Michigan Camp Meeting 2023: The Boldness of the Cross

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

P.R.A.Y. Like Never Before

Darrel Le Roux

P.R.A.Y. Like Never Before Part 1

P.R.A.Y. Like Never Before Part 2

P.R.A.Y. Like Never Before Part 3

P.R.A.Y. Like Never Before Part 4

P.R.A.Y. Like Never Before Part 5

P.R.A.Y. Like Never Before Part 6

You are about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2023 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

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

Father in heaven, what a privilege of being able to just participate in the body of Christ and express the joy of your salvation in our hearts, in our minds, in our lives.

That the joy of the Lord is our strength.

Thank you that we can place our lives in your nail-pierced hands, and you can hold us, and you can guide us.

And we pray that as you open your words, you will open our hearts and minds to receive and understand what your spirit wants to tell us today.

Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near.

John the Baptist preached it, Jesus preached it, and repentance and the kingdom of heaven, receiving the kingdom of heaven and repentance are not able to be separated, inseparable.

As you repent, you're preparing to receive the kingdom of heaven.

Repentance is a critical component of our prayers.

And so this is the second part of the 4 core concepts that we're talking about.

Praise being the first, repentance being the second, and asking and yielding being the other.

I'm Pastor Darrell LaRue, and just call me Pastor Darrell.

And if you have a question at any time in this class, just put your hand up and share or connect.

And someone else might have an answer, I don't.

That's why it's a seminar of learning and growing together.

But prayer is a privileged conversation with God.

It's not just pray, ER, emergency, right?

It's praying to have power as you connect to the source of power, God himself.

And so in the praise aspect, we have spent a lot of time in the last Monday, Tuesday, because we want to emphasize that praise is connecting God in the right way, in the best way, coming to his powerful, awesome presence with praise and thanksgiving for who he is.

When you understand and address God for who He is, your attitude begins to embrace Him for who He is in a right way.

These are not—this is just God's attribute as Creator and holy.

Our human attitude should be 1 of holy awe of this Creator God that is holy.

When we experience in repentance His mercy and grace, His attributes of mercy and grace, we should experience our human unworthiness.

When we experience His attribute as a master, we as humans should experience an attitude of being a servant.

When we experience His attribute of being a father, we should experience an attitude of being a child.

When we experience his attribute of being Lord or Savior, we should have an attitude of surrender and ready for him to use us as he chooses.

And so, in the simple 4 core concepts of praise, repent, ask, and yield, when you focus on God's attributes, and praise helps you focus on his attributes, because praise is praising God for who he is.

I hope that we're really practicing this in our private prayers.

And when you do that, your human attitude, knowing who God is, shapes into a right embrace of who he is.

So, sorry, I'll give it to you again if you want, but It's on the booklets.

If you didn't get a booklet, please just put your hand up.

If you didn't get a bookmark, please put your hand up.

Please make sure you get 1 if you haven't.

So there are 2 bookmarks that we often have distributed.

The 1 we take back because I didn't have enough of it.

It's really helping us focus on the attributes of God.

These bookmarks, this bookmark in particular is going to give you a brief definition of each of these.

Repent is God reclaiming, as we said there, God reclaiming control over us.

Asking is asking what he wants, and yielding is letting Him have control to use us after we have praised, repented, asked, we were willing for Him to use us as He wants.

So repentance is God-focused to re-control our lives.

In essence, we're saying we don't want sin to have control over us anymore, only God.

There are 2 aspects of repentance we touched on yesterday and the first 1 we're not gonna go over in detail.

And that is David's expression in Psalm 51.

And then there is national or corporate repentance that Daniel confessed the sins of his people.

He is interceding for his nation, Israel, that has abandoned God, but I hope, I don't know if we'll get there today, but I hope we're gonna see that this is a powerful experience because it's preparing.

Repentance in Daniel's time is preparing for the first coming of the Messiah, and repentance in our time is for the second coming of the Messiah, because it is so critical to have a right attitude when we understand who God is.

In essence, repentance is being crucified with Christ.

And with that, when you come to the cross and you see what your sin has done, The Holy Spirit, we went through this yesterday, gives you godly sorrow, 2 Corinthians 7, 9-10, a godly sorrow that you see what your sin has caused in heaven and the pain that heaven has.

And when you stand at the cross and you spend enough time at the cross, your pain becomes insignificant when you begin to get a glimpse of God's pain, and you refocus on Him and His experience rather than our pain.

And this is part of the journey of owning your sin.

We said that it's very difficult to own your sin.

But if you don't own your sin, you can only give away what is yours.

And so if you don't own your sin, you're never going to give it to God, because You don't have sin, right?

And so stop blaming the devil for sinning.

Don't blame the devil ever for you sinning.

Own it, because if you blame the devil, you don't own it.

You say it's his fault, then you don't give your sin away to God because you say it's not your sin, it's the devil's sin.

Be very careful that we don't give more power to the devil than we give to God in our lives and in our experiences of coming to the Lord.

So when you open your mouth to repent, own your sin that the Holy Spirit can convict you and convert you about.

And when you own it, you can give it away.

The cross exposes sin for the horror that it is, and that's why we spend time.

And then the line talks about we should spend a thoughtful hour at the cross every day.

And if we did that, we would refocus our attention to Him and less ourself, as He must increase, and we must decrease.

And when that happens, joy is the greatest continuation in our life because it's not our joy, it's His.

And so godly sorrow for sin produces a desire that we want to abandon sin for itself.

It's a gift from the Holy Spirit, this godly sorrow for sin.

So briefly, yesterday we went through this Psalm 51.

And the first thing David says in Psalm 51 is, have mercy.

The first thing he declared of himself to Moses was, the Lord, Lord, God merciful.

He says the first thing about himself is he is merciful.

David knows God is mercy, but David doesn't want any kind of mercy.

He says he wants the loving kind mercy, loving kindness.

He mentions 3 times mercy in the first verse of Psalm 51.

Because those tender mercies in the Hebrew is a direct association of belonging, like a mother and a child, They belong to each other.

He says, even though I messed up, I've committed adultery, I've murdered, even though I messed up, I still belong to you.

Series

P.R.A.Y. Like Never Before

P.R.A.Y. Like Never Before Part 4

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

The Cross

Forsaken

34m

Does God Care?- Part 2

53m

P.R.A.Y. Like Never Before

P.R.A.Y. Like Never Before Part 3

51m

WYC 2012 Breakout Sessions

Overcoming As Christ Overcame, Part 2

53m

The Plan of Salvation

04 The Nature of Christ

1h 14m

2019: Evening and Sabbath Meetings

Father of the Fatherless

1h 13m

ECYC 2012: Plenary Sessions

Messenger Without a Message

1h

Come Lord Jesus

03 The Crossword Puzzle

1h

A Man After Gods Own Heart: King David

19 Restore To Me The Joy

43m

Workshop: Biblical Examples of Conflict Resolution

The Mantle

1h

Come Lord Jesus

01 Still Here After All These Years: Why?

53m

Why Jesus Needs Closure

1h 4m

Sound Doctrine