ASI 2009: By Knowing Him

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ASI 2009 Youth Meetings

Jessica Frame

From Partyer to Teacher

I don't have a lot of time, so I'm going to fly through.

So I hope you can listen to someone speaking really fast.

And we do have some really good pictures, and I'm going to talk about those and fly through.

But first, I just want to tell you a little tiny bit about myself really quickly, because you know what?

The whole purpose of this is to tell you God has a plan for people's lives, even when you don't know it.

Because like I told you a little bit last night, I was not a Christian growing up.

And it's a shock still today to me where I'm at right now.

Like when they find out I teach in a Christian school, they're like, what?

When I went to college, I started partying when I was really young, partied, partied.

Went to college, it got a lot worse and that's what ended up leading me to becoming a Christian was it got so bad, We'll start the pictures in a minute.

That's about the reservation and like this stuff, I don't have any pictures for it, but it got so bad.

I was partying and stuff and trying to fill this hole inside of me that like partying and dating and all this stuff and doing crazy things.

I was doing everything I could to try to fill some kind of a hole inside of me and nothing was doing it.

And it becomes really frustrating when you're doing that with your life.

I did more drinking and more drugs and it just was, it's like the hole was getting bigger.

And so I got to a point where I just wanted to die.

And I was taking so many different combinations of drugs and stuff just thinking well maybe I just won't wake up and that'll be awesome.

And it would have been fine with me at that point.

And then my dad came down to college and made a surprise visit, realized I was kind of a mess and he's not an Adventist, still isn't, but somebody had stuck a Doug Batchelor prophecy seminar thing in his mailbox and he went to it at the Adventist Church.

This was like 10 years, 15, a little bit more than 10 years ago, and he happened to go to that seminar.

So when he came down to where I was living 15 hours away and saw that I was a mess, he's like, I don't know what to do with you.

And for me to even hear my dad say that was shocking because we didn't go to church growing up.

So it was kind of like, wow, why is dad talking about Jesus?

So he took me to the Adventist Church in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, which is where I went to college and stuff.

And the very first time I went in that church, it was like God surrounded me with people that made me feel like I was not a bad person, and I never stopped going.

And I immediately was like, wow, this is what I needed inside.

And so I quit hanging out with all of my friends.

I was halfway through college, and I literally did not have any friends after that.

Because I had to separate myself when you're doing drugs and stuff.

It's just hard to continually be around that.

And so at that point, I actually tried with my best friend to tell her, I'm going to quit and she made fun of me, actually tried to hit me and was like, what you think you're better than us now?

So at that point I realized, I'm going to have to separate myself from all these people.

The last 2 years of college, I never really made any Christian friends because there weren't a lot of young Christian people at the beach.

And I'll tell you what though, that last 2 years of college, me being alone, not having a lot of friends, but learning about God for the first time in my life at 22, 21 I guess I was, the most fulfilling time in my entire life.

Like you can be completely alone as far as human beings go, but if you have God there and he's working on you, it feels awesome.

And I've never felt as great as I did at that time, and it was wonderful.

For some reason, I changed my major to elementary ed while I was in college.

I hated school up until the day I graduated.

And somehow, I took an Education 101 class, ended up becoming a teacher.

I didn't even tell my dad for a year that I changed my major because he was an art major, didn't want to hurt his feelings and it's like I don't know why I'm doing these things but it's like God was moving me and I didn't even know it.

After college and I started teaching public school I loved it.

I taught in a really disadvantaged school.

I got all the kids that none of the other teachers wanted.

I just enjoyed the challenge of trying to make them want to do good in school and want to do things and be positive.

I loved that job, but still there was something missing.

I worked there for 3 years in the public school, and I loved the job, but I still felt like I kind of wasn't living up to my potential, and I didn't know what to do.

At the end of it, it said my talents were working with disadvantaged children.

And I was like, great, I already knew that.

I thought I was going to find out something that was going to give me a purpose and, you know, lead me on to something a little bit more fulfilling.

And I was kind of sad after that seminar because I already knew that I liked working with disadvantaged children.

