iShare 2015: The Challenge

Witnessing on Campus

Bashar Fargo

Melissa Miranda

Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Willing to Be Led

I think I like to always start with by saying I come from the Middle East so it's a little more challenging to have meetings like I share, go door to door, do evangelism.

And we're definitely privileged to have that opportunity here in the United States.

So I pray that we all make use of that opportunity and it's something exciting.

1 day soon we won't have that opportunity and I pray that we may make use of it.

So this afternoon I'm going to be sharing some of our experiences on the university that I attended for my undergrad and then Melissa is going to be following up with her experience also and how the Lord has been using her right now on that same campus.

So if you don't mind, if you can bow your heads with me as we pray.

Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you once again for this time.

And we just pray for your presence, Lord.

In the midst, Lord, may your angels be present here, and may your Holy Spirit be present in our hearts to convict us, to lead us, Lord.

And the words that we speak today may be uplifting Jesus and Him alone so that we may be drawn to Him.

So An important question I think we always have to ask ourselves is, what is the purpose of my life, especially as a Christian?

And I'm going to ask you today, and You know, of course, this question is sometimes sort of redundant, but I think it's very important because it's going to determine every decision we make in our lives.

Fulfill his will in our lives now, what is that will that's that's the question, Right?

I mean, we do want to fulfill God's will.

There has to be a purpose in our lives, but really what is that purpose?

And if you can go with me to Isaiah, if you have your Bibles.

The Bible says, Okay, Isaiah 43, 7, the Bible says, Everyone who is called by my name, whom I have created for my glory, I have formed him, yes, I have made him.

So do you notice that God is saying we were created for a purpose?

In the Bible, of course, we're not going to go through that study, but God's glory means His character, right?

Now, if that's our purpose is to glorify God, that's why He created us, and to basically reflect His glory, reflect His character, How can we do that?

As our sister mentioned earlier, we have to know Him because that's what God wants.

If I don't know who the person I'm worshiping, if I don't know who this person that I want to reflect who He is, then how can I reflect?

How can I show people who this person is?

Unless I have that relationship, unless I know this person.

Now, we know that Jesus said, For this is eternal life.

And John chapter 17 verse 3 says, This is eternal life that they might know you, God, and thou only Son, Jesus whom thou hast sent.

So, if God's purpose for us is to reflect His character, and we can do that only by knowing Him, and knowing Him essentially means having internal life with Him, then it will change our perspective about what we do every day.

Our decisions that we make, as I mentioned.

There is a purpose that, okay, I'm in this place, and there are people that need to know who I'm worshipping.

They need to know who this person that I have a relationship with, that they need to see Him in me.

That determined purpose is what we have and we need to have.

And I think that will kind of drive us to do God's will.

Now I want to read to you a quotation from the Desire of Ages, page 672.

And this is what it says, We cannot use the Holy Spirit.

Through the Spirit, God works in His people to will and to do His good pleasure.

This is why they do not receive the heavenly gift.

Only to those who wait humbly upon God, who watch for his guidance and grace, is the Spirit given.

And sometimes we think, well you know what, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that, and thinking that, you know, we can kind of use the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit can't be used.

We have to allow ourselves to be used by that Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit comes from God.

Now, In that process of knowing God's purpose, in that process of being used by the Holy Spirit, there's something I think more important that God wants us, more than even using us.

Because as it was mentioned today in the sermon, that God, of course, it's in God's word, God can use even the rocks to speak to him.

And in fact, God sometimes uses people and situations that were initiated by Satan and turns them around to bring something good.

So it's not a matter of as much using, but there is something more important than using.

And that is God is trying to save us in the process of using us.

And unless we understand that, our perspective of God would be probably a little different.

Oh yeah, God can use me, oh yes, for his purpose, and then what?

But God that we serve is not only wanting to use us for his purpose, but really his purpose is to use us and essentially save us in that process.

In the same chapter that we read earlier, Isaiah 43, I'll read verses 10 through 12.

You are my witnesses, says the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am He.

Before me there was no God formed, nor shall there be after me.

I, even I, am the Lord, and beside me there is no Savior.

I have declared and saved, I have proclaimed, and there was no foreign God among you.

Therefore you are my witnesses, says the Lord, I am God." So our God is a God that wants to save.

And if we understand that kind of God that we worship is we know he's a selfless God.

We want to fulfill His purpose because He wants to at the end save us in that process.

And there are many examples in the Bible, we don't have time to share them, but all of God's servants, God sends them, but the main thing He wants to show them first is that who He is, how He feels about His people.

