What makes a prominent, educated, prosperous individual give all to the cause of Christ? The Gospel of John records three encounters that one individual had with Christ, transforming that individual from a reluctant, cautious introvert into a radical revolutionary. A juxtaposed experience with both the Hebrew Scriptures and the humble Savior caused a spiritual recalibration in his heart, ultimately resulting in the beginning of the early Christian movement.

ASI 2013: It's Time... To Be About Our Father's Business

<p>What makes a prominent, educated, prosperous individual give all to the cause of Christ? The Gospel of John records three encounters that one individual had with Christ, transforming that individual from a reluctant, cautious introvert into a radical revolutionary. A juxtaposed experience with both the Hebrew Scriptures and the humble Savior caused a spiritual recalibration in his heart, ultimately resulting in the beginning of the early Christian movement.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

ASI 2013 Plenary Sessions

Frank Fournier

Look a Little Higher

Thank you for preparing your hearts to receive a spiritual blessing.

I'd like to invite you to turn with me to Colossians.

Several weeks ago, the program chair called me up at home and said that it was urgent.

They needed to have a title for the keynote address, was what I'm doing this evening, and a description of it.

In my heart, I thought it was fairly hard to describe something that didn't exist, much less give it a title.

But I had to because they were under pressure, they need to be ready, the program needs to be ready, and I should have been ready by then.

I was being influenced at the time by what I was reading in the Spirit of Prophecy, and I was reading a vision in a dream in the little book, Early Writings, And so because I had these thoughts in my head, because these things were running around in there, I gave them a title right off the spot, right off hand, and it was, Look a Little Higher.

Now that's a good title, and actually it's even good counsel.

I had you turn with me to Colossians chapter 3.

Colossians chapter 3, we're going to look right for it verse 1 if he then being be risen with Christ now in the book of Romans it talks about baptism it talks about being buried with Christ It talks in Galatians chapter 2 verse 20 it talks about being crucified with Christ and dying in him.

Nevertheless we're alive because he is alive through us.

Tremendous blessing and when he died we died in him and when he was buried in him we were buried and when he was resurrected we also resurrected with him to newness of life.

If he then being risen with Christ to newness of life, If you've had a change of heart, if you've been born again, if you have new desires and new directions and new hopes, if you want to be like Jesus, I know how you can get there.

Do You know that there's not many other ways to become like Jesus?

And I'd like to suggest to you tonight that we need to do a lot more beholding than we do.

And sometimes we behold a lot of other things that corrupt what happens in our hearts.

We're still there in verse 1, If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above.

Where Christ sits on the right hand of God.

Set your affections on things above, not on the things of this earth.

Thinking of that little vision that I was seeing, that I was reading about at the time a few months ago, a young lady by the name of Ellen Harmon had her very first vision, and in her very first vision, she says she was lifted up far above the earth, this is what it says.

So you gotta get that in your mind, and the emphasis in my mind Is that she was far above the earth she went up, but when she was up there She decided to look for the advent people.

These are God's true people in the earth So she's scanning the earth and she can't find God's people.

And she's wondering why in the world is that, except that the angel said to her, listen, you want to look up, look a little higher.

And when she looked higher, she saw a path, the way to salvation.

She saw a path from the city of destruction to the celestial city.

And at the beginning of the path, there was a bright light called the midnight cry that shone all the way up the path, all the way to the celestial city, and the people were not to deny that bright light behind them.

And you know, I don't have time this evening to explain what that bright light was all about except to say that the midnight cry shone its light, it magnified, it emphasized the moving of Jesus from the holy place of the sanctuary into the most holy place of the sanctuary.

And God said we must never lose sight of that fact because if we do we'll fall off the path to the dark world below.

And she was also instructed for the people's sake that they needed to keep their eyes on Jesus.

So here she is far above this world and God's people are higher up still.

And so there's symbolism here and I think the symbolism is fairly clear.

God's people have been meant to have higher standards.

