ASI 2016: Called. Chosen. Committed.

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Health & Family

Edwin Nebblett

Maria Nebblett

Mentoring Godly Men

Father in heaven, we just want to thank you for the privilege we have to open your word and understand how your principles can be practically applied in our lives, in our homes, in our church, and in our community that we have the privilege to serve.

We invite your Spirit's presence here now, that your Spirit will teach us whatever it is we need to know, and how we may implement it in our own situation.

Maybe we should amend that and say that the principles come from the Word of God, but these are principles that have been applied by us during our lives in New Mexico.

So the first question that we want to know is, Why do we want to talk about this today?

We believe that we should be talking about this because manhood is in trouble.

And there's no better place to look at this than in the home.

Statistics in North America show that 1 third of children do not live with their biological father.

In a manless home, a child is 4 times more likely to live in poverty, more likely to suffer emotional and behavioral problems, 2 times greater infant mortality in that home, more likely to go to prison.

A child is more likely to go to prison, more likely to commit crime, 7 times more likely to become pregnant as a teen, and more likely to face abuse and neglect.

And of those fathers that are in the home, how many are engaged?

I mean, they may be in the home, but are they there in the home engaged?

Well, you see, I was engaged in many activities outside of our home, instead of working intentionally with my wife years ago to raise godly sons and daughters.

My attitude changed when I realized that I would not hear the words, well done, good and faithful servant, when I was asked that message in Jeremiah 13, 20, where is the flock that was given thee, thy beautiful flock.

That really was a call to my heart and as a result of that I began to pay much more attention.

I'm not trying to say that the activities that I was doing were ungodly, They were not.

Busy as a family physician, doing a lot of teaching, involved in church planting, involved in evangelism, health evangelism, involved on television, Lifestyle magazine, and Janice's Attic.

I enjoyed it all, but what about my flock?" And that was the question that was before us.

So, in order to answer the question, we need to be clear what godly manhood looks like, and the place to go, we believe, is the Word of God.

In 2 Timothy 3.16 we read, "...all Scripture is breathed out by God, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

Now you know, many of us are familiar with Proverbs 31, which is well known to detail many attributes of an excellent wife.

However, I believe that you don't get to be an excellent wife unless you have first become or are becoming an excellent daughter.

Well, the same principle, I think, applies for becoming a godly man.

First of all, a godly man has to be committed to following after Christ.

And we believe that for this, this is the greatest need in the world today.

The greatest want, you've heard this passage in Book Education, page 57, the greatest want of the world is the want of men, men who will not be bought or sold, men who in their inmost souls are true and honest, men who do not fear to call sin by its right name, men whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole, men who will stand for the right, though the heavens fall." So how do we, if we are interested in raising godly sons, do this?

Well, first of all, we know that Satan will attack.

You know, as long as we seek to mentor godly men, regardless of their age, we need to be aware of the attacks of the enemy.

But I say that we should not focus on Satan's attacks, but rather on the power that is available to each and every 1 of us in our situations through divine grace and through God's nature to combine with our feeble efforts to develop our sons into the men that God would have them to be.

There is no limit to spiritual attainments in and through being partakers of the divine nature.

This is the greatest, the highest inducement ever offered to man.

His identity is hid with Christ in God, and he has that mind that was in Christ Jesus and he has that high pure and elevated thoughts and for he has grown into the likeness of Christ that is godliness.

So today we will seek to paint a portrait of a godly man, and we are going to cover 7 points as we look at some of the critical, what we believe are the more critical attributes, these are by no means all of them, of his character and discuss some of the disciplines that helped to build such a character in childhood and later on in adulthood if a young man was not initially raised in an environment that would help to give him that right foundation.

So the portrait of a godly man, These are the 7 points that we want to cover.

The humility, integrity, honor, diligence and perseverance, self-sacrifice and self-discipline, and moral purity.

I just want to put in a good word for mentoring because as Edwin mentioned, some of the blessings and the privilege of having a foundation in a godly home and having been able to watch a godly father to live with him, to receive his mentoring.

A godly father is the best mentor for a godly boy to help him become a man of God.

But many in this room, in my home, my brother, I, we did not have a godly father to look up to.

So it was much later in life that we came to the convictions that we now have.

So I just want to make an appeal to you, especially to the men, since the purpose of this seminar today is particularly mentoring godly men.

If you are those men that did have that blessing and privilege, pass it on.

God has given man an identity which involves many things, including being a leader, being his representative, to meet the needs of a broken world.

