GYC 2012 Acts: The Revolution Continues

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

GYC 2012 Morning Devotional

Wes Peppers

Rediscovering Character

I'm thankful that 3 of you are here this morning.

It's great to be here worshipping with you this morning, amen?

It's great to be a Seventh-day Adventist this morning.

And I'm thankful to be at GYC, I'm thankful that you're here and I'm looking forward to a very exciting weekend.

What could be greater than starting GYC on a Sabbath morning, amen?

The only thing I think could be better would be starting GYC in Heaven.

How many of you think that might be possible next year?

I'm excited about what the Lord's going to do.

It's good to see that all of you have survived the Mayan calendar disaster.

And that was, you know, in the news and all these different things, but I'm thankful, friends, that the hope that we have is not built upon superstition, amen?

It's built upon the Word of God and the Word of God has been proven down through the ages.

And I'm just so thankful today that we have a solid hope, something that's real, something that's pure, something that's true, and we can celebrate that, we can worship our God this morning.

My wife is at home, She's watching online with my eight-month-old son and we actually, I think they have a picture of my son.

I don't know if they're gonna be able to put that up but there they are, they're watching at home.

And I tell you what, friends, having a child will change our life for eternity.

And what a blessing it is, little Levi is there at home.

I hope this weekend that we are going to leave GYC not the same people as when we came, but we will be changed, we will be filled with the Holy Spirit, and we will be ready to fulfill Revelation 18, the glory of God being shown into all the world.

I've been praying for each 1 of you that God's Word, God's Spirit would speak to your heart this weekend.

And friends, we want the latter rain to be poured out.

How many of you want to have that experience today?

This weekend we're gonna look at 4 different themes.

We're gonna look at several things from the book of Acts, some things that won't be from the book of Acts.

But today we're gonna talk about the roots of the book of Acts.

We're going to — and then tomorrow we're going to look at the power line of Acts.

The next day we're going to look at the driving force of the book of Acts.

And then the last day we're going to look at what it takes and what it took to continue in the book of Acts and what that means for our generation today.

The titles will be Rediscovering Character Today, Tomorrow Redefining Culture, The Next Day Resurrecting the Church, and The Last Day Reaching the cosmos.

I'm looking forward to a powerful weekend.

You know, as I was on my way out here, I was on a plane and I sat, it was, I was flying southwest, it was open seating.

And as I got on the plane, I, I, there was, I have to confess, there was a man sitting in the seat by the window, and he was actually a very large man.

In fact, he kind of like spilled over into the next seat.

And I thought to myself, I said, you know, if I sit beside this man and there's actually extra seating available, then nobody's going to want to sit in the middle between me and him." You were supposed to laugh.

I felt heavily impressed to sit by this man.

I thought, I'm going to be able to witness to this man All the way to GYC, four-hour flight.

Well, all the people came on and the stewardess said, you know, this is gonna be a very full flight.

And so, all the people came on and the last guy got on and he walked past me and I thought, man, this is it, I'm gonna have a seat to myself, I'm gonna witness this guy, it's gonna be wonderful.

Then all of a sudden I get a tap on the shoulder, and it's the guy that went past me.

He came back and he said, there's no more seats back there.

This guy was about 6'4", and his shoulders were about this wide.

And so you have the 3 biggest people on the plane all sitting in the same seats.

This brother, the very large man, he like spilled over into the next seat, and then there was this brother sitting beside him, And I sat like this the whole time.

You think I'm joking, I'm totally serious.

And the stewardess kept like bumping into me with the, with the cart.

But I started talking to this man in the middle, the dude on the end, he like fell asleep and I thought I was supposed to witness this guy.

But the guy in the middle, he started telling me he was of a certain faith, and he started telling me how much he struggled with his faith.

And he said, I struggle with my faith because the picture I see of the, of the character of God in the Bible, He says, I don't understand how there could be such a loving God and He would burn people for all eternity.

And I said, brother, I said, this is not the true picture of God in the Bible.

