ASI 2012: It's Time... To Be About Our Father's Business

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ASI 2012 Youth Meetings

Doug Batchelor

ASI 2012 Youth Meeting

Well, I'd like to pray with you just briefly and I want to share some things on my heart that go along perfectly with the theme of what you were just listening to a moment ago.

Dear Lord, as we've gathered together and the Sabbath is approaching and we want you in this place.

We want to talk Lord about how we can have your mind and have your spirit do your work and ultimately Lord we want to live forever with you.

So please bless be in this place Lord and pray that you bless the approaching Sabbath and all the other meetings going on.

Alright, I want to talk to you about, Wait a second, let me back up.

You don't just think you're alive, you really are.

You might think that everyone around you is a figment of your imagination, but they're alive too.

You think you're the only 1 thinking anything but they're thinking too.

Now if you have doubts that you're alive you could put your hand over your chest see if your heart's beating, Hold your breath for 4 minutes and see if you pass out and you'll know that you're alive.

All right, so let's establish that we all agree with that.

That's really important Because you didn't make yourself, nobody asked you if you wanted to be alive, you're alive.

You know, I didn't know what that was for the first part of my life.

I thought I was a big biological accident.

I was living in the mountains up in a cave, and it's a long story I won't tell right now, but tried to figure out what was the purpose of life, and I tried everything.

I mean, I was in drugs and got involved in crime and different religions and traveled around the world, and this is before I was your age, trying to figure out what's the purpose of life.

And after all that, I ended up trying to find purpose in nature.

So I went up into the mountains and I lived in a cave, kind of like a hermit.

I was tired of people and I just thought I'd see if there was some purpose of life.

And while I was up there I read a Bible that someone had left in the cave.

And as a result of reading that Bible I became convinced this is the truth.

And as Brother Burdahl was just saying a minute ago I prayed.

And I said, Lord if you're real come into my heart give me a purpose for living.

And then I began to discover what the biggest battle is.

Right now while I'm talking, a thousand ideas are going through your mind.

Especially when you're young, your minds are...

I know more than you know, but you think faster than I think.

I got more data, but I've also got a virus in my computer.

So I don't think as well as you guys think.

But You realize how many ideas and thoughts are going through your minds right now while I'm talking?

See right now, you just all heard the door click and you got distracted.

And you're thinking about what the people around you are saying and you're thinking, what do they think about me?

And You're thinking about how long is this guy going to talk.

And you're thinking, I wonder if I got left any snacks in my room for after the meeting.

And all these things are going around in your mind all at 1 time.

And some of you are chewing gum and you're not even thinking about it.

But your whole life and experience is based on what's happening here behind your eyes, between your ears, and you ultimately will be happy or miserable based on what you think.

To illustrate this, all right just picture if you will for a moment, stay with me.

Lemon, big lemon, big yellow lemon, fresh ripe big yellow lemon in my hand.

I take the lemon, I put it on a wooden table, take a big sharp knife, I cut the lemon in half, But I'm not done.

I take the knife and I quarter the lemon.

So now there's 4 parts of that big, juicy lemon.

Then I take 1 section of that lemon and I bring it up to my face, I open my mouth, close my eyes, I take the edges of my thumbs and I reach in between the lemon and the peel and I pull it back so all the pulp is sticking out and I push it up in my mouth and I bite down And I hold it there.

All right, now, how many of you find yourself salivating a little bit right now just because of the thought of a bitter lemon?

What you think can make the difference between what kind of person you are.

You will be the sum total of what you think.

So, you can make a difference in what you become by what you listen to.

I can tell you a story right now that'll break your heart and make you cry, make you sad.

You won't know the people in the story, but just the thoughts and the pictures and the images can make you very sad.

I could tell you something funny that happened to me that would just crack you up.

I could tell you about last week when I was getting dressed and I realized that something terrible had happened to my body.

I'd gained a bunch of weight and my legs changed shape and I was so upset, I thought I've gotten old.

And then I realized that my wife put her pants in my drawer.