Jonah goes, God tells him, go to the Ninevites and talk to them.

Priscilla Santos

Lambs Among Lions

It is more than a blessing to be here with you today.

I was a literature evangelist for 4 years.

It was through the literature evangelism work that I actually gave my life to God.

But you know, God is amazing and once you make that decision to live for him, he takes you on a journey.

And I've been working with different ministries.

I've worked with Cristo on theme ministry, Little Light Ministries, Loma Linda University, all the way to Aven Hope.

I was their co-outreach coordinator for 2 years.

1 of my co-coordinators is over there, and then now I'm the associate director.

So evangelism everywhere and more evangelism to come.

But my goal for you today is that you feel encouraged, blessed, and empowered.

But before we begin, I do have to make a very major disclaimer I am NOT an expert in school evangelism oh I'm not an expert in any form of evangelism I only know of 1 who is and that is God God alone knows how to reach the human heart and save a soul.

So before we begin, let us go ahead and ask our Heavenly Father, the expert, to be here with us today.

Dear Heavenly Father, Lord God, we come before you knowing how much we need you.

Lord, we need your Holy Spirit to work in our lives and in our hearts, and if ever we're going to make a mark on campus, it's going to be through your might.

So Father, I ask that the words of John the Baptist be our words that we decrease as you increase.

And Father, I ask that your words be shared today.

So I ask, Lord, that you help us to understand that today.

Alright, Lambs Among Lions on campus evangelism.

This looks like a messy student, but then again this looks like every student I know.

It actually looks like she's about to cram for an exam, if you will.

There's even, looks like there's energy drinks.

Be warned, I'm a nurse, we'll talk afterwards.

We get so involved in school that sometimes we can't really see ourselves doing anything but study.

In fact, in nursing school they tell us you need a minimum of 8 hours a day.

We're like, Lord, I barely have time to do personal devotions, let alone evangelism.

But the thing is, friends, the gospel needs to be carried to people.

People aren't just going to, or we shouldn't just wait for them to come to us, we should come to them.

It says here, we are not to wait for souls to come to us.

When the word has begun preached in the pulpit, the work has but just begun.

There are multitudes who will never be reached by the gospel unless it is carried to them." Now here's the thing, friends.

We have a lot of what I like to call pastor-oriented evangelism.

We find someone who's interested in the gospel and they're a little rough around the edges and we're like, we know how to deal with you.

And then we go to the pastor and we're like, here you are, and they're like, job well done.

It says here that the pulpit is actually where it just begins.

We have a very key role to play in evangelism.

Now turn to your Bibles to Matthew 28 18 through 20.

Now for those of you who have been involved in evangelism this verse or set of verses should be memorized already.

Matthew 28 18 through 20 it is the great commission and it was 1 of the last words that Jesus said to us so should we pay attention?

Matthew 28 18 through 20 and here we have 1 command and 2 promises.

Starting in verse 18 it says, And Jesus came and spake unto them saying, all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth go he therefore and teach all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost teaching them whatsoever I have taught you and lo I am with you always even until the end of the world.

Someone else wants to know that hope as well.

Because we are investing in a heavenly family when we're doing evangelism here.

We want to take as many people as we can with us.

So it makes sense to spread the gospel, right?

Most people will not come unless they are invited.

In fact, all people won't come unless they're invited.

But in order to successfully fulfill this commission, we must understand the 2 promises beforehand.

So verse 18 tells us, all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

You know, that word power translates to the word exosia, which means strength or influence.

So when Jesus says he has all power, he means he has all strength, he has all influence.

And when he tells you to go in his stead He equips you with his exosia.

In other words, he's promising when you go in the name of Jesus You go with the influence of the divine power to make things happen.

There have been many roadblocks in getting things done in evangelism, but you know when you serve a God who can make things happen, Suddenly all doors are open.

I remember we tried to work with a different, or with a certain school at the university we were working at.

And for a year and a half, we tried to work with this school over and over again.

And they kept shutting the door and shutting the door and shutting the door.

We kept praying and we're like, Lord, we need to reach this school.

Finally, actually, just last year, the doors suddenly opened.

Paul Negrete

Advent HOPE Sabbath School

What I Learned While I Was Teaching

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your blessings, Lord.

And we thank you because you have allowed us the privilege to come together in freedom and liberty to praise your name, to worship you, Lord.

We know that the time is short, but we thank you for today.

And we pray that today's message will bring honor and glory to your name.

I pray that you would bless me as the speaker, that your spirit would speak through me.

