Gerard Damsteegt: Spring 2013 Week of Prayer

P. Gerard Damsteegt

General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Revival of True Heart Religion

I'm glad to share something with the area from where I come, and that is the snow.

And so I saw this beautiful display here that you can see behind the screen about spring flowers.

They have been talking about spring flowers and how beautiful they are.

And now covered with a mantle of snow, reflecting upon us Christ's righteousness.

And yet In a few days, everything will be changed.

And I hope that the change that you will see in the next couple of days may be a change in your own life.

Because ultimately, that is what counts, right?

Lord, may the words of my mouth and meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight.

When I got this invitation, and I heard that the theme was specifically revival and the Christian life, it challenged me because here in the headquarters, this theme has been resounding for nearly 3 years.

And I don't want to repeat what others have said.

Anyway, I talked to the Lord about it, and I made an outline.

That He changed this and He changed this.

And what I share now with you is the latest, what I got from the Lord.

I want to speak specifically of the revival of true heart because if your theme is revival and the Christian life, It's not revival and what the General Conference has to do, or Andrews University, or the unions and the divisions.

And unless that revival takes place, all the other things are simply cosmetic changes.

And so therefore the Lord impressed me to talk about true heart religion, and specifically here, the revival under Samuel.

And if you have your Bibles with you, and I expect here everybody has a Bible or an iPad or your iPhone with the scriptures.

If you look then in the story of Samuel, here in 1 Samuel 7, verse 2 through 13, And in this presentation, you will hear less my words and more the words of scriptures and a pen of inspiration.

We need to hear the words of inspired sources.

And so here then, it says in verse 2 of chapter 7 of 1 Samuel, so it was that the ark remained in Kiriathirim a long time.

It was at 20 years and all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord.

The background information you find in 1st Samuel chapter 6, verse 13 to 20.

Remember that the people had the audacity to take the sacred Ark on a warpath.

And the protection of the Lord disappeared and they lost their Ark.

And now, after pleading with the Lord and whatever, finally, the ark came back.

And there, in verse 13 of chapter 6, now the people of Beth Shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley.

And they lifted their eyes up and saw the ark and rejoiced to see it.

Immediately they rejoiced and then they cut the ark, not the ark, but the cart in pieces and started to offer.

And then the the Levites took care of the ark and then it continues.

And my this was the greatest day of the life.

Then God struck the man of Beth-shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the Lord.

In fact it says here, the Lord had struck the people with a great slaughter.

We rejoice, we praise your name, and you kill us off.

He came back from the Philistine, the evil people, and now you're killing us?

And so they called another community and they took the Ark and there it stayed for 20 years, not in Shiloh, the center of religious activity, no.

And the people lamented and lamented and lamented.

Now what was now the solution to this crisis?

And so here we reflect upon God's choice of leadership.

Now let's first see what Samuel did as a leader.

Verse 3 of chapter 7, and Samuel spoke to all the house of Israel saying, if you return to the Lord with all your hearts, Then put away the foreign gods and prepare your hearts for the Lord and serve him only.

And he will deliver you from the hands of the Philistines.

Here it is, calling to a heart surrender.

Put away the idols, and I will clean your heart.

Then, verse 4, the children of Israel put away the bales and the ashtoreths and served the Lord only.

And that was not, that was a promise, a commitment.

So Samuel said, okay, gather everybody here together, the high and the low, the rich and the poor, everyone.

They came there together, and then they declared a day of fasting in verse 6.

They fasted the day and said, we have sinned against the Lord.

What was the sin that caused this great slaughter?

They did not have the right to look in the ark.

And yet they did, in their enthusiasm, because the Lord, and why not look in the ark?

Because maybe the Philistines had defiled it.

Yet everyone who had the audacity to touch the sacredness of God was lauded.

No matter what you like to celebrate, no matter what is the celebration that we do in harmony with the word of God or not, That is the key.

And so the children of Israel in verse 8 said to Samuel, the leader, do not cease to cry out to the Lord, our God for us, that he may save us from the hands of the enemy.

And he, the leadership of the church at that time, they cried out to the Lord for Israel.

And how did the Lord take care of all the problems and the enemies?

Here it is in verse 10, the Lord thundered with a loud thunder upon the enemy and the enemy disappeared.

What would happen to the church if we would cry together in the face of all the insurmountable problems?

And we have problems and they are big but what would happen would the Lord not take care of them?

Oh yes there's no doubt about it And therefore every day on my prayer list, I call upon the Lord to solve those.

I have no answer, friends, absolutely not.

But I know that when I cried, the Lord will answer me.

And I hope that the leadership of the church, whether it is general conference, divisions, conferences, unions, schools, that they cry out to the Lord.

GYC 2013: Before Men and Angels

GYC 2013 Plenary Sessions

Anil Kanda

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

GYC 2013 Final Charge

This message was presented at the GYC 2013 conference, Before Man and Angels, in Orlando, Florida.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

You sounded much older than the way you looked.