If you remember Pilgrim's Progress, and I don't know if I can tell you exactly where it is, but this pilgrim Christian, he's making his way through all these adventures, through all these experiences.

He comes to somebody's house, I forgot the name of the person whose house it was, and this house had many rooms, and when he looked into 1 room he saw a man with a muckrake and the man was occupied with this muckrake drawing to himself dust and sticks and straw and all the while there is hovering above the man an angel preferring to him the gift of eternal life but he is so focused on the dust and on the sticks and on the straws of this world that he is missing what God is offering him from above.

He is not looking up, he is looking down, and that's the symbolism of that.

When I continued to read this vision, the vision went on to show that all this was about the 144, 000.

Now you can read all about the 144, 000 in Revelation chapter 14.

They have the Father's name written in their foreheads.

They have the character of God in their frontal lobe.

And the symbolism of women in the Scriptures, especially when it is a symbol, represents a church and being that they're not defiled with these women, then obviously these women are corrupt somehow or these churches are corrupt and these people are not corrupted by these things.

Besides that, they sing a new song, a song that was never sung by anyone in this world, but will be sung by these people in the last days, the 144, 000.

And ah, I'd like to learn that song, wouldn't you?

They follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.

Not only will they follow the Lamb, but they follow him now.

And Jesus would lead us to the bedside of the sick.

Jesus will lead us to where people have real needs, so that through us, He can begin to meet the needs of those who have those needs.

Do you know that Dezar of Ages says, from the soul that feels his need nothing is withheld and there must be people out there who feel their need, who are appealing to God, and we are God's hands, aren't we?

And this is what the 144, 000 are going to be like.

They're going to go forward and they're going to be, through God, meeting the needs of the people around them.

There are a lot of people who have needs.

In point number 5, of course, talking about the 144, 000, it says they have no guile in their mouths, no deception.

Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks and when their mouths are open everything that comes out is pure.

They have an eye single to the glory of God.

Their hearts burst with gratitude for what Jesus has done for them.

Their hearts are on fire for the truth of God and for Jesus Christ and for helping other people, for doing evangelism and what comes out of their mouths is all pure.

Well friends, if this is so, we've got to make sure what goes into our hearts, don't you think?

Because if we allow corruption in there, what do you think is going to come out?

It's an amazing calling really, isn't it?

It's an amazing thought that God would have us to focus so purely on pure things, so much on Jesus alone that we receive none of the nonsense that this world would like to fill our hearts with, that the enemy would like to fill our hearts with.

When all this is all over, then the last verse in Revelation chapter 14, the last verse describing the 144, 000, it says that they stand faultless before the throne of God.

Ah, friends, I hope that you and I can, as the Spirit of Prophecy says, strive with all the power that God has given to us to be among the 144, 000.

And I think the emphasis there is on all the power that God has given unto us.

I think there's a lot of people who have been wanting to be part of the 144, 000, who focus on all the law, who focus on all the standards, who focus on all the do's and don'ts that we have to do.

And friends, I wouldn't knock that down for anything.

No, I want to be like Jesus and my whole life ought to reflect what He was like and what He would do.

But listen, We're not going to do it in our own strength, and this has been our problem.

We are to strive with all the power that God has given to us to be among the 144, 000.

And I'm trying to Remember a verse Jesus spoke, he says, he that dwells within me, he doeth the works.

Ty Gibson

The Power

I'm so glad you've come for this early morning session.

I considered not coming myself, but here we are.

So let's spend this time together in a very productive way exploring this morning God's idea of power.

More specifically, I want to spend our time together discovering the power that God has made possible, potentiated, latent in Adventism.

So let's pray together as we get started.

Father in heaven, Lord, we invite your presence here this morning.

We want nothing more than to be led by your Holy Spirit.

Father, take charge of my mind, my tongue.

Give me the privilege, Lord, to speak effectively and clearly on your behalf.

As we explore the biblical idea of power, I'm reminded that some truths are best known by contrast to what they are not.

