot in camp meeting time, but I've come to grips with that and that's okay for the most part.

A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

Don Sawvel

Lisa Sawvel

Dealing with Sexual Addiction in the Marriage

Father in Heaven, thank you so much for just being with us all the way till Thursday afternoon.

You have been very present here at Camp Meeting ever since we came last Friday, And I just want to thank you for that.

And now as Don and Lisa share, I just ask for your Holy Spirit to be here in a powerful way that you will speak to each 1 of our hearts, touch us where we need to be touched.

And thank you so much that you care so much about us, that you provide us resources, you provide us people who have gone before us, who have struggled and who have overcome and are overcoming through you.

And so today we just want to commit this presentation into your hands and our lives and our marriages and even those that may not be married or whatever but we're all humbly here before you and we just thank you for what you're going to do.

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Series

Marriage

Reducing Financial Stress

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

How Keeping Your Vow Benefits Many Lives!

47m

Communication & Conflict Resolution

55m

Relationships: Not for the Faint of Heart

56m

Dealing with Sexual Addiction in the Marriage

58m

Reducing Financial Stress

55m

Sound Doctrine