GYC 2010: No Turning Back

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Till I Die: A Study on the Commonality of Tears, Blood, and Sweat

Sebastien Braxton

For Life: Balancing Commitment and the Cares of Life

This message was presented at the GYC 2010 No Turning Back Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

For other resources like this, visit us online at GYCweb.org.

We are thankful, Father, for the fact that we don't deserve to be here.

We're unworthy and our lives are filled with broken promises, commitments made to you in this very place of prayer that have been broken time and time again.

And so we are praying, Lord, that through this man who is but dust in your sight, that you would teach us, Lord, how to maintain commitment to Jesus, how to know Him, to encounter Him, and yet to continue to have personal contact with Christ as we leave this place.

We thank you, Father, for the opportunity and the privilege that it is to study your word And now we pray for your Holy Spirit that he would go from heart to heart and from mind to mind Impressing upon the soul the truth that it may have a sanctifying power over our lives.

It's a little better when I start talking and you know I get loud sometimes so all right slaves of God our seminar is entitled till I die We want to stay dedicated to Jesus till we die.

Last year in my final morning devotional message that we would either finish Jesus's work in this generation or die trying.

In order to do that, that means we must know the science of how to maintain the commitment to Christ.

So I think from this particular seminar today, the attitude must first begin with a sense of Even the devil doesn't Sabbath It must first begin with an understanding of identity So I want to start talking about slaves of God a New Testament metaphor for total devotion to Christ so now we live in a generation where there is a problem of commitment did you know that you know nowadays when I was canvassing I was knocking on some doors in a very rural, rural, rural area in Michigan.

There were more gnats on the street than there were homes.

And I came to this 1 home this couple that was from Germany and as we began to dialogue a man and a woman stepped out and we began to talk about the books that I was sharing with them and immediately I Thought you know trying to be a good canvasser okay so see what kind of relationship they have maybe this these books would be good for family worship time as husband and wife now I assumed immediately they looked at me and they said we're not married okay So you guys are just you know Interested in 1 another said no We're just partners Partners, you know, I think of partners as you know, McDonald's partnered with Chipotle You know GYC partnered with you know, amazing facts College of Evangelism.

That's a partnership But now there's this attitude in this mood and and that was about 7 years ago that I had that conversation.

Now there's a mood in society that says what's the point of just getting married?

Now you have you know Jada Pinkett and Will Smith have a open relationship.

I want you to know Jesus doesn't want an open relationship with us.

And as we understand that at the very heart of Christianity, at the very heart of what it means to follow Christ is commitment.

In fact, commitment is the test of discipleship.

We're afraid to commit to something because we're not sure if we may still want something else.

We're going to talk about that tomorrow, the paradox of choice.

Some of us think the more freedom I have the happier I will be.

Yet scientific studies have shown that the more options a person has the less satisfied they are with the decision that they make.

This is the devil strategy with pluralism.

Give you 50, 100 different kinds of Christianity to choose from.

And people become so overwhelmed with choices.

Why do you say that the Baptists are wrong or these people are wrong and churches are fighting churches and denominations are fighting denominations because we're a generation that likes options.

You know we like to have the option of getting wireless on our cell phone or not.

I may not turn it on because it drains my battery, but I like to have the option.

When I come to the hotel, I want to have the option of, you know, do you want 2 double beds or would you like just 1 large king size bed?

I just want to have the option and we're obsessed with options.

And as a result of that, that leads us into a state of paralysis and a fear of commitment because if I commit I'm restricting my freedom later on in Business we call this opportunity cost what word did I just say?

Opportunity cost and An opportunity cost it is a reminder in economics that as soon as you say yes to 1 thing, you've automatically lost the other.

And so we say opportunity cost is what you could have had, had you made a different choice.

So Let's put this in the context that young people like to talk about, relationships.

As soon as you choose to get into a relationship with 1 person, the opportunity cost are all the other single women that still exist.

Now when you think about that, this is where some of us as guys, we're afraid to commit.

Because what if we meet a girl who's a little prettier?

What if we meet a girl who's a little more spiritual?

What if we meet a young lady that's a little more evangelistic?

Maybe she's preached her own evangelistic series and so we're like, oh man, I made a choice too soon.

You know, those are people who end up never getting married.