And I pray for those that are hearing that your spirit would allow the message to reach into their hearts and turn into something that they can do in their lives.

My name is Paul Negrete, and I am the principal of San Gabriel Academy.

And this is my 19th year in Adventist education.

So you could say career-wise, I am just about at my half-life, okay?

And as I look at my time with Adventist education, you know, there's a lot of mixed emotions about our system.

Just out of curiosity, how many of you have gone from K to graduate level or college through the Adventist system?

All right, so I'm praying that I have firm support for Adventist education here in this room.

How many of you, Loma Linda University is your first integration into Adventist education.

Well, whatever it is, you're here today, right?

Even if you're not attending or have not attended an Adventist school of some sort at whatever level.

We're sitting in an Adventist school, correct?

And so, in some way, we support Adventist education.

But the fact of the matter is, as we look forward into the future, there are challenges that we're facing, aren't there?

And I wanna talk about some of those challenges.

I want to give us a perspective so that as we discuss the challenges, whenever you talk about it, whenever you leave this room and you go talk about it with your friends or whatever else.

It won't be open to just simple opinion and personal perspective.

It will have the framework hopefully of what Christ, how Christ wants us to see this organization, this institution.

So as we're looking at it, let's open our Bibles to Genesis chapter 2.

Because I like to start at the beginning.

It says, It says, The Lord God took man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and keep it.

And the Lord commanded the man saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat.

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat.

For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

And the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone.

And out of the ground, the Lord formed every beast of the field and every file of the air and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them.

And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

And Adam gave names to all the cattle and to the fowl of the air and to every beast of the field.

But at Adam there was not found a help meet for him." What does this have to do with Adam's education?

From the beginning, the master teacher is teaching.

He said, listen, of everything, this is what you do and this is how you do it.

And then he also allowed the opportunity for some discovery learning.

He didn't decide to make Eve when Adam found out that he needed her.

He says, and the Lord God decided that he would make him a woman, but he allows Adam to go name all the animals and do this, and then to realize that I have need for a mate myself.

From the beginning, the master teacher is teaching his pupil, Adam.

In Genesis 3, verse 8, it says, And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.

And we know this, this is right after the fall.

But again, the teacher comes looking for who?

And for those of you that have worked with any group of students, for any amount of time, this scene plays out over and over again.

It doesn't matter what age level, whether they be in kindergarten, preschool, high school, even at college, when there is an offense, when there's something going wrong, there's hiding taking place isn't there?

And then I find it interesting that there is still in chapter 3 in verse 22.

It says, And the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become as 1 of us to no good and evil.

And now lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever.

Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken." So I kind of see this as 1 of the first disciplinary committees here on Earth.

In education, unfortunately, sometimes we have to have a disciplinary committee.

And Unfortunately, sometimes maybe I've sat in too many of them.

But 1 of the things that I do appreciate is that in Adventist education, we have this idea of redemptive discipline.

So that means even as we discipline, Even as we may have to ask a student to withdraw from school, there should be a plan on how to redeem that student.

And I want to see if that redemptive discipline, because it's something that we're told to do, is actually in how God first deals with his first 2 pupils.

And so if I look at verse 24, it says, So he drove out the man and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life.

So the action is to expel Adam and Eve from this garden home, from this first classroom.

He puts cherubim there and notice what they have.

It says they have a flaming sword that turns in every which way.

I looked at a concordance and it says that the word keep is the word shamar, which means to guard, to protect, to mark, to observe, to preserve, to reserve, and to save.

Was the sword there to keep Adam from touching the tree Or was the sword there to illuminate the way of how he would get back 1 day?

But the other side of preserving and saving and marking is to point there it is.

Let's take a look at something in John chapter 5 verse 35.

In John 5 35 it says of John the Baptist, Jesus says this, He was a burning and a shining what?

And ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light.

Notice that the description of John the Baptist is similar to the description of the burning sword that shined in every way to keep, preserve, mark the path back to Jesus.

Well, we keep on moving from this and we're going back to the book of Genesis.

We won't take the time to read it, but I'll just make reference to it.

Christian Martin

Grants Pass SDA Church

A President, the Pope and a Lectern

So our hearts are prepared to hear a word from the Lord.

As we prepare to open our Bibles, let's pause and ask God to come and direct us.

Father in heaven, how thankful we are, Lord, to be living in days like these.

We ask that as we ponder your word and put our thoughts into what you inspired writers to write.

Lord, this is your time to speak to our hearts.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

Willing to Be Led

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Lambs Among Lions

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What I Learned While I Was Teaching

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A President, the Pope and a Lectern

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