I actually went to the very first GYC, year 2002.

And I decided that during some of the seminars, I was going to skip them and go hang out with my friends.

So me and my friend decided after 1 particular speaker was continuing with his sermon, we decided that we were going to go outside and take a walk.

Our minds could not last more than 10 minutes during a sermon.

What happened is, we were walking around the trails and there we saw this fenced off area that said, do not trespass.

We jumped over the fence and we decided to take a walk.

We went walking for miles, like sheep without a shepherd.

We were looking at some of the hills and we were watching all these things and we were just like, nature is so beautiful.

And as we continued to walk, all of a sudden, a snowstorm came in.

And this snowstorm just really poured out so much snow, it was crazy.

I never forgot that, like, we couldn't even see anymore any of the buildings, nothing man-made, and we got lost.

In fact, what was so funny, I thought to myself, I am not going to die out here.

And so we were out there and we were just, we were getting very irritated at each other and there we were and we were just thinking to ourselves, oh I wish we never skipped these seminars.

Ladies and gentlemen, you skip a seminar, and may be at the peril of your own life.

The other thing I learned is God got us back, but we kept walking in the direction.

I mean, we had no idea where we were going.

And we began to pray, Lord, please show us where we should go.

And we just continued walking and walking and walking.

And it just seemed like for miles we were walking.

And finally we saw those buildings And we went in there and we were so happy to see everybody at GYC again.

I just thought about this lesson when I was backstage and that is this.

You skip those seminars, God may have you up here presenting a sermon.

Better watch out, the Holy Spirit is watching you.

Why don't we start with the word of prayer and let's ask Jesus to bless us with the Holy Spirit.

Father in heaven, we Thank you so much for this time, and we pray and ask that you would bless us, God, that you would invigorate us as we are preparing to head home.

Lord, we pray that you would end in just a powerful way this conference.

All right everybody, take your Bibles, your iPhones, whatever it is.

We're going to be looking at a very important verse.

Take your Bibles, go to 1 Peter chapter 1.

1 Peter chapter 1 is a very beautiful chapter.

You're going to be learning about a very special group of beings.

And if you're there, go ahead and say amen.

Peter here is talking about the gospel, and he's talking about the grace of God.

The prophets have inquired and searched carefully who prophesied of the grace that would come to you.

Searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ was in them was indicating when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.

To them it was revealed that, not to themselves, But to us they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven now watch his caveat he adds at the end things which angels desire to look into Peter says something so remarkable about the gospel.

He says this is something that unfallen angels love to look into.

In fact, Hebrews says that they love to spread the gospel as well.

They love to look deeper into the gospel.

But now let me introduce you to another entity.

Take your Bible and let's go to 2 Corinthians chapter 4.

Look what the Scriptures are saying, chapter 4, starting with verse 3.

Gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are what?

Perishing, now watch verse 4, whose minds the God of this age has what?

Blinded who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.

Now notice this, the Bible then introduces us to another entity and this entity is purposed to make sure that the gospel should never be known.

So you have 1 group that is determined to see that the gospel go forward, you have another group that is determined to see that the gospel go forward, you have another group that is determined to see that the gospel is never given.

And the reason why, ladies and gentlemen, is because when the gospel goes to the entire world, the end will come.

If you take 1 country and they're warring with another country and that country develops a weapon that will end the world, ladies and gentlemen, the other country is going to do whatever it takes to see that that country never transports that weapon.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are in the midst of this war.

And when the gospel goes to the entire world, the war is over.

He wants us to spread this message in a very powerful way.

Now I love what Jeffrey said, if you take your Bible go to Ephesians chapter 3 he talked about a very powerful verse.

Ephesians chapter 3 Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, General Electric Power Company I'm trying to think of an Indian rendition of that, I can't.

Okay, Ephesians chapter 3, Are we all there?

You're going to see something very powerful.

David Kim

Congenital Christianity

It is a wonderful privilege to be with you this afternoon.

Our Lord God and Heavenly Father, you are our God and we praise you.

We thank you for Jesus Christ, the author and the finisher of our faith.

We pray, Lord, that You would be with us in this plenary session.

We pray that You would speak through Your humble servant and that You and only You would be glorified.

We pray that the Holy Spirit would give us hearing and comprehension, but even more important than comprehension, we pray that the Holy Spirit would give us conviction, conviction of what it is that you have to say to us this Sabbath afternoon.

We pray this in Jesus' precious and lovely name.

Yet as important and as defining each of these things is each of these facts is to who I am and my identity.

There is 1 fact that is more important than any of these facts to who I am, what I am today, and that is that I am the survivor of a chronic and deadly disease.

It is a disease that affects millions around the world.

It runs in families and is passed on through generations.

There is no known cure for this disease absent a literal miracle from the Lord himself.

I am a survivor of congenital Christianity.

Congenital Christianity is a spiritual condition.