And then by the time they get married, still not satisfied.

See back in the day, we didn't have options.

There wasn't this, you know, whatever the Adventist relationship website is, let's go on a singles cruise.

So now while we're going to Bahamas, you know, She looks good with the Jamaica in the background and easy to fall in love on a tropical island.

And thus leading us into a paralysis and a problem of commitment, even in marriage and relationships.

Now you have people who, when they get married, it really doesn't mean much.

I'm sure if I took a poll and a survey in this room, how many lives have been impacted by divorce.

And I want you to understand something, if you've ever been affected by divorce.

The breakdown as to why all that pain came into your life was simply a failure to maintain commitment.

And you understand now why God hates divorce.

When you look in the life of Jesus, there's 1 interesting fact that you find.

Jesus never walks away from 1 person in the Gospels.

Everyone who leaves Jesus, it's because they left him.

The rich young ruler, Jesus stood right there.

The Pharisees came, Jesus didn't leave them.

They walked away the men who brought the woman caught in adultery They walked away Guess who stayed the woman caught in adultery?

Guess who was changed the woman who stayed?

The 1 who was willing to maintain commitment.

As a result of this divorce rate, some of us even in our early relationships, you know, you get people who are 13 years old, this guy was telling me, you know, I just broke up with my girlfriend.

13, and he's trying to tell me all the issues, you know, we, our communication was bad.

What do you have an eighth grade vocabulary?

She said some things on Facebook I didn't like and 1 thing led to another.

And I'm sure those of us who are on Facebook understand what I'm talking about.

Person makes a very bad comment, 1 person responds and another person responds and next you know it went from 3 comments to 54.

And Then it turns into private messages and that's when it gets really ugly Help us Lord, that's right 13 years old talking about communication problems.

But really what he's doing is he's practicing divorce.

And I can tell you, not having grown up in the church, I understand.

Burn the Boats: Challenges to Commitment

I just want to wish you all a very good morning.

The Bible says that God's mercies are new every morning, just like the sunrise.

Some days you just got to open your curtains and remember, as the sunrise is new, so are the mercies of God.

So now we can start our day with a message from my good sister, Tondo, and then go into some practical ways of how to maintain commitment.

You know, I really want to go on record saying, before we pray, and I ask 1 favor, that I'm really excited about having Tondo speaking in the mornings.

We've, this is the first time we've ever had a female devotional speaker at GYC.

And to be so young and on fire, because Tondo is on fire, you don't want to get too close to the stage, you know.

But yeah, I'm really thankful for that because our church is really lacking good quality female mentors who actually know how to wrestle with the things that women in the church wrestle with.

I don't have time to go into all that, but I've been recently studying into the, just the situation of women in society, and there was a recent presentation on TED, Technology, Education, and Design, their website on the rise of women in society, and the fact that this recession that we're in, they've actually quoted it in newspapers as calling it not a recession, but a he-cession, because men are actually more impacted by the job market than women.

And the fact that women are now getting more PhDs, more degrees, they actually are rising almost 10 times as fast as men are in high paying positions in society.

So we recognize, as is quoted in the Bible, where are the men?

And so, If you're a young man in this seminar, I just wanna personally challenge you to take up a new role, and in our first challenge to commitment, I will make a more specific appeal to men, but just personally because I look at Tondo and I'm thankful, as well as some of the other young ladies that I recognize in this seminar, that you really need to take your places as role models, spiritual mentors to younger young ladies in the church.

Very, very important, because the issues that we grapple with, we don't have to grapple alone.

We can learn from the mistakes of others and as my father would say, experience is the best teacher, but a fool learns by no other means.

If you learn from someone's life, you can get the point without the pain.

I don't know about you, but I'm all about avoiding the pain, getting the points.

You can do that for me, what's your name?

All right, Ian, so I'll expect you to be my timekeeper, so when I'm looking for time, just let me know where we are.

Mighty God, everlasting Father, we are so grateful for the gift of life.

We are grateful, Lord, because we didn't deserve to wake up this morning.

Not because we were so righteous yesterday, not because we are at GYC and we responded to some appeals, but God woke us up because he had a purpose.

There was a message to be received and yet a message to be carried.