Long story short, I used to fly out here to hike a lot because South Carolina is flat and I love the West.

I emailed the conference office here and said, I'm getting ready to come on a hiking trip.

I'd like to see what it's like and join up with it because our church is not doing anything mission-like back east.

I just feel like I want to do something for God.

All I wanted was like a week-long mission trip and ended up, they emailed me back and they're like, there's no mission stuff going on, but you sound like the perfect person for this job.

There's this little school on a reservation, it's been opened 1 year.

There are 4 kids that have been kicked out of public school.

This is what it looked like when I got there.

There's no money, no supplies, but you could live there for free.

You'd have to find your own money and kind of grow the school and find all the money to run the school and just make it into like a real official thing.

Why would she think that someone would want to leave a well-paying job, move across the country away from everybody they know onto a reservation, and why would you do that?

And so Literally, I never gave it another thought.

I kind of made fun of it to my friends and stuff.

I was like, can you believe this lady thought I'd actually do that?

And then I don't even know how long it was later.

Like literally I didn't even think about it.

Somebody was praying for me or something so you know what guys God has a plan for your life and you might not even know it and as long as you're open to him and open to doing what he wants he will work things out and it will shock you and I'm still shocked And that's been 7 years ago since I moved out there.

When I got there, some of you that cooked in the cafeteria today saw that's where the school was, was in the front end.

David Asscherick

Afghanistan

Father in Heaven, what a thrill, what a joy it is to be here with these young people.

And Father, I want to thank you for the testimony tonight and the work and the ministry of Jessica Frame.

Father, I want to thank you for the way that this is ministered to my soul, and it has inspired me and the way that she is ministering to those young people.

Father, even now, wherever they are, whatever those young people are doing, fill them with your Spirit.

Father, may they have the experience of coming to know God through the kindness and the munificence and the magnanimity of Jessica.

Father, may they not see her, but may they see Christ in her.

Bless them financially, Father, and may this work broaden.

May her tribe increase, and may this be exactly the work that all of us are involved in.

In some capacity, whether great or small, may we, every 1 of us, be taking seriously the clothing, the feeding, the visiting, the teaching that we have heard here in Matthew 25.

Help us, Father, tonight as we open Your Word, we pray that You would open us.

We're looking forward to a great presentation tonight, not because of a great presenter, but because of a great message, and that is the Gospel message, the message of Christ, the message of Your own character.

So please bless us now as we come into Your presence.

May we have a rich experience and may we learn to do good by following Him who alone is good.

Is our prayer in Jesus name, let everyone say, Amen.

Okay we're going to begin by playing a little word association game.

I'm going to say a word and you're going to tell me a word that comes to your mind now if we all shout it out At once it's not going to Be very discernible.

I'm not going to be able to understand what you're saying.

So just raise your hand and the word is Afghanistan The word is Afghanistan young lady war God's people Obama.

I don't think there's a lot of oil there though someone else Afghanistan no 1 from this side has said anything yet 9-11 hot Hostility war.

Second question now, Who here has been to Afghanistan?

Okay, so I just met your brother Matthew over there, didn't I?

I asked him the same question since he was the only 1 over there that had actually been there.

So I'm going to put you on the spot here, Emily.

A couple words, a few words, 5 or 6 words.

It's the poorest country I've ever been to.

And it's very hot and dry and it looks a lot like Arizona.

So, so does it look, is it beautiful or it's not beautiful Okay, okay Okay, so you've actually been there good experience apparently it was positive or not really Okay, great You can have this conversation with your brother later, but he said it was beautiful.

His exact words were, lots of pretty places.

Now our thesis tonight is that God can be more than proved, He can be experienced.

And it doesn't work if you've already heard this presentation, but I'd be very curious if anyone who has not heard this presentation or heard me talk about this before can tell me who this man is.

Okay, Violet, I'll buy you dinner anyway.

Yeah, he does look a little like Mick Jagger.

He was sort of born and bred as the son, I believe, of a diplomat in Malaysia.

