ECYC 2015: Christ In Me

Morning Devotional

Danielle Harrison

Eastern Canada Youth Conference

Pins & Needles of Sin

I would encourage you because the question often is, what do we do after a mountaintop experience like this and we go home and we're not surrounded by so many like-minded believers and we're kind of like in the valley, right?

And it's easy to kind of be like just forgetting about what we learned.

And I am so thankful for the recordings that have been collected.

And so I would encourage you to go home and listen to the messages again and Take time to really look up the Bible quotes and the Spirit of Prophecy quotes and read them in context because we're just kind of trying to juice down what we found into something that is digestible for you now.

But if you go back and you look into the there's so much more there that we can learn from what has been presented.

So I would encourage you to continue the learning process and like she said, share it, because it's 1 thing to learn it and to keep it to ourselves, but really, Christ desires for us to share what we have learned and to spread the blessing to others.

So before I get started yet again, let me humble myself before the Lord and let's pray 1 more time.

Dear Heavenly Father, what a joy it is to enter into the experience of Christian sanctification.

And Lord, I know that You have brought me onto a path that is very challenging so that I could have a clearer way of sharing this picture with people.

And Lord, I pray that as I share this message this morning, again, I will claim your promises from Exodus 4.12 and Isaiah 51.16, where you have said, you are the Lord, you are the 1 who does it, and you will put your words in my mouth, and you have.

And so, Lord, I just, Every time I get up and speak, I claim to those promises.

And Lord, I pray that each and every 1 of us who are here this morning will hear a pointed message from you, Lord, just what you want us to hear.

And may I be hidden behind your cross, And may Jesus be seen in his name, amen.

So this morning I'm gonna be sharing a presentation entitled Pins and Needles of Sin.

And maybe you've noticed that I've been using the theme of object lessons throughout the weekend.

I really feel like spiritual object lessons help us to really understand the things of heaven because we better understand the things of earth because we interact with them in a tangible way, right?

And as I read through the Bible, I can't help but notice that Jesus used object lessons in his method of teaching, right?

And as I started to see this trend in his method of teaching, I started to wonder, why?

Well, I found the answer in the book, Christ Object Lesson, imagine that.

And it says on page 17, in Christ's teaching, the unknown was illustrated by the known, divine truths by earthly things with which the people were familiar.

Like I just stated, this was why Jesus used object lessons.

It goes on to say that by connecting his teaching with the scenes of life, experience, or nature, he secured their attention and impressed their hearts.

Afterwards, as they looked upon the objects that illustrated his lessons, they recalled the words of the divine teacher.

To minds that were open to the Holy Spirit, the significance of the Savior's teachings unfolded more and more.

Mysteries grew clear, and that which had been hard to grasp became evident." So we see here there's a lot of different reasons why he did this, and I'm hoping that by this object lesson that I share today, it can awaken a thought process within your mind.

And then in the future, as you see these things that I used to illustrate this point, it will call to your memory the things that I shared today, and it will continue to bring this lesson more and more into significance in your life and in your mind.

So today I'm actually going to be sharing an object lesson that's very close to me, so close to me that it's actually inside of my skin, and that object lesson is tattoos.

I think that today we see that tattoos are becoming more and more prevalent in the world, right?

We see it's a growing trend, but just how prevalent is it?

I looked up some statistics and I found that 21%, that being 1 out of 5, U.S.

They have seen over the years this number increases every year.

Being that this statistic was collected in 2012, I can say I know that this statistic is much higher than it was then.

Compared to not having a tattoo, having a tattoo makes me feel, they asked this in the poll, and what do you think the number 1 most common response was?

I would say attractive would be very, very close.

30% of people said that having a tattoo makes them feel more sexy.

And I think that this is drawn out even more by the fact that nearly half of women under the age of 35 have tattoos.

And that's almost double their counterpart because 47% of women have tattoos and 25% of men have tattoos.

And I think in this world, we're a kind of program that women have to be sex symbols, and they have to appear very sexy in order to have value.

And I thought that was made even more interesting by the fact that half of people who don't have tattoos say that people who have tattoos are less sexy.

So they're kind of going for an end that they're not necessarily accomplishing, right?

And the second most common response was rebellious.

So we can see here that people are receiving tattoos for the end of how they are feeling and how they are perceived.

I thought it was very compelling to know that only 14% of people would actually say that they regret their tattoos.

And this was very interesting to me because looking up these statistics, I was thinking that's a low number.

Because for me, I regret all of my tattoos.

I received all of my tattoos between the ages of 18 and 24, and today I have 9, and today I regret them all.

That's because as I became a Christian, I started to learn about how the Bible says, our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, we should glorify our God in body and in spirit.

