ASI Scandinavia 2014: Sharing Christ His Way

Fred Hardinge

ASI Scandinavia

Is Balanced Health Ministry Possible?

Father in heaven, as we meet here this morning, we invite your presence to be with us.

We realize that it is only as we are imbued by your spirit and guided by your love that we can truly be the kind of people you want us to be, that we can have the kind of attitudes and ideas that will make us of significant contribution to your work here in this world until Jesus comes.

And so we just pray that you would speak to us and that you would guide us this morning is our prayer in his name.

I had never really been asked to speak on the topic, had not really thought much about it until about 9 months ago.

The more I've thought about it and prayed about it, the more I've realized it's a very complex topic.

So I want to focus on balance in health ministry, but balance is also something that we all need to strive for in our lives, and I'm no different than you.

We all struggle with balance in our lives, whether it's the things we know we need to do, the 8 natural remedies, however you wish to describe them, the 8 doctors.

All of those things require a certain amount of balance.

When we talk about our diets, where do we find balance in our diets?

Where do we find balance in how we spend our time?

I'm going to read a statement, well I'll read that 1 a little later, But when we look at the Bible, and I've had to ask myself the question, did Christ live a balanced life?

Well, I don't know how you'd answer that question, but There were times he skipped out on sleep There were times he skipped out on meals There were times At least from our human perspective that he maybe didn't live a balanced life.

In fact, I had a pastor 1 day, my own pastor.

He didn't show up for a very special event in the life of 2 church members who had been in that, they had been members of that church for their entire married life, came to their 50th anniversary.

Family asked if they could have the celebration there in the fellowship hall.

Months ahead, every week, somebody got up and made an announcement about, put it on your calendar, be there.

My wife and I were there, Members were saying, where's the pastor?

I had the occasion to see him a little later that week.

And I just said casually, you know, you were missed on Sunday where were you and he said oh he said I have boundaries in my life And that was family time and I couldn't come.

Well, I appreciate the importance of preserving family time.

That's important for all of us that have families.

But That was a very, very important event in the church's life.

And you know, he said, I have to live a balanced life.

Okay, I understand the need to live a balanced life, but when you have accepted the call to be a pastor, there are times, maybe as in Christ's life, when things are not as balanced as you would like them to be.

Somebody gets sick, somebody dies, what do you have to do?

And he said to me, well, what do you, how do you deal with it?

And I said, well, number 1, if it had been something that you could not, some commitment you could not get out of, you should have at least the day before in the pulpit recognized 50 years of marriage and the example that that meant to the community and to the church and the service that this family has given to this church and then apologize that you For reasons that personal reasons or whatever that you would not be able to be there At least let them know you let the whole church know Anyway, that's not dealing with the balance, that's dealing with, you know, decisions that he made.

But at the same time, that pastor, in struggling for balance, was unbalanced in his ministry.

Because I got many phone calls as 1 of the elders during the time he was there at that church, because they called, told him that a relative or a friend was in the hospital, usually somebody in the family, and he never showed up.

There were deaths in the families and he wasn't there.

And when he was asked about it, he was struggling for balance.

So we look at some of the characters in the Bible.

And we all will struggle with this issue of balance.

None of us are exempt from that struggle.

If you are, tell me how you've managed it.

But let's, you know, let's think carefully, especially as we point our fingers at other people, and that's so easy to do, that they have an unbalanced life.

And at least often in our theory, at least in our minds, we have the only balanced lives in the world.

If you do some study on the spirit of prophecy, you will see that balance is not an easy thing.

My wife and I were just recently talking about this whole topic and she said, well did Ellen White have a balanced life?

She left her young children alone with a caretaker while she went for a long time, often months without seeing them, in her ministry.

People look at my own life right now at the General Conference, and I'm not the only 1.

By any means, at the General Conference, we refer loosely to those who have been elected to responsibilities that require travel as the traveling staff.

Last year, I was away from home more than 230 days in the call of duty.

I serve a world church, 18.2 million members, 13 divisions that encompasses the entire globe.

And in the health ministries department where I'm located, where we teach balance.

We certainly espouse it and encourage it.

We've been down 2 people, 1 because of sickness, 1 because of a change in staffing in a retirement.

