Michigan Camp Meeting 2025: He Must Increase

Life in God's Will: A Young Adult Seminar

Micheal Goetz

Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

03 God’s Will and the “ONE” for Me

You're about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2025 Michigan Conference Camp, held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

Father in heaven, good morning to you and thank you for today.

Rain or sun, severe thunderstorms, we Know that you are here, that this day you have given to us.

So we will rest and trust and choose you today.

Bless us in our conversation and in our reflection, but may it be in that blessing that it comes from you and your word, in the name of Jesus, amen.

All right, I am compelled to do a bit of review.

The title for today is The 1 For Me, All right?

We're gonna use, like we did yesterday, the energy of romance to springboard off into our conversation about God's will.

So if you're saying, I want nothing to do with romance, it's still very applicable to all the other areas of your life.

All right, if you were here Monday, we looked at this.

This is a, it's a garden, a French garden.

This is kind of, in my mind, and some may disagree, but in my mind, this is what heaven would be like.

This is very clear cut corners and very crisp edges and very organized.

And this is what they call a French garden.

I don't know if this picture's actually in France or not, but the style is called French.

And in my mind, this looks like happenstance.

Like last year's flowers are trying to compete with this year's flowers and there's lack of order and things don't have system or process.

But I have come, and some of you are well ahead of me on this, I have come to say, what if God's plan for your life looks a little bit more like an English garden than a French garden.

We think, well, if I'm in God's will, then it will be clear.

I have heard people say, I must have been, because I dated somebody, and then we broke up, And it must not have ever been God's will for me to even been in that relationship.

And then I had a man share with me once that said, in a in a respectful relationship, in a holy, respectful relationship.

Could it be that God brings 2 people together for that time, but then that's it?

I'm not talking about marriage, I'm talking about just the dating relationship.

He had just broken up, or a girl had broken up with him and he said maybe that's okay.

Maybe that's okay and I didn't make a mistake by dating this girl but some some have come to the conclusion no I'm going to date 1 person and if I'm in if I'm following God's will it will be clear I'll date 1 person then I'll marry the only person I ever date.

And so when you date somebody and it ends, you feel like, oh, maybe I didn't follow God's will and he probably wouldn't have led me through.

In Oregon, where I grew up, 1 of the things my parents did, and they did it with a pickup truck, so this was extra fun.

But we would go to, they call them BLM roads, Bureau of Land Management, this is like public land, it's just thousands and thousands of acres of woods where they log, and So there's these gravel roads that wind around mountains with no road signs or maps.

And we would call it Sabbath afternoon drives.

We would get in the back of the truck, except for my parents maybe, and we would just drive these roads, these logging roads where sometimes it was a drop off and then you'd wind your way up to a mountain landing where they had harvested the timber.

And sometimes you'd come to dead ends and just turn around.

And it wasn't a loss, it wasn't a wow, we have just wasted our time because we came to a dead end.

This was the purpose of just going for the ride.

And so sometimes we've mapped this out that no, A has to lead to B and B has to lead to C and we have to accomplish something, otherwise it must not be God's will.

And life would look like, life would look like, really?

Life would look like this if it's God's will.

And this is certainly just guesswork, right?

But no, what if God is into taking us into the same, into a dead end or into the same route twice or 3 times and he says, no, I just wanna take you over the same ground.

This idea of surrendering to God's will is this journey that no, it's not a shortest distance to destination, it's letting Him take you where He wants to take you.

Faith is the substance of things, hope for the evidence of things not seen.

And then we concluded that this is just a bit of a review.

So some of you are like, hey, you already use it.

So the life of faith, we have often determined that faith is what we hold on to until we get to like the prize.

I'll hold on by faith until I get to the prize, the conclusion, the end.

And what Hebrews 11 is saying is, no, the life of faith is it, that's it.

We like stories that have resolution that, oh, you didn't have money and then you held on by faith, you held on by faith until you got the money and you paid.

But what if God keeps you forever in that question mark, in that wondering, because that's the life of faith.

So we like to look at conclusions and resolution to our story, but the life of faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

You don't ever see it, you don't ever get there.

By faith, when called to go out to a place, this is Abraham, he would later receive as an inheritance.

He obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.

We read that story and we assume that that was at the beginning.

Okay, he went out, he didn't know where he was going, but shortly thereafter, God told him where he was going, and for the rest of the time, he knew the plan.

Now, we read it as, well, we can map him out quickly, but he didn't know where he was going.

He didn't know next year, this year, he was just following God.

And we revisited the Gospels or reflected on the Gospels that when Jesus invited His disciples to follow Him, He used 2 words, follow me, follow me.

God, if I'm going to trust you, I mean, I need to map some of this stuff out.

I need to know that I'm not taking these classes in vain because they're gonna lead to...

What if God says, I just want you to take those classes?

I want you to just, for no other reason, that there's no degree at the end of that.

I want you to go over this ground because it's doing something unseen to you, but the visible to God work on our hearts.

Speaking of surrender, George Mueller, we talked about these 4, 90% of knowing God's will is choosing to have no will of our own.

That's 90% of where God is trying to take us, which is why sometimes he drags his journey out.

