ASI Conference 2024: Investing in Eternity

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Young Professionals

Stephen Lee

Felecia Lee

You Don’t Need More Time

Thanks everyone for being on time because we're going to talk about time.

First of all, we're going to go ahead and pray.

Hope you're excited to learn more about managing your time.

Father in heaven, we ask that you be here because we desire to learn more about you.

Even though we're talking about something that involves tactics and and understandings of how to manage the things on this earth.

We still ask that your spirit will guide us, for you know all things and you have wisdom beyond what we could ever think of.

Help us to have a spiritual moment here and not just mentally being educated And maybe enjoy this time together for we know you are here with us in Jesus name we pray amen So you don't need more time that's how we start off this presentation You think you know you think you need more time, but we want to say you might not actually.

I want to start off with asking you a question And there are no wrong answers for this 1.

What are some things that you do that keeps you busy?

Well, I'm gonna look at you and point to you.

Okay, like too many hours or too much tasks.

So I'm assuming that you don't have a 0 inbox.

I was wondering when that's gonna come up.

So let's say, first of all, we talk about this and I put this up because not to boast about what we do but we had to quickly realize that time is not for us for my wife Felicia and I we're Stephen and Felicia if you didn't know that's who we are we're the Lees And so there are some things that I'm responsible of on the left.

And there are some things that she's responsible on the right.

And we have to somehow navigate all this every week somehow.

And you would wonder just job itself is enough for some of you.

And at the same time, you have to do the things at home.

But I believe that as you will learn with our seminar, as you understand more about time and how God wants it, you might be able to do even more without being overwhelmed and being able to navigate things that you thought it was impossible to do and not to stress about it.

Not to stress about all the things you're doing, not being overwhelmed, yeah?

And also being able to respond to messages right away or at a timely manner, yeah?

So that people don't feel that you're ignoring them.

All right, so that's what we're going to talk about.

So there are 2 people, this is a made-up scenario so you understand.

So let's say there are 2 people who come to the throne of God and they're being judged.

1 person used his wealth to buy all the luxury cars that he can afford and design brand clothing.

Alright, 1 person used all his wealth for those things.

The other person spent 15 minutes a day watching useless videos on social media.

Which do you think will be judged more harshly?

Who says the person who wasted 15 minutes?

Well, this is a hypothetical question to make a point.

I want you to know that there's this quote like this of no talent He has given will he require a more strict account than of our time What does that mean It means it's not your wealth If you understand the talents that is listed in christ object lessons chapter 25, There are several talents specifically mentioned there and it's not health.

It's not kindness Which is kind of character it's not kindness it's not money or even how you speak let's say you say something bad mean or even mental faculties which is developing your mind.

Sister White says it is time that God holds stricter account than any of those.

So you have to ask yourself how are we spending our time?

If it is to that degree of importance, How are we spending our time?

If you messed up, wasting so much time in your life, God has a solution.

So we are not coming to you this morning as experts in regards to how we use our time.

So we're coming, we flew from Houston yesterday.

Last week we put on a retreat for single women.

It was a great success, but every morning, we have some of the attendees here every morning it was up early and ending the day late the week before we were presenting at AYP after we leave from here we go to New York and then Pennsylvania and then New Hampshire back home and then California And in the midst of all of this, it's so easy to think because I am doing God's work It's okay if I get to skip on my devotion for this morning and try to catch up whenever I do make it back home And in the midst of our busyness, most of us doing ministry and good works, whatever it is that we're doing, somehow we think that our busyness is going to merit us to God.

That somehow he's going to be impressed by how much we are doing for him, even though we're not spending as much time with him.

So I'm going to be sharing with you a few lessons that I have been learning myself in the midst of so much that I have to do.

In the book of Haggai, however you wish to pronounce it, This is talking about when the exiles were returning back to Jerusalem and the temple needs to be rebuilt but rather than building the temple they are busy building up their own lives and so forth and God sends a message to them.