It's very difficult in this day and age to invest time in extra things.

But take the time as you can, if nothing else, in praying for young men in your life that you know need mentorship.

For those of you who are adults, you've come to know the Lord in your adulthood, again, the benefits of having a mentor, a godly older man that you respect and trust is incredibly positive.

And there is also a very rich source of mentoring.

Our boys, all of our children have benefited incredibly by reading the biographies of men and women of God of all ages that have been mentored by God themselves.

We are going to have on our website, we meant to do it before we came here, didn't have time to do it, a list, a list of biographies, a list of, a recommended list of materials that you can read If you're a young man and you didn't have the foundation, or even if you did have the foundation, our young people do this all the time.

They look at the lives of others, worthy lives.

They are inspired by the testimony of those people.

So if you are now young, you have boys, girls in your home, this is the time to take very seriously your role.

Your example is far greater and more impactful than the words you can speak.

So make sure that through the life that you are living, you are mentoring your sons just as much as with the admonitions that you give them.

And if you did not have, if you don't feel that you are skilled at doing that mentoring, ask the Lord to help you.

And as in my case, I asked my wife to help me.

That's what I did because I didn't know how to do it.

And many things I knew what to do, but there were some things I didn't.

And the Lord blessed me by giving a godly woman who could help me.

So the first thing that we want to do is to help our young men to understand that they draw their identity as a member of the body of God's peculiar people.

We've got to remember this world is not our home.

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, and holy nation, a peculiar people that ye should show forth the praises of him who have called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." So we draw our identity from God.

We need to help our young men to understand that they need to strive all that God purposed in creating them as it's revealed in Scripture rather than what worldly philosophies are shaping men to be in our current age.

1 Thessalonians 2 11, for you know like a father with his children that we exhorted each 1 of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

So through the study of passages such as Ephesians 5, 1 Timothy 3 and 4, 1 Timothy chapter 3 and chapter 4 and Titus chapter 2, we discover that God calls man to be a servant leader who becomes first of all the head of his own home, seeks to rule well as Christ would have us to lead in self-sacrificing spirit.

The second thing that we have to understand is that the godly man, we need to help our young men, ourselves, to understand that we need to exemplify this servant leadership and to love sacrificially.

Now we want to take a look at an example and I think I left my book in that bag, or did I bring, no I didn't, I left the book in the bag.

I can walk, oh thank you dear, from history of a very worthy, we call it, a mention worthy man.

Since the nature of his leadership as Testified by those who work closely with him and were under his leadership have many similarities to the self-sacrificing servant leadership of Christ So I just want to read for you, this is 1 of those books called Boyhood and Beyond by Bob Schultz.

In 1916, Ernest Shackleton and his men approached the coast of Antarctica.

They were attempting to be the first party to hike across the continent.

It was particularly cold, a very cold year, with much more ocean ice than usual.

With only 1 day's sail to their destination, the ocean froze around their ship called Endurance.

For nearly a year, the ice held them captive before it crushed and sank the boat.

Well, the crew camped out on the ice until it broke to pieces in the warming weather.

So climbing into 3 small lifeboats, the 28 men took to the open sea.

Their desperate struggle was only allowed them to reach a barren island called Elephant Island.

Unless somebody went for help, every 1 of them would die.

Well, the nearest source of help, according to this, was 800 miles away on South George Island.

Well, Shackleton and 5 of his men attempted the challenge.

He was not about to put anybody else through something that he himself was not willing to do.

And in a 22-foot makeshift sailboat, they sailed some of the most treacherous waters in the world.

They battled hurricane winds and 140-foot waves, freezing rain built up 18 inches of ice on their small craft without modern navigation equipment, and with only a few good readings of their sextant, they miraculously reached the shore of South George Island.

So, even from sea level, they said, the small party had to climb a range of uncharted snow-capped peaks to the whaling station on the other side.

Exhaustion and hunger tracked them like wolves, forcing them to gamble for their lives.

On the slope of sheer ice, they had to make a choice, either die from exposure or lock themselves into a human toboggan and slide down a steep slope into the fog without knowing what was going to be at the bottom.

Though Shackleton and his small band were saved from death by reaching the whaling station, he would not rest until all his men were safe.

It took months and 4 different ships, but he safely rescued every man.

To tell you, these kinds of stories are the kind of stories where you don't tell your own story, but you hear what other people have to say about it.