He leaves us in limbo because we've got to be quiet.

If you've ever taken a retreat, I do these periodically just for my own journey, between 24 and 48 hours unplugged.

I usually take a hammock, a tent, my Bible, notebook, maybe the guitar, And you turn off the phone.

I go up into a place as deserted as I can get.

First time I did 1 actually was here in Michigan.

And it's like the first 3 or 4 hours, I'm constantly thinking, well, maybe I should just turn on my phone and make sure, I mean, what if the world ended and I'm still out here and I don't know, I need to know.

And God's like, I'll let you know if the world ends, right?

So just, but it took me probably 7 or 8 hours to start to be quiet and not to be like, all right, God, like what are we out here for?

Decision - Discipleship - Destiny

Wes Peppers

03 Discipleship to Destiny

You're about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2025 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

Father, we thank You for this time together, and Lord, we need to cover a lot of ground, so we pray that Your Spirit will help us.

And Lord, these principles are very vital today.

They were used in the early church, in the book of Acts.

They were used all throughout history when church growth took place.

And they're still effective today if we will utilize them.

And so Lord, We pray Your Spirit be with us today and open our eyes and our ears, and even more importantly, our hearts, to what You want to do through our lives and in our churches and in our communities.

So we pray this in Jesus' name And we say together, Amen.

Do you remember the first 3 principles for a training center church?

And the way that I would rephrase that just a little bit is I would say everything that we do in our church must filter through the understanding of the Great Commission culture.

Missional church structure, which we will endeavor to speak about today.

Number 3, making sure that we are much more what?

Territory focused rather than church maintenance focused, right?

And we remember that maintenance will never accomplish the mission.

Number 4, and that's where we're at today, is to have trained and equipped leaders now I asked you the other day and I'll ask you again.

What happens at the nominating committee?

We tell them how much of the job description Very little because we want them to say yes, And then we get upset when they do nothing.

And then at the end of the year when it's time to nominate again, we, we, what do we do?

And we're bothered with them because they didn't do anything.

And so likely, they just did the best that they could.

Even if that was nothing, because they might have been afraid they would mess it up.

I recommended a book the other day, do you remember what it was?

Another book that I want to highly recommend to you, even if you've read it 20 times, read it again, is the book Christian Service.

If you want to get stirred up for evangelism and soul winning, read the book Christian Service.

There was a gentleman in, and I don't even remember where it was.

It might have been China or some other place, some Asian country.

Non-Adventist fellow who was raising up numerous underground churches.

And those churches were growing by the hundreds every several months.

And they kind of interviewed him, and they said, what's the secret to your church growth?

He didn't even know who they were, but he held up 2 books, and he said, I found these books, I forget where he said he found them, in a box in a closet somewhere, and he said, I read these books and I actually started putting what it said into practice.

We did everything it said to the letter and our churches have been exploding ever since.

1 was Christian Service, and the other was Evangelism by Ellen G.

So in the book Christian Service, it says many would be willing to work if they were taught what?

Someone said to me yesterday, we have stood up and made announcement after announcement about outreach, about the help we need in this area of the church and that area of the church.

And it's very frustrating that when it's time to do the outreach, we have 3 people that show up.

You will never recruit people effectively by making announcements in church on Sabbath morning.

You ought to consider the announcement you make to be a final reminder.

Let me tell you a secret that I learned in my first pastoral district, and that is this, that Christ's method works equally inside the church as much as it does outside the church.

When Ellen White says, go to your neighbors 1 by 1, show them Christian kindness and love and concern, and then invite them to follow the Master.

The same principle works inside the church.

There are many people who are willing to work, but they're never just going to jump right out there and promote themselves.

It's no secret that there is the 80-20 rule in the churches, right?

And I found that the people who stay the most busy, busy themselves, and they get frustrated because they've made announcements and all these things, but to recruit workers in the church is as much a personal work as is recruiting souls in the community to follow Christ.

And so, what you need to do is you need to start going to people individually.

Now I'm trusting and believing, I'm assuming, that all of you are part of that 10 or 20% in your local church.

And in my church, in the Lansing church, it's a very large church.

You know, when I was there, we had anywhere from 300-400 people in attendance on Sabbath each week.

We had multiple departments and very few people had to lead more than 1 area because we had a lot of people.

We had like 20% of the people doing most of the work.

And I said to my departmental leaders, we'd have regular meetings, I said this year, I want you to do something different.

I don't want you to go only to the people you always rely upon, the people that you always recruit to do the work.

I want you to find somebody in the church that they attend church maybe regularly, maybe every week, maybe it's 2 or 3 times a month.

And I want you to go and visit with them and maybe invite them to some meal at your house or something, and I want you to personally interact with them and become friends with them, and then seek to recruit them to help you.

Not all of them did it, but many of them did it.

And guess what happened to our workforce?

Christian Martin

Living Hope SDA Church

Building Homes on the Rock

And as we welcome the Holy Spirit to speak to our hearts, let's bow our heads together once more as we acknowledge Him.

Father in heaven, we are just so thankful that Your Word is so living, so powerful, that it could touch our hearts and speak to us through the lips of a child, through your written word on our laps.