So what you listen to And what you look at can affect your happiness in life.

It can also make you a nice person, or it can make you a mean person.

It can make you a loving, caring person, or it can make you a very selfish person.

It can make you like Jesus or it can make you like the devil.

You get to choose what you want to listen to, what you want to look at, and that will determine who you become.

Now as you're a baby and you're growing up, your parents are making a lot of those decisions for you, and you're taking stuff in from your friends and from your environment, and that's why most of you, I'm assuming, listen to me speak English, or you're just looking at me right now wondering what this guy's saying.

Right, Most of you understand English, right?

Kameron DeVasher

Can somebody, by the way, give me a synonym?

First of all, can you tell me what a synonym means?

Yes, has a similar meaning, the same meaning.

Basically, the Apostle Paul is saying don't let anyone hate your youth not you in particular but your youth the youth that you carry with you that's the essence of the text with that being said let me share some thoughts with you.

I am now, within the last couple of years, I've come into a new phase in my life.

I have, along with my wife, I didn't do it all by myself, but we have this wonderful, beautiful, healthy baby boy who's just learning to say words and every day he's got about 1 or 2 brand new words for us.

1 of his favorite words is no, but we're trying to get other words out of him.

And he's becoming, there's a transition from a little baby that's just kind of a glob of skin and fat and cute to he's starting to stretch out and elongate and become you can see facial features of an individual because all babies kind of look alike but now he's starting to look like our Henry you know where before he was just a baby, you know, but now he's Henry.

And he's starting to, but there are certain things he cannot do for himself yet.

In fact, there's most things in life he cannot do for, we have to drive him everywhere.

In fact, when he was a baby, we had to prop him up to sit.

Now he can walk on his own, he can sit on his own, he can sometimes talk a little bit on his own.

But 1 thing in particular that hit me this week that he cannot do for himself is care for his hair.

It's up to his mother and I to cut his hair appropriately.

Now, when I was his age, my parents loved my beautiful, I had bright, bright, bright, bright, bright, bright blonde hair.

And they shuddered at the thought of ever cutting it, ever.

Finally, my hair was growing down past my shoulders and I was pretty like a lady, you know, it was nice.

But I had this blonde long hair and it was, and finally the time came and they realized we have to cut the boy's hair because I wasn't doing it myself, right, because I'm a little baby.

And so they went and cut it and basically the haircut that I got was kind of like a bowl on my head, you know, and it was pretty weird.

And there was a long time in my life where I could not do anything about my hair.

I mean, I guess I could have just picked up the scissor and got it.

Never dawned on me that I had control over my own head.

What I looked like, the impression that I made on the world, which by the way, when my hair was long and blonde, the impression I made on a lot of the world was that, what a cute little girl, right?

There was a time when people looked at me and thought I was something different than what I was.

And I had no control over it, you know, until, and then they gave me the bowl haircut and people thought other things about me.

But finally there came a time in my life which I'm so glad my son has not come to yet, but I'm praying for the Lord's patience and mercy whenever he does get to this phase when he can choose for himself the haircut.

He can choose for himself the reading material.

He can have an independence from his parents that can, he can choose what to do with his own head.

Which for us, of course, at this age, of course you can choose what to do with your own head.

But that's a brand new idea that my son does not have yet.

And I want him to come into that really slowly.

But as I grew up, there came a time, somewhere in elementary school, somewhere around there, that I started choosing how I was going to cut my own hair.

And I started choosing not only that, but I started choosing who I would hang out with, and what kind of words I would listen to, and what kind of words would come out of me.

And what kind of music would go into me, and what kind of thing, and I started to choose who I was.

Now, this seems like a very, very novel thing, but there were some, I did some experimentation.

I didn't know what I wanted to be yet, and so I kind of experimented with some looks.

For instance, there was a time when I wanted to be a skateboarder.

You're already laughing, some of you are chuckling, some of you...

Did you know that there's a certain haircut that sometimes goes with skateboarders?

