ASI Southwest 2023: Here I Am, Send Me

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ASI Southwest

Philip Baptiste

Stephen Bohr

Andi Hunsaker

Oleg Lotca

Jose Rosado

David Shin

Sabbath School: Obeying God’s Call

All right, I am Pastor Philip Batiste from the North American Division.

I serve as the departmental director and secretary treasurer for ASI.

And it is my pleasure to be our host today for our Sabbath School panel.

So I'm excited to have this panel discussion.

Today we're going to be talking about really the call of God and following God's call.

Would you look at the person beside you and say, neighbor, oh neighbor, it's time to follow God's call.

As we begin today, we wanna pray, and just bow your heads with me as we ask God's presence to lead us.

Father, we're so grateful for your love and your blessings.

We pray your blessing now as we enter into this Sabbath School panel discussion.

We pray that you will do for us what you promised to do in Psalms 32, instruct us and teach us and guide us in the way that we should go.

Bless our panelists and bless our discussion and may what we share today be relevant, helpful and practical to the lives of everyone here so that they can be galvanized and Energized to follow the calling you have on their life.

So, I'm excited about our distinguished panelists today And so what I'd like us to do is if each person could just go down the line and just share your name and where you're from.

So let's start over here with Pastor Adam.

I get the privilege of serving right here in the Crowley Seventh-day Adventist Church.

And my name is Oleg Lotka, originally from Moldova.

Now we live with my family in Clovis, California.

Well, I work for the conference, Literature Evangelism Department, also for Streams of Light International.

I've lived in Texas for many years, but now I live in Moberly, Missouri.

I mean, what did you retire from, though?

I was, I retired as a director of the Ellen White Research Center at Southwestern.

And I mean, you're here and you're in ministry, So you're doing something for the Master.

And so I am, my name is Andy Hunsaker, and I'm from Boston.

And what a privilege it is to be here in a warm climate, coming from Boston.

We're going to go to our first question, which is, how does this statement, here I am, send me, How does that apply to you personally?

How does that statement apply to you personally?

I think the invitation for myself to be involved in ministry.

It's easy as a pastor to think of Ephesians chapter 4 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, but there's a calling even on pastors to daily engage in the ministry as well.

1 of the things that my church knows I say often is we have to be intentional in sharing Jesus, And that's not just for everyone else as lay folk, that's for us as pastors as well.

If I'm going to teach how to give a Bible study, I better well be giving Bible studies myself.

So for me, it's putting myself daily in that position to say, God, use me, whatever that looks like today.

How does that question apply to you, Oleg?

You know, after reading the book, Steps to Christ, I came to an understanding of Jesus in the way that I have not seen Jesus before.

After reading that, I said, Lord, here I am.

As I read Isaiah 6 and this particular text, I noticed there's a condition to the text.

And because of that humility, Then the Lord was able to have his lips touched with the live coal from the altar, and his iniquity was taken away, and his sin was purged.

And so there's an experience that we must have before we are ready to go out and say, here am I, send me.

We have to, he let his fingers touch his lips and he said, I'll let my words be your words.

We have to have that experience, touch and purge before we're set.

Yeah, so, Philip, I want to make sure that we've not finished that question yet, because the way it was written, the question was written, how does this statement, here I am, send me, apply today?

Yeah, she alluded to something that really affected me, and that was recognizing that before the Lord sends people, there is something that does happen.

The call of Isaiah was in the midst, well, at the end of Uzziah's reign.

And when the Bible puts things in, it doesn't put them in by accident.

Uzziah was the 1 that was able to stave off the Assyrians as they surrounded Jerusalem.

And so we can just look at the story as Isaiah was thinking that, you know, who is going to protect us?

But Isaiah was concerned with something more.

And Ellen White says, you know, that the problems without were less than the problems within.

So that's kind of how I come at this particular passage.

What do you think about being sent by God?

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Sabbath School: Obeying God’s Call

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