Preparing to witness and share your testimony- 

Go and Sow 2017

<p>Preparing to witness and share your testimony- </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>

Amazing Facts Ministries Canada

Herb Larsen

Sharing Your Testimony

Okay, why don't we start with a word of prayer again here, just to get going.

I know it's just, you know, sometimes we need to have that to settle down a little bit.

Dear Father God, we just want to thank you so much for this incredible weekend.

We want to thank you so much for the experiences that have come out of this weekend.

Father, it's all because of you and it's all because of you, Jesus, and we just want to thank you for being here and letting us have your presence.

And Holy Spirit, we just give, as you have been already this morning, we just continue to ask that you would take control of these meetings, we could take control of our minds, and you do the speaking, and we rebuke you, Satan, in the name of Jesus, and by the power and the blood that He spilled on Calvary, you and your evil forces again have no right to be here, so get lost in the name of Jesus.

I want to start with just 1 reference here.

Continuing a little bit from last night, there was some stuff I would have liked to have got into before we move on.

I think what I'm going to do here is I'll talk for maybe half an hour and open up for questions because, you know, I try to allow the Holy Spirit to lead in whatever the Holy Spirit thinks needs to be heard.

But there's sometimes that people have specific questions, or I may have brought something up that leaves you hanging, you know, that's very possible, as you saw the first night, may leave you hanging a little bit.

And so, you know, I just want, if you have questions, fine.

You know, I'm not saying I'm authority at anything, but at the same time, I've had a lot of years of experience in ministry, and I'm more than happy to attempt to answer your questions.

The first reference I'd like to read here is a commission given to Paul.

And if it's given to Paul, you know it's gonna be given to all of us.

To show how simple, because what I'm trying to do here is to remove, like last night especially, remove the fear factor that comes with thinking that you have to be knowledgeable, you have to be this, you have to be that, all these pre-qualifiers, because that's what we do sometimes As an organization, as Milton was talking earlier, sometimes organization gets in the way of ministry.

I mean, I still get this, believe it or not, now and then.

I get people come up to me and say, oh yeah, your dad was a pastor.

Have you ever thought of entering the ministry?

And I'm like, you know, and I'm saying, okay, so by entering the ministry, what are you saying?

And I'm thinking, okay, I'm not against formal theology, I wish I would have had some, but I didn't.

It doesn't matter because I have found a phenomenal tutor that's just like unbelievable by the name of the Holy Spirit and so I literally pray down the Holy Spirit.

I am not afraid to address the Holy Spirit directly and say, look, I need insight in this thing.

And like I briefly talked about last night, I use my imagination on everything.

And I pray, I specifically pray down the Holy Spirit to let me see, feel, taste everything I'm reading.

Because like I said, I'm a visual person.

If I see something happen, it's etched there for good.

If somebody tells me about something, well, you know, I can probably keep the details as long as I visualize what they said.

So when I'm studying scripture, I'm constantly praying down the Holy Spirit to let me see between the lines, let me see everything that's going on here.

And the Holy Spirit does open my mind up.

But like I briefly alluded to last night a little bit, the devil has come up with so many things that destroy your creativity and destroy your imagination that he has stolen the greatest asset God has given us to apply to scriptural learning, and that is the power of your imagination.

And 1 of the greatest deterrents there is, is television.

I could tell you that, and the 3 screens.

You know, now Nielsen's, who track television watching, are tracking 3 screens.

Number 2 is the internet, the computer screen.

And the interesting thing is the average American in Canada is right there of course is about 4 hours a day on television.

So now when the other 2 screens came along what is interesting, they're not displacing that 4 hours of television, They're adding to it.

So that the average person in Iowa is spending like 1.7 hours a day on the computer screen and another roughly hour a day on the phone.

And if any of you have traveled anywhere, you don't even have to travel.

You know, I sat and I got a picture of this family, it's on my iPhone there, because I was in an airport and I was waiting, and I went to get something to eat.

And here's a family of 5, 3 kids and the parents.

And I sat there for a half an hour eating my sandwich and not 1 moment during that time did anybody say anything to all 3 had smartphones, dumb phones, whatever, and the whole works were sitting there.

And I've spoken at a lot of our colleges around the world, I mean, Walla Walla, Andrews University, and Southern, and La Sierra, and overseas, and Ecobee Home, and Avondale in Sweden there, and Avondale in Australia and stuff.

And here's what's interesting, especially evening meetings you see this more.

I'll be sitting there, we're getting ready for the meeting, it's dark in the church or wherever we're having the meeting at the colleges, and I look out at the sea of students and everybody's faces are lit up.

The good news is I don't hear much whispering like I used to hear a lot of whispering.

But the point is, is what it does erodes your creativity.

People pay me to daydream, that's exactly what my job is.

Because my greatest asset in school from probably grade 4 on was daydreaming.

And so when I got finished, I figured what am I going to do?

I didn't learn much when I got my degree in biochemistry, but I thought, okay, my greatest thing I got out of school was all that daydreaming.

I'm going to figure out how to apply that to make a living off it.

So people come and say, can you create this, can you create that machine?

And this is years ago I figured this out.

We literally had parents telling us, your kids are gonna be culturally devoid when they're adults, because we didn't have television.

And so we just thought, okay, we're just quiet.

But boy, I wanna tell you Now, I would just love to say I told you so, but I'm trying to be more diplomatic than that.

And so we have a television set, of course, and I have the dish, the 3 ABN thing and all that, which I maybe watch, what, once a week?

Primarily because I never could figure out how to fish the cord through the floor, so we have to unroll it and plug it into the back.

But the thing is this, sometimes when I travel, and I'm bringing this up because it relates to the Bible, obviously.

When I travel sometimes, I'm sitting in a hotel room, I'm bored, what am I gonna do?

And in the evening, I just can't Bible study in the evening.

My mind is mush, as you saw the other night.

So sometimes I just wanna let it be mush.

2, 3 hours, or we're at home watching a video or whatever, 2, 3 hours for 3 or 4 nights in a row and I come home and I have to do something ultra creative, I can't, I cannot bring my imagination to the level I need to perform.

And if I have to do something really ultra-creative, I have to literally, I have to stay away from media for a week.

And then all of a sudden my imagination comes back.

But, 1 of the greatest assets I've applied to Bible study is the power of my imagination and visualizing things and asking questions, why, why, why?

But the scriptural reference here, so what I'm saying about that is, is don't allow Satan to erode the very faculties you need in order to understand and visualize with scripture.

And here's the thing, I can't memorize scripture.

I've tried this on the dashboard of my truck.

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Sharing Your Testimony

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