Debbie Baker

Angeline D. Brauer

Allen Lloyd

Don Mackintosh

Donna McNeilus

Debbie Young

Juggling Work, Home, Family, and Ministry: Finding the Balance

Father in heaven, we invite you to be here this afternoon to guide our thoughts and to direct us.

We each come from different circumstances and yet have similar struggles.

So we ask that here amongst us, we have fathers and mothers, daughters, sons, wives, husbands, all of us from different stages in life.

We ask that you be with our panelists today, that you'll help them to find a balance as we talk about these struggles in our lives, that we might be able to serve you better in all areas.

So open our hearts and help us to hear with our hearts as not just our ears.

And we just thank you for an extra measure of grace just now, Lord.

Would like to take a moment, this seminar is called Juggling Work, Family, Home and Ministry, Finding the Balance.

And I must confess, it is a topic that I struggle with and have truly very few answers.

And so, I have a great group of panelists today that are gonna help us navigate through this question that all of us struggle with in 1 way or another.

Before we get started, I want to say that I had an opportunity to really think about what this word balance means and the idea that it's an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright or steady.

How many of us want to remain upright, steady in our life?

A condition in which different elements are equal or in correct proportion may not always be equal as we think of equal.

So today as we start discussing this topic, you know, I pray that my heart will be open to hearing maybe things a little differently than the norm, than the way the world's paradigm sees things, and helps me to see the way God sees things.

So we're gonna turn the time over to our panelists.

They're gonna introduce themselves and share a little bit about their experience and their paradigm from where they are.

I am the new Health Ministries Director for the North America division and I'm very happy to be here with you all and really I came here because I wanted to learn how to balance work and family and home and everything else but certainly the Lord has given I think each of 1 of us some experiences where we can glean those lessons.

And I think 1 of the important things is to remember that the Lord wants us to serve in all of these various capacities, not simply for our own selves, in the sense for our own accomplishment or sense of well-being.

Certainly those things I think are byproducts, but because he wants us to find in him the perfect source of balance.

As we engage in various activities, of course, it's important to first pray and ask the Lord, is this what you really want me to do?

Because if he is calling us to do something, he's calling us to be a parent, he's calling us to serve in a certain ministry, then he will equip us to carry out each and every 1 of those tasks.

And also, as we do that, to make sure that we keep him primary, not forsaking our personal devotion time with him, I found that that is 1 key that is, that if ever left out, everything else begins to crumble.

So making sure we have our personal devotional time with him on a regular daily basis.

And really another key I think is also recognizing the fact that I myself am not the answer to every question, that I am 1 piece of a larger puzzle, a larger framework, and finding others to join together on that journey, the work, the ministry, even in the family, making sure that we're working together, walking together.

I'm Neil Nedley and have worked with all 4 of these aspects in trying to balance it all.

And 1 piece of advice I would like to give is marry someone who works harder than you do.

I am privileged, she's not here today, actually she's somewhere, she's probably attending another seminar where her husband isn't presenting.

But she of course is a Romanian girl that doesn't know what rest is until she is sleeping.

And 1 of our mottos has been, if the Lord giveth you something to do, if your hand findeth something to do, do it how?

And so really we have to put all of our might into these 4 aspects of life.

And it wasn't the Lord's original plan that these 4 things be competing against each other?

You know, I think the world views them as a competition.

Is it going to be work, or is it going to be family, or is it going to be your marriage?

You know, and are you going to, you know, have to sacrifice 1 for the other.

And you know, the original plan in the agricultural world was that children would be working right alongside their parents, and we'd be mentoring while we are working.

And that we would be doing things together as a family unit, even in ministry, and not having that be separate.

But since not all of us are privileged to work in an agricultural society or an agricultural background, which is more the ideal in regards to doing all 4 of these things.

I've actually bemoaned the fact that I can't have my kids with me in the examining room when I'm doing, when I'm seeing people and doing physical exams and doing procedures on them, but for obvious reasons, we don't allow those types of situations to occur.

And so in some respects, as a result of that, it can be seen as a competition.

And so there's times when I'm when I am working and doing consultations with patients that I can't be, you know, with my family at the time and doing things with them.

And so in reality it requires, you know, structure.

And 1 of the things I would just like to point out, Angie pointed it out as well, but when we're structuring our day, the Lord actually told us in Genesis how the days operate.

It's the what and what made the first day.

And so the best way to set up your day is to have a right evening.

And that evening should have devotionals and it should be another thing that I would highly recommend if at all possible early to bed early to rise.

If you want to be working with all of your might and working well you need adequate rest and the biggest reason for lack of adequate rest is 2 late nights.

