MTYC 2012

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Montana Youth Conference

Michelle Boothby

Revival in the Church

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this opportunity you've given me.

I ask that I would use it as you would have me to.

Please bless every single person in this room.

May they hear specifically what you would like to tell them this morning.

Please encourage each 1 of us and help us to be a part of a revived church.

Help us to be part of the solution and help us to have vibrant, vibrant home churches and may we put a smile on the faces of those around us every week and during the week and at prayer meeting.

And Lord, just make our experience with church everything you would like it to be we know your church is your bride Lord we're excited to see you you're our groom and we just want to be as as happy of people as we possibly can be so that you just can't wait to come and take us home I ask all these things in Jesus' name, amen.

I wanna start by just giving you a little background.

I am someone who, my testimony is, and I'm excited about it, that I just love church.

I can't remember when I started loving church, but I have always just loved the church service and the singing and the pastors.

I always liked going back and shaking hands with the pastor and his wife.

I would look forward to it, and I'd go shake their hand.

My parents liked to have us right sitting in there with them, and I preferred it.

I remember thinking that it was more grown up.

And so I wasn't at the children's program, I was sitting with mom and dad.

I probably didn't understand a lot of it, but I liked what I could understand.

And I remember at net 95, I was 9 years old, and there was Mark Finley up on the screen at our church.

And I would sit there, and he'd have baptismal appeals.

And every single time he did it, seems to my memory like 10 times he asked people to come forward for baptism through this evangelistic series or it seemed like every night.

And I would just feel so convicted and I remember 1 particular time I just about had it.

I would stress about it during the day and I'd know that the next night when I'd get to that meeting he'd ask again.

And I remember crying in the service, I gotta go forward, I gotta go forward.

My grandma saw me, praise the Lord for grandmothers, and she says, you need to go forward, I'll go with you.

She took me by the hand, gave me a little pull and I was just praising, I was so happy that someone helped me get down to the front.

I actually wasn't baptized until I was about 12.

The pastor didn't think I was ready, which he actually never even came and studied with me.

I really wanted him to, but it just didn't happen.

I don't know why, but anyway, I was baptized later.

And what a blessing, you know, when you're standing on the, there was a beach of Lake Michigan, and the waves were beautiful, and the evening was gorgeous, and my little sister and I were baptized.

Church has always been very special to me.

And revival, I want to say, starts in the home, which makes such sense, I realize, but parents with your kids, you want your church to be revived, start with your own little families in your home and we'd have family worship and it was practice for church.

We'd sit there in church and It was kind of like family worship.

Let me read you a quick Ellen White quote here.

The laws of the land will soon be against us.

If there was ever a time when the people of God should press together, it is now.

She also says, and you're familiar with this quote, first selected messages, I think it's page, is it 121, something like that?

She says, revival is the greatest and most urgent of all our needs, To seek this should be our first work.

There must be earnest effort to obtain the blessing of the Lord.

Not because God is not willing to bestow his blessing upon us, but because we are not, because we are unprepared to receive it.

Our Heavenly Father is more willing to give his Holy Spirit to them that ask him than our earthly parents to give good gifts to their children.

But it is our work by confession, humiliation, repentance, and earnest prayer to fulfill the conditions upon which God has promised to grant us his blessing.

A revival need be expected only in answer to prayer." You're familiar with that, but I want to just flesh that whole thought out a little bit with revival in the church.

I even asked 1 of our attendees here to kind of get a feel of what some of you think a revived church would be like, A revived, vibrant church.

Conflict and resolution working together.

Not just, because there will be conflicts in the church, but resolution needs to go right along with that.

And filled is our theme for this weekend.

Let's read something about prayer meeting.

I think this will kind of wake us all up this morning.

A prayer meeting will always tell the true interest of church members in spiritual and internal things.

The prayer meeting is as the pulse to the body.

It denotes the true spiritual condition of the church.

A lifeless, backslidden church has no relish for the prayer meetings." So who here attends prayer meeting?

But I have had many opportunities to go to prayer meeting, and it is a blessing.

You can be part of the solution help prayer meeting to be something like ask if you can lead a prayer meeting help help there to be more prayer at a prayer meeting prayer meeting go to an army Bible camp I encourage you to try some things that maybe are focused on prayer, and then bring it home to your home church.

Bring home what it is you tasted someplace else, so that everyone else gets the blessing.

That's a part of being a vibrant church, is you being vibrant.

Speaking of prayer meeting, when I was at this California camp meeting at SoCal, 1 of my habits is when I'm at a cafeteria I make friends with the cook.

It's always a good idea to make friends with the cook.

And they say, oh would you like a little extra of this?

So I gave a back rub to the lady who like runs the cafeteria in this part of the cafeteria.

And there was another lady that, so either place I went for lunch, I had given them back rubs.

Anyway, 1 of them, her name was Marty, and I interviewed her because she was telling me a little, just a little bit of a story of how she had helped kind of bring someone to the church.

And I said, well, do you mind, I said, give me a piece of paper, and I got a pen, and I said, I have to write this down.

She goes to Carson City to a prayer meeting.

And this isn't her church, this Marty, this isn't Marty's church.

But she sees a girl over in a corner and no 1 is talking to her.

And so she kind of goes over by her and she says, you know, what's your name, and asks her some things.

And then, I just can't believe this, Marty was there for a couple of months in that area, visiting some relatives and all.

And so she would call Denise and take her out to dinner.

You go to prayer meeting, you meet a friend, and Marty is in her 50s, makes a friend with this 20 year old girl, and keeps in touch with her, takes her to dinner a couple of times, takes her out to lunch and stuff, encourages her to come to prayer meeting.

Revival in the Church

Transcript

Parent Conference

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