Cherished memories from special family Sabbaths

<p>Cherished memories from special family Sabbaths</p>

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Restoration International

Remember the Sabbath Day

Alane Waters

Tom Waters

The Essence of the Sabbath

We're going to be talking together as a family about the essence of the Sabbath today.

And we just experienced some of the essence of the Sabbath.

Oh, how he loves each 1 of us here today.

And as God began to help me as a man and as a father to recognize he just wants my heart.

As I began to recognize that part of the essence of the Sabbath is letting my children know that God just wants their whole heart.

And you know we have spent Sabbath after Sabbath in our family looking for ways to make Christianity come alive.

Because everything around us makes Christianity die.

Everything even sometimes, Church services can become a ritual.

Sabbath school lesson can become a ritual.

These were never intended to be this way.

And Sabbath can become a form like it was for the Jewish nation.

And we look back and we say, how could they have crucified our Savior?

Do we walk away from the Sabbath day and go back into the week?

No different people than we started the week before.

You see, Sabbath, the essence of the Sabbath.

It's a time to rest from the week behind and to refocus for the week ahead to gain new strength in a larger measure on the Sabbath day.

To come forth into a new week prepared to live for Christ in the power of Jesus Christ.

So today we want to talk about how The essence of the Sabbath has become real to us in our family.

You know, this morning as I was contemplating this, a thought came to my mind and it was actually quite an emotional thought.

It really hit me right in my heart and I wondered if I should share it with you this morning.

So I'm gonna share it with you this morning.

It's not here in my notes but You know as parents we have given ourselves at least in the part of our lives that we've come to understand The essence of the Sabbath we've given ourselves to make the Sabbath come alive for our family And I praise God that it has.

And I praise God that today our young people have tasted and seen that the Lord is good.

And The thought that came to me this morning was, this is the last family Sabbath school we'll probably ever have.

But this guy's going off to school and it's quite possible that his life will take a different direction.

At least at Washington camp meeting, it's probably the last time, at least for a long time.

But, you know, my son leaves with the essence of the Sabbath in his heart.

And I just have a deep yearning in my soul that our young people here can experience the essence of the Sabbath, that Christ can come alive for our young people and it'll never come alive for them if it doesn't come alive for us as parents.

We've got to get away from the traditional.

Traditions are okay as long as those traditions are powered by Jesus Christ.

Daniel did the same thing 3 times a day, but they were not rituals.

Every time Daniel got on his knees, he was empowered by the God of Heaven to live the life of Jesus Christ.

I want that essence to be a part of every family here.

When I see these young people stand up in front of us and sing these songs and play those instruments, it just breaks my heart.

Partly because I see the willingness of these young people to give themselves to God, but partly it breaks my heart because some of these young people come to me and they say, I never experienced anything like this in my home after I leave here.

I never experienced the joy of playing together with my parents after I leave here.

It only happens here at camp meeting brothers and sisters Let's take the essence of the Sabbath the essence of Jesus Christ And let's make it a living part of our homes when we leave this camp meeting What an opportunity that we have been given as people, as God's children, to have 1 day a week that we can set aside all of the regularness of everyday life and be able to gain a double blessing I Hope that you don't wait for Sabbath to work in the hearts of your young people.

I hope you don't wait until Sabbath to seek the Lord personally.

If we want to spend an eternity with Him, it's a day by day, moment by moment, seeking after him.

And then the Sabbath at the end is the culmination of an experience we've been having during the week.

And we receive a greater blessing, a double portion of what we've been tasting and partaking of during the week.

And it helps us to go into the new week to face the new challenges, the new distractions, the new conflicts perhaps, with a focus that we wanna honor our Lord.

Sabbath in our home has become a very special time, a very sacred time.

Even yet, we know in our home, if we do not have plans and directions, somehow it's so easy for humanity to come in and conversations to go astray.

So it takes time, it takes planning, and it takes a conscious awareness.

But that's simply training our minds the way that Jesus is calling us to, to bring every thought into his captivity.

That the thoughts that we think, whether it's on the Sabbath or any day of the week, can be honorable before him.

In our home we have recognized the importance of helping to establish the sacredness of the day.

