Through her personal testimony, Danielle hopes to share vital truths about the importance of a life of purity. This presentation outlines some of the influences which shaped her views of life, spiritually, sexuality, and ultimately of God. Her message is a testament to the cleansing power of Jesus Christ.

ECYC 2015: Christ In Me

<p>Through her personal testimony, Danielle hopes to share vital truths about the importance of a life of purity. This presentation outlines some of the influences which shaped her views of life, spiritually, sexuality, and ultimately of God. Her message is a testament to the cleansing power of Jesus Christ.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Eastern Canada Youth Conference

Morning Devotional

Danielle Harrison

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.

I think we're all intrinsically designed to have music as a part of our worship experience and it's easy to use music to worship the wrong things.

This is actually a quote from a magazine called The Advocate.

And Madonna was interviewed and asked about her hints towards homosexuality in her music videos.

She said, They, meaning the viewers, will digest it on a lot of different levels.

Some people will see it and be disgusted by it, but maybe they'll be unconsciously aroused by it.

If people keep seeing it and seeing it and seeing it, eventually it's not going to be such a strange thing.

And I think she kind of understood something that us as consumers might not always understand, that the subconscious mind had been studied for almost 100 years at this point, and they were using it, at first to sell their products, but now also to sell their views.

And this is happening more and more in the society that we live in today.

And so this quote would have been taken around the same time that I was watching her music videos on MTV.

Now we didn't have Jesus in our home, but we did have the world in abundance through television and radio and Hollywood movies.

I'm gonna turn away from that influence and look at a more holy 1.

This is found in the book Appeal to Mothers on page 11.

She says, mothers, you cannot be too careful in preventing your children from learning low habits.

It's easier to learn evil than to eradicate it after it is learned.

Neighbors may permit their children to come to your house, to spend the evening and the night with your children, and here is a trial and a choice for you, to run the risk of offending your neighbors by sending their children to their own home, or gratify them and let them lodge with your children, and thus expose them to be instructed in that knowledge, which would be a lifelong curse to them." Now when we look at this quote contextually, how it's found in the context of the chapter, we see that this lifelong curse that she's referring to, She's actually talking about what she calls self-abuse.

The medical term that we use today is masturbation.

And my mother didn't know this counsel when I was growing up.

Unfortunately, I was permitted to have frequent sleepovers, and this did bring a curse into my life at a very young age.

My parents divorced when I was 6 years old, and we moved into some low-income housing.

And it was there in that development that I met a young girl.

But she told me some things later that led me to realize that she was actually being sexually abused by someone in her life.

And so she was learning things about her body that she should not have known.

And as a result of those experiences, she started sharing those things with me.

And so I also started learning things about my body that I shouldn't have known.

So I started interacting with the same sex sexually at the age of 7, and masturbation soon became an addiction for me.

This was a stronghold in my life for many years until eventually I gave my heart to Jesus and he established me in victory.

My mother and my sister found out that my relationship with this girl was not quite what it should be.

They didn't know the extent of what was going on between her and I, but they just didn't know how to approach the subject.

I think a lot of us, when it comes to sexuality, we, in the world, we just joke and laugh about it because we don't know how to be serious about this topic.

They started poking fun at me and and making jokes and saying, Daniel kisses girls, ha ha ha.

And you can imagine how humiliating this was for me.

And I thought this was something I needed to be ashamed of and I needed to hide.

And so I made the decision in my mind that no 1 else would know about my feelings or practices, even though they continued and other girls came and went as the years went by.

When I was 9 years old, I was actually baptized.

I had been attending church unfrequently with a family friend.

And the pastor sat us down and he said, do you believe in Jesus?

But for me, as I wanted to be a good girl, I wanted to do the right thing.

I had learned a little bit about sexual purity by this time, and so I wanted to stay a virgin until I was married.

And I didn't want to do alcohol or drugs because I had seen the way that alcoholism had interrupted my family's experience and been a big factor in my parents' separation.

But unfortunately, I didn't have a relationship with Jesus.

I didn't know how to make those promises real in my life.

And to have a relationship with someone, what do you have to do?

You have to come to know who they are and what they're really all about.

And through that trust develops love and commitment.

And this was not an experience that I had had with Jesus.

I only had a superficial knowledge of who he was, and I really wasn't making that commitment to him on that day when I was baptized.

And so those promises that I made to myself, they melted away very quickly.

Within just a few short years I was really struggling with depression and trying to just figure out who I was in the world, where I fit in, and what my place was.

I was struggling with depression because I was realizing that I couldn't be that good girl that I wanted to be.

I was making a lot of bad decisions in my life.

I was choosing the wrong friends and I was getting into trouble already.

And, you know, I had gone on and then off of antidepressant medication.

I had started smoking cigarettes when I was only 11, and by this time in my life, I was smoking habitually, and, you know, I just, I was really, really struggling with the person that I wanted to be but the person that I actually was.

And in that place in my life, I was trying to fit in somewhere in the crowd.

And I moved to Washington State, up in the Pacific Northwest, where kind of anything goes, and everybody lives out loud.

And I was seeing some fringe groups that I wasn't exposed to growing up in Wyoming.

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.

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.

Series

Morning Devotional

Sexual Purity: Lost and Found

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Timeless Keys to Resilience

The Resiliency Mindset, Part 1

28m

Driving While Under the Influence

48m

Workshop: Dealing with Conflicts In Ministry

Dealing with Conflict and Adversity in Personal Liberty

1h 1m

Experience Versus Scripture

38m

Why Am I a SDA?

4. What the Devil Hates

51m

Breakout 2- Chad & Fadia Kreuzer

5. Freedom and the Frontal Lobe

42m

Sabbath School 4th Quarter 2023: God's Mission My Mission

07 Mission to My Neighbor

20m

Acts

Acts: Baptized By the Spirit

40m

The Faces of the Wicked

51m

Plenary

My Story, His Faithfulness

1h

The Principle of GIGO on Pandemics: Reaping What We Sow

45m

Understanding Difficult Topics

3. The 1000 Years of Peace

1h 10m

Sound Doctrine