iShare 2013: Everywhere

iShare 2013 Seminar: How to Become a World Changer for Jesus

Ben Lundquist

Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

101: Know Who Your Father Is & What He Thinks About You

So, today we're talking about how to be a world changer and knowing who your Father is and knowing what your Father thinks about you.

And I'm a firm believer that our identity in Christ is the full-on foundation for everything we do in ministry.

And I've met a lot of people that are involved in great ministries, but their identity is more tied in the ministry than who the ministry really is about.

And if you were to take them away from that ministry setting, they really wouldn't know who they are anymore.

And so we're talking about if you want to be a world changer for the cause of Christ, we really have to ground who we are in Christ before we can minister for and with Christ.

I'm going to In this microphone, we're going to give our official introduction.

Those of you who are listening on the audio system, this is World Changer with Pastor Benjamin Lundquist, 101, knowing who your father is and what he thinks about you.

We'll have a word of prayer, then we're going to jump right in.

We thank you, Lord, that we are sitting in the room with world changers.

And at this conference, as I looked out over the vast young adult and adult audience, Lord, these are your sons and your daughters that are called to change the world for you, to make your name famous.

And we just pray God that as we spend the next 50 minutes together, may we understand the identity that we have in you on a deeper level.

So even if we were to pull away from your work, we could still know who our father is And what our father thinks about us bless us in your name.

Amen Okay, we're gonna jump right in real quick There was a big study that just just came out within the last year And if you've if you've been on social media, there are tons of Studies articles all over the place from why do young adults leave the church?

So much so that I'm kind of tired of hearing articles about why young adults are leaving the church.

1 reason is not all young adults are leaving the church, amen.

And there are young adults that are fully involved in the work of Christ.

But this was a study that came out that surveyed 12, 000 millennials in 27 countries.

And the young adult generation of today is known as the millennial generation.

And what they found from this big study was that this generation is far from jaded.

They're far from disconnected, about the 18 to 30 year olds.

But in reality, this generation has a very bright outlook on actually being able to change the future and make the future a better place.

How many of you believe that with your life you can leave the world better than you found it?

And so that's what we're talking about today is how do we do that?

And got to talking to them on the phone a few minutes ago.

My full-time ministry job is the Young Adult Director for Arizona Conference.

And then I also am 1 of the Young Adult Coordinators for the North American Division and the Pacific Union.

And so if you've ever been in a place in your life where you wondered kind of where God was leading, all of a sudden he opened up 3 pretty sizable platforms for young adult ministry in the same week, and I realized that was probably where he was leading my ministry was in that area of young adult ministry.

And so as we jump in, I want to share a story with you.

I recently got asked to go speak on the East Coast.

And so I had packed my bags, was leaving Phoenix at about 02:00 in the afternoon.

And as I packed my bags, I had my computer, I had all my clothing with me, and I arrived at Sky Harbor Airport to depart on my flight out to North Carolina.

And as I got ready to get out of the car, I said goodbye to my wife.

I had the kids in the back seat and I began to take my luggage bag that I had my clothes and I took it out of the car, I set it kind of on the side curb there, and I went in and I began to look for my computer bag.

And I was looking for my computer bag, and it was nowhere in the car.

Inside the computer bag was my wallet, it was my identification, all my credit cards, all my means for travel, you know around the United States And so like a good man, I turned Kind of like Adam did way back in the day I turned to my wife as if to accuse her for leaving my computer bag at the house And I and I kind of asked her I said Kim do you know where my computer bag is?

Don't you think you should know where your computer bag is?

I had places to go and things to do, but I had no identification.

And so like a very resourceful man that I was, I went inside to the Southwest Airlines ticket counter, and I began to beg and plead, is there any way That I can get on this flight and of course the answer was absolutely not in the day and age that we live in without Identification there are certain places you will never go in this life And there are things that you will never do unless you have your ID Amen, we kind of know what we're talking about And so I beg and plead enough and the gentleman said let me let me hook you up with a ticket that leaves an hour and a half later you can get on a later flight.

And so I made the arrangements, had the ticket in my hand, went all the way back home, got my computer bag I had left it there in the kitchen and I brought it back to the airport said goodbye to my family and kids again And then I went with my ticket to TSA through security pulled out the ID and all of a sudden it was this this Invitation to get onto the plane.

Let me repeat that comment without proper identification there are certain places in this life you will never go.

And there are things in this life that you and I will never do unless we have the proper identification.

I'm here to tell you, I think, this afternoon, that our identity in Christ has to be deeper than our identity to minister for Christ.