So instead of having 4 for the last year, there have been 2 of us that have tried to cover the responsibilities, and we haven't covered them very well.

But we look at our own lives and say, are we balanced?

I'm just simply saying, wherever you are, whatever the Lord has called you to do, you're going to struggle with this issue of balance at every level of life, because we live in an unbalanced world.

And it's easy for us to say the world is unbalanced.

But we need to look at ourselves and ask ourselves the question, where do we find in the Lord Jesus Christ balance?

Last night before I went to bed, I had a nice conversation with my wife, but it's not the same as being there.

I'm grateful that the Lord has given me a wife who equally shares in the calling that he has given to me or it wouldn't work.

I was very fortunate that just before coming here, I spent a month in the South Pacific Division, 4 weeks away from home.

But I was able to bring my wife with me on that 1.

That's the only major trip she took with me this year.

But I know that not everybody, even in the traveling staff, can do that.

So with that as a prelude, let's turn our attention primarily to balance in health.

And how can we find it in health ministry?

And there are many different levels, and we're not going to cover them all in the time we have here.

Those of you who have been involved in programs and the community, you know they can be very demanding.

If you have other responsibilities, you have family responsibilities, you add on top of that something in the evening that happens on a regular basis and it requires a lot of preparation.

Those of you who teach Sabbath schools, you know that it doesn't just happen Sabbath morning.

Those of you who preach, it doesn't just happen Sabbath morning.

So when you are doing health ministry and you may have a program only once an evening, how do you go and visit people that come to the programs?

How do you minister to those who are growing in their experience?

And they're working, so you have to take another evening to do that.

Daniel Pedley

How to Equip Yourself and Develop Talents for Your Life Calling

Discovering your life calling is 1 thing, but how do you get further with it is another.

And that's what we want to look at today.

2 monkeys were sitting on a log and 1 of them decided to jump off.

How many monkeys were left sitting on the log?

And so what I would like to do with this seminar, as any kind of learning that we do, if we don't take action, then we're not going to get results.

So with that in mind, We're going to look at this whole seminar in 3 phases, finding your life calling, equipping yourself and developing your talents.

So we're going to do 3 sections and cover the material in those sections.

Where do you, which 1 of these 3, okay, let's go back, sorry monkeys.

Okay, Which 1 of these 3 do you see yourself in right now?

Which phase do you identify with the most?

I mean, you have no clue, you're just on stage 1, you're trying to find your life calling.

Or maybe you know where the direction of it is, but you don't know exactly, you need some education or you're trying to find out how you're going to equip yourself or you may be in your life calling and you want to step up you want to level up so you want to develop.

So let me hear from you Which phase do you feel yourself in right now?

All right, well, we will get warmed up And you can start thinking about which part you're in.

But you're here, and I'm making an assumption you're here because you want to find out at least 1 of these, or in between, or beginning, or after something around here.

So hopefully we're going to give you some tools and some ideas of how you can go to the next level.

But before we begin, we want to have a word of prayer.

Our Heavenly Father, we thank you that you call each 1 of us to a special place in your work and we pray that you bless our time together, help us to learn something new and to be able to put it into practice that we can see results from as we cooperate with you we thank you in Jesus name, Amen.

So our first section we're looking at how do we even find our life calling?

What did you want to be when you were younger?

I had on my list a garbage man, a builder, electrician, a filmmaker, a Lego builder, a lumberjack, physiotherapist, and policeman.

Whatever we thought we should do when we were younger, Some of these ideas carry on with us.

What do you think God's calling for you is right now?

Right now, what is God's calling for you?

Does anyone have an idea of somewhere God wants you to be or to do?

Could be in a field, you know, something medical or something creative or something technology or it could be in a specific place or any anyone.

Well, I need to get a little bit of feedback from you so I know, I mean, I have pre-planned material, but It's helpful to know what are you looking for.

This is not a TV show where you just watch me and I perform seminar presenter.

You fire questions and I will try to answer them.

All right, so I've split the first phase into 2, becoming aware and seeking to discover.

There are moments in our life where something happens that causes us to think and change our perspective.

I had 2 of these reference points or turning points in my life.

