ASI 2015: Lift Him Up

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Plenary

Kyle Allen

One Purpose

Father in heaven tonight, we humbly bow before you, seeking your Holy Spirit.

Father, I pray that you would hide me behind the cross, that Jesus would be lifted up, that all of us here tonight would receive a fresh blessing from your word and that we would be inspired to live as your people who are called to take this message to the world.

Forgive me, Father, for my sins, and cover me in the blood of Jesus.

45 years ago, the crew of Apollo 13 blasted off in their Saturn V rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on their way to the moon.

It was less than a year after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had first set foot on that lunar soil, and Jim Lovell, Fred Hayes, and Jack Swigert were on their way to the Moon.

But 56 hours after a successful launch, with the Apollo 13 spacecraft and its three-man crew now 205, 000 miles away from Earth.

On their way to the Moon came the ominous words, Houston, we've had a problem.

An oxygen tank in the service module had exploded, setting off a chain reaction of failures that crippled the basic life support systems of the spaceship.

Realizing that the situation was critical and 1 of life or death, mission control and the crew were no longer focused on getting to the moon.

Now they had 1 purpose, and that 1 purpose was saving the lives of those men and bringing them back to Earth.

They created a lifeboat out of the lunar module, and actually, They decided that the only way to save them would be to slingshot them around the moon, using the moon's gravity to propel them back to the Earth.

And so, they did this, and the power was out, pretty much.

They had a loss of heat, there was a shortage of water, and they had a crippled air purification system.

At 1 point, they famously had to figure out, with tape and spare parts, how to make a square filter go into a round hole so that the crew could breathe clean air.

The crew and the mission control staff worked together to create what was nothing short of a miracle.

The flight director, Gene Kranz, who was the man at the helm at mission control in Houston, he was approached by the NASA director at the height of the crisis, and the director said, Gene, you know, this could be the worst disaster NASA has ever experienced.

And Gene looked at him and said, with all due respect, sir, I believe this is going to be our finest hour.

They came together and had 1 purpose to get those 3 astronauts home.

They gave all their best effort, all their energy to that 1 single goal.

You know, the NASA team that worked on Apollo 13 was determined to follow their goal.

There's a story in the Bible that was about a group that also had a mission, they had a goal, to accomplish something.

And nothing was going to stand in their way to get it done.

Now, it might not be the story you're thinking of, because we're going to go to Genesis chapter 11.

So turn with me in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 11 or open up your iPhones, whatever you've got, let's go to the Word of God, Genesis chapter 11.

Beginning with verse 1, The Bible says, Now the whole earth had 1 language and 1 speech, and it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there.

Then they said to 1 another, Come, Let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.

They had brick for stone and they had asphalt for mortar, and they said, come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top is in the heavens.

Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.

See, the builders of the Tower of Babel, they didn't trust God and His promises.

The Bible says they wanted to make a name for themselves.

God had told them to disperse throughout the whole earth, but they wanted to create a city.

They wanted to find security in man's works, not in God's.

And in selfishness and pride, they directed their own course and charted their own destiny.

They also wanted to secure their lives in case there was another flood.

They didn't believe God's promise in Genesis 9 that he would not flood the earth again.

The tower was a way of saving themselves.

The Bible continues in verse 5, Genesis 11, but The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built, and the Lord said, Indeed, the people are 1, and they all have, " what?

Now nothing, notice what it says, nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them.

The Bible says that if God didn't step in, these evil men would stop at nothing and they would fulfill their goal.

Verse 7, the Lord said, "'Come, let us go down and confuse their language that they may not understand 1 another's speech.' So the Lord scattered them abroad over from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city." The Bible says it confused their language.

You can imagine, they're trying to build this tower, and they're calling up for more materials, and they're calling down, and they can't understand, and they're getting frustrated and angry.

Have any of you ever been in a place where you didn't know the language and you were a little frustrated?

You know, I'll be honest, I started my ministry at a Filipino church.

But at the church, it was funny because, you know, they could talk about me and I could never know what they were saying.

But I love them and I praise God for them.

But anyway, they could not understand each other.

Slowly they dispersed over various parts of the earth.

I mean, these people experienced such a loss in setting themselves against God.