I started to think about these things and what does it mean to be the temple of the Holy Spirit?

I feel like that means that Jesus dwells inside of us and we're his hands and feet on this on this earth, right?

So I started to think about my tattoos and I thought, you know, they really aren't a way for me to glorify my God in body and in spirit.

My tattoos seemed more like a rebellious teenager's way of spraying graffiti on her temple, right?

And nonetheless, I didn't have the option of being free from them, right?

And then I learned that the Bible actually mentions tattoos.

In Leviticus 19.28, it says, ye shall not put any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you.

I am the Lord." So when I read this, I thought, for the dead, what does that mean?

And so this led me into a study into the origin and history of tattooing.

And so before I get into the object lessons, I want to kind of share some of these things with you because I think a lot of us don't really understand the nature of how tattooing became prevalent in our world today because it's a very popular thing.

We do it for self-expression, but back then they were doing it for a different reason.

The following documentation is from pro-tattoo books, simply documenting the obvious spiritual and religious links of the tattoo.

The facts are loud and clear, backed by tons of research and documentation by the leading pro-tattoo authorities on the planet.

So this conclusion here is not come to because this is my Christian perspective.

This is the conclusion backed by facts and evidences just from history.

And basically it says that the foundation, origin, meaning, and purpose of the tattoo is pagan, demonism, shamanism, bail worship, and occult mysticism.

So you might be thinking, wow, that's a really strong statement.

So I'm going to show you just a couple brief quotes here that helped these people come to this conclusion.

Historically, tattooing has originated in connection with ancient rites of scarification and bloodletting, which were associated with religious practices, intended to put the human soul in harmony with supernatural forces and ensure continuity between this life and the next." So as I looked through a lot of the quotes, I saw that this was kind of a common theme, the superstition was not only the reason why people started getting tattoos, but also why they started piercing.

They believe that evil spirits came into the mind through the ears, so they started piercing, engaging, stretching out the ears to ward off evil spirits.

And so, you know, to put your soul in harmony with supernatural forces and try to align yourself with the next realm for reincarnation and things like that.

And where it says here, bloodletting and scarification practices in religion, We see this actually verified in the Bible.

And we find that in the book of 1 Kings on chapter 18.

And does anybody remember when Elijah was up on the mount with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel and they decided that they were going to see whose God was the true God, right?

And does anybody remember what they did there?

Yeah, they erected 2 altars, right, to call down fire from heaven to see whose god was the true god.

And when the prophets of Baal began to call upon Baal to bring down fire from heaven, they started dancing around the altar and cutting themselves with stones.

And so we see that this bloodletting practice was actually a part of this pagan worship.

And so they started cutting themselves and eventually they would start rubbing ashes into the wounds if they would become infected.

And then they started to see if the cuts were really deep, it would actually hold in the ink and, or not the ink, the ash, and it would start to create colored scars.

And so if your bloodletting was a sacrifice to your god, your scar was kind of like a symbol of that, right?

And so how much more prevalent would it be if it was colored?

So this was kind of how the tattoos started to evolve into something that they practiced more and more as a religious part of their worship.

Purified & Preserved

Dear Heavenly Father, I'm thankful that you've brought each and every 1 of us here this morning and that you have a special message to speak to us not only through this presentation but by all of the presentations that have been put together.

And Lord, we're told in the spirit of prophecy that because the enemy is alive on this earth and he has seen what I have put together and he has also seen the things that each person here has been struggling with, he will do all that he can to distract in the very moment that the information that is being presented is needed the most.

And so Lord, I pray that he would not be permitted to come here, but Jesus, who has already won the victory on the cross, would be in control, and that only holy angels from heaven would be permitted in this room, in this building.

I pray for all of the people who are in this hotel and and working in this hotel who don't know you Lord may they see you in us this weekend and may we be a witness to those around us.

Lord, this morning as we look at the topic of victory over sin and abiding in Christ, Lord, I pray that you will speak to us maybe things that we've heard before but in a way that's different, that we haven't heard them in a way that we haven't heard them before.

And Lord, I just pray that for each and every person here, you will make these concepts tangible to them, something that they can grasp, that they can feel, that they can see, that they can understand, and may you be glorified Lord, may Jesus be the center of every word I speak, and may he be seen in Jesus' name, amen.

So like I said, we're going to be looking at victory over sin and abiding in Christ.

We hear that all throughout our lives, we know that we need that, but what exactly does that mean for me?

How does that apply for me in my life and my journey?

Well, I left off yesterday at the point of my baptism and I talked a little bit last night how God has brought me into full-time ministry now and how he's led me all the way in that, but he's also led me forward in the maintenance of the victory that he established for me at that baptism or before that baptism.