And even though information is coming in this seminar, perhaps 1 of the most powerful moments we could spend in this seminar is just in prayer, asking God to teach us, to give us the spirit and the resolve and the resolution to continue on in the Christian life in spite of the issues that we deal with.

Guide us now, Lord, as we open your word.

Grant us your spirit that he may travel from heart to heart and from mind to mind, impressing upon the soul pictures of Jesus that will inspire us.

This is our prayer and we trust that you'll help this to be our experience.

We ask in Jesus' name, let all of God's people say, Amen.

Now yesterday afternoon we dealt with the topic, slaves of God.

Even my good sister Tondo brought it up this morning.

If you came to my seminar yesterday, you were probably like, I know what that word is in the Greek.

I was proud sitting there watching, I was like, okay.

I said, people from my seminar better respond.

Doulos, so we looked at slaves of God yesterday and the fact that this is a New Testament metaphor for total devotion to Christ.

Now for those of you who didn't join us yesterday, you'll have to go ahead and wait till it gets on the GYC website.

I don't have time to do a review, but you can connect with 1 of these other young people who were here, took copious notes, and go and get that information.

But we're gonna move forward with challenges to commitment.

But yesterday we dealt with the fact that commitment is not a choice that we make, it's actually an identity issue.

We think that we're in a individual relationship, contractual perhaps, with Jesus.

But in actuality, the Bible never terms us as friends in this kind of sense, but many of the apostles, many of the young ladies who were used in the word of God to powerfully move the world for Christ, when you ask them who they were, how they viewed themselves, it was as a slave of God.

And we said that a slave emphasizes 3 points.

First 1 being completely owned by the master.

A servant renders service, a slave belongs to someone.

Then we also saw that he's not only completely owned, but he's also completely available for the master's use.

You don't get to serve where you want to serve if you're a slave.

You don't get to take a break when you want to take a break when you're a slave.

And the last thing we said is the slave is completely dependent upon his master.

Everything that he receives and has doesn't belong to him.

And so we fleshed that out a little bit, saw that some of the benefits of being a slave of God, Revelation 7, 3, the slaves of God are the ones who are sealed in the last days.

The slaves of God, according to Acts chapter 2, and I believe it's verse 18, slaves of God receive the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

So there are benefits to being a slave of Jesus.

But we recognize that becomes a commitment to identity.

So today, let's talk about challenges to this commitment, to this identity sense.

Now, what we're gonna do is we're gonna look at the book of Hebrews in a bird's eye view.

Maybe you've never studied the book of Hebrews, but it's come to be 1 of my favorite books in the Bible.

And the reason why is that the book of Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians.

Now, we know that turning your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 6 and verse 10.

Hebrews chapter 6 and verse 10, when you're there say amen.

All right, if you didn't bring a Bible say help us Lord.

You know the first tenant of the spirit of GYC is a respect for scripture.

Hebrews chapter 6 and verse 10, the Bible says here with us, for God is not unrighteous to forget your work and your labor of love, which you have showed toward his name in that you have ministered to the saints and what?

Do minister, now do is present tense, amen?

So as a result of that, these are individuals who not only have ministered to the people of God, but are presently ministering to the people of God.

The saints, saints meaning in the actual literal word, holy ones.

So now these are the beloved of God, the children of God.

Now these individuals who this letter is written to are Christians, but apparently very familiar with Judaism.

And so a lot of the illustrations that the author uses is to show the superiority of Jesus to the Judaic system.

We also can conclude that they're Hellenistic Jews.

Now that's just a fancy word to say that the Jews, when they were scattered abroad, all throughout the Grecian kingdom or whatever, they would be in what we call diaspora.

So for example, let's say you're from Africa and then you end up in America, and then there's Africans in France, and Africans in Holland, and Africans in South America, we would say these would be Africans in diaspora, spread all over.

Now, these Jews apparently, because this letter was written in Greek, we would understand they must be somewhat familiar, obviously, with the Greek language.

They could read the letter and understand it.

Slaves of God: A Commitment to Identity

All right, let's go ahead and have a word of prayer.

I'm going to pick up where I left off, go through a couple more points, and then we're going to just filter right into our third session.

So I'm just going to go ahead and bridge that, because I want to really get this content out to you.

And by the way, I will give an email address where I can email you these things or try to put them on the GYC website so you guys can have these for download.