1 was when I was born, I had some complication where I had difficulty breathing or something happened where I had to go to emergency and it was life-threatening.

In fact, the doctor who was involved in my case, his daughter had died of the similar thing just a few days earlier and they were pressurizing my mother to christen me, you know, in case I died.

My mom had just recently become Adventist, my parents actually, and her faith was like burning a fireball.

And she said, if Jesus wants him to live, he will live.

And so I went off in the ambulance and it was kind of blue and it was whatever the case was, I don't remember.

But the next day when I came back, the nurse said, you know, that cheeky little boy of yours, he just wanted a ride in the ambulance, because as soon as he got in there, he just cleared up and he went normal, and there was nothing wrong with him.

And so I've always had this story kind of in the background of my life when things have gone wrong or I've been uncertain of where am I going, I always reference that point, what I call the turning point, and I think, you know, God has something for me.

Each 1 of us has a unique place in God's work in his heart.

The second time, the second turning point that I had was when I was 5.

My cousin, she was only 16 and decided, with my uncle, went to learn how to drive.

And so we went, we were with my brother and cousin and another uncle.

We went to this industrial estate and we got out while she was driving around.

And well, I was standing there near a field and suddenly the car lost control.

My cousin lost control of the vehicle and started heading towards the field where I was standing.

While my brother was on 1 side and he hopped over on 1 side, didn't think to grab me while he was at it.

Johannes Axelsson

How to Use Science-Based Creation to Win Confidence- Part 1

Because of his belief in evolution, he doesn't even understand, he can't even begin to understand the meaning of that God loves you.

I mean, even if he, on a quite like, on a personal level, he can, yeah, okay, maybe someone loves me.

But this is just nonsense because God doesn't exist.

Well that's what I've been taught from childhood, that we have evolved.

And even though there are many Christians who say that, who believe in theistic evolution, that God used evolution to create.

What everyone, everyone else thinks is that evolution proves that God does not exist, because it shows that God is not necessary for our world to exist.

Many people think that this begins in school.

When I say from childhood, maybe you thought, yeah, in school.

But wait a minute, I didn't hear about it in school until 7th grade.

Or actually I didn't hear much about it at all until I went to high school, gymnasium.

But We hear about this way sooner, way earlier than the school years.

He's about to start public school and yet he already knows about evolution, the Big Bang, that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago and that people evolved from apes.

I mean, if you sit down with your kids when they're watching children's programs, you will notice that here and there you get these bits of things where they talk about how old the earth is.

There's billions of years old and that there were dinosaurs that lived millions of years ago.

And that lays the foundation for this whole paradigm, this whole worldview.

And when they come to school, they get this message every day.

Of course, they've got the days in the wrong order in this picture, but you get the picture.

Every day they are fed with the same message in 1 of the textbooks or in something that the teacher says, but usually comes from the textbook.

Have you ever experienced, raise your hand if you've ever felt like like the textbook of the teacher is saying that the Bible is wrong.

Maybe they didn't say like the Bible is wrong but in there it says that yeah yeah long ago people or like 100 years ago people believed this and they were not so smart back then but now we know better you know.

So every day there we are our children are being fed with this message.

And even, you see, even on the free day when they're home from school, while they're watching TV, of course they might do that all of these days.

Every day, and then when they come to church and someone tells them, okay, let's study the Bible.

I mean, I already know the Bible is wrong.

How do we start to get them thinking that no, the Bible isn't wrong?

Since they have been taught that evolution is true and the Bible is wrong, we need to twist this around.

It's not enough to say, No, the Bible is right.

We need to actually also be able to say, no, evolution is false.

And why is this, why again is this important?

We already said it's important to unplug these ears of the people we're trying to witness to.

There is another level explaining why this is important.

The removal of the 10 began with the attack on the 6, on the 6 days.

It must have been ages like thousand days in in 1 day.

And then from that, it gets bigger and bigger, ages longer and longer ages.

And eventually people start questioning the Bible altogether.

That eventually we say that, well, we don't need the Bible at all in our lives.

Maybe it's even immoral, what the Bible is teaching.

This is what happens when the biblical creation story was being under attack.