And often people get into burning the midnight oil because they are entertaining themselves in the evening.

The entertainment television and internet and all of those things are being run in the evening and they actually adversely affect our sleep, they adversely affect our devotional life.

And so 1 of the ways in which I've been able to be, to the degree of success I've been in these 4 areas, was as a result of my father making sure that we did not have entertainment television in the home.

I'm not sure my mother was happy with them either.

But that was what happened in our home and I have thanked him many times since in regards to how my brain and body developed in ways that it would have never had that had I been gravitated to those screens.

And that's 1 of the things in family, we need to limit our screen time in families significantly and among our children, and have it just be useful and practical.

The other aspect of things is not only the evening devotional, but the morning devotional.

And how I like to do my devotionals is actually the way Christ recommended where we go into our closet and we pray out loud.

The reason why he wanted us in our closet is so we can stay focused in prayer.

And I read the word as I'm praying, and when I see a promise, I claim it to God out loud, and when I see a command, I ask the Lord if I'm in compliance with that command.

And he can answer me, and the prayer life goes effortless that way and it gives a great start to the day.

In fact, the evening in the morning I can guarantee anyone who's actually followed this recommendation of mine has told me that they actually feel far better at the end of that session than they did watching their most favorite movie.

And you know people will watch a movie to relax and try to quote get balance, but that's not the type of balance that the Lord wanted us to have.

The type of balance where we would balance effortful work with reflection was actually in time and prayer and time with him and the Word of God.

And so those are a few essentials that we've had in balancing these 4 things.

When I've been able to speak and take my family with me, I've done that a lot.

In fact, I've made it mandatory even on international speaking tours that my wife go along with me as well.

The other thing is meal time should be a family event.

Don't just have meal times at any odd time.

There's a time for the closet devotional, but before that there should be a family worship.

Make them short, but what I've noticed is a 10 or 15 minute worship that I have planned usually turns into an hour in our home because my boys are asking questions.

And it becomes a very engaging event with a lot of dialogue and a lot of learning.

And we're told to teach by precept and example.

This is 1 thing I learned from my father when things would go wrong in the church or some other place and it became public.

He analyzed it as part of a family worship.

How could this have been done differently?

And as we, instead of just accepting bad that happens out there, let's learn from the bad.

And when there are good things, let's point that out as well.

And these things that are happening in the news or public events can be great teaching moments for our kids to give them analysis of things as we go forward.

So those are a few essentials that I have found in balancing these 4 things, and I know we'll have a chance to speak more as well.

You've got your own microphone there, Debbie.

Hi, my name is Debbie Young and my husband and I live in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

We have a media ministry, Quiet Moment Ministries, and I guess, okay, and I guess that I would call myself 1 of the sandwich generation.

David DeRose

Helping Hypertension, Healing Communities

Father in heaven, we are so grateful that we can come together today.

You're so interested in just having us pause for a moment in the midst of all the wonderful activity at ASI and just to tarry in your presence.

Thank you that you're always available to hear our call.

Father, you know what each person in this room needs.

You know what needs to be communicated and how it needs to be communicated.

So we trust you with the electronics, with our minds, with our thoughts, with our time.

And we praise you that as a result of what happens in the next minutes or hour or longer, we can trust that you've worked.

Well, there's absolutely no question, absolutely no question, that 1 of the world's great epidemics is 1 in which we find ourselves in its midst.

That epidemic is high blood pressure or as we call it in medical circles, hypertension.

Statistically speaking, If we were to look at the United States today, what is the likelihood, if we're like the average American, and hopefully we're not, but if we are like the average American, statistically speaking, what is the likelihood that in our lifetime we personally will have high blood pressure?

And your answers are dependent on how long you're expecting to live.

If you look at the United States population, if you look at those over 65, about 65% have high blood pressure.

Now, I'm not quite sure that if you get to 99, it's 99% of 99 year olds.

But you understand it's a staggering epidemic.

We are in the midst of an epidemic and as Seventh-day Adventists, we talk about ministering to people's needs.

So if we're really interested in ministering to people's needs, I would suggest to you we have to be interested about what?

We have to be interested in high Blood pressure.

Well, you know, the Lord has interesting ways of connecting the dots.

We've been praying a lot over the last month.

Not that we weren't praying a lot before that, But we were praying with a specific thing in mind.

We thought, no problem, we're going to have a new book out on high blood pressure before ASI.

Series

Health & Family

Juggling Work, Home, Family, and Ministry: Finding the Balance

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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