ECYC 2012

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Eastern Canada Youth Conference

ECYC 2012 Seminar: Multiply From Within

Benjamin Ng

The Good and the Better

Father, please once again be with us as we look into Scripture, as we look at our own lives and our own church.

May you help us to see what we need to do and what you need to do in us as well, and so that your church and your work may move forward and not backwards.

Please guide us now we pray in Jesus name, amen.

Before we get into looking at what I'm gonna draw up, I want us to turn to the Bible text in Luke chapter 10.

But look, as a youth ministry, as a young person, you have to constantly, you constantly are bombarded by this situation that we're going to be looking at.

Luke chapter 10 and verse 38, Luke 10 verse 38, and there are choices that you are going to have to make all the time.

Now it came to pass as they went that he entered into a certain village and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house.

And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet and heard His word.

But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to Him and said, Lord, dost Thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone?

Bid her therefore that she help me." So she said, Jesus, tell my sister to help me.

Get off her butt and do something?" And Jesus asked her and said, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things, but 1 thing is needful.

And it says, Mary has chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her." Was Martha doing anything wrong?

Then what's the point that Jesus was trying to make?

Now spiritually speaking, look, it's better to make sure you sit at the feet of Jesus before serving, right?

But the point that I want to make here is the good over, the better, sorry, over the good.

It's good to serve for Jesus, but choose the better.

Especially As Seventh-day Adventists, as Christians, we have to choose the better over the good.

2 paths, none are morally wrong, But which one's better?

And you gotta choose this in light of the people that are around you.

This instance that I brought up about the church choir at the very beginning.

Nothing wrong with the church choir, but there's something better that we could have done.

This principle must pervade your whole life.

News resolutions are all about the better.

Whether we achieve them or not is another thing, right?

But we constantly, in order to be the top person, you have to choose the best of the best.

And in order for evangelism to be successful, you must choose the better over the good.

A better thing to do maybe on that week is to have a social activity.

Now from a distance it looks like wait a minute you're choosing social over spiritual, certainly the spiritual is better.

But maybe not always in the grand scheme of things.

You must always ask yourself that question.

And also, when we do activities like youth camps, do you guys have youth camps?

I hope you do this constantly with everything.

I'm a big critique of my own summons and I don't think I really preach the breast sermons because I was not something to improve that's what we must always look at at our youth camps that we held every year back in australia We always sat down at the end of it and go, okay, what was good, what was bad, what could we have done better?

Always improving, always choosing the better, always doing that which is better.

At the end of the year you sit down and go, okay we had no baptisms, why?

I'm gonna draw up, actually let me draw this first.

I'm gonna draw up the funnel that we had.

For those that weren't familiar about the funnel, we had 3 sections to it, social, second was care groups or small groups and then 1 on 1 and the result, Baptism.

Not that we're aiming for numbers or I'm being your friend because I want you to get baptized.

It sounds like a really shallow reason to be your friend, right?

But actually that's the noblest of all reasons.

You could not have a better friend that wants to bring you to Jesus.

But there are some that come to me and go, hey, that's not right, you shouldn't think like that.

I'm not thinking like that in terms of numbers and that's it.

Or I want to get you baptized so you can give tithe.

You know, so our church can have more money.

This should be our ultimate goal, baptism.

Matthew 28, All power is given to me in heaven and earth.

Go ye therefore, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

But what I want to do today is, how many churches do we have represented here?

So you 2 are from the same church and that's it?

So it's 123, it's different as well, 45677890, you guys go to different churches.

There's 9 different churches represented here.

Well, maybe 8, because you said you jump around.

So you don't have a position anywhere, but you help out everywhere.

Our Missing Ingredient

Father, thank you so much for bringing us here to study once again about your plan for your church in these last days.

And Lord, I just pray that you'd please draw close to us once more, guide us with your Holy Spirit as we open the Bible.

Please open our hearts and our minds, we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

We're going to go through the Bible a bit here for a while.

And I want to look at a couple of things, but this is the missing ingredient, I believe, in many churches today.

I've talked about it before in the previous session, but I didn't focus on it.

I see you have it, is it highlighted in your Bible?

It's a famous text, but the question to me is how many people really apply it?

But 2 Chronicles 7.14, the Bible says here, if my people which are called by my name shall what?

And seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

You know, of all things, God wants us to be a people of prayer today.

You know, we focus so much on methods, methods and methods and events and activities, But God wants us to pray.

You know, prayer is the answer to everything.

Every question we have, every problem we have, This is the answer to why our churches are so dead.

I shared with you in the last session for those that were here, the average pastor, and I'm not talking about the average Christian, the average pastor prays 5 to 7 minutes a day.

The average pastor prays 5 to 7 minutes a day.

You know, if the average pastor is praying that little, how much less would the lady be praying?

It's a really serious question that we need to reflect on in our own lives.

How much time, don't answer me, but how much time do you spend in prayer every day?

Is it something that's so emphasized, we know it's important, but yet How many of us really do it?

You see, to take that time, to spend time with God in prayer.

Let's go to another text, Matthew chapter 9.

But now we're gonna look at it with new eyes.

But when he saw the multitude whose mood was compassion, and then because they fainted and were scattered abroad, their sheep having no shepherd.

The harvest is truly plenteous, but the laborers are few.

Pray ye therefore that the Lord of the harvest, He will send laborers into His harvest.

But once again, how many of us really spend time in prayer?

I was brought again to think about this just last month.

And I found that it was not where it ought to be.

You know, this is a position that's meant to be spiritual.

When I first started the work, I remember this pastor came up to me, he said, Ben, don't ever forget, 70% of the pastor's work is done on his knees.

70% of the pastor's work is done on his knees.

But how many of us really, really come to God and take the time to pray.

We know all the illustrations, all the stories.

Martin Luther and the Great Controversy, Ellen White says what?

When Martin Luther, he was busiest that day, guess what he did?

He spent twice the amount of time in prayer.

He was from England, he set up orphanages.

I read through his autobiography when he fed thousands of kids at the orphanage.

They had no food, no food at the table in the morning, kids let's pray, They prayed at the end of it, the door knocked.

But how many of those people are there out today?

I hope we all can really come back and focus on this 1 thing.

It's a spiritual problem when we don't evangelize.

We must learn to bathe everything with prayer.

How many of you guys keep prayer journals?

Do you write down prayer requests that you look at every day on a daily basis that you pray for?

I want to encourage you to start doing that.

I've only just started doing that recently.

I write on my iPad on my to-do list, I have a list of all the prayer requests that I have.

The smallest to the biggest, God I need a youth leader.

I've been praying for 5-6 months for a Bible worker, so I'm hoping God will answer that 1 sometime soon.

But everything I just give to God in prayer.

We're told that we can never ever be successful in conversion without prayer.

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Series

ECYC 2012 Seminar: Multiply From Within

The Good and the Better

Transcript

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Parts

The Good and the Better

1h

Our Missing Ingredient

55m

Sound Doctrine