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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Talking Points 2nd Quarter 2026: Growing in a Relationship With God

Kameron DeVasher

Mark Howard

01 Reality Check

02 To Know God

03 Pride Versus Humility

04 The Role of the Bible

I'm Cameron DeBasia and I'm Mark Howard and this is Talking Points.

We're now on our fourth lesson in our Growing in a Relationship with God lesson series here in the second quarter of 2026.

This fourth lesson is titled, The Role of the Bible.

And I think that's interesting, Pastor Howard, how, I mean, we're Christians and we're Bible believing Christians, so you would imagine, and maybe this is the simplicity that I come with it, naivete, that I think, well, obviously, if you're gonna have a relationship with God, you had to have a relationship with his Word, but in our discussion a little bit, you kind of reminded me.

Well, when we talked in our first lesson, we were talking about some of this, you know, the whole relationship speak that currently the term relationship and the phrase, why have a relationship with God is often like a next level like oh you still study the Bible you know I talk to God and he talks to me and we walk together and we have in a lot of people you get this is this has become more common in Christianity, where it used to be, yeah, I've studied and I pray and I hear His voice through His word.

Not now, it's like, yeah, I was talking to the Lord this morning over breakfast, and this is what He told me.

I've even had new believers, as a pastor, I've had new believers come to me and they're like, I must not have an experience with God because I'm not doing like this, you know, third-generation church member who's like, yeah, I just have this conversation with God and I don't want to be overly critical, but for some people, there's a mindset that the deeper your relationship with God, the less you need the word.

So it's almost like- This is elementary to get you to that next level.

It's like the Christian version of, I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious.

And so, what, and so it brings up this, this week's lesson does bring up, what is the proper sphere and role of the Bible in our relationship with God dynamic.

So this week, in fact, I just put in the lesson, this week's lesson examines what role the Bible plays in a growing relationship with God.

I am certain this is why our contributor chose this to address this.

To put a whole week on this, right, it's a topic that we need to look at.

So I actually put the talk points together this week, so before we get going on this deeper study, why don't you lead us off with a word of prayer.

Gracious Father in heaven, we are thankful for the testimony of your Word that reveals you to us, that the Holy Spirit who works through the Word and also Lord, its role in our relationship as we study this today and we study it around the world church.

I pray the Spirit of God who inspired the Scriptures would give us clarity of understanding and a practical understanding that will help us to deepen our relationships with you, that others may know that we spend time with you and that we may reflect you to the world around us more fully.

Well, Pastor Howard, I want to tell you something else.

Before we get into this week's lesson, we're gonna take a radical departure from our customary tradition here on Talking Points.

I do not have prepared 3 Talking Points this week but we've learned the lesson I don't want to go to 4, I don't want to go to more, I want to go to actually fewer talking points this week.

Okay, but I have to remind you of the radical, like, we have done this before.

But it is a little bit out of the ordinary.

It's a little bit out of the ordinary, but as I was going through this week...

I was going through this week's lesson and as, and 1 of the ways I like to prepare a lesson is obviously read through the passages, read through those studies, make your notes and everything, but I like to put a little summary of each day's lesson.

Like if I were to summarize this day in 1 sentence, what's the topic here?

And I realized that these kind of pool together in this theme and these kind of pool together and I think, okay, and that's kind of how I put my talking points together.

But as I went through this week's lesson, I tried to put 3 together and I had a third 1 and I was like, but that really folds under this first 1, right?

And I was like, why am I trying to arbitrarily come up with 3?

You had also made the point that we have pointed out, inappropriately, that 1 of the reasons we came up with talking points is when the teachers will try to go through the lesson and go through the whole thing and Sabbath and Sunday and Monday, they can't get to the end of it and they're racing into the end if they even get to it and then they don't have...

And you had made the point that sometimes it gets that way with our talking points.

It's like, Well, talking point number 3, we got a little bit of time left on the clock.

So I wanted to say, we're going for 2 this week.

Exactly, we're going to have 2 talking points this week, but I really do think it thematically fits with the lesson and logically fits the flow of conversation you could have.

And the time we just took in discussion could have been a third talk point right there.

So, talk point number 1, Scripture is the voice of God.

This comes from Sunday and Monday primarily, but that's gonna be looking at what the Bible even is and how do we relate to it at all.

And then the second half is the Bible is alive.