So let's begin with an encounter that I recently had personally with an extremely powerful person.

The fact is This individual was considered to be in history so powerful that my first encounter with him, that is the historic memory of him, was a life-size painting.

And there he was in all his powerful glory.

And I was just standing a couple of weeks ago at Hampton Court Palace.

Now that I stood before this painting of this extremely powerful man in a particular wing, a hall rather, of this palace, the audio guide that I was listening to with a very somber and sober voice said, This king had walked this very hall in which you're standing.

Would you have the courage to lift your eyes to meet his?" And then there was a dramatic pause, knowing that at will he could lop off your head.

And he had in fact lopped off many heads, including 2 of his 6 wives, right there at Hampton Court Palace.

So I was standing in the presence of the memory of a very powerful man.

And then suddenly, out of nowhere, as we stood there taking in what was history, out of nowhere, King Henry VIII, well not himself, but an enactment of him, came out of nowhere.

And here was a man pretending to be King Henry VIII, dressed like King Henry VIII, remarkably looking like the painting of him on the wall, and with a commanding and intimidating tone, he pointed to a number of us men who were in the group and commanded us to follow him to his chambers.

And we found ourselves sitting in a room with the unspoken expectation that we men would all play along with this display of kingly power.

He began to describe to us how he was going to take another woman as his wife but there were certain political maneuvers that must be made for which he needed our support and then with an intimidating glance he communicated to us that our heads were at stake if we didn't go along with the political maneuvers that needed to be made in order for him to move out of 1 relationship into another.

And you could just feel the power of this enactment of this ancient king.

Well this is precisely the kind of power, by contrast, that God is not interested in exerting over the world.

This was the power of a presence, but that presence conveyed intimidation.

This was the power of the force of a larger will over our own and the threat of harm or possibly death if we didn't go along with the program.

This is a kind of power, would you agree?

This is a power that plays upon our emotions and appeals to our sense of self-what?

Now I'd like to suggest to you this morning that if I serve God under the influence of that kind of power, in other words, if I harbor or cherish in my heart a picture of the character of God that has me intimidated before Him and serving Him or quote-unquote worshipping Him or even obeying Him out of a sense of obligation and duty because after all He's God and I'm not so I had better or else.

If my relationship with God is grounded in that kind of power, then ultimately I'm not actually serving, worshiping, obeying God.

Now Ellen White does something very fascinating with power in this regard.

She talks about the fact in the book Desire of Ages that, and I quote now, It is not the fear of punishment, nor the hope of everlasting reward that leads the disciple of Christ to follow Him.

If it's not fear of punishment, if it's not the desire for reward, then what is it that prompts?

What's the motive that God is really appealing to or actually trying to stimulate and recreate within us?

She goes on and says, they behold his matchless love in his death on Calvary's cross and the sight of him attracts.

Now she very, very interestingly uses the word attracts.

There's the contrast in this quotation between 2, we might say, kinds of power.

On the 1 hand, there is the kind of power that drives by intimidation and fear, and then there is the kind of power that, what's the word she used again?

We have to ask ourselves the question this morning, and at every juncture of our Christian experience, are we in a relationship with God through Christ that is attracting us to Him?

Is there a voluntary kind of outreaching after God?

Or is it merely an exercise in self-preservation, the fear of punishment, or the desire for reward?

Because the fact is, as long as I'm serving God because of what I might have threatened upon me, or serving God because of what I might get in the end by way of material goods and the posh and luxurious heaven and eternal life in the streets of gold and all of that as Long as fear of harm to myself or desire of reward to myself is the motive for serving God, then really I don't love him for who he is, I love him love is in quote marks here you understand, for what I might avoid or evade or what I might gain.

So at that point self still occupies the throne of my heart and no actual conversion has occurred.

I'm going through what Ellen White calls the motions of appearing or serving God in a way that passes for following Him, but is in fact avoiding Him.

