ASI 2009: By Knowing Him

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ASI 2009 Morning Devotional

Edgar Vyhmeister

Judith Vyhmeister

Knowing Him as a Family, Part 1

In 6th Bible Commentary 1075, it describes the new birth.

Many, so many who assume the name of Christ are unsanctified and unholy.

They have been baptized, but they were buried alive.

Self did not die, and therefore they did not rise to newness of life in Christ.

50 percent of first-time marriages are ending in divorce.

The statistics go higher for second and even higher for third marriages.

In the church, the divorce rate is higher, which tells you which group Satan is interested in.

My husband and I moved to Sonora, California in 1998.

We started a couples group that lasted for 3 years.

We then started the Christ Quest Institute with a weekend seminar, followed by a three-year cycle of weekly group and an every-other-week video presentation by Christ Quest Institute.

This was a program from Life Partners Christian Ministries, founded by Ken Nair, based out of Phoenix, Arizona.

It was a privilege to work with the couples.

To deal with human minds is the nicest job that was ever committed to mortal man.

This morning we will describe problem couples, state some of the principles taught, describe the paradigm shift that had to take place, and then the impact it had on the couples.

Example number 1, the husband grew up in a very abusive childhood.

His father was incredibly verbally and physically abusive.

In spite of his father, he became a very sincere follower of Christ.

However, under his leadership, his wife became quiet, withdrawn, and depressed.

He and his wife came to class because 1 of his friends had invited him.

This husband's missionary father had been unfaithful to his mother.

As a result of bitterness, he brought rage and anger into his marriage.

Even though he was a Sabbath school teacher, trouble brewed at home.

He was known to trash his home in fits of anger.

When confronted, his flesh would rise as he defended himself.

He thought that what happened in marriage should never be discussed publicly.

1 night, when he was gently asked a question, he got mad and left the group abruptly.

He left squealing his car wheels out of the parking lot.

This physician and his wife traveled several hours each evening to participate.

People looked on them as a model couple, yet the wife felt so alone.

His wife wondered if she had married the right man.

However, there was constant conflict in the home.

He was irritable, critical, demeaning, grumpy, sour, exacting, complaining, unhappy, yet they were in church every week, smiling.

The testimony of their grown daughter was that they were always arguing with no resolution.

She wondered if they really loved each other.

Example number 4 was a pastor and his wife.

He corrected his wife frequently and felt superior to her.

She was suffering under his demeaning, oppressive leadership.

She refused to return home with her husband after the seminar.

She did not want to return home unless he agreed to participate in the weekly discipling sessions.

Would you have counseled her to go home, be under his authority, just appreciate his good points and not complain?

What principles did they learn that were so invaluable as to make the dramatic changes that occurred?

How would you run a group of couples at varying levels of maturity, with some even separated?

Their wives would not even come to the group.

All were professing to be Christians, but the husbands especially were bitter, blaming their wives, taking things personally, so that it was hard for them to be objective.

Most of them had a 50-50 mentality that says you do your part, I'll do my part.

If you don't do your part, then I'm not gonna do my part.

Other attitudes included I would be a pretty good husband if my wife would change, or I'd be a pretty good husband If I had a different wife.

They were self-sufficient with a mental consent to the truth, but lacked a heart change.

However, they all wanted a better relationship.

All stated, they were willing for their thinking to change based on Bible truth.

The following are some basic principles utilized.

Number 1, the men were told at the beginning that this was a men's discipling group, not a marriage counseling group.

The Gospel Commission in Matthew 28 states, Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Number 2, the goal was to help a man become more Christlike and to understand the heart of their wives.

Men were encouraged to maintain this goal of Christlikeness regardless of the response of their wives.

They were there to please God, not their wives.

After all, their wives might suggest doing the wrong thing.

Number 3, women were not to be corrected publicly.

They were already critiquing themselves and being very hard on themselves.

Public exposure would have been unnecessarily devastating.

The men were responsible for presenting their wives without spot or wrinkle before God, not we as group leaders.

Ephesians 5, husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and blameless, so husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies.

Men were to accept 100% responsibility for whatever happened in the home, The same way a foreman accepts responsibility for his employees.

Fault means that you are a problem causer.

But we were talking about responsibility, which means that we are a problem solver.

Responsibility means that we are a problem solver.

And there were a lot of misconceptions as to what a spiritual leader was, but this is 1 of the things that we learned.

A man who has the ability to perceive the spirit of another, to understand his condition at that moment, and know what is required by God to care for that person's spirit in a manner that will increase that person's spiritual maturity.

Edwin Nebblett

Maria Nebblett

Knowing Him as a Family, Part 2

Let us begin by closing our eyes and lifting our thoughts to Lord asking for his help here.

Precious Heavenly Father, We want to hear from your throne as you call to each of our hearts what we can do to be more like you and to rightly represent you as individuals and as families here on earth.