A lot of people, long, kind of shaggy, kind of hangs in your face, you have to do this a lot, you know, and you can barely see, you know, there's a kind of a look to it.

Some people are smiling because they know someone, they are someone, or they can see someone, and we're not, whatever.

Whenever I, as soon as I say skateboarding, you had a picture in your head of a haircut, didn't you?

Honestly, I look back at the pictures now and I don't know what I was thinking.

There was a time when I cut all the hair on 1 side off kind of and all the other side was long and I really, that was just, Apparently I was aiming to be a mistake.

There was a time when I wanted to be a rock star, and I dyed my hair blonde.

But All of these things, I was trying to figure out which thing I wanted to be like, which group I wanted to aim toward.

And that not only affects, of course, your hair, it affects your clothing, it affects your music, it affects everything about you.

You choose, I'm going to set my course that way and I'm going to mold myself into that image.

There's a kind of a look, there's a kind of a personality, there's a kind of character you might say, that you're aiming for to develop.

Now, a fun thing that I like to do with some students sometimes, and I think we have the time to do it today.

What I'm going to do here is on the board, for those of you listening to AudioVerse, you're really missing out right now because this is going to be visual, okay?

I'm going to take this pen and I'm going to draw very artistically the best that I can.

But what I need now is, well I'm going to say something and, alright, How should we do this exactly the best I need a volunteer?

Dwayne Lemon

Father in heaven, we want to thank you Lord for the opportunity to hear you speak to our hearts.

Lord, we thank you for such a wonderful message like the message of the sanctuary.

We pray that you will please give us understanding.

Forgive us we ask of our sins Lord and help our minds to be connected with heaven so that we can understand the things that you share with us, most importantly, apply it in our lives so that we can effectively share it with others.

I pray that you will please send your Holy Spirit that he may come and be our teacher, and may he open our eyes and help us to behold wondrous things from your word.

This is our prayer we ask in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, you're gonna find that the reason why I wanted you to have Bibles in hand is because as I ask you questions, there's 1 of 2 ways you can answer a question.

You can either answer it according to what you think, or you can answer it according to what God says.

So therefore we want to do our best to try to let God speak to us, all right?

Question, did at any point in time in history, did mankind have a face-to-face communion with God?

Now, you say yes, that means that you said it like you know it, so that means you have a scripture for it.

What scripture do we get in the Bible that shows that mankind had a face-to-face communion with God?

What Bible verse would you use to help substantiate that?

Genesis chapter 2, do you have a specific verse?

So what we have to do is, if we're going to direct us somewhere in the scripture, we've got to find a specific scripture.

Because I could be searching all through Genesis 2 all the way up to verse 25 and never see it.

All right, so where would we find somewhere in the Bible where it shows that mankind, at some point in time, had to have face communion with God.

Since we believe it, is there anybody who doesn't believe that?

Anyone who says, I do not believe that mankind had face-to-face communion with God?

Where would you go in the Bible to help us find where mankind had a face-to-face communion?

Now, wait a minute, I think my friend here had his hand up first, so let me acknowledge him and then if he doesn't have it, then you can go ahead.

Okay, well, in Genesis 2, 16, it says, The Lord commanded the man saying, Of every tree of the garden you will eat, of every tree of the mountain you will eat, and of every tree of the vine, and of every tree of the tree of the vine, for in the day of the eating you shall surely die.

So that has been his conversation with Adam and Eve.

Okay, so I'm looking you in your face and I say, today if you partake of this tree, you shall surely die, and if you don't, you shall not surely die." Face to face, right?

All right, now if I say, today if you partake of this tree, you shall surely die, but if you don't partake of this tree, you shall not surely die.

Did I still make the same communication with you?

No, So does that verse prove that God was talking face to face and maybe he wasn't talking with his back turned or looking someplace else?

Now the only reason why I'm asking because there is a verse that does help us.

So you know, I'm just helping us all search it out.

Now my friend in the back, his hand, oh you give up, you didn't want to do it anymore?

