This seminar will share wisdom for intensifying your relationship with God through the power of prayer and Bible study. 

GC Session 2015: Prayer Seminars

<p>This seminar will share wisdom for intensifying your relationship with God through the power of prayer and Bible study. </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>

General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Dan Augsburger

Praying and Living For Revival

Kind Father in Heaven, we're grateful for the opportunity to present more on prayer, to encourage the attendees and their families and more people to be inspired by learning more about your word and more about ways in which they can enlarge their prayer life.

We ask Lord that they will be inspired in such a way that they'll take it back to their home churches and find ways to make your word known in so many ways.

And may they initially go to you for guidance and instruction.

Thank you for Dan and his wife who are here tonight and keep them faithful and keep them serving you in this marvelous way.

Dan Augsberger is, and he wrote this out so I'm going to follow it.

He teaches at the seminary, the Andrews Theological Seminary in Berrien Springs, Michigan.

He does that part-time and then the rest of his time, he and his wife spend speaking at prayer and revival seminars throughout the world.

I think most recently you were in Honduras, is that right?

Okay, or you speak so many places it's hard to keep track.

This seminar tonight will consider how to get prayers answered for revival.

How do we get a revival in our hearts, in our churches?

This is something Dan Augsburger will address tonight.

And I'd like to ask his wife, Rose, if she would wave her hand or just stand.

It's a privilege, but more than a privilege, it's a sobering responsibility to be here this evening.

We have been called to be the representatives of God.

That when people see us, they will know what God is like.

When Jesus came the first time, he was given a body by the Holy Spirit.

But in this day and age, the church is his body.

And in John 17, we learn that Jesus said, called for a unity, because it was in that unity that the greatest proof that he was sent from heaven would be observed.

Not the best understanding of the Bible, not the nicest programs, not the most inspiring sermons, but the unity, the relationships between the members of the church, that's the greatest proof that Jesus truly came from heaven to earth.

Our other worldly relationships are the greatest proof of the genuineness of the gospel.

And so it's a sobering responsibility to stand before you.

We live in a time when we believe the the end is coming soon.

And you can find every variety of religion that you could possibly want.

But we want that which is genuine, that which is life-changing, that which is church-changing.

And so I stand with fear and trembling before you praying that I will be a faithful messenger for God.

Just very briefly 1 of the stories of the Bible that has greatly touched my heart recently was the story of Naaman.

Who would believe that the story of Naaman would be such an important question?

It's about a little girl, you know, that refers a man, but it's actually the story of faithful and unfaithful messengers.

The little girl was faithful in sharing what she knew and sent him off to to Samaria.

Like so many that don't know God and perhaps even some Christians that belong to the church, he thought he had to prepare gifts.

He had to do something to win the favor of this God that he was being referred to to get his prayers answered.

First goes to the king, the king tears his clothes, thinks he wants to start a squabble, he's not a faithful messenger, and eventually he gets to Elisha's house, right?

And I can imagine that he came in with his retinue of soldiers in his chariot, well-dressed.

And Elisha chose to send a messenger, didn't he?

And if you read the story, Elisha wasn't happy about 2 things.

Number 1, that he sent a messenger, and number 2, he didn't like the message.

And I'd like to suggest this evening that those are still the 2 great issues in the church, we don't like the messenger and we don't like the message.

And that's why I believe that for the members of our church, what we do with Ellen White is very significant.

I've had people say, you know, we don't need her if we just follow the Bible.

Luckily, Elisha had some friends who said, you know, you ought to follow the direction.

Now just imagine, had the messenger come and said, you need to go to a river and dip, would it have brought about the miracle?

What if he had said you need to dip somewhere 7 times?

What if he'd said you need to dip in a river in Israel 7 times?

It was a very precise message of going to a certain place and dipping a certain number of times and because he completely obeyed, he was completely healed.

And the question I want to ask you this evening is to what degree are people coming for help from the members of our church, but because they're only hearing part of the message, the message that is easy to share, They're coming with great expectations, but going away disappointed.

Perhaps wondering if there's something wrong with God.

And truth be told, the problem is that the messengers have not been as faithful as they should have been.

There's another story in the Bible that also speaks to this, and that is the story of the father that brings his son to the disciples.

They're followers of the 1 who has the truth.

They were sent out with power, they have brought about many miracles.

But on that particular day when they had sought to cast out the demon, they had failed.

In fact, the disciples would come and say, I brought my son and your disciples were not able.

And when Jesus comes down from the mountain, it's interesting that there's a squabble.

And I believe the scribes were saying, what's wrong?

Maybe things aren't quite so right with the 1 you're following.

And I think the disciples are responding by saying, well, maybe it's not God's time.

Maybe there's something going on in this family that prevents God from answering our desires for healing.

They were doing this instead of saying, actually, we're not really willing to take up the cross and follow Jesus.

We want to be on each side of a reigning monarch.

This idea of dying to self and carrying the cross and being humbled, that's not part of our agenda.

Maybe God is unable to bless our efforts because we have failed to accept his way of working.

Undoubtedly, we're not saying we've been arguing about who is first, And because there is a lack of unity, because there is disunity, because there's differences between us, God is unable to bless us.

In the 1 case it was failed to accept the message, or potentially that the message might have been poorly given, only partially or wrongly.

In the second case, there was something within their lives that kept the miracle from happening.

Now it's interesting, there were, that day there were the disciples that I think were trying to defend themselves.

They weren't taking any of the blame probably.

There was the father who tried many times, the son who frequently had been, you know, embarrassed as he'd been thrown down into the ground.

There were the scribes who were trying to make the most of it and those that were around the edges.

My brothers and sisters, as members of the Adventist church, We should live in such a way that God's miracles can take place through our lives.

Ellen White had a vision where she talks about seeing thousands going door-to-door.

The doors were open to to studies of the Bible and she also says the sick were being healed.

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Praying and Living For Revival

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