It is in many ways similar to Seventh-day Adventist Christianity, but it lacks 1 thing.

It is at its core superficial, and it lacks an authentic saving relationship with Christ.

Some of you may be suffering from this very condition.

And in order to help you self-diagnose, I'd like to share with you a non-comprehensive list of potential symptoms you might observe.

1, you avoid talking about your faith at work or at school because you're not quite sure what you believe and you're a little embarrassed.

2, you know that Saturday is the Sabbath, but what's the big deal?

3, you've heard that we have distinctive Biblical beliefs about death, hell, and the sanctuary, but you have no idea what they are and why they matter.

4, you hear people refer to the spirit of prophecy, But you're ambivalent about it, even though you've never actually read any of the books.

5, those beasts on the prophecy seminar flyer look strange and bizarre to you, and you've got no clue what they mean.

6, you think that mega church down the street is a lot more fun and a lot more interesting, but you feel sort of bad that you think that.

7, you abstain from all unclean meats except for pepperoni, bacon, and shrimp because they taste so good.

You abstain from all alcohol, except for a little beer and wine socially.

Oh, well, and the hard stuff only mixed with orange juice or cranberry juice because then you can't taste it.

And if you can't taste it, it's not there.

8, you dutifully wait until sundown on Sabbath before you head to the theater to see Twilight in IMAX 3D.

You go out to lunch after Sabbath church service because surely God does not want you to starve, and those garlic breadsticks are so much yummier than what they got at Potluck.

You go to church or Sabbath school most weeks, but you go because you want your kids to have exposure even though you don't have any personal conviction or investment in the faith.

These are just examples, but they should give you an idea of what we're talking about.

But maybe a friend or a family member or another church member you've observed, maybe the head elder.

Well, I have good news and I have bad news.

I think the bad has it, so we'll go with the bad news first, which is what I was planning to do anyway.

The bad news is that untreated congenital Christianity leads to eternal death 100% of the time.

The bad news is that while the disease is passed down, the cure is not.

You cannot be saved by your parents' faith or the faith of anyone else.

The bad news is that you must affirmatively choose to be cured.

You can't walk this off." That's the bad news.

The good news is that there is a cure, and I stand before you as living proof, a congenital Christianity survivor.

I testify to you that I have been cured of this disease by the love of Jesus and the power of the everlasting gospel.

The good news is, is that if God could save a wretch like me, He can surely save you.

And The good news is, is that if God could save a wretch like me, He can surely save you.

And the good news is, is that it's not too late.

Even if you have been suffering under the putrefying malaise, lukewarmness of congenital Christianity for years or even decades, it is not too late for you.

God can still reach down from His throne, touch your heart, and turn your heart from a heart of stone into a heart of flesh.

I know that He can do this because He did it for me.

My story begins 3 generations ago, in the early 1900s when my great-grandfather was the second ever ordained Seventh-day Adventist pastor in Korea.

His son, my grandfather, also entered the ministry and he became the first native Korean to be the president of the Korean Union Conference.

His son, my father, did not go into the ministry, but he attended Adventist schools all his life until he went to 1 of the top medical schools in Korea, where he scored number 1 on the medical board exams that year, all the while observing Sabbath in a country which required attending class on Saturdays.

And that's where I come in Because I was 4 months old when my mother, my father, 2 suitcases and a baby showed up in Boston for his residency.

So while I am a 1.5 generation Korean American, I am a fourth generation Seventh Day Adventist.

My roots in the faith go all the way back to its earliest days in Korea.

And while many blessings come from having this heritage in the church, it comes with a predisposition to congenital Christianity.

My earliest spiritual memory comes from when I was 4 years old.

I would come downstairs early on Sunday mornings to watch television while my parents slept.

And it didn't take me long to notice that every channel I turned to actually we didn't have remote controls back then, I'm that old.

Every channel I turned to, and we didn't have cable, we only had rabbit ears.

Every channel I turned to, it didn't have cartoons.

Has anyone ever heard of Sunday morning cartoons?

Ted N.C. Wilson

GYC 2013 Sabbath Divine Service

What a privilege it is to be here with you, and what a wonderful choir and orchestra.

Thank you so much for what you've done to bring us to the throne room of heaven through music.

This is a wonderful conference and I know that God has blessed the seminar speakers, the plenary speakers, and he's blessed you.

And what a privilege it was yesterday to go out on the GYC outreach.

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All Teachings

Revival of True Heart Religion

36m

GYC 2013 Final Charge

55m

Congenital Christianity

49m

GYC 2013 Sabbath Divine Service

59m

Sabbath School Church Leaders Panel

1h

GYC 2013 Keynote

46m

04-Holding Nothing Back

49m

03-The Sabbath Principle

43m

02-Can God Trust You: Death Before Dishonor

45m

01-Trusting God

46m

06-Danger Signals, Part 2

1h 10m

05-Danger Signals, Part 1

1h

Sound Doctrine