Not just on Saturday morning on our way to church but more importantly when Sabbath begins even before it begins that our hearts are ready that our home is ready and that we are ready to come together and for us in our home Sabbath begins Friday evening and that is family time.

You know during the week the family is somewhat fragmented isn't it?

Fathers off to work, the children may be off to school or they may be in their home school lessons, mother's busy doing this and the children at the various ages have different responsibilities and we often times don't have the kind of time we like to spend together in spite of our greatest efforts.

But on Friday evening, we can set all those things behind us and we can come together as a family to have that special bonding family time.

Not a time when the work is done for the week and everybody goes off to do their own thing, but rather it's a time that we come together in our home for family together time.

Something that has become such a beautiful tradition in our family.

It doesn't, you know, a lot of families bring in the Sabbath when the sun goes down, but in Montana the sun doesn't go down very early in the summer.

And our family is so hooked on this family evening time on Friday night.

But it doesn't matter if the sun's going down at 930 or 430 in the afternoon.

Our family lays the cares and stresses of the world behind and comes together to be just us together with God and prepare our hearts and just enjoy 1 another.

And that has been 1 of the greatest blessings of my growing up years.

I always look forward to Friday evening because I knew no matter what time that sun went down, our family was going to be found together in the living room having heart to heart conversations and just being together.

So we slow down, We let the pressures of the week go by.

And I think it's the same for you all here because the music here has been very inspiring and very rich.

And I had the privilege of being able to video this last song and much of the song service that happened here this morning.

And I'm thankful for those zooming lenses because I can see the expressions on the faces.

I can't see when I'm sitting out there where you're sitting.

And it is such, you just see it in the faces.

There's a radiance from within that is bubbling out by singing praises to our Lord, our Savior, and our King.

And that's what we enjoy on Friday evening.

Music is very much a part of our Friday evening worship time, our family together time.

Sometimes that's other than the worships in the week which are just a little morning time and a little evening time, the only other time we have to sing together or for the young people to play their instruments is on Friday evening.

And we find that it really draws our hearts together.

We find the blessing in singing together, in playing music together, and in contemplation of the words that are being spoken.

Prayer is a part of our Friday evening, preparing our hearts as we do individually when we come, but praying together as a family for the blessing that God has for us on the Sabbath day.

Prayer is very much a part of our home, it's very much a part of our lives.

It was cute this morning, we were going to drive from our cabin to the cabin where we're eating breakfast because there was a lot of rain and we needed to get all of us there and we had a bunch of water bottles to fill.

Before we left, just to drive across the parking lot or across the little campus, we had prayer in the car because it's so much a part of our nature to ask God to protect us and be with us wherever we go.

And that really touched my heart this morning.

I mean, we're only going, you know, a couple hundred yards or whatever.

Not real good with distances, but not that far anyway.

But prayer is very important, and it's become a part of our lives, not as a ritual, not as a habitual thing we do, but a meaningful part of our daily lives.

Friday evening gives us the opportunity to bind our hearts together as a family in prayer.

For us in our home on Friday evening it is story time.

We have read numerous books through the years, character-building stories that often come back to 1 of us as we've gone through life in situations where we find ourselves being challenged and we can remember a story about someone who had gone through something similar and how they found the Lord to be their strength, to be their confidence, and their companion in spite of the trials they were in.

Those stories have been tremendous blessing.

Spiritually Special Sabbaths

This morning we want to talk to you as a family about spiritually special Sabbaths.

For those of you that have been to family camps before, you know that 1 of the great desires that we have in our heart for families, for grandparents, for single parents, whatever position you find yourself in, is that our Sabbaths can become alive in Jesus Christ.

It is Jesus Christ that brings the doctrines of the church alive.

We talk about Christ being the center of a meaningful doctrine in our church.

Christ must be the living head, the living center of what makes the Sabbath special.

But I want to tell you that it's not enough that the Sabbath was made for man.

Just as it's not enough that the gift of salvation has been provided to us, that's not enough.

We must accept and enter into that spiritually special experience with Christ and that's where we come in parents primarily I'm going to speak for a moment to the parents because I know the young people I see the young people at these camps they're desirous of entering in their desirous of doing the will of their Heavenly Father and it's much like the Old Testament closes with turning the hearts of the fathers to the children.