And now Lord we pray that it would speak to us through your spoken word.

And so Lord this is your time it's the reason we came and we're here as families many of us as a family unit and we pray that your word would speak to us as a whole So we thank you Lord for answering our prayers and may you guide us and bless us in Jesus name, Amen.

Let me begin with a simple picture in our minds eye.

Imagine a builder, a builder constructing a house, and he has everything laid out.

Elegant walls, polished floors, a nice roof, and everything is in place.

The construction has begun, and to the eye it looks strong.

In fact, the end result looks even better, because it's for real, and there you admire the finished house.

The first heavy storms come and the house collapses.

Isn't that a picture of many families in every age since the entrance of sin?

We don't have to look at Barna group surveys.

We don't have to look at the demographics of nearly every town and every city in this country, and let's add, around the world.

The reality is, is that the entrance of sin, We've seen something very, very impactful in our homes and our families.

From the outside, oftentimes, everything looks fine.

But when the storms come, When the financial struggles come, when broken communication happens, when temptations get the best of us, when sickness strikes and the crisis hits the home, the cracks begin to show.

And in Jesus, in Matthew chapter 7, there gives us some wisdom as we consider the message today, building homes on the rock.

In Matthew chapter 7, Jesus is speaking and he has the attention of his listeners.

Among the listeners are all types of people.

As it is today, And in Matthew chapter 7, Jesus gives wisdom.

He simply says that the wise build on the rock and the foolish build on the sand.

There it's in Matthew chapter 7 beginning in verse 24.

And this is what Jesus says as he begins.

Therefore, whoever hears the sayings of mine, and does what?

I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock.

The NIV, New International Version, puts it this way.

Jesus said, everyone who hears the words of mine and puts them into practice, Puts them into practice.

I think we all have had enough experience in our life to have learned lessons of times when we heard it well.

Can't tell you how many times I've been to gardening classes.

I've been to all types of classes, training courses.

But what Jesus is getting at here is he's cutting to the chase.

He's saying here, And the key is, it's not just hearing, but Jesus says there's something in the, in the what?

It's not enough to hear, but Jesus calls us to do.

And if there was ever a place where there's sure a lot of listening going on, a lot of hearing going on.

Well, it's in this very place where we meet today, within these walls.

Week after week, Sabbath after Sabbath, we gather together for this very reason, because we know that something will be spoken, something will be shared.

The crowd that Jesus spoke to is still the crowd today.

The key is not just hearing, but it's doing.

After all, that's where the instruction happens.

That's where the hearing, or rather, that's where the speaking takes place.

Families that say grace at meals, or they own a Bible, but never practice the word.

So plainly, even a child like Elias can sing about it.

The houses built on the sand are those that hear the words of Jesus, but don't practice the word.

Jesus continues, But everyone who hears, ye saints of mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand and the rains descended the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house and it fell and great was its fall." In other words the house may stand for a while.

But when the trouble comes, they collapse.

Constant financial stress, debt, and overwork can leave little space in that precious family circle for nurturing relationships.

Families crumble when they are isolated from those that can feed into them encouragement and strength and inspiration and support.

When prayer, worship and scripture leave the home, families lose that spiritual glue that holds them together.

But the family that takes the sayings of Jesus, the families that takes the principles, the values, the instructions that are all outlined in the living Word of God.

When families take the saints of Jesus seriously, reading it, listening to it, hearing it, but not stopping there, living it, practicing it, obeying it, families become strong.

They become strong and the Bible becomes their blueprint.

But in this context, decisions about money, relationship, discipline, and priorities are measured against Scripture.

We take the circumstances, the situation that needs critical attention, but we base our plan of action, base first and foremost on the say of the Lord.

What are the principles found in the Word of God that will give us direction and guidance, that will give us insight so as we pray for the wisdom that is promised from God, we will be able to take the steps that are according to His good and perfect will.

Your children, your children don't just need to hear you talk about God.

They don't need to just keep hearing the story.

02 God Doesn’t Like Pretty Girls or Handsome Boys

Lord Jesus, as we go into today, we consecrate and dedicate ourselves to You.

We choose to serve You no matter the cost.

The question we have on a very practical level is how do we follow your will?

Our Father, may you and you alone speak to our hearts and grow us closer to your own heart.

To review, we visited some individuals like Hannah Smith yesterday and George Mueller yesterday and found that 2 common teachings, conclusions that they had drawn, knowing God's will, was 1, immersion in scripture.

You just, you have to be hearing and hearing and hearing God's voice.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

03 God’s Will and the “ONE” for Me

1h 2m

03 Discipleship to Destiny

1h 5m

Building Homes on the Rock

52m

02 God Doesn’t Like Pretty Girls or Handsome Boys

1h 6m

02 Discipleship that Doesn’t Dumb or Dump

55m

God’s Got You on the Move

55m

01 Covenant Promises

28m

01 I Guessed by Faith

52m

01 From Decision to Discipleship

1h 9m

A Study in Hebrews 8: A Better Covenant

18m

01 Recipe for Success

30m

01 Recipe for Success

28m

Sound Doctrine