We look forward to exploring together an important aspect of “Rest in Christ,” particularly “Finding Rest in Family Ties” (the August 7 lesson study). Authoring this Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide has helped us discover the importance of God’s plan for offering healing and rest in our relationships.

ASI 2021: Into All the World

<p>We look forward to exploring together an important aspect of “Rest in Christ,” particularly “Finding Rest in Family Ties” (the August 7 lesson study). Authoring this Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide has helped us discover the importance of God’s plan for offering healing and rest in our relationships.</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>

Plenary Sessions

Vanessa Dowdley

The Tunnel Syndrome

Members in Action

Cami Oetman

Personal Testimony: Cami Oetman

Stephen Lee

Felecia Lee

A Message for Every Nation, Tribe, Language and People

Gerald Klingbeil

Chantal Klingbeil

Finding Rest in Family Ties

Ted N.C. Wilson

Hold Fast What You Have

Steve Dickman

The Hour

It's a real privilege to be in this very big Satur School class this morning.

I'm sure that a lot of you are a little tired, right?

You've had a couple of wonderful days meeting with people and seeing so many wonderful things and hearing so many wonderful presentations.

So we're gonna try our level best to keep you awake.

Well I don't think we need a mic check, Chantelle, I think it sounds good, but let's try and start with an accent check.

I didn't pick up this accent, I was born with it, thank you.

This is a South African accent, although it has been quite diluted, I'm told.

Well, at the moment, I work as an associate director for the LNG White Estate in Maryland.

So when you ask me where I'm from, I'll say Maryland.

My husband, Gerald, is an associate editor for Adventist Review and Adventist World and you noticed he has a different accent.

Well I was born and raised in Germany But I believe I don't have a strong German accent.

The clock is ticking, so let's get right into our Sabbath school lessons.

Chantal, why don't you open with a word of prayer?

Our Heavenly Father, we are so grateful to be able to call you Father.

This morning as we explore 1 of the great gifts that you've given us, relationships, and we explore rest, we pray that you can be very close to us and open our minds, open our hearts, that we can find that rest and that healing where we need it most.

I know I'm not saying or telling you anything new, but relationships are not always easy, aren't they?

And I think at Advances we are no exception to that rule.

We wish for healthy and functional relationships in our families and in our churches, but we need to recognize that we too struggle with dysfunction sometimes.

Let me share some data, and I need to thank publicly my friends at the Office of archives and statistics and research at the general conference who pointed me to the research that I will reference right now in a 2009 survey by the Center for Creative Research found that 28% of Adventists living in North America had gone through the through a divorce Now the researchers said because those research is only done maybe every decade every 12 to 14 years they noticed that the trend was going up.

This is 2009 that we living in 2021 the estimate is that's roughly a third mid 30s of Adventist Marriages go through divorce Now divorce is only 1 of these challenging things that challenge our relationships or dysfunctions that challenge our relationships.

It's really just a symptom of many challenges and that is pretty disheartening.

As God's end time people you would imagine That we should be characterized at least our relationships by kindness gentleness joy peace long So you mean the Galatian 522 family?

But I guess if we look back at our history, relationships haven't always been easy.

Well, Are you talking about the pioneers?

I know you work a lot with this Adventist heritage also.

Do you tell me that their homes weren't ideals and their relationships weren't always healthy and, you know, happy?

Just a quick look at Adventist history and you will know that our pioneers didn't always have smooth sailing in their relationships.

Our church leaders, you know, they often had challenges interpersonally.

I'm thinking of, yeah, I'm thinking of the whites as you mentioned.

Yeah, they didn't have always a perfect home and perfect relationships.

They had their ups and downs, their storms.

I think especially of their second son, Edson White.

Probably right from the beginning, he had, he married young, he was a fairly strong personality.

I guess he inherited a bit of James's temperament.

He was quite good at making money, but he wasn't very good when it came to spending money.

And he would spend the money rather quickly, And he had quite a stormy relationship with the fledgling Seventh-day Adventist church that his parents were so very involved in.

Very careless, as I said, with spending money, and there was a very embarrassing, and I guess we don't talk about it very often, a very embarrassing public fallout with the church over copyright issues that Edson engaged in.

Of course his behavior caused his parents a lot of embarrassment and a lot of pain and really strained his relationship with his parents, particularly with James.

Look, I mean, we're talking here about the White family, some of the...

1 of the co-founders of the Adventist church.

Yeah, Well, the story does go on after James's death in 1881.

By the way, yesterday was the sixth, right?

So yesterday was the anniversary of James White's death.

After James White's death in 1881, it seemed to something clicked for Edson and then he really seemed to kind of step out and he actually wrote to Ellen, he wrote to his mother and I'll quote here, he wrote in his letter and he said that he was, quote, not at all religiously inclined.

I mean think about your child writing you this letter.

She really felt this and she wrote a lot of letters and I've been privileged and you can actually all read it, I'll plug in here for EGW Writings app, but it's heartbreaking to read these letters that she writes to Edson, pleading with him, you know, trying everything to encourage him into a relationship with Jesus.

She doesn't give up her love, her tender concern for her prodigal son.

Fortunately, this relationship has a happy ending.

Edson does give his heart to Jesus at the age of 43.

And when he does, he becomes involved in outreach ministry, as I know is a passion here at ASI for missions.

And he helps to design a steam paddle boat, which you know.

And of course with that he starts his mission project up and down the Mississippi bringing education and a knowledge of Jesus to the recently freed slaves of the South.

We had a story, maybe some of you had heard that story before.

What do relationships, now we tried to really get to it, What do relationships have to do with the topic of this quarterly that we wrote?

Well, we get to choose relationships, right?

Some of them, but probably the most, how can I say, the most formative, our parents, our siblings, we don't get to choose those?

We've lived in Africa, in South America, in Asia, and in most places, when we moved to the US 13 years ago, we found a very strange thing.

Have you ever heard the term church hopping?

Very strange because in many parts of the world you know you live close to a church you have to walk there or you take the bus to get to the closest church and not so necessarily in in this country.

So sometimes we can look for the ideal church, but most of the times in reality, there is no ideal church because it's full of human beings that are imperfect, human beings that are sinful.

Series

Plenary Sessions

Finding Rest in Family Ties

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

The Cost of Forgiveness

52m

Recharged: Finding Your Safe Place

02 Restless Family Ties

51m

Plenary

Why We Must Love God

1h 1m

Let the Words of My Mouth

Let the Words of My Mouth- Part 1

30m

Getting Acquainted With Jesus

2 - My Drowning Brother

28m

The Power of the 3 Angels Messages

The Power of Letting Go

1h 11m

Marriage Heart to Heart

Forgiveness

54m

How to Know God

1h 6m

We Never Saw Anything Like This!

40m

Restoring the Home

04 The Power of Forgiveness

1h 10m

Norman McNulty Weekend

Justification By Faith For Our Time

50m

To Forgive Is To Benefit

36m

Sound Doctrine