You know, like I said, I had given my heart and life completely to Jesus And I said, Lord, in the victory that you have established me in, I need you to keep me because I've made promises to myself before and I know that I can't keep those promises and I made a new covenant with the Lord and asked him to move me forward in that purity.

So for those of you who weren't here yesterday to hear that, I had wore a white dress all day before my baptism and a red dress all day before my baptism and a white dress all day after my baptism to symbolize that cleansing that God had given to me.

How can this kind of a transformation take place?

How can something of this magnitude be maintained when I, in my life, have continued to return to the sins that I have confessed and repented of?

And I can tell you that it's only by the power of God.

And that's what we've been looking at here.

Righteousness by faith means that only God can establish and maintain that kind of a victory.

And so now, as we're moving forward, we realize that A butterfly cannot bring forth that amazing transformation of going from caterpillar into the chrysalis and being totally reformed into a whole new creature, right?

He cannot in any way, shape or form make himself into a butterfly.

All he can do is submit himself to the work that God is doing.

He has to lay himself down in that position of surrender and allow the Lord to pull his skin off and recreate him from the inside out.

And then he becomes what God intended for him to be.

And this is the process that we're entering into in righteousness by faith.

And his very nature now being a butterfly, a creature that no longer creeps on the earth but flies in the air, his very nature is the evidence of the fact that he has made that surrender and he's continued in that surrender until that transformation was complete.

And every point that I came to have victory on in my life came as a result of having a new perspective.

So I'm gonna ask you now, what do you see when you look at this photo?

Yes, so some people see the faces and some people see the cup, right?

And some people will see 1 and not see the other until it's mentioned.

Some will see both at first, but once you've seen both of the images, I think you can't unsee them.

They're both there And they're both recognizable to you, even if they weren't at first.

And I think that this shows that God created our minds to function in different ways.

While I might see the faces and you might see the cup, and we might not see it from each other's perspective at first, God gave us different perspectives and different enjoyments and desires so that everything gets done, right?

But he desires for us to come to see things from his perspective.

And as I obtained the perspective of God, when I came to see the things in my life from God's perspective, when I came to see my sin as sin and something that was only injuring me and that I needed to be free from, only then was he able to move me forward into the process of being liberated from that.

Only when I saw how I needed to be free from this thing and that I couldn't hang on to the love that I had for it was he able to move me forward into this relationship with Jesus.

And so here's an example of 1 of those things that God gave me a new perspective on a paradigm shift, right?

I had become a Christian and I was sitting there and I was thinking, you know, I'm going to go read the commandments.

You know, we're familiar with the commandments, but how often do we just sit down and read them, right?

So I decided I was gonna do that, and I'm reading in the, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet, right?

And this thought process came into my mind.

It says, Danielle, you've been putting the emphasis in the wrong place.

Because so often we look at the commandments and we see thou shalt not, thou shalt not.

And we put the emphasis on the not, right?

But God desires for us to see the emphasis in a different place because God wants us to realize that we shall not kill, we shall not steal, we shall not lie, we shall not commit adultery, We shall be free from these things that are injuring us, that are separating us from him.

And when we start putting the emphasis on the shall, then the commandments aren't just rules to keep us from the things in life that I should be able to practice as a human being.

No, now we see that God is issuing these as liberating statements, as promises that we can be free from these things that beset us in this world that is so damaging to us.

And as we start to see the things in our life and conviction comes in as we realize that these things are injuring us, they're injuring those around us, and they're injuring Jesus.

They're injuring God who has poured out his whole life and everything within him to give us that promised victory.

But you see, when we live in this world that teaches us to live by our feelings, follow your heart, listen to your heart, let your heart decide.

We don't want to submit to that conviction that hurts.

She was 16 and she had been abused by someone in the church, and as a result, she had come to be really confused about her sexuality.

And she had started a relationship with 1 of her girlfriends, and we were just talking.

And I said, do you believe in the Bible as true and real?

And she said that while she hadn't experienced Jesus as something that was real in her heart and in her life, she did believe that the Bible was true.

So I said, how would you feel about just us looking at some of what the Bible has to say about same-sex relationships.

So as I started to read some of the verses with her, in a very non-threatening way, and I had opened up my history to her so She knew where I was coming from.

I just opened up the scriptures and we looked at them together and she was like, wow, I have never seen that before.

Even though she had been going to church for a long time, right, before she had been abused and stopped going.

And as she saw it from God's perspective, and we went to Romans 1 and I said, let's look at the descriptive words that God uses so we can see how God looks at this topic.

She looked at them and she was just like, I could see in her face the conviction, right?

She says, I realize I've made a huge mistake.