And we opened our Bibles together on the plane, we had a Bible study.

And at the end of that time, the man said, man, my faith has been renewed, I'm so excited, thank you for sharing this truth with me.

You know, what that makes me think of is that there are young people all around the world who are not even in the Adventist church who want to be a part of the revolution that you're experiencing here.

There are young people around the world who would give anything to have the seat that you're in today.

And friends, there are young people who are going to be joining this church when the Holy Spirit pours out, and the question is, what are they going to be coming into?

If they came to GYC, what would they see in you?

It is my prayer this weekend, friends, that we will have such an experience with Jesus that it will radically change our lives.

Father in Heaven, Lord, this weekend we need an outpouring of Your Holy Spirit.

This weekend we need to shun worldliness and selfishness and self-seeking.

And we need the true love that can only come from Heaven.

We ask that Your Spirit would draw near to us today.

We ask that You would speak to our hearts in a very powerful way.

We pray, Lord, that we would not be the same people when we leave as when we came.

But we would be transformed, we would be renewed, we would be empowered.

And You would bless Your people and we would know that we have been in the presence of Jesus today.

This is our prayer, we ask it in His name, Amen.

In order to oftentimes understand what lies ahead, many times you have to go backward, is it not true?

In Bible prophecy we understand the book of Revelation, and many of the symbols and themes in the book of Revelation we find repeated in the, or, or first told in the Old Testament.

Every revolution had something that had to happen before the revolution could take place.

And that's what we're gonna look at today.

We're gonna look at that in the life of a very interesting character in the Bible.

How many of you have heard of John the Baptist before?

Now what's interesting is that without John the Baptist, there would be no book of Acts.

Because John the Baptist introduces Jesus onto the scene, and then Jesus introduces, He brings about the Holy Spirit after that.

John the Baptist is actually mentioned 9 times in the book of Acts.

And every time he's mentioned, it's with great reverence.

In fact, in Acts chapter 1, Jesus talks about John the Baptist, his closing words with the disciples.

John the Baptist we find in our study of Scripture, he's actually a type of the final generation that will live upon the earth.

John the Baptist, his role was to prepare the world for the first coming of Jesus, and the last generation is to, their role is to prepare the world for the second coming of Jesus.

And so John represents what God wants His final generation to be in the last days.

And that is why we're going to look at John, we're gonna see how he impacted the decisions he made, the life he lived, set the stage for the book of Acts.

We're gonna find a very powerful, clear connection.

Jesus calls John the Baptist 1 of the greatest prophets that ever lived.

And if he's 1 of the greatest that ever lived, he is the greatest, we know that he represents the last generation and the last generation will also be the greatest.

Redefining Culture

This message was presented at the GYC 2012 conference in Seattle, Washington.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

I want to welcome you this morning, thankful that you are here, excited that you are here, and I hope that you're excited.

I'm really very thankful to be here this morning.

I'm really thankful that the person next to you is alive.

You know the temptation is as we go further along in GYC, you're gonna get more tired And the temptation's going to be not to come to the meetings.

But I want to challenge you every morning, friends, wake up early.

Do your devotion, spend time with Christ and then come to the meeting.

How many of you are ready for outreach this, this afternoon?

I want to tell you something, friends, this experience, if you have not been on it before, will change your life.

I wanna encourage you to go and not just to go but take someone else with you.

Make sure that if there's somebody who's trying to skip out that you grab them and say, you're going with me, you're gonna be my outreach partner.

God has somebody behind a door today that He wants you to impact.

You have the opportunity this afternoon to impact someone's life for all eternity.

I can remember in Ukraine we had an Afco school over in Ukraine and we had 30 students and the leadership there said, you can never knock on doors in Ukraine.

And we said, boy, you must sound, it sounds like you've had a negative experience with this.

They said, well, we've never actually tried it.

But we know our people, we know it won't work.

We sent 30 AFCO students, 20 church members out knocking on doors and in about 5 hours they had over 300 requests for Bible studies, amen?