And very familiar with Islamic culture, fluent in I think 5 or 6 languages, and he got this harebrained idea at the age of 25 years old to walk across Asia.

He walked across the better part of Asia, but there was something taking place.

What was happening in Afghanistan in 2002?

And so what happens is is that he walks the first part of his journey He gets to the border of Afghanistan, but there's no way he can get into this country He's just a lone traveler and so what he does is he he catches an airplane and he flies over to whatever the the rendezvous point was going to be after he came out of Afghanistan, and he walks the remainder of his journey.

Ernestine Finley

Testimony of Ernestine Finley

I am glad to be with such a great group of young people.

And I heard you had a great day yesterday, and helping others.

I also was very glad that you sang that song, what, never part again.

Because as I tell my story, I'm gonna share with you how that when I went to the Portland church, every Sabbath that was the song that they sang and that stuck in my mind.

This morning I've been asked to share my own life experience and how God has led me in my life and led us in our ministry.

So I'm gonna try to take you through several years here in just about an hour this morning.

But the reason that I wanna share also this experience with you is because I have no question in my mind that God took a little girl from Maine and led my life completely.

And if he can lead my life, I know he's leading your life.

And we just have to be sensitive to his spirit.

And so I wanna share with you a few pictures this morning too, so, Imeon, do we have that up there?

And so if we can put that on, I have a few pictures along the way that I'm going to share with you and let you think about how God is leading your life and how that many times you say, I wonder if God is really leading me.

All of these things that are so important.

And so 1 day I was in the car with Imeon and his family and he asked me to share my experience and after that he said, you've got to come and share that with the young people.

I think that they'll be inspired to see how God has led you.

So I want to first start by saying throughout history, God has led his people.

If you look at scripture, God has led his people.

If you look at Moses, why, who would even think that there was something great for Moses to do in his life?

I mean, he was to be put to death as a child, as a baby, and here he is in a basket behind the bulrushes and in the river, and you wonder, how is he going to lead anybody in his life, let alone have his own life spared.

And yet God allowed Moses to lead the children of Israel.

Daniel was 17 years old and He's taken captive and he leaves his country, he leaves his friends, he leaves his family.

And he goes into Babylon and yet a whole nation is changed because of Daniel.

They think he, his father loves him and does more for him than them, and they're jealous and they're angry, they're upset, so they really wanna kill him, but they don't want his blood on their hands, so they decide they'll put him in the pit.

But we see Joseph going from the pit to the prison to the palace, And he leads again a whole nation and he spares his own people from dying.

In fact, in Genesis chapter 50 verse 19, when the brothers finally were bowing down to him and said, behold, we are your servants, Joseph said to them, don't be afraid, for I am in the place of God.

They were afraid of Joseph then, but he said, don't be afraid for I'm in the place of God.

But as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive.

So he said, you meant it for evil, but God led my life and meant it for good.

And look, he spared my father, he spared my people from death, from famine because of where he placed me.

I want to take you back to a cold winter day in December and a little girl is born in Portland, Maine.

This girl only has a single parent, no father, just a mother.

If you think sometimes it's difficult in your life, Try being raised by a single mother and very little money in a poor family and yet at 6 months old I left Portland, Maine and went on to a little town way up in northern Maine in Millinocket and lived in this house.

Now my mother is in a relationship with who would in the future become my stepfather.

But as a young girl, I saw that God had a plan for my life and I had that spiritual longing, but I didn't know how that was going to be fulfilled in my life.

You see, There were really 3 of us, my mother, my sister, myself.

I did not grow up, of course, as a Seventh-day Adventist Christian, and really not even in a Christian home.

Oh, occasionally, we would dress up at Easter and put on the very best dress that we had and go to the Congregational Church to, or the United Baptist Church that we had in the town, but maybe just once or twice a year, never really had any religious background, but occasionally went to that church, but there was conflict in the home.

And so we would be thrust from our home and told that we needed to go to our grandparents' home.

Now my grandparents lived way out in the country in this old house that my grandfather and his father was actually born in, 66 acres out on the farm out in Morro, Maine, about 3 hours from where I lived, and we would go down to that house, but it was different there.