I'm going through the external motions of a relationship with God, but no actual relationship of the quality that God is looking for is actually there.

God is a God who is operating, listen carefully now, God, the 1 and only true God, is a power under kind of God, not a power over kind of God.

God is not interested in exercising a power that is imposed from without in order to extract from us, but he's interested in exerting a power from within that produces voluntary love to God.

And this is the highest possible form of relationship imaginable.

Now I love the theme for this year's ASI.

It's time to be about our Father's business.

I don't know if you've recalled or looked up where this is taken from.

But it begs the question, if it's time to be about our Father's business, what in fact is our Father's business?

And in the title we have here a direct reference to Jesus at a mere 12 years of age, you remember, who had been busying himself in the temple, first encountering the Passover sacrifice for the first time, you remember, 12 years old.

Imagine Jesus, the Son of God, God incarnate, standing there watching the sacrificial service.

The lamb is slain before him and burned to ashes.

And Jesus is looking on, you remember, his omniscience and his omnipresence have been put, as it were, on hold or in remission.

The very scriptures that he has inspired the prophets to write Mary is now teaching him at her mother's knee.

Jesus can't sit under a Jerusalem sycamore tree and reminisce about what it was like with the Father and the angels before he came to this world.

No, according to Scripture, Jesus in Luke chapter 1 grew in knowledge and in wisdom.

He said later on of himself, no man knows the day or the hour of the coming of the Son of Man but the father alone, not even myself.

I don't even know the day and the hour when I'll return because Jesus was a real human being now.

He was moving through a developmental process and the little boy, 12 years old, he stands there watching the sacrificial service.

No doubt she has walked him through Isaiah 53, and it's dawning on him as he looks at the mysterious service and the sacrifice.

This is all pointing to my mission and my identity.

Now this is important because when his parents find him as he has now encountered his first Passover as a 12 year old boy, And now he's in among the scholars asking questions and giving answers.

When Mary and Joseph finally find him, and they're a little perturbed as parents would be when you're 12 years old and you have wandered off, Jesus said, don't you know that I must be about my father's business.

It is in this context, the context of realizing his identity and mission, that Jesus says, I'm about my father's business, mom and dad, just so you know, it has begun.

And now something is going to unfold before the world and I'm realizing precisely who I am and what my mission is.

Now his mission, his identity, Jesus unfolds before us and we'll just use the Gospel of John as our main text for this part of our message this morning.

In John chapter 1 and verse 14, the scripture says, this is chapter 1 of the Gospel of John, verse 14, the word, speaking of Jesus, became flesh and dwelt among us.

1 version says God moved into the neighborhood, up close and personal, and we beheld, notice, we beheld, not just with physical eyeballs but with our hearts and minds, we saw something, we realized something in this encounter.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld what everybody?

His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of 2 things.

Grace Daley

Blessed Beyond Basketball

And I'm praying that this morning it will be Jesus that's speaking through me to you all.

I really appreciate the invitation to speak at ASI this year, I'm really grateful for the opportunity because every time I share my testimony, I am encouraged, I am re-motivated, I am energized.

So I'm hoping that today, all of us will leave here encouraged, re-motivated, and energized to be about our father's business.

Now as you heard from the introduction, I had what most people would consider to be a dream job.

So that means I got to live all over the world and all over the United States, and actually, all of my expenses were paid and I got paid.

I had very short, I'm gonna call them work hours, and I use that term very loosely because I was out there playing, okay?

I was working for 2 to 3 hours a day, and I played on 4 different WNBA teams.

3 years in France, 2 years in Italy, 1 year in the Czech Republic, a season in Spain, and a few days in Russia.

Every time I traditionally chose a team, I chose a team based on how I could help them, right?

Now, 1 time in my life, and this was my Russian experience, I decided to choose a team based on purely selfish reasons, how much money I could make, all right?

And at the time, playing in Russia for women's basketball, that was the place where you could make the most money.

