Michigan Camp Meeting 2024: As For Me and My House

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

What Kept You in the Church

Jennifer Landis

01 What Kept You in the Church

02 What Kept You in the Church

03 What Kept You in the Church

04 What Kept You in the Church

05 What Kept You in the Church

You are about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2024 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

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

Father in heaven, we are so grateful to get to spend this special time learning and fellowshipping with each other.

We ask that as we speak, as we talk, as we listen, and as we share, that you would come and you would bless our hearts, that you would open our hearts, and that we would see new glimpses of you today.

All right, now to start, when we started on Monday, It really feels like it was like 5 days ago, but ironically that was like what 2 days ago So on Monday when we started we specifically started talked about the church and how the church can be the nucleus of the home How it was for us in our family and how it was such a blessing And the one-liner to take away from it was give them a reason to be there.

Give them jobs in the church, give them activities in the church, make church an exciting place to be, a place that they want to be, and it's a place they'll stay forever.

And so day 1 we talked about the church, day 2 we talked about missions and how impactful that is in the life of a young person.

When you experience missions and when you see God work miracles out in the mission field, again I ask the question I asked yesterday, how could you not serve him?

You see him work, you see these miracles, and you're like, wow, this is the kind of God I want to serve.

And So Missions is so impactful, so powerful.

They get to see answers to prayer, they get to see miracles, and it changes their lives.

It changed my life, it's changed the lives of all of my siblings.

It's been 1 of the key, most important factors in that change, in that long-lasting change, I should say.

Today we're gonna be talking a little bit about education, teaching tools.

I had the privilege of, as I've mentioned, I'm a pastor's kid, and so we kind of have this thing in the conference where if you move to a district that has a school, It's like an unexpected rule that you send your kids there, right?

Because that makes sense, you know, if a pastor doesn't send his kids to the church school, everybody's like, well, what's wrong with the church school?

But then if there's no church school, you can do whatever you want.

So it really just depended as we grew up what district we were in, whether we were homeschooled or whether we were in Adventist school.

I went back and forth throughout my years.

There are things that I really loved and appreciated about both of them.

As an Adventist teacher now who teaches for the Michigan Conference, I have to give this disclaimer that if you're able to do homeschool well, it is the ideal.

And at least it has been in my life and in the life of my siblings.

If you're able to do it well, It's really an ideal situation.

But Adventist School can be such a blessing as well.

Wherever you go can be a blessing, but we really loved homeschool.

But if that's not possible, there are still some really amazing things that you can do outside of the classroom when the kids are back at your house that can really aid them not just in their academic journey but in their spiritual journey.

So we're going to be going through a couple of those tools.

Some of the things are going to be things that my mom did for us and some are going to be things that I've learned over the past 4 years of teaching.

So, you know, when I was considering what the focus would be each day, I really wanted to do a day like this where we talked about education, where we talked about teaching tools, because I kept thinking about the fact that the reason why I initially became a teacher, why I finally made that decision.

I was 17, I had just graduated high school and I was out canvassing again because you know you got to pay for that good old Adventist education for college.

So I'm out canvassing, and I meet this guy.

We're actually in a Walmart parking lot, and I come up to him.

Instead of junk food, we have something longer lasting.

I said that to Canvas so many times in my lifetime, I think even if I turn 89 years old, I'll still be able to tell you.

So I start handing him a cookbook, I hand him a spiritual book that we had, and he asked me point blank, what religion are you?

And I say, well actually I'm a Seventh-day Adventist Christian.

He starts telling me and he's like, you know I've actually heard of Seventh-day Adventists.

I've talked to a few and you know when it comes to the Sabbath, you guys really know what you're talking about.

I see what you're saying there." He's like, but the 1 I can't see is the state of the dead.

He's like, you know, you've got, I see some of the verses you take, but there's other ones that kind of contradict it.

And it's like, I'm just not sure if you guys are really seeing that right.

And I was like, oh, that's a really interesting perspective.

He's like, actually, I want to hear your thoughts on it.

Why do you think what you think on the state of the dead?

I was 17, just graduated Avenis High School.

Not only have I, 17, been in Avenis education for the last 12 years, been in Avenis for the last 17, I was also a pastor's kid who had been through probably 105 evangelistic series at this point.

I was floored as I stood there with a blank brain.

It's like I had this unbelievable moment of realizing I don't have anything to share right now.

Sure, there's a couple words floating through my brain, something about the dead don't know anything, something about, I don't know where it is.

I don't even have a memorized verse to say, oh, I forgot the reference, but this is what the verse says, da, da, da, da, da, let's look it up.

I sat there, and I'm like, give me a second, and I pulled Google because if in doubt, Google is out.

So I pull out Google, and I'm typing in, what do SDAs believe on the state of the red?

We shared some of the things that I found, and ended up with a really good experience.

He bought The Great Controversy, praise God.

I know God can use him through that book much more than he was able to use me in my lack of knowledge.

But as I walked away, I was stunned with this realization that I had been through this my whole life in this world of avidness education and I didn't know 1 of the most common things.

You know, if he had said something about, like, explain, like, Daniel 11 or something, I'd be like, listen, man, come on.

Makes sense that I can't really sit here and explain that for you right now but the state of the dead I didn't have 1 and it was at that moment that I knew something had to change.

And something I think, you know, and of course there's the element of learning at home, and you know, my parents did a great job of showing to us, but I just didn't actually have it in my mind cemented.

Of course I had heard it, I'd heard a million studies on this topic, but nothing that I had memorized or learned for myself to be there to share, you know.

So I knew, especially at the education level, something had to change.

So I went into Adventist education because of that.

Now I did get a little bit ahead of myself.

That's gonna segue into education in a second.

So we're gonna take a quick pause and we're gonna be talking about our books.

Again, we have the 2 that were left over from yesterday.

We have our Project Sunlight, which is based on some true events and also goes forward into what we know about the future of Jesus coming and kind of gives you like a story of what might happen during that time.

It's a beautiful experience for young people to read, to see what a life of getting to know Christ and living a Christian life, and then making it through the end times could look like.

It's a classic for all Adventist literature lovers.

And then we have our good old Desmond Doss.

It has the unlikeliest hero in here, plus some other footnotes by his wife, Frances Doss.

Series

What Kept You in the Church

03 What Kept You in the Church

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

What Kept You in the Church

02 What Kept You in the Church

56m

How to Introduce Ellen White to New Believers

03 How the Early Church Related to Prophets

50m

Christ and the Heavenly Sanctuary

04 The Day the Devil Dies

1h 4m

Preparing Your Church for Evangelism

03 What are the Challenges?, Part 01

1h

From Shame to Grace

05 A Biblical Journey of Healing

1h 1m

Healing Remedies Through the Storm

04 Contrast Shower, Heating Compresses, Steam Inhalation

53m

Theodicy

Melanie’s Problem

1h

Preach the Word

02 Preparing the Message

59m

Healing Remedies Through the Storm

03 Hot Foot Bath, Contrast Bath and Home-style Russian Bath

43m

Principles for Succesful Soul Winning

Interpersonal Relationships - The Art of Hospitality Part 1

42m

Berry Bounty: A Guide to Growing Your Own Delicious Berries

03 Growing Blueberries

58m

Toleration, Liberty, and Personal Freedom

06 Toleration, Liberty, and Personal Freedom

1h 1m

Sound Doctrine