You see, my stepfather didn't like us, didn't want us around, so he would give us a little bit of change and say go to the movies on Saturday, but then when I would go to my grandfather's house, he would, on Friday, have all the house prepared.

On Friday night, my grandmother and grandfather would gather around the piano and sing songs just like what you sang here today.

And then on Saturday morning, they would get up and go to church.

For you see, someone knocked on their door and they had become Seventh-day Adventists.

But not early enough, possibly, in their life, so that the rest of us benefited from that.

But they now became Seventh-day Adventists.

And they saw these 2 little girls with a single mother and now a stepfather being involved, and not a good situation, and so we would go down and just enjoy being with them, But it was different.

But soon we would have to go back because it would be time for school to start and we would go back.

Sometimes even in the school year, we would have to go and live with our grandparents because things would be kind of rough at home.

And so we were in and out of several schools, and that sometimes can be very difficult on a young person as well.

But God, again, was leading because I had grandparents who were praying for these 2 little girls.

But it became so bad that 1 night in the middle of the night, I'm praying, and Lord, I don't even really know who God is, but Lord, just lead my life.

And then 1 day, as I'm back in my home in Millinocket, a knock came on the door, and it happened to be a call porter.

And the call porter wanted to sell books and Bibles and all of that, And at the end of his sales pitch, he said, oh, we're also offering a free Bible course.

And I said to my mother, I wanna take that Bible course.

I was 9 years old and I said I want to take that Bible course and I started with the Voice of Prophecy junior lessons at 9 years old taking this very course.

I didn't want to come from what I was seeing in my home.

I'm indebted today to the voice of prophecy for what they did in my life because you see I kept taking these lessons.

I learned where did Satan come from anyway?

I started learning things about healthful living and that pork wasn't the best for me, that my body was the temple of the Holy Spirit.

And I started telling my mother, I don't want to eat pork anymore.

Then I started learning about the Bible Sabbath.

And I thought, I want to keep the Bible Sabbath.

At first, my mother was very much for this.

In fact, I started telling her about all these things and She started taking some lessons and we started doing some things in our home, just trying to even keep the Sabbath.

Christian Berdahl

Four Cs

I'm going to try to condense a talk that usually takes about an hour and a half and try to condense that down into a little bit less than 50 minutes, about 45 minutes.

So I'm going to have to talk fast and you're going to have to listen fast, fair enough.

I have discovered some 4 basic components that are necessary.

And I even proposed to you, not only are they necessary, but they're necessary in a certain order.

There are 4 C's is what we're going to talk about.

And in the 4 C's, the first 1 is to connect.

If we, in the Adventist world specifically and in the religious world by and large, it is very common for us to want to try to make a commitment, which is the second C, and to begin commencing work for God long before we've ever connected with Him.

And so I submit to you the 4 C's being connect, commit, commence, and conquer, those are in successive, they are successive 1 to the other.

In other words, if we try to go out and be a conquering soul, but we haven't commenced witnessing and working for Jesus Christ, and we haven't committed our souls to him, and we haven't connected to Him, we will not be ultimately successful as a Christian.

So we have to learn, number 1, how to connect and the importance of connecting.

We're going to have a lot of Bible and spirit of prophecy, and we're going to talk about connect now.

When I first met my wife-to-be, she didn't know that, and I didn't know that, but she became my wife-to-be, we connected 1 with another.

We didn't jump right into commitment, and we didn't commence with a wedding, we connected first.

He doesn't necessarily call you to jump into a commitment with Him until you've connected with Him.

We have to connect first before we commit.

And before we commit, we have to connect.

And before we commence, we have to commit.

Ephesians 6, 10, and 13 says, Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rules of darkness of this world, and against spiritual wickedness in high places." Somebody tell me, what is this scripture saying to us?

Connect with the Lord or you can be overcome.

Connect with Jesus in a way you've never connected before.

Obviously, this is the million-dollar question.

Series

ASI 2009 Youth Meetings

Testimony of Ernestine Finley

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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Tech Transformation Part 1

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