That comes from Wednesday, Thursday, and Sabbath.

And what the Bible does to us in us and what its intention is by God for us in our relationship.

If you could look up 2 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 16, we have this well-known passage from the Apostle Paul to his Timothy protege, his younger protege in ministry, about the importance of Scripture and it becomes the Bible's own explanation of itself.

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for the instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work." So he talks about how Scripture, and he adds the part, all Scripture is given quote by inspiration of God, or as the New International Version says, is God-breathed.

And then, so the Bible is direct communication from God.

So it is God-breathed, it is inspired of God, all of it is, and that we may be, and it goes on a list, thoroughly equipped for every good work, right?

Now, in 1 Peter, I'm sorry, 2 Peter chapter 1 in verse 20, we read something very similar from the Apostle Peter this time.

It says here, speaks of how, knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of men, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit." So again, the utterances, the writings of Scripture did not come from the men, it came from God.

So here we have the Apostle Paul, the Apostle Peter, both defining Scripture as the voice of God to humanity, right?

And in fact, I added this text in the notes just for the, you know, our extra bonus points that we like to add here.

In 1 Peter 1 verse 11, It speaks about how the prophets of old were moved by the Spirit of Christ who was in them testifying, right?

So it was Christ in them moving them to lay out the prophecies.

So we have God moving on men to write down what we have as the Word of God.

And sometimes people will hear, oh, the Scripture, the voice of God, and they get confused about it.

And I think that there are 2 views, not just in the world, but even in the church right now, about both of which are wrong, about the scripture.

1 is that scripture is a collection of ancient wisdom, the best men knew at that time, and it's good for references or history or to learn from.

It's not scientific, it's not modern, it's not enlightened, it's good for what it is, but we're better than it.

Or the other way is to say every word was dictated by the very hand of God, like the 10 Commandments itself, and therefore it is a dictation of God's mind to us.

Well, the Bible, in those passages we just read, it doesn't give that picture.

It gives the picture that God moved men, inspired these authors, these prophets, these messengers, to convey a message from him, but as you read through the scriptures, you're gonna see the writing style of Moses is different than David or it's different than Luke or Matthew.

So some is more narrative, some is more advice, some is in song and poetry, Some is just history, but all of it is a conveyance of the message God wants to give to his people So God is speaking to us, but he does it through this interesting process of inspiration where well There's a there's a statement about the mechanism of this sure.

This is found in several places in Sister White's writing.

This is a Bible commentary commenting on 2 Timothy 3.16.

Sure, there's actually, I believe his first Selective Messages has a whole section on how inspiration works.

It is not the words of the Bible that are inspired but the men that were inspired Inspiration acts not on the man's words or his expressions But on the man himself who under the influence of the Holy Ghost is imbued with thoughts but the words and thoughts receive the impress of the individual mind.

The divine mind and will is combined with the human mind and will, thus the utterances of the man are the word of God." Fascinating.

The utterances of the man are the Word of God.

So we're reading Moses' word selection, Peter, Paul, whatever, but still they were inspired, so holy men were moved.

There's another place where Sister White says that God has not put himself in words or rhetoric on trial in the Bible.

In other words, men wrote it and there is going to be that limitation.

You've got a divine mind trying to communicate to a finite being and so he's going to use finite language and finite people And so there's that aspect of it what you're talking about, but at the same time he safeguards the integrity of it.

That's right, so it still has the authority and that's what we're coming to is that what does this mean that God who created us has now communicated to us through this inspiration process to give us this Bible, his holy scripture, and so for a Christian who claims to be a follower of this creator communicator God, the Bible is supposed to be our final authority.

So that's our sub point here is that as we as Christians view this authority of Scripture we need to do several things.

Interjecting here, if not, somebody say I'll push back on that.

I don't know that I agree that it's completely reliable and trustworthy.

If that's the case, you may as well throw it away.

Now somebody's gonna say, oh, that's ridiculous.

I mean we can glean from it, but what's the gleaning any different than gleaning from any other book that was ever written?

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Series

Talking Points 2nd Quarter 2026: Growing in a Relationship With God

04 The Role of the Bible

Transcript

Parent Series

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Recorded

Parts

01 Reality Check

30m

02 To Know God

30m

03 Pride Versus Humility

31m

04 The Role of the Bible

30m

Sound Doctrine