Instead of gratefully remembering God's mercy in His covenant, they murmured against God and tried to save themselves.

How many today are in that same boat, building towers for themselves, whether it be towers of human or scientific theory, turning away from the clear teaching of Scripture?

Ellen White says in Patriarchs and Prophets, page 124, If the professed followers of Christ would accept God's standard, it would bring them into unity.

But so long as human wisdom is exalted above his holy word, there will be what?

If evil men with an evil purpose, a self-seeking purpose, could unite together for a common goal, even to the point where God said unless he stepped in they would they would fulfill their goal, How much more can God's people, when they are united under the power of the Holy Spirit, accomplish their goal?

Is there a place in the Bible where God's people came together for a common purpose to do something?

I'm Sure we could look at many stories, but the 1 that stands out in my mind is Acts chapter 2.

Acts chapter 2, the story of the New Testament church.

And you remember our scripture reading for tonight, Acts 1-8, Just before Jesus returned to heaven, he told his disciples that promise.

He said, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

And so Jesus is then taken up from them out of their sight.

The angels tell them that he's going to come back in the same way he left, and they have a job to do.

It's time to devise plans, it's time to lay down a strategy, to meet together and come up with a committee.

Acts chapter 1 verse 14, these all continued with 1 accord in prayer and supplication with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.

They understood the source of their power was not in themselves, it was in God.

My friends, when God's church prays together, powerful things happen.

And just the same, the key to success in our local churches, in our conferences, in our unions, in our divisions, in ASI, is that we humbly come together seeking the Holy Spirit.

Acts chapter 2 verse 1 says, when the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all what?

Pentecost comes, the Holy Spirit falls, Peter preaches a powerful sermon, and the Bible says in Acts chapter 2 and verse 41, then those who gladly received his word were baptized, and that day about 3, 000 souls were added to them, praise God.

Now question for you, what were the reasons for the success of the early church?

Let's take a look at a couple of statements from Acts of the Apostles to see if we can find this out.

Like a procession, scene after scene of his wonderful life passed before them as they meditated upon his pure, holy life, They felt that no toil would be too hard, no sacrifice too great, if only they could bear witness in their lives to the loveliness of Christ's character.

You see, they understood the source of their power was first in lifting up Jesus, in remembering his sacrifice and his love for them.

Patsy Arrabito

What I’ve Learned About God

I was 21 years old, traveling the world, proving that I could do it all by myself, that I didn't need anyone.

I'd always wanted to go to 1 of the little Greek islands where there's little white buildings and blue sea, and it's beautiful.

I wanted to go to a place where there weren't a lot of tourists.

I found a room for a dollar a night, went out to the water, enjoyed the sea.

Children came and talked to me, took me sightseeing.

Sabbath came around a couple days later and I wanted to spend the day in another place.

So I took the bus across the island to the second village.

As I got there, I saw this beautiful cove with the village here and cliffs over here.

I just thought I'm gonna go out on those cliffs and I'll spend Sabbath reading my Bible and having a quiet time with God.

It took me a while to get out there because it was rocky and stickery.

I had a bag on my shoulder with my Bible in it, travelers checks, passport, the little money that I had.

I made it out to the cliffs and I started climbing around and as I was climbing my bag slipped off my shoulder.

It bounced once on the ledge where I was standing and then it flipped down into the seat about 40 feet below.

And my first thought was, whoa, that could have been me.

My second thought was, there's no way I can get down there and get that bag.

And I can't go anywhere else in the world without it.

I scrambled back through the brush and the rocks around the cove to the village looking for help.

I found a teenager who could speak a little English and I told him what had happened.

They got in their boat and they started chugging across that Cove, but it was a windy day and there were white caps and they couldn't get over to the cliff.

And pretty soon this whole little village knew that there was an American tourist who had lost her belongings in the sea.

I'd walked down those cobbled streets and people would invite me in their home and they would offer me food.

The young people in the village, friends of the teenager, took me sightseeing.

I looked out again, and the water was still full of whitecaps.

Woke up first thing in the morning, crack of dawn, I'm looking out my window and there are still whitecaps.

All the next day, the villagers entertained me and took care of me.

The bus driver came looking for me because he was worried I hadn't come back to his village.

