MTYC 2012

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Montana Youth Conference

Christian Berdahl

From Empty to Overflowing

Father in heaven, Lord thank you so much for your tender promises, your tender mercies, the blessings that you have for each 1 of us.

Thank You for the amazing creation You've placed us within.

Thank You, thank You, thank You for all the blessings that You've placed in our lives.

Many times we focus on the problems, Father.

And when I lost my song the last 2 weeks, it's because I was focusing on the problem, and not the problem solver, you.

Lord, I ask that you would please bless these meetings and Lord I would ask publicly even that you would just imbue me with your spirit and that you would even physically help me but father if not that's not according to your will then at least spiritually speak through me.

Lord we love you and I pray that you would help us to glorify you.

You said if I be lifted up I'll draw all men unto me and that includes Eureka Montana.

Thank you for this group of young people here and I pray that you would bless our time together now in Jesus name, Amen.

Matthew 5 and we'll start in verse 3 blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.

And if God says it shall be done, will it be done?

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Yet see, as you go down these things, if you have a Christian perspective, if you've been raised as a Christian or you've been a Christian for any span of your life, some of these texts absolutely probably make some sense to you.

And I can tell you, being raised in the home that I was raised in, this would have sounded like a bunch of baloney to me.

Because in my home, oh we were poor in spirit.

You see, I was raised in a home where there was no Jesus.

We were poor in spirit, As in like there was no hope.

My mother was 17 years old when she had me.

Do you think that they were ready to take care of a child?

You know, my mother was barely learning how to iron and, you know, cook food.

Now she's got to tend to a baby and my father was not willing to become a father.

He was kissy-kissy, tootsy-tootsy with a girl that he shouldn't have been at an age where he shouldn't have been doing that.

I just want to know kind of where your thinking is.

And so here we have a young woman and a young man and they have a baby.

You see my mom back in the day it wasn't cool to be pregnant.

I've learned that now it doesn't really matter.

You know my niece who just graduated from high school I was having a talk with her a couple years back on Thanksgiving and when I was talking to her about my concern that she wouldn't be like grandma make poor decisions with grandma sitting right there.

You want to wait and save yourself and she just started laughing and she goes oh I'm not I'm not having you know intimate relations like that uncle.

She says but it's not a matter of whether you are or not, it's just how many people and how many people are taking pictures of it.

And sexting is called, you know, when you send inappropriate pictures to people of your body parts that should be revealed for only your spouse.

And I was absolutely shocked at how much things had changed in the 20 years since I had been in high school.

Man, I thought it was kind of scary and risque when I was in high school, and I wasn't even a Christian.

I was just kind of 1 of those good boys that really didn't want to get involved with all that stuff.

So, my mom and my dad have this young little baby.

Well, my mom showed up at her mom's house, my grandmother's, when she told her I'm pregnant, she swiftly received a slap across the face and was told, you'll be married young lady.

You know, back then it was an embarrassment.

Now it's like a badge of honor or something.

My mother was empty inside because her father had not filled a place in her heart.

And My mother was empty inside because her father had not filled a place in her heart.

And my mother was empty inside because she hadn't learned about Jesus either.

Oh, she had been dropped off sometimes when she was a little girl at Sunday school, but her parents didn't go in.

So there was no true fulfillment in her heart, in her life and from her father or from a father in heaven and so she began seeking for the attention through male figures and she wound up in a precarious situation and voila here I came.

So the reality is she was not fulfilled properly as a young lady and she wasn't filled with her father's love or the father's love.

You see, God wants us to be in a relationship with Him to where He can fill...

I've heard it described like this, there's like a Jesus-shaped hole in each 1 of us.

And if we try to put anything else in that hole, it will not fill it up properly.

You know, maybe like a car that we really want, or that boy that we want, or that girlfriend that we want, or this career that we want, or this amount of money.

And we try to fill up that Jesus-shaped hole with other things, and for some reason it just never satisfies.

And that's what had happened to my young mother.

And little did she know she would be passing that on to me.

Because in my home, My mother and my father didn't even know hardly how to get along.

They were just boyfriend and girlfriend fooling around.

So I was raised in a home with no Christianity.

Well, when my biological father worked, that was 1 of the problems.

So now he's out jumping from job to job to job to job.

And by the time I was 6 or 7 years old, we had moved 13 times.

Because you go and rent an apartment, and if you don't pay the rent, you get kicked out.

I'll have a different school I've got to go to, different neighbor kids to play with.

And so, there was a lot of unrest in my home.

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From Empty to Overflowing

Transcript

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