All right, now people are getting excited.

All right, Exodus 33, 11, let's take a look at that, what does it say there?

All right, now I want you to notice this, okay?

So my friend just said here that the Lord spoke to Moses how?

Now, I want you to, actually, I think that's a very good verse.

The Bible says that God spoke to Moses face to face.

So did God have face-to-face communion with man?

Now I'm going to actually show you that that's actually not the best verse.

Now if you look at Numbers chapter 12 it kind of clarifies that verse that we just looked at where it talks about face to face.

I want you to see how it says more so in Numbers chapter 12.

Let's see how God actually spoke to Moses.

And I want you to sit down and think about this.

You're doing a Bible study with somebody.

You're trying to prove that mankind had face to face communion with God and you're breaking it down.

And as far as you're concerned you're feeling good you're saying yeah look I just showed him see face-to-face the Bible just said so so you feeling real strong right like you just proved your point but then all of a sudden let's say that person's a little studious and they say well it's not really that God spoke to Moses face to face because notice what Numbers 12 says to kind of clarify it and they go to Numbers chapter 12 and look at what it says in verses 7 and 8 and I'm going to ask you to read it since you read the face to face point.

He's in the garden in a dark, dark place.

He says, if you see the form of the Lord, why have you not prayed and seen him?

All right, now, what version are you reading from?

My friend is reading from a New King James Bible, but he lives in Tennessee.

Tennessee is part of what's known as the Bible belt in the south.

I live in Georgia so I know also this area.

Now in the Bible belt you're going to find that people typically like to use King James versions.

Believe it or not, seriously, like if you're talking like Southern Baptist and so on and so forth, they don't even call it King James, they call it the Blessed King James.

Now with that being said, you know, if they were reading from the King James version, they'd say, your version says face to face, but my version says in Numbers 12, verse 8, with him, will I speak mouth to mouth?

So therefore it's God's voice to his voice.

In other words, God speaks to Moses, but he's not necessarily in Moses' face.

Moses speaks back to God and God is hearing Moses' voice, but they're not necessarily looking at each other.

In the other verse, it says face to face, which is interesting because in Exodus 33 it says face to face, but then in Numbers 12 it actually says mouth to mouth.

So somebody may say, argument, that's not gelling.

Voice to voice, that doesn't necessarily mean face to face like I just did with my friend.

I turned my back and I was going ahead and talking to him and he still heard my voice and I heard his but we weren't face to face.

Now let me give you 1 that I think is irrefutable.

Ted N.C. Wilson

Thank you very much for letting me have the opportunity to come and share a few minutes with you.

And after this, I'll be talking to the early teens for a few moments as well.

You know, 1 of the devil's biggest, biggest ways in which to discourage people is to help them to somehow doubt.

You know, The world's full of a lot of doubt, a lot of skepticism.

When I grew up and about your age and a little bit older, there was a saying that a lot of people had, young people, don't trust anyone over 30.

Today, young people have so many things that are thrown at them, so many different ways of looking at things, that many times, even Seventh-day Adventist young people are not sure what is truth and what is it that I ought to really follow.

First of all, let me tell you that this word right here is truth.

This is what God wants you to embed yourself in.

We just had a little promotion in the main auditorium about a series called New Beginnings.

Some of you may have heard about it, where you show evangelistic slides and texts from the Bible and all kinds of things.

And it's a wonderful series that's been around for about 12 years.

Lay members and pastors and others using this new beginnings.

Now they are putting it on a device that will be about half the size of my Bible in this, simply in this dimension and probably about 1 sixth the width of the Bible.

And people will be able to take that, even plug it into TVs or whatever, and show all kinds of things.

Fantastic Bible lessons, the Bible itself, spirit of prophecy, all on that little tiny tablet.

Now that is God's Word and that's what's so important.

But you know God's given us a lot of signs today.

Signs to tell us what is truth and what is not truth.

You've got to look around and see that, well, things are shaking in the political area, not only in our country, but all over the world.

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