That We have to know, apart from ministry, apart from call-portering, apart from being involved in an amazing Summer Rush program, we have to know who we are in Christ if we are going to be a world changer for Christ.

If you've got your Bibles, let's go ahead and let's go to the book of Matthew.

I'm going to go ahead and put the notes up on the screen.

They're a little bit small, but you can either scoot closer or you can come photograph them a little bit later.

I want to take a look at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus, because I think a lot of us right now, how many of you were involved in some kind of a summer program this summer?

A lot of us are in a ministry transitional period right now.

The summer ministry season has kind of ended, and a lot of us are thinking about going back to school, going back to jobs.

A lot of us, like Michael, who just graduated, are praying about what is God's next step in this journey.

And so I want to take a look at the beginning of the ministry of Christ as we begin to look at this idea of identity.

And when you've got Matthew chapter 3, go ahead and look at Matthew chapter 3 verse 13.

And when you've got that, go ahead and say, amen, so we know you've got it.

Okay, and so this is the account of the baptism of Jesus.

If you could have been live present at different moments throughout biblical history, How many of you would like to have been present at the baptism of Jesus?

I mean, to be there present as Jesus is baptized.

Jesus is transitioning into a public ministry.

Many of us are transitioning into different stages in life and ministries as we speak So let me go ahead and read this for you.

Here's what it says Then Jesus came came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized and I'm reading out of the New King James and John tried to prevent him saying I need to be baptized by you and and you are coming to me question verse 15 but Jesus answered and said permit it to be so now for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness Then he allowed him in verse 16 when Jesus had been baptized when he'd been baptized, Jesus came up immediately out of the water.

And we're going to see people do that tonight at 5.

He came up out of the water and behold, the heavens were open to him.

I really wish that I could have been there.

And the heavens were open to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and aligning upon him.

102: Know Your Gifts & How to Use Them

Dear God, I want to thank You so much for letting us be here.

I want to thank You, Lord, for this amazing—this room of leaders and influencers and world changers.

Give us something that we can chew on, that we can walk away with for Your honor and Your glory.

I pray that my life can be can be lived to make you famous in this world And I thank you Lord for letting us be here and I pray that we can leave this place Recognizing that that nobody was skipped when it came to handing out gifts by you and you have given us gifts for a very specific purpose We want to know about more more about where we can use those and how we can use them for your honor and your glory.

Okay, I wanna introduce myself a little bit.

My name is Benjamin Lundquist and professionally I'm the young adult director for the Arizona Conference and 1 of the coordinators for young adult ministry for the North American Division And for the Pacific Union anybody live in the Pacific Union Really?

Wow, we got a lot of good travelers, huh?

And so if I ever had a question of where God was kind of leading my ministry in the course of 1 week, about 2 years ago, I got invited to be the Young Adult Director for the Arizona Conference and the North American Division and the Pacific Union in 1 week.

And so if I ever wondered kind of where God was leading, I didn't really have to wonder.

It really was in the area of young adult ministry, and I can tell you that I there's no place that I'd rather be serving.

I don't know you, but I love you just because you're young adults.

But we love being able to work with young adults.

I want to introduce you to my family real quick.

We were born in 2005 and we've been married for about 9 years.

Her name is Remy and she is about 2, about 2 and a half.

I got to talk to them a few minutes ago over lunch, and it's fun to get to hang out with family a little bit, huh, and get to kind of connect.

So that's kind of where I've come from a little bit.

So what we're gonna be talking about today is this idea that if you're gonna be a world changer, then it's really helpful to understand what your gifts and your passions are and how you can use your gifts and your passions for the honor and the glory of God.

Let me share this kind of opening illustration with you.

I used to live in a place called Hinsdale, Illinois, And Hinsdale, Illinois was outside of Chicago, about 20 miles.

And I wouldn't, I don't know if I'd call it an Adventist ghetto, but it had a lot of Adventist roots.

The biggest hospital in Hinsdale, a town of about 25, 30, 000 people, was Adventist.

It was 1 of the primary nursing, teaching Adventist hospitals in North America when I was growing up.

And so we had a big Adventist hospital, big Adventist church.

There's also a day academy called Hinsdale Junior Academy there in the same town.

We had these beautiful streets where the trees would like grow almost over the streets, oak trees and elm trees.

And you could drive down and it's almost like you're driving in this big tunnel.

It was just a beautiful, beautiful scene.

But it wasn't so beautiful when all the leaves fell off in the fall.

And so I can remember my dad getting up in the morning, like on a Sunday, and saying, hey, we're going to go ahead and we're going to go rake some leaves.

And it was 1 of those moments where I didn't really want to be in.