And I said, well you know what's happening right now is God has created this safety zone within which we can be safe.

And when we go outside of God's will, when we exit that safety zone, we go into an area of life experiences that those things injure us.

And so because of sin, God shows us in Genesis 3 that he had to bring thorns into this world, right?

And so God has aligned our narrow path to heaven with a hedge, and he's placed thorns on that hedge.

And what's happening, honey, is that you've gone off the path.

You're going the wrong way and you're getting into that hedge, and you're being pricked by those thorns.

And the world tries to teach us to listen to our feelings and so you're gonna wanna turn away from God.

You're gonna wanna feel ashamed, you're gonna wanna turn away from him, but you know what, you don't have to do that.

This prick, this conviction is a gift from God.

He has placed those thorns there as a gift to you to show you that you're going in the wrong direction and to show you that you can turn back onto the right path and from that conviction you can turn to God, not from him.

So we run away from the convictions for a lot of different reasons, right?

A lot of different feelings cause us to turn away from those convictions.

You know, we have pride, we have selfishness, we have fear of failure.

But when we push through that conviction and we turn away from God because of that conviction, it brings a lot of other things into our life too.

More shame, more guilt, sometimes even anger, restlessness, resentment, and It just causes this vicious cycle within us.

So I hope that this can become vivid to you, that when you have that conviction, you can turn to God and not from him.

And I think we've kind of covered this already in our talks.

Spirit of Prophecy says that, "'No man can empty himself of self.' "'We can only consent for Christ to accomplish the work.

Then the language of our soul will be, Lord, take my heart, for I cannot give it.

It is thy property, keep it pure, for I cannot keep it for thee.

Save me in spite of myself, my weak, unchristlike self.

Mold me, fashion me, Raise me into a pure and holy atmosphere, which is where the rich current of Thy love can flow through my soul.

Let this be the prayer of your soul today.

Let this be the prayer in our hearts every moment of every day to realize that in everything we need Jesus and we cannot venture forth for even a moment without him.

And as we are walking through this process of conviction and surrender and repentance, meaning turning away from that hedge of thorns and going back onto the middle of the path, the straight and narrow path, it can be painful.

It's not easy to pull away from those things that we've grown addicted to and dependent upon.

Sexual Purity: Lost and Found

This morning I am going to be sharing my testimony.

And my desire is to share something with you that shows you that victory is possible, that we can live a life where Jesus is living out his will within us, even if we come from a history as dark and stained as mine.

I am going to be talking about some mature topics today.

I'm going to be talking about total purity, and that is going to include sexual purity.

And so I'm going to be touching on some things that historically in the church we have shied away from talking about.

Now I assure you I'm going to strive to share those in a way that will paint the true ugliness of sin.

And my humble prayer is that it will not glorify sin in any way.

But I feel like we need to be talking about these things because we can't just pretend like they don't exist.

And we need to be presenting them in a biblical way so that our young people are receiving the knowledge from God that He can provide because otherwise they're getting all their information from the world and that is scary and it really isn't safe.

So before we proceed on, let's just say 1 more word of prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, I am so grateful for the privilege and the honor of being here at ECYC this morning and sharing the story that you have given.

Lord, it's your book, I am just the pages.

And I cannot convey these deep spiritual things on my own.

Spiritual things are spiritually discerned.

So I need you to fulfill your promise from Exodus 4.12, where you told the stuttering and stumbling Moses that his part was to go and you would put your words in his mouth.

And so I ask you to do that for me this morning.

And I ask you also to give spiritual discernment to each and every person here this morning.

May they not only hear a story of transformation, but Lord, help them to see the spiritual object lessons, the spiritual implications of the story along the way, and help them to see how it relates to their life and how they can apply these things in their own journey.

So I usually start from the very beginning.

I really think that the photos add an extra dimension so you can really understand exactly where I was all along the way.

I came into a home where my parents were struggling in their marriage.

They were not planning on having another child.

My sister and brother were already 6 and 8 years old when I came into the picture.

My mom says as soon as I was able, I was always singing and dancing everywhere that I went.

And we'll talk more about my experience with music all along the way.

Just like technology, music can be used for good or for evil in this world.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

Pins & Needles of Sin

51m

Purified & Preserved

45m

Sexual Purity: Lost and Found

46m

Righteousness by Faith in the Sanctuary- Part 2

1h

Righteousness by Faith in the Sanctuary- Part 1

51m

Christ in the Word and Prayer

53m

Trials and Their Object

1h

Christ in Me Through Beholding

1h

The Rocks are Crying Out!

1h

From Tragedy to Triumph

53m

06. Jeremiah: Symbolic Acts

51m

Great- Part 2

31m

Sound Doctrine