So I prayed, God please, I just want to make as much money as possible.

And have you guys ever heard of the mafia before?

Okay, I had, I was called into an office to get, you know, paid upon arrival and they wanted to pay me in a duffel bag.

So I saw them putting cash in a duffel bag and I had drivers, I didn't speak Russian, I had drivers that were watching me get paid in a duffel bag with a lot of cash who are supposed to take me to my apartment and Nobody I knew knew where I was going Okay, so it wasn't a very safe environment in my estimation.

And what I learned from that story was it is never a good idea to ask God for what you want because you know what, you might get it.

It's a great idea to ask God for what He wants for you because then you'll get what you really need.

So unfortunately it took the Russian mafia to teach me that lesson.

And before I get started, I just want to take a moment to pause for a word of prayer.

Dear Lord, thank you again for bringing me here and for this opportunity.

I ask that everything I say today will be holy and fully representative of you, amen.

Okay, so yeah, my story really is simple.

I decided to stop playing professional basketball so I could faithfully observe the Sabbath.

And whenever I told people that, I got a multitude of adverse reactions.

And the most popular was somewhere along these lines.

You know you're playing for the glory of God.

God gave you a gift and he expects you to use it to glorify him.

And I kept hearing that, God gave me a gift and he expects me to use it to glorify him.

But the conclusion I came to was that God did give me a gift, but that gift was not basketball.

The gift that God gave me was his word, and in his word is contained the commandments, and in his commandments is the Sabbath.

So People often interpret what I did as giving up my career, but I'm very careful never to use that term because I did not give anything up for Christ.

What I did was I gave into Christ, right?

I gave into Christ and willingly surrendered and just to become completely obedient Because he's the 1 that gave everything up for me.

He's the 1 that made the ultimate sacrifice.

My job was simple, just give in and accept this free gift.

And as much as people were telling me, hey, you're playing for the glory of God, what I realized was if I was truly playing for God, going about His business, then I would be playing by His rules and going along with his schedule.

And I learned that the schedule was simple on my heavenly coach's team.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, 6 days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, and on the seventh day, your rest.

So that meant I got to work for 6 days, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, during the day.

And on Friday evening, my heavenly coach calls a, what is this?

Everywhere in the world I go, this symbol, everybody knows this means?

So I'm gonna describe a timeout and if you can imagine, This is exactly what the Sabbath should look like and feel like for us.

During a timeout, players go to the sideline, they take a break, and they give their coach their undivided, complete attention.

They listen intently to what their coach has to say.

And while your coach is talking, it's a great time to catch your breath, regain your focus, relax, regain your strength, because you're preparing to go out and perfectly execute the plays that the coach threw up on the clipboard.

So the Sabbath is God's weekly timeout for us.

So along with the coach calling timeouts, on a team, the coach also is responsible for making the schedule.

I'm gonna hold this up, and it's actually okay if you're not able to read the teams on this schedule.

What's important is that you know that every 1 of these lines represents a game.

Series

ASI 2013 Plenary Sessions

To Jesus by Night

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

ASI 2011 Plenary Meetings

Beyond the Righteousness of Angels

46m

ASI 2010 Plenary Meetings

First Things First

1h 43m

Personal Spiritual Enrichment

Making Sense of the Former and Latter Rain

1h 25m

ASI 2011 Plenary Meetings

ASI Presents

1h 54m

Plenary

ASI Members in Action

1h 58m

Plenary

Final Charge: Partners in a Finished Work

1h 21m

Morning Devotional

Faith and the Final Crisis

59m

Personal Spiritual Enrichment

Thriving Mentally: Assimilating the Mind of Christ

1h 33m

God's Last Message: Christ Our Righteousness

God’s Last Message: Christ our Righteousness, Part 3

49m

Seminar: Spiritual Enrichment

Reaching the World Next Door

1h 14m

Preparing For the End of Time

1. Why Prayer Matters

45m

Just This One Time

48m

Sound Doctrine