Fathers, we need to turn our hearts to our children.

Mothers need to turn your hearts to your children.

And you'll find as you do, faithfully turn your hearts, your young people will turn their hearts to you.

And so we want to talk today about making Sabbath spiritually special.

And so we're going to go through some things from when our children were very young, right on through things that have brought the Sabbath alive and made them practical in our home.

It was just a cardboard box and it was filled with all kind of things like ribbon, little pieces of paper, glue, glue guns, little magnets, all kind of things that you could use to put things together to have a Theme that could be an activity for your young people and you as a family together When we talk about these type of things, this is not something for children.

I remember once we had the theme on the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and after we discussed it and we had a nature walk we came back and we all every 1 of us sat down at the table and we got out our collage box.

It's already there and you can use anything in that box to create the scene that's in your mind of the crucifixion.

We had construction paper in there and it was interesting to see the children create on a piece of construction paper how they saw the crucifixion using different things, colored rocks, pieces of wood, or whatever it was they would glue on there.

We hung them in our kitchen on the bulletin board and they hung there for a long time as a reminder that Jesus died for them.

So this is something, the idea of having something pre-prepared ahead of time, this is in our home still, in our closet upstairs in the living room, ready for any time we need to have something to direct the attention of our guests.

You know, my children at their ages, they're not sitting necessarily at the table doing this.

But it's interesting, even, I'm going to point out a few other things in here.

Even where we are now, there's cards in there.

Cards with envelopes, and they're blank cards, so you can see.

So sometimes we'll just sit down and write a note of encouragement, or we'll put something special that we've designed on the front of the card, write a note of encouragement, and then Monday it goes out in the mail.

The things in here are very simple, very inexpensive, and after the meeting today, it will be sitting out on the table in the first room we come through, where our tape table was, so you can feel free to look through it to see some ideas that are in there.

But 1 of the things that we found interesting, it doesn't take a lot of resources.

We went to the printer in town who printed our girl's cookbook and talked to him because he knew we were homeschooling.

And he says, well, do you ever need paper?

Scraps of paper, because printers have lots of scraps of paper, all colors.

He cut these for us in 1 swipe of the machine.

You can have a whole bunch of bookmarkers, nice quality paper, and they're in there just ready for use.

There's stickers in here and all kind of things.

He's even the 1 who cut the cards for us.

He cut them and he matched the scraps to the odd envelopes he had laying around his print shop that he's never going to be able to sell and gave them to us just to use in our home.

So there's all kinds of resources out there.

They're all cut and ready to do what with?

Yeah, make a chain or whatever else you want to use them for.

So we just encourage you with with about 20 minutes of time and maybe 4 or 5 dollars in expense, or maybe a little more than that, you can go and you can put together very simply a collage box that's there in your home ready at all times to make Sabbath really special.

Because you don't have to go think of a great idea or you don't have to go hunt all the stuff up and who wears the scissors and what did you do with the glue and all that kind of stuff everything's here and it's only used in our home on Sabbath so it's always prepared and ready.

We all enjoy that, especially when you are indoors most of the week or If you work in an office type environment, it's always so nice to be able to get outside and do things that are fun.

But sometimes the weather doesn't always cooperate, does it?

Like today, it's been raining a little bit.

So it's nice to have the variety of indoor things and outdoor things, but whenever the weather is conducive, we always enjoy, especially on Sabbath afternoons, going outside into nature and finding out what God has in store there for us.

Nature is God's second lesson book, isn't it?

And beyond going out and just having a special time outside, The emphasis that we want to draw out this morning is that it can be spiritually special.

There's a difference between just having a fun time and bringing that enjoyment into the spiritual realm where it can bring lessons to the heart and we can go throughout the following weeks with those lessons.

So whenever we go out into nature, into the outdoors, especially on the Sabbath, we like to make it a spiritual time, a time of drawing our minds and our hearts closer to our Creator and the 1 that created everything out there for us and for our enjoyment.

And this can be done many, many different ways, but this morning we're going to share with you just a few little things that we have enjoyed doing over the years.