We're anticipating God to do great things.

It was once said, if you are not a missionary, you are a mission field.

I want to ask you to pray this morning for 2 things.

Pray this morning, 1, my son is very sick at home.

He had — it's been confirmed by the doctor yesterday, he has the flu.

So I want to ask you to pray for him and that he'll get better.

Secondly, I want you to pray for 3 things.

I want you to pray for me, that God's Spirit would speak through me and through His Word today, and that we would be passionate about Jesus, amen?

Third thing I want you to pray for is for yourselves, that God would impact your hearts with the Word.

And actually I want you to pray for 4 things, and that is the person beside you, that their hearts would be impacted, amen?

We want to be drawn closer to Jesus this morning.

We want to have an experience with the living Christ.

Would you kneel with me this morning as we pray and as we begin?

Father in Heaven, we thank You so much today for the rich treasure that is in Your Word.

We're thankful today for Jesus, who loves us more than his own life.

We're thankful today for souls whom you are drawing to yourself, even this very hour.

You are arranging divine appointments for this afternoon, even this very moment.

And we want to pray, Lord, in a special way that your Spirit would be poured out upon our hearts today and that Jesus would be uplifted.

We would be passionate and excited about Him, about His Word, about His mission, about His church.

And I ask, Lord, today that you would impact our hearts in a powerful way.

Speak through us today, help us to understand you in a way we haven't before.

I remember when I first had my, my first encounter with the Word of God, I was 22 years old.

I did not grow up as a Christian, I did not grow up as a Seventh-day Adventist.

I didn't know much about the Bible, I didn't know much about God.

And through the course of my life, I endured a lot of different things.

I'm going to tell you a very brief version of my testimony.

Growing up, I played high school football and I was 1 of the most, 1 of the top football players in the state of Alabama.

I was being recruited by a number of different colleges and I was kind of like the star of my community.

But in that time, my life, there was something missing from my life.

When I was 17 years old, my parents, who had been married for 20 years, decided to get a divorce.

My mother, in the midst of that, tried to commit suicide.

But growing up, friends, I did not have the advantage of a Seventh-day Adventist Christian home like many of you have.

And because of the hard things that I experienced in my life, I became an atheist.

I wanted nothing to do with a God that would allow me to suffer that much, not knowing how much He had suffered for me.

And so I became a hardcore atheist, a pro — not just an atheist that says I don't believe in God, but an atheist that would have been in the face of any Christian cursing them and swearing at them, telling them what a foolish thing that they believed in.

I went to a state university where I studied evolution, I studied all these different theories of, you know, the stuff that they teach there, evolution, I know all that stuff.

And my life continued to spiral downward until it reached a point where I was thinking about committing suicide.

I thought the Bible was a fable and I wasn't afraid to tell people so.

And so there I was, thinking about suicide.

I thought if this is all that life has to offer, I was miserable, I was broken, I was hurt, I had experienced a lot of pain in my life.

And I said if this is what life is about, why even live?

And so the more I thought about suicide, a thought began to come to my mind, and I only know now that it was from the God of Heaven.

God said, why don't you start, why don't you study the Bible?

And the more I tried to put that thought out of my mind, the more it came.

And so finally 1 day I said, you know what?

I'm going to Prove that God doesn't exist that there is no purpose There is no real meaning to life and then I'm going to commit suicide And I want to cause great pain to my family and those around me who have hurt me so.

I began to see that God predicted things that happened in the world thousands of years, and even hundreds and even thousands of years before they ever happened.

I saw that Bible prophecy was being fulfilled today and it gave me the confidence to know that the Word of God was real, the Word of God was true, and it gave purpose.

And when I had that confidence, I turned to the Gospels and I began to read about the life of Jesus And never in my life had I ever read something so pure Something so powerful something so life-changing and Christ changed my life 22 years old college student on a secular state university of about 12, 000 people.

I gave my heart to Jesus in my college apartment room.

And I don't stand before you perfect, I can assure you.

I'll be the second person to tell you that I'm not perfect and my wife will be the first person.