So I'll work around with that with Brandon to see what we can do.

So let's go and have a word of prayer together.

Heavenly Father, we want to thank you Lord for the privilege and the blessing that it is to freely be able to study the word of God.

There are countries in this world where things such as this must be done underground, in secret, but We can freely and openly praise the Lord, study his word, and give invitations to accept Christ.

Father, this time is not about a man, it's not about information, it's about learning of Jesus.

And we pray, Lord, that his name would be uplifted, that Jesus would be seen, and that you would not only speak through this man, but that you would speak to him.

For your namesake is our prayer in Jesus' name, Amen.

All right, so we're picking up with some practical things, a document to form in terms of dealing with neglect and being intentional in your life, in terms of dealing with these specific areas.

So I'm just going to go ahead and just, those of you who are joining us late, this is a document that I drafted up for my own personal life, because I know I struggle with the very same things that most of you struggle with.

And so I started off with personal life and ministry life.

You may wanna add your work life to this document and say these are some specific areas that I'm failing in my work.

So for those of you who are taking notes, I just wanna briefly cover these.

I talked about devotional life, we talked about the importance of reading, I talked about family and friends, contacting individuals, exercise, prayer, and this is another 1.

I want to emphasize that you cease to neglect.

Says here, through this whole experience, it has definitely become much more apparent the power and thus the importance of prayer.

It truly can move the arm of omnipotence.

1 to study prayer and its science regularly.

So I made a commitment that I want to get some books on prayer.

1 book I can recommend to you is a book by E.M.

Bounds and it's basically a book on prayer.

E as in echo, M as in Micah, Bounds as in no limitations.

Also, 1 of my favorite chapters in the book Steps to Christ, The Privilege of Prayer.

So if you want to really dive into the science of prayer and its importance, those 2 books are really helpful, really powerfully impacted my spiritual life.

Also I started wanting to institute a midday prayer time for myself.

This is just to bow before God in thanksgiving and praise and also affording an opportunity to seek counsel from God.

Sometimes our day we prayed, we had our devotions, but sometimes your day can start off really hard.

You've taken a lot of spiritual hits early on in the day.

As a result of that, I saw, at least from my experience, that it's good for me to have some time in the middle of the day, even if it's 15, 20 minutes, just to thank the Lord for what's been happening, thank him for who he is, thank him for the friends, the love, the support that I have in my life, my church family, thank him for what he's been doing in my life throughout that day, and then begin to seek specific counsel from him.

For the rest of this day, Lord, I have some meetings that I really don't know what to say.

And by having this document, this is something that I'm planning on printing out.

It's going to be on my wall in my room, so I can constantly be reminded and then reevaluate it as I can measure my progress.

How am I doing in these things that I don't want to neglect?

1 thing I'm going to add to this that's not in this document is maybe 1 statement from the spirit of prophecy to show the importance of this area, of what I don't want to neglect anymore.

This is a commitment I made about my relationship with my girlfriend and said it's also imperative that I be intentional about spending time and energy letting her name's Candice, know that she's loved and on my mind.

This is not always easy to plan, but certain commitments are in order.

So we get together and we pray at 5.30 in the morning, at least 3 times a week.

Also, taking time each week, you know, take a walk, grab a bite to eat or something.

Guys, we really need to work on this kind of stuff.

And accompanying her on a ministry outing or something.

Also gifts and acts of service on busy days.

Sometimes my girlfriend can get really busy.

Those are good days to pick up a card, some flowers, stuff like that.

I have to, you know, and there's the hug and the holy kiss, you understand, so.

Now I've asked this of my missionaries and it will be helpful for me to do the same, obviously with the spirit of excellence.

I've had a working document, but I really want to dive into this thing.

And so what this chart is, I have 3 commitments, develop a chart, design it, and I want to fill in call, commitment, and community.

Now there are 5 C's of discipleship that we teach in stride, okay?

The 5 C's are call, the call of God, commitment, Community, the fourth C is competence, and the fifth C is commission.

Now in these 3 areas in the call, we develop things like a personal mission statement.

And I don't mean that in the corporate sense of the word, but to deal with the fact, why do you exist, Sebastian?

Series

Till I Die: A Study on the Commonality of Tears, Blood, and Sweat

Burn the Boats: Challenges to Commitment

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

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