I didn't really want to go rake leaves out in the backyard, but I would kind of just follow him around the house and so my dad would Get a pair of jeans on and I would go get a pair of jeans on and he would go pull a flannel shirt Out of his closet.

I would pull a flannel shirt out of my closet.

We would go to the garage and he would get some gloves on and I would ask dad, hey dad, I'd kind of like to wear some gloves, you got any of my size?

And it just so happened he always had gloves that were my size, I don't know how that worked.

I would put gloves on and then he would give me like a little mini rake.

You know, it was kind of like the miniature version of the big manly rake that was like 10 feet wide.

1 swoop you cleaned a whole yard and I had this little tiny rake and I would just follow dad and he would lead the way And so he would just kind of walk him there in the front yard, just mounds of leaves.

Amanda is from Yuma and she's, oh sorry, not Bisbee, and she's never seen a leaf in her life.

Arizona doesn't have as many leaves falling.

So I'd follow my dad and we would spend the day just raking leaves and I would kind of do what he did.

He would make big piles, I would make mini piles.

And they had this big leaf collection process where you would dump all your leaves and debris in the street and some magic thing would happen where the next morning they were gone.

I don't know what happened like a big street sweeper would come up and they move all the leaves.

But as a kid I wanted nothing more than to be like dad And every home doesn't have that same situation.

There are some dads that are not great dads.

And there are some moms that aren't great moms.

But I had the benefit of having a great dad.

Ministry, ministry is going to work with Dad.

He leads us to the area that we're going to be working in.

He really calls the shots, but he invites us to come along, to go to work with Dad.

And here's the amazing thing as we talk about being a world changer.

When dad invites you and he says, hey I'd like you to come to work with me, he doesn't just not give you any tools.

He doesn't just send you out into the field and say rake leaves with your fingers.

No, he gives you a rake and he gives you leaf bags and he gives you a dust mask, but he gives you the tools that you need to do the job.

To be involved in going to work with dad, which I like to call ministry, first he comes up and he gives you an invitation and he says, hey, I would like you to come and work with me.

How many of you here at iShare have received an invitation from dad to come and work with him?

I think everybody, or else you wouldn't be doing what you were doing all summer.

And we wouldn't be here talking about ministry if we hadn't first gotten a what?

And so God calls us and He says, I don't need you to do this work, but I want you to be part of this work.

How privileged are we as a people to be invited to be part of the work of saving souls for the honor and the glory of God.

I think there is no higher calling than to be able to partner with Dad with Jesus to be able to work for the saving of souls Amen So we're gonna talk about is this today?

We're gonna talk about the calling a little bit.

And we're going to talk about the gifting a little bit.

And we're going to talk about your passions a little bit.

And we're going to talk about where, leaving eyeshare, can you know with certainty that you can make the greatest impact for the cause of Christ, period.

How many of you are not about wasting time?

When I first began to do ministry in Arizona, My routine in the evening was, it looked like this.

My kids would go to bed, and it was 1 of the only times when it was kind of quiet around the house.

103: Know Your Community & Discover What They Need

Okay, let's bow our heads in 1 word of prayer, and I think we're going to have to be a little bit efficient with time because we do have baptisms, I think, at 5 o'clock today.

I want to thank You, Lord, for letting us be here, and we thank You, Lord, for this opportunity to talk to world changers for your cause and we thank you Lord that you have Created us called us and gifted us and loved us to be world changers to make your name famous to make who Jesus is More expansive in this world And I pray God that as we look at the needs of communities and we look about how to be a dealer of hope in communities, what that really looks like in your name we pray, amen.

Okay, my name is Benjamin Lundquist and I'm the full-time young adult director for the Arizona Conference, which is a really neat opportunity.

I think at this time I'm the only full-time young adult director in the North American Division, and so we're hoping there's going to be a lot more young adult directors, anybody of young adult age, 18 to 30-ish, a few people.

It's kind of where I do a lot of my ministry.

And so I function out of Phoenix, Arizona with the Arizona Conference.

And I'm also 1 of the coordinators for the North American Division for Young Adult Ministry and also the Pacific Union.

And so I've got a real focused ministry responsibility area.

It's pretty much exclusively with young adults post high school to early 30s and I love working with young adults.

This is my wife Kim in the kind of blue shirt and she's a nurse in Phoenix.

He's about 4 years old and he's got a lot of energy.

And my little daughter named Remy, who's about 2 and a half and she's got almost more energy than Koa does.

And so they are really, they're going all over the place.

I got to talk to them today at lunch, which was definitely kind of fun.

What we're gonna talk about today is we're doing a series on how to become a world changer.