But by the grace of God every day, I want to be growing more like Jesus, amen?

I want to spend time in His Word, because His Word is powerful, friends.

The early church experienced a revolution because of the power and their experience in the Word of God.

I appreciated Brother Valmy's post on the GYC website about the driving force in the book of Acts.

He said that 25 times In the book of Acts, the Word of God is mentioned.

But you know, I looked at the indirect quotes, the indirect statements as well as the direct, and the Word of God is actually talked about 50 times.

Resurrecting the Church

I hope you are because I'm pretty excited.

It's a blessing to be with you again today, New Year's Eve.

And we have the opportunity to serve God more passionately than we ever have before, We have the opportunity to be closer to him than we ever have before and I hope today that you're making your commitments Not in your own strength, but in his strength to be faithful to him in 2013.

Amen How many of you went on outreach yesterday?

Praise the Lord The people that come to the morning devotionals always go on outreach, right?

How many of you had the opportunity to pray with somebody yesterday?

How many of you had the opportunity to give away some literature to somebody yesterday?

Did you sense the Spirit of God with you?

The angels of God were told go with us and they're walking beside us as we go from door to door do you realize that yesterday you were fulfilling Bible prophecy?

Ellen White had a vision where she saw in the last days young people going from door to door, sharing literature, having prayer.

Who knows that when she saw that vision, she didn't see your face.

Lighted with the glow of the glory of heaven and with the love of Jesus in your hearts.

What a privilege it is to serve Jesus, amen?

That's what we're gonna talk about this morning.

I invite you to please pray for my wife this morning, I just found out that my son, who is now getting a little bit better, has given this nasty thing to my wife.

The whole family's sick and I have to go there on Tuesday.

So thankfully, I didn't go there before I came to GYC.

But Please pray for her if you would and pray for my son as well.

By the name, by the way, I don't think I've said his name.

So we gave him a Bible name and a family name.

I want to invite you this morning if you would to kneel with me together as we ask the Lord's blessing to be with us.

Father in heaven, It's a great privilege to be here together today as the people of God in the last days of earth's history, shining brightly for you, forsaking all, drawing close to our Savior in worship, in prayer, in study, in service.

And Lord, today we want another outpouring of your Holy Spirit.

We want to ask that your Spirit would come and would draw near to each 1 of our hearts, and that we would be challenged today, we would be inspired, but especially challenged, and that your word would open up to us and convict us of those things that we need to do and not do and how we need to be closer to you.

And we ask in a special way today that you would be close in a way that you haven't been before, and that you would transform us by the power of your word and by your spirit.

And we ask today that a special outpouring of the Spirit be given, and we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

I remember a number of years ago I was doing outreach, I was going door to door, and I was doing this in Denver, Colorado when I was an AAFCO student and It was in the middle of winter it was February it was cold there was a lot of snow on the ground, and we had to do outreach from early afternoon till late at night.

And when you do outreach on a time such as that, you're out there in the middle of the darkness and we're knocking on doors, they told us, do not stop before such and such a time.

Well, that was about 3 hours after it was dark because it was getting dark early because it was the wintertime.

So I'm going door to door and it's cold, It's raining, it's snowy, it's dark, and I'm hungry.

And every week after outreach, my partner and I, Adam Ramden, my friend who preached on Sabbath morning, we had this tradition every Thursday night, we would go to the Thai restaurant and get some Pad Thai.

And that particular day, we didn't have a very positive experience on outreach.

There were a lot of people that were rejecting us, closing the door in our face, getting in our face, and etc.

And as time was ticking, I was watching the clock and I said, you know, it's almost time to go.

And all I wanted to do was go get my pad thai noodles, go home and take a hot shower, and slide into bed because it had not been a very good day.

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Series

GYC 2012 Morning Devotional

Rediscovering Character

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

Rediscovering Character

51m

Redefining Culture

54m

Resurrecting the Church

52m

Reaching the Cosmos

54m

Sound Doctrine