Now then the Lord of armies says this, consider your ways you have so much only to harvest little, you eat but there is not enough to be satisfied, you drink but you are not filled, You put on clothing but there is not enough for anyone to get warm and the 1 who earns, earns wages to put into a money bag full of holes.

What's happening here is the people they're spending so much time, so much energy investing in their lives and somehow the output is not reflective of the input and God is saying that their Priorities are all mixed up and that's why even though they're doing so much they're not seeing the result that they wish to see.

He said you hoped for a rich harvest but they were poor and when you brought your harvest home I blew it away.

Because my house lies in ruins while all of you are busy building your own fine houses.

While the immediate context of this was talking about the temple, 1 way that we could apply this to is our devotional life.

Mark Finley

End Time Integrity

Well, thank you all for joining us for our seminar.

A few little practical things before we start.

A lot of people asked me, Pastor Mark, are you retired?

And I said, could you please give me the verse in the Bible that speaks about retirement.

You know, how old was Moses when he led the children of Israel out of Egypt?

How old was John when he had the first vision in the book of Revelation?

How old was he when God gave him the book of Revelation?

He was imprisoned by Domitian, so he was 95.

And God gave him a vision in the book of Revelation.

So I have a few years yet to preach, don't I?

Let me tell you a little bit about what we're doing, and then we'll have prayer, and we'll start our seminar.

We average between 750, 000 and a million views a month.

We have 3 programs that we do on YouTube Ministry.

1, we do the Sabbath School lessons and a commentary.

We have about 70, 000 people every week that watch our commentary on Sabbath school.

And so if you want some commentaries, a prophetic aspect of the news, you can go to our channel.

And then of course we do our sermons and our programs.

If you have a pen and you want to take a note of our channel, it's HopeLives365.

How many of you have ever seen any of our programs on YouTube?

So if you're not familiar with our channel, please subscribe to it, hopelives365.com.

Now the editor of that channel And the 1 who gets the programs done is George Washington Deverage.

George, raise your hand so people can see you.

And if you want to know anything about YouTube ministry, you talk to George.

He knows how to produce and promote YouTube.

Now, many of you may not be familiar with our university.

We have 3, 800 students taking 18, 000 classes in our online university.

So, the online university, you just go onto our website, that's called Hope Lives 365, and you can look up our university.

Many of our courses are free, so you can look at it, choose some free courses if you desire, and we have, as I said, 184 courses.

There are courses on leadership, courses on how to give Bible studies, courses on health, courses on preaching, and so that can be a great resource for you.

Some of you are familiar with our national radio network.

Our national radio network is on the largest Christian broadcaster in America.

We are from Los Angeles to Washington, DC, to Florida.

And our national radio network, we have a daily radio program and I know that that would bless you as well.

You can look up Mark Finley, Salem Radio Broadcasting Network, or you can look up 1 Place.

Just call 1 Place and you'll find our radio network.

Incidentally, we had an amazing Sabbath this last Sabbath.

I had met 1 of the top radio producers in America about a year and a half ago, certainly not a Seventh-day Adventist at the time, began Bible studies with them, and we baptized she and her husband last week.

We are just thrilled with the fact that these are top quality people known in the United States for radio broadcasting.

In addition to that, probably our prime work is our pastors' retreat center.

We invite pastors to come to our retreat Center, and as they come, we study the Bible together.

We take about, we have 2 facilities now and we have approximately capacity for 13 bedrooms and then we have a bed and breakfast that we work with right next to us.

So we have about 16, no I think it's 20 beds, isn't it now?

20 beds and so we can, depending on whether we take individual pastors that come with their wives, we can feed about 35 people.

Typically they stay for 5 days, they get good exercise, they get a great diet, and we get deep Bible studies.

So these are some of the things we do in our retirement in addition to traveling the world and preaching.

Father in heaven, thank you for your grace and your love and your goodness.

Thank you for the opportunity to come and study today.