And the first thing we talked about in the first session was that the foundation of all ministry must be your identity in Christ.

And that we as a people need to know who we are in Christ apart from doing the work of Christ.

That if you took all ministry away from what you've done this summer, what you're going to do in the fall, would you still know who you are in Jesus?

Would you still confidently know who you are as a son or daughter of God.

And we talked about when Jesus was baptized, that the words from the Father came down to him, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.

And just a few verses later in chapter 4 of Matthew, the devil came in a moment of weakness and he tempted Jesus by asking him this question, if you are the Son of God, know in ministry and in life, your identity will be targeted, it is guaranteed.

And the foundation of world-changing ministry and effort is that you and I know who we are in Christ.

We finished off that session talking about the reality out of 1 Peter 2, 9 and 10, that we are completely accepted, extremely valuable, extremely valuable, and that we are eternally loved and totally forgiven.

And that is the identity that we have in Jesus.

And then we talked about our second session just a few moments ago was the idea that we are created for ministry and ministry as I defined it is going to work with Dad.

We go to work with Dad and He gives us tools and He calls us.

So We are created for ministry to change the world for the cause of Christ.

And the motivation for that ministry is the love of Jesus in what He has done for us.

The reason that I like to work for Jesus is because in my life, He has brought me back from the dead.

And Jesus is in the business of calling the dead back to life.

And I would like to throw out to you that any life apart from Jesus is a dead life.

And I've been there and I know what that's like.

And so it's that motivation that calls me to do ministry is that that love did that for me.

And I want that love to be able to do that for somebody else.

Matthew 25, I think, is an amazing model for ministry when it comes to service, leadership, and influence.

So if you've got your Bibles, let's go to the book of Matthew and let's check out Matthew chapter 25.

When you've got that, go ahead and say amen so we know you've got it.

And this is Matthew chapter 25, and it kind of, Jesus kind of paints a scenario of what it's gonna be like towards the close of this world and it really is an explanation of those people who get the love of Jesus and Those that don't and so I want to just read to you the description of those people that really Understand and get the love of Jesus and are living that out in their life.

And here's what it says in Matthew chapter 25, verse 34.

Then the king will say to those on his right hand, come you blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world and here's what it says practically in verse 35 for I was hungry and you I was hungry and you gave me help me out food and I was thirsty and you gave me drink and I was a stranger and you took me in I was naked and you clothed me I was sick and you visited me and I was in prison and you came to me and Here is I think 1 of the most important crucial Responses by this group and it's it came to me and then in verse 37 then the righteous will answer him saying Lord When did we see you hungry and feed you are thirsty and give you drink?

What do you think why is that response so crucial?

Here was a people who did the work of Jesus and didn't even know they were doing the work of Jesus because Living for Jesus was just the way they live their life.

May we never stop call portering ministry May we never stop mission projects when we never stop being pastors and teachers and chaplains and parents and influencers.

May we never turn off Jesus, but may we live a life for the honor and glory of Jesus because that is just the way we live our life.

I was gonna say something kind of cheesy.

Once a Call Porter, always a Call Porter.

If you're gonna work for Jesus for the last 2 months in Call Porter ministry or Summer Camp ministry, do you ever stop ministering for the cause of Christ?

Whatever context that may take you in post this summer, we don't turn off Jesus.

And I would love to be in the place of my life when somebody said, hey, when did you preach that sermon?

I know all my sermons now, which means I got a long way to go.

Because that was just the way that we lived our life.

So going off of this model, I wanna share a couple things with you quickly, and I'm gonna try to show a video if there's time about a project we did for a mobile home community that was really about recognizing the needs in a community and serving an entire mobile home community of 35 homes and what that ended up doing for the cause of Christ in that community.

Because we're talking about being world changers.

You are never more like Jesus than when you serve.

The greatest influencers are those that serve other people.

How many of you would like to retire financially at age 39?

He retired at age 39 and he was the youngest vice president at 39 years of age of a company that grossed in over $1 billion a year.

So the question would be, Jim, how did you come to the place where you could retire at age 39?

I became the youngest vice president because I was an engineer.

I made microchips in Silicon Valley somewhere and I was really good at what I what I did and so I became the vice president of this company.

As a vice president of this billion dollar grossing company, I could sit in my office on the corner with the huge glass windows and the big overstuffed leather chair and the massive desk and the clocks on the walls and I could stay in that office, and I could tell people what to do.

I could give my assistant notes to hand out, instructions for my team, but he said I was almost never in the office.

Series

iShare 2013 Seminar: How to Become a World Changer for Jesus

102: Know Your Gifts & How to Use Them

Transcript

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