But of course, the main issue here today, what we want to learn about is how to unplug those fingers from his ears so that he can hear this message that he really needs to hear and understand because he's not hearing it he's hearing it yeah he's saying that that the God loves me but God doesn't exist we need to change that and how do we do that It seems like a big mountain to climb if you talk to a person and they have been taught for so many years, day after day, that evolution is true and the Bible is wrong.

How do you change that if you only have 5 minutes to talk to a person?

Do you feel like it could be possible for a person to switch like that and say, hey, maybe evolution is false.

Anything is possible with God and with the Holy Spirit to guide and impress the hearts and to guide us in our words to this person that we want to witness to.

And of course, there is not 1 model that will be the answer for every person.

But I think, and I really hope that today here, I may give you some advice, some way to start thinking around this, so at least that this won't feel like a big mountain that you can't climb.

Instead of, wow, maybe this is the day when I get the chance to tell someone that the Bible is actually true.

Okay, before I give you the how, I want to talk a little bit more about this.

Why can't we just talk about, well the Bible says.

I think that, of course, creation, what we teach, must be Bible-based.

I mean, it's not even here because it's so obvious for us that it has to be founded on the Bible.

But why does it have to be science-based?

Well, the thing is that people today, they believe that the Bible, since they have this view that the Bible is in a conflict with science, We need to somehow dig around that and help them realize that no, it's not in a conflict.

This man is saying Bible believers can't be scientists.

There is 1 man named Bill Nye who's very famous.

Richard Dawkins is a scientist, but he's not a professor.

He has researched popular opinion about science.

In the same way, there's a celebrity named Bill Nye in the United States.

And he's not that kind of scientist, but he's appearing on TV shows and making different arguments.

And right now, his main argument is that we need to stop this creationism trend because if people believe in creation then all technology will be gone and our nation will collide and collapse.

We really need people to believe evolution because otherwise nothing works.

But he never really explains why is evolution helping us make new cell phones and satellites and so on.

Because actually quite the opposite of what this man is saying is true.

Because historically Science was based on the Bible and people who really believe what the Bible said, literally six-day creation.

This is Francis Bacon, he's famous for establishing the scientific method to say that this is how we determine what is scientifically true.

And he said that there are 2 revelations that reveal God.

How to Run Effective Community-Based Cooking Schools

We're going to be focusing on what I would call nutrition evangelism.

I think we have a wonderful opportunity as Seventh-day Adventists to reach out into our communities and get acquainted with people, make friends, and lead them to the Lord through their interest in better food and eating better.

It's a very interesting area of endeavor, 1 that I have enjoyed immensely over the years and that my wife and I have done a great deal in this area.

And so we'll just share some ideas and some concepts with you.

This is not long enough in terms of a full training program as we typically do it.

We only have 3 hours, so it'll be an overview, give you some ideas, and hopefully give you some inspiration and motivation to go out and become active in this area of outreach.

As we begin, I would just invite you to bow your heads with me in a word of prayer.

Father in Heaven, we recognize that our own efforts are insufficient and we need your strength in everything that we do.

And so we invite you to be here in this room along with the other rooms where seminars are taking place, that you would speak to our hearts and minds, strengthen us and motivate us, that we can serve you more faithfully and that we can carry out the mission that you have given to us in these last days of this earth's history is our prayer in Jesus' name, amen.

I stand here today only because somebody was willing to do a cooking school.

I will tell you the story, a very short version, very quickly.

My grandparents lived in the city of Calcutta.

They had never been to church in their lives.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

Is Balanced Health Ministry Possible?

1h

How to Equip Yourself and Develop Talents for Your Life Calling

1h 31m

How to Use Science-Based Creation to Win Confidence- Part 1

1h 30m

How to Run Effective Community-Based Cooking Schools

3h 24m

How to Find Bible-Hungry People

1h

03. Biblical Missionaries: The Unlikely Missionary

42m

Cancer, Crisis, and the Cross: Part 2

57m

The Atheist Who Found God: Part 1

1h

Emotional Intelligence- A Case Study

29m

How to Improve Your Emotional Intelligence

29m

The Little Gospel

54m

The Idols of the Internet

30m

Sound Doctrine