I pray as we study that your spirit would be with us, open our hearts and minds to what you have to say to us by your spirit in Christ's name, Amen.

Now to get the most out of the seminar you need your Bible.

If you don't have your Bible and you have your cell phone I know you're not going to be texting I know you're gonna be looking at the text right?

If you have a pen, so this is a seminar, a study seminar.

You should have the study guide for the seminar.

How many of you, does anybody not have a study guide?

Anybody on this side, you don't have a study guide?

So if you have your study guide, the topic of our seminar is becoming a person of integrity in the words that you speak.

What we say is a reflection of who we are inside.

So we're going to be studying about that.

You know, as a child, you may have been brought up in a home where you came home from school and somebody was teasing you at school.

And your mother or father said to you, when they were teasing, somebody teased you, you came home crying and they said to you, this is an American saying, so if you are not from the United States you may not understand this 1, but did mama ever say to you sticks and stones will break your bones but names will what?

See, so you come home crying, and say, Mama, somebody was teasing me.

Sticks and stones Can break your bones, but what?

Shanniel Fisher

Unlocking Your True Potential

It is so good to see all of you today, and it's a blessing to be here with you and to share a little bit, as you may have noticed in our program, we'll be talking about unleashing our full potential.

And some of that we will be looking at 7 particular principles, at least from the topic when we first spoke, when Ashwin and I spoke, he told me the idea and what we were thinking, and therefore I started putting some of the information together regarding unleashing our full potential, especially kindly impulses in that wonderful book, Christ's Object Lessons.

But before we do that, I'd like to just mention to you a little bit of the work the lord has called me to do my family and I at this time this is the campus of Eden Valley Institute And anyone here have heard about Eden Valley Institute in colorado?

So this is our campus we praise god But a little bit some of you may have heard that the campus is threatened with fire right now.

And I'd just like to show you a little bit of what's going on as we begin our seminar time, just by way of introduction.

I've been serving there as a president for 3 years now.

And before that, I've worked with OCI, Outpost Centers International, and Light, Lay Institute for Global Health Training.

If you'd heard about these institutions, I've worked in Latino America serving for about 10 years and then the Lord called me to work here at Eden Valley Institute.

So some of the things we do there, oops too fast, we have a Lifestyle Center there.

We also have medical missionary training programs.

So the training program is medical missionary and we also have a agriculture training program as well.

So if anyone here is interested in those kind of programs, our lifestyle center and our medical missionary training program, then please, you know, stop by our booth.

You can learn a lot more about this and we do have a drawing on Saturday night as well and that is for a full lifestyle session.

Now you need to understand a full lifestyle session normally costs 5000 dollars.

5000 dollars and here at ASI very special we want to be able to share with 1 of you can be a special winner of a full lifestyle session booth 476 stop by Just put your name down for that drawing on Saturday night we'll be doing that and hopefully 1 of you in here today, about to say tonight, most times I'm speaking in nights, but 1 of you here today will be able to get that lifestyle session.

Also we do have a big farm, We supply 8 farmers markets with our produce.

So it's a beautiful operation that's going on over there at Eden Valley.

And we have a health food store and much, much more.

We help to start several missions around the world and that's what Ashwin alluded to.

A part of my work is to be involved in a lot of the foreign missions that we help with at Eden Valley and of course local evangelism etc.

Now as we get into our presentation today I want you to know that God is a God of miracles, Amen?

And God is a God that does things for us more than we can imagine or think.

And I'd like to begin by showing you on Monday morning this was the news at Eden Valley that there's a fire approaching very closely to the campus.

I have traveled already, was out of town and so I've been on the phone constantly with my team back at Eden Valley as the fire was approaching was approaching closer and closer.

This is the view in the evening that's a part of our property you can't see too well here but right here on top of the hill that's part of Eden Valley's property and so the fire was coming all the way down at us.

Of course the team was praying, we were praying, several groups we wrote to, ministries around the world praying and as people prayed we know that God was working and the fire came down to a barrier.