And I'm sure that many of you have heard about this first game that we're going to talk about, and that is the blindfold game.

How many people have heard about the blindfold game?

How many of you have done it in your homes?

Jesus said if you know these things, Happy are you if you do them, right?

So what really makes Sabbath spiritually special is doing these activities, not just hearing about them.

That's a little like preaching, isn't it?

And you know, the thing is, it doesn't have to be the games that we share with you.

We just are sharing with you from what our family has enjoyed, things to give you ideas.

So you can go home and you can be creative.

But these are some very simple things that everyone, it's easy to catch on to and everyone can do it.

But anyway, for those of you who don't know how this game goes, we go out on a walk and each of us have a little bag with us or a bucket, and as you walk along you pull things from nature, little different nature objects, and you put them in there when no 1 else is watching because you don't want anyone to know what's in there.

And when you come back together, everyone sits in the same room and there's a chair there that someone volunteers to come and sit in and then someone else will volunteer to blindfold them.

And a third person will take something from what they have gathered and put it in that blindfolded person's hands.

The blindfolded person holds their hands out in a cup, and then a nature object will put in their hands and they have to figure it out using all their senses except sight, and we don't usually recommend taste, it can be kind of risky, to figure out what is in their hands.

So once they have discovered what it is, the blindfold comes off, and then they have the first opportunity to come up with a nature object or a Bible story that comes to their mind where that nature item was used.

And then talk about how that, what that means to them practically in their own lives.

And after they're finished sharing that, in the small setting of just the family or a couple of families together, everyone in the room has the opportunity to go around and share what they thought of.

And then whoever is in the chair gets to choose the next person to come and sit in the chair and then they'll blindfold them.

So we want to make this morning interactive.

So we have a chair here and we have a nature object and we have a blindfold and we even have someone to blindfold 1 of you, but we need to have a volunteer to come up and sit in this chair.

Why don't you right here on the front with the red tie, why don't you come up?

Because your hands are going to be down here like this.

What’s in the Box

It just warms my heart when I see all these young people up here in the front.

And it's 1 of the main reasons why we like to do a family Sabbath school program.

These young people are precious, aren't they?

And it doesn't matter how big they get, whether they outgrow us, they're still precious, aren't they?

I used to try to stand up taller last year when Josiah was getting pretty even with me.

I couldn't slouch, but now it doesn't matter.

But they're still precious no matter how big they get.

And so we like to have a family Sabbath school where we can get ideas and enjoy the specialness of the Sabbath with the family.

Because if Christianity works in the family, it will work anywhere.

So we're looking forward to a nice family Sabbath school this morning.

Well, we want to play with you this morning what's in the box.

Now, unfortunately, you folks on that side may not be able to see it, but there is a box sitting here.

We can't get it too close Because when we open it, there's more than 1 thing in there.

We don't want anybody peek over the lid and spoil the fun but we look for ways to make Sabbath a special high day in our home and This earlier this year when we were in Australia and as we were traveling around through the country doing family camps down under, 1 of the families that we had the opportunity to meet and actually reacquaint ourselves with was a family that actually took us nearly 3, 000 miles through Australia.

They took a month off of time from their employment and traveled us through their country as chauffeurs because you know they drive on the other side of the road there.

Anyway, they taught us how to play what's in the box.

And they do that with their family and it makes it Sabbath very special.

And so as they began to share it with us, we thought, that has got to come back to America.

It's just too much fun to leave down there.

So that's what we want to do for you today.

And what we're going to do is we're going to have Allison come up.

Now, everything in that box is a nature item.

So that narrows it down quite a bit, right?

And she's going to give you clues and when she gives you the clue, if you think you know what it is, you do this.

So you just raise your hand and there's going to be a lot of hands up so we can't call on everybody, but she's going to pick certain people and then you're going to have to say it really loud, especially if you're way in the back.

You're just going to have to almost yell it out or relay it up here.

But remember, if you think you know what the nature item is, please raise your hand.

Otherwise it's going to be chaos in here.

I want the children to have the first opportunity to make the guess too.

So we're going to start with you, okay young people?

First clue, it can be found almost anywhere in the U.S.

Trees from this side, pine cone from that side.