He offered me money to get back to Athens.

Other people in the village offered me money.

The day passed, the white caps remained, and I spent another night in that lovely guest room, which I could never have afforded if I were paying for it.

The boy and his dad and several other people got a little bigger boat.

They took me on the boat with them, and they chugged across that Cove.

They got right there near the cliffs and a man dived down into the water and on his first dive he came up with my bag.

They honked the boat horn all the way back.

The people, the whole village was lined up on the wharf cheering and clapping because they'd found my bag.

They took my stuff, they spread it all out on a flat roof to dry.

My passport had 1 visa washed out, my Japanese 1.

My Bible was like this thick by the time it dried out.

I had a letter half written to my parents.

I finished writing it and I said, lick this paper, it's salty, it's been in the drink.

I was out proving my independence and thinking that I didn't need anyone.

And God allowed me to be in a position where I desperately needed help.

And what he showed me was that those people were blessed to be able to help me.

Some of those people wrote to me for 5 years after that.

They loved helping me, and they were so blessed.

And that was 1 of my first adult lessons in what God is like, and how He takes care of us, and what he does for us that's so surprising and unexpected.

Life doesn't always happen the way you think it will, does it?

It doesn't always do treat you the way you think it should.

And I'm really thankful to be old enough to see some of the things that God does.

And it's our stories that God uses to show what he's like.

Paul tells us in 1st Corinthians, for we are made a spectacle or a theater unto the world and to angels and to men.

You know, think about the fact that the whole universe is looking at you and your life and what God is doing in you.

Paul exhorts the Corinthian believers and us in 2 Corinthians 3, verses 2 and 3, he says, you are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men, being made manifest that you are the epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not in tables of stone, but in the tables of the heart, fleshly tables of heart.

God's story is written on our hearts, and It's written for the whole universe to see.

And it's for the purpose that the universe can see what God is like.

Some of the things that I've learned I wanna share with you this morning.

I didn't really take it seriously until I was a rebellious teenager.

I looked up at the ceiling and I said, God, don't think you're gonna get me this time.

By the end of that week of prayer, God had spoken to my heart and he had impressed my heart with the fact that he liked me.

He says, I know the thoughts that I think toward you.

Thoughts, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you an expected end.

And when things don't look so good, it doesn't mean that they aren't good, Right?

Because God does things in ways that we can't understand.

I learned that it's because God loves me that I have great value.

It's not because I'm so good, not because I'm so gorgeous, talented, accomplished.

Because I am, he loves me and his love for me is what gives me value.

I remember holding my firstborn son after a long and difficult labor.

His head was shaped like a bullet and he had white stuff all over him and I realized later he really wasn't beautiful, I couldn't tell at the moment.

And that baby in my arms did nothing to win my love, earn my love, or pay back my love.

I loved him so much and I realized I'm God's baby.

There's nothing beautiful about me, but he loves me and that's what gives me such value.

ASI Members in Action

We are certainly very, very thankful to be here at this ASI convention, and I know that God is going to bless in a very, very special way.

Tonight we're going to hear thrilling stories, thrilling stories of how God is working through the various ministries that are taking place.

And so we know that God is going to be present and we can all end up saying praise the Lord.

We're going to have a real drink out of a fire hydrant here.

We got to move along pretty quickly here and I have with me Barbara Taylor who has been with ASI for many many years and from the Denver area and she's going to tell us about New Beginnings DVD series.

The New Beginnings DVD series has been 1 of the most exciting, successful, wonderful, soul winning programs that ASI has ever established in my opinion.

And I can tell you right now that when you ever become involved with ASI New Beginnings DVD training, you will become on fire for the Lord.

The other day when we were in our board meeting, we found that they're actually per soul, it's 1 dollar per soul, when we use the new Beginning to DVD training program.

Now do people stay in the church, or what's the average people who leave or stay in the church?

You could send out a hundred evangelists, and they could have a hundred baptisms and the statistics show that after 1 year, 95% of those people have left the church because they're not connected.

They do not have anyone to give them nurturing, to give them encouragement, to get them involved in other programs.

And the reason that the New Beginnings DVD program is so successful is once we form teams and once they start these small group home Bible studies with lay people just like yourselves, they become baptized and once they're baptized, they get on fire for the Lord and they get those people involved in training them to become involved in the next...