The firefighters and others were up on our mountain and they created a trench.

They were pretty much flying helicopters with retardants, with water and all of our mountains and we just thank God because each day, Monday, Tuesday, yesterday, Wednesday and yesterday, they all were saying it's not looking good until last evening.

Yesterday evening they said, well, we're seeing that the wind is changing.

And they realized that something special was going to happen and this the fire reached up on the mountain of our property there at Eden Valley.

And this was the picture of yesterday afternoon.

So it's a picture of yesterday afternoon.

They realize it's just about the fire is just about stable and praise God it won't come down to the on the mountain and touch our Institute.

It looks over his ministry because that's God's ministry, amen?

And whatever ministry you are involved with it belongs to God.

And so of course you would imagine I'm here at ASI and I'm troubled in my mind thinking about the institute but as I speak with the team on the ground, well a few of them because the majority are they're evacuated so they're not on campus but as I speak with them and as I pray I said Lord you know this is not about any of us this is about you and this is your ministry so therefore you know best how to take care of it amen and God is doing his work So as of early this morning things are stable and we praise God for that.

This morning we are in this beautiful conference of ASI investing in eternity called and what else?

This is what we've been talking about here at ASI and by God's grace in this seminar, we want to look at ways that God is trying to have us really understand our calling because many are called the Bible says but what happened few are chosen so many are called few are chosen but hear what God wants us not only to be called he wants us to be consecrated to his cause aj yeah and he also wants us to be committed to his cause so we'll be taking some time to look at some of these principles this morning let's pray I'll kneel you can bow your heads with me father we thank you so much for the wonderful blessings that you've given us to be a part of your work.

And thank you Lord for bringing us to ASI, investing in eternity.

Father, we don't want to just invest on this earth, but we want to invest our lives and in the lives of others for eternity.

And so now we pray that your Holy Spirit and your power will be with us as we walk through this seminar.

May you speak to our hearts and may you give us principles that will impact and empower us forever in Jesus name we pray amen.

So this morning we want I'd like to begin by reading a statement here that I think is really powerful as it relates to investments.

I'll tell you a little bit more about my story of how the Lord brought me here and brought me into this work.

In my opinion it's just a miracle why I'm here today and I'll explain some of this while I'm going through my seminar.

So this is an interesting idea, investment explained.

In the last 3 Olympics, Usain Bolt has won how many medals?

In total, he ran less than 115 seconds in this, in the 3 Olympics.

Less than 115 seconds in the 3 Olympics and made 100 and well well well.

Let's you get too excited here in the young professional seminar.

But here we go, which is more than 1 million for each second he ran.

Not a great comparison for us to be thinking about this morning, but there's a lesson that I want us to look at.

But for this 2 minutes he trained plus 20 years.

We're talking about unleashing your full potential this morning.

If he would be thinking, man I need to run just about 115 seconds.

They're in it right now, by the way, you know that and so so anyway Imagine while 4 years he's training and he's thinking So man, I'm gonna run for few seconds and I need to train so hard.

It's not about the moment or the winning moment.

It's a lot about the amount you put in before the winning moment.

It's about the amount you put in before the winning moment.

It's about the amount you put in before the winning or the victory moment.

And that is very very important and very vital for us this morning because a lot of us want to see the finish line, we want to see the end product, we want to see the amazing ways that God can build our business or our cooperation whatever it is our ministry but many times we're not willing to put in that work And so that's a big part of our presentation this morning, looking at the amount of work and the dedication, the commitment, the consecration that is needed before we can really see the many things that God wants to do for us.

And so we're going to talk about it this morning.

I trained 4 years, the man himself said, to run 9 seconds.

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Series

Young Professionals

You Don’t Need More Time

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

You Don’t Need More Time

1h 24m

End Time Integrity

1h 16m

Unlocking Your True Potential

1h 10m

Sound Doctrine