So what kind of retention do we have here?

Is it better than the large evangelism program?

It has shown that after 5 years, 88% of those people are still in the church and they're out winning new souls to God's kingdom.

So you've been involved in this for a while, and you just do this out of your home in Denver, or have you done this elsewhere?

No, this New Beginnings DVD program was started in the year 2000, and this was a program that was developed by ASI, And it is written, Mark Finley at the time was in coordination with this, and now we tie in very closely with the General Conference.

So this is a marvelous, marvelous program.

I just returned this last year from Brazil.

I went down to South America, and we did DVD evangelism training in South America.

Our very first place that we went to was down in Gravata.

And I think we have a slide that shows a little something about this.

Yes when we trained the 400 these were 400 Bible workers from 1 conference Wouldn't we love to have 400 Bible workers in our 1 conference in our United States?

There's a gal named Sarah on the second slide.

Yes, and Sarah, this lady doing home Bible studies, these are all lay people, the home Bible studies, she has baptized last year a hundred and thirty-five baptisms.

10 years, over the past 10 years, she's baptized over 1, 000 people.

Now wait a minute, she baptized 135 last year and 1, 000 over 10 years, so she had some down years, it sounds like.

I would love to have that kind of a down year, wouldn't you?

And so after that you went to Bolivia and trained some more.

Yes, Pastor Donato and myself, we went to Bolivia, and we trained over 500 laypeople, who some of them traveled 24 hours to get to the meetings.

They trained all throughout the day, and that night, they got back, and they traveled another 24 hours to get home.

And this is amazing because we had testimonies that were just outstanding.

In the next slide you're going to see a little lady here holding the DVD disc or a DVD player and this little lady she's from Santa Cruz Bolivia and she has started 31 home Bible study groups in her 1 church in central Bolivia in central Santa Cruz and she has every single week they have multiple baptisms, not just 1 a week, but multiple baptisms.

He was a top general in the country of Bolivia.

And when he, his wife and 3 daughters became Seventh-day Adventists through the small group Home Bible Studies, and when he would get up every Sabbath, his daughters and his wife would say, oh please, please Papa, come to church with us.

And he'd say no, and he'd march off and he'd go on to his work.

After 3 years of earnest prayer, 1 Sabbath he woke up And he said, okay, I'll go to church with you.

He retired from the military, and last year he had 32 baptisms.

And Then, this year, he is going to give 3 small group home Bible studies in his home, and he is working with top government officials from Bolivia.

So this is how God is working in wonderful, wonderful, mighty ways.

And we have another slide here of a lot of people who have gotten involved in the young people.

Yes, the young people are on fire for the Lord.

They are the strong things in the church in South America.

When you go to South America, you see so many young people in our churches, and They are on fire for the Lord and they are out developing home Bible study groups as well.

Now, Barbi, you've been a member of ASI for many years and you're president of the Mid-America ASI chapter and you've been a businesswoman in marketing and sales for many years.

But how does this New Beginnings DVD rank among all that you do?

It is the most rewarding, most exciting, most encouraging program that I would encourage every single 1 of you.

You can get a copy of this DVD, New Beginnings program.

And we are developing this for all over the world and we are very, very successful all over the world and God is leading.

So let's see a show of hands if you're not capable of doing something like this.

So everybody will be coming to the booth.

So my next guest is Paul Opp and Leovina Perez of the People of Peru Project in Peru.

Back to Menu

Series

Plenary

Building God’s Church

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

The Question

1h

From Big City Basketball to Big City Evangelism

38m

ASI 2014 Plenary Sessions

Why Adventist? Why Now?

1h 58m

I Did It My Way

38m

GYC 2009 Plenary Sessions

GYC 2009 Keynote Address: Unashamed

1h

Persuaded

1h

Plenary

Hold Fast What You Have

44m

Rise Up and Build 2008

The Pavement and the Proposal

1h

The Third Elijah

52m

GYC SE 2013 Plenary Sessions

Heaven On Earth

53m

GYC 2010 Plenary Sessions

Generation of YOUth for Christ

1h 13m

Crisis Ahead

1h 15m

Sound Doctrine