So we invite your presence here now, Lord, as we share from our hearts and share in song that those who hear and if convicted by the Holy Spirit will turn to you to achieve the strength to do the things that you have called us to do.

We were excited when we heard that the theme for the early morning devotionals this year would be knowing him as a family.

Because for the past 15 years, we have been on a journey that has led us to the discovery of God's special, beautiful design and purpose for each family, which is to experience intimacy with him as a family.

There is incredible joy and blessing for us and all others when we catch a vision of God's design and seek to fulfill his glorious plan.

We find ourselves connected, happy, secure, fulfilled, and empowered and equipped with the most powerful evangelistic tool in our hands.

There's a passage that is found in Adventist home page 32 that clearly defines how we can be the most effective witnesses for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It states, the greatest evidence of the power of Christianity that can be presented to the world is a well-ordered, well-disciplined family.

This will recommend the truth as nothing else can, for it is a living witness of its practical power upon the heart.

So we want to share with you about a time in our lives when we came under the conviction that while we were professed Christians engaged in God's work we were not connected to God and to 1 another in the way that God designed families to be.

And thus we were unable to witness of the effectiveness of the gospel of Jesus Christ in our own lives, in our own hearts.

And how by God's grace this has changed and continues changing.

I graduated from the family practice residency at Hinsdale Hospital in the suburbs of Chicago in 1981.

I completed a teaching fellowship, I joined the faculty, and I began teaching in the residency program.

I was practicing obstetrics as a family physician.

I was administering the residency practice.

So you can imagine how our lives crossed on different paths.

On the weekends I was busy with my responsibilities as a church elder and engaged in starting a new church.

I loved my wife but I was not tuned in to her needs.

Well as time went on we started the family.

I became more involved in service to others.

I was now involved in media ministry with the focus of reaching the secular world and then I added a children's series.

I was conducting health lectures at churches.

I had a part-time medical practice while now being the director of the residency program.

When I was at home I was often on the phone.

I was so busy doing God's work that I had little or no time for God.

We live in an age, in a society where it seems that nearly everyone is pressed for time, hurried and hassled.

Technology has provided us with more so-called time-saving devices than ever before in the history of mankind.

And yet, we have less time for meaningful communication and relatedness than we have ever had before.

God says, Be still and know that I am God.

It takes silence in the soul to be able to search out the deep things of God.

We cannot experience real intimacy with our father unless we take time to have those periods of stillness before him on a regular basis.

Likewise, we cannot experience intimacy with our spouses.

We cannot experience closeness as a family unless we take time, once again, for that meaningful association, deep communication, and relatedness.

This is why cohesive families tend to be a thing of the past.

1 pastor speaking of the people of God in the context of modern life has said, we have become a body of people that look more like a herd of cattle in a stampede than a flock of God beside green pastures and still waters.

And this is the way that I remember our lives being in those early years of our marriage.

I remember always longing for more time with my husband and never feeling like I had enough.

As the months and years passed, we began having children.

And I grew up hearing stories from my mother of her very happy family life in a large family.

But by the time we had 3 and then 4, I was overwhelmed.

And I felt alone in the day-to-day coping with the challenges of raising and mothering several young children.

I often ended the day with tremendous fatigue, with tears and regret, desiring with all my heart to be a happy, a nurturing, godly mother, but often losing my temper with them.

You see, I was ignorant because I wasn't taking that time to be still and to learn of the Father.

I was ignorant of the principles that could make our home, that could bring peace and order into our home.

1 evening I was especially fatigued and disappointed having learned that he was not coming home.

He had just admitted a woman in labor to the hospital and he would not be home that evening.

I lost my temper once again with our children as I was trying to get them to bed early and they were not quickly cooperating.

I yelled at our oldest, our seven-year-old.

I said, when will you ever learn to listen and to be considerate of your mother?

Now while it was not infrequent for me to lose my temper with them.

It was different this time in that instead of bringing all activity to a halt as they usually did when I lost my temper and just watching me in silent dread, this time she spoke up and it shocked me.

She said, I can never please you with big tears in your eyes.

I was silenced by her words, and I put them to bed quietly and filled with shame and regret.

I lay in bed wondering how can I be so hurtful to children that I wanted so much and that I love so dearly?

For the first time I was struck by the ugliness of the sin of angry words and the devastating effect upon the heart.

I cried to God in despair that evening, how could I learn to manage my children in a loving, God-honoring way?

How could I teach them to love Jesus and to love, honor, and obey their parents without losing my temper frequently and speaking words of condemnation to them.

In a passage from Ellen White that is found in the SDA Bible commentary, among other places, it says, the greatest insult that we can inflict upon him, upon Christ, is to pretend to be his disciples while manifesting the spirit of Satan in our words, our dispositions, and our actions.

The same principle is stated in James 1.26, where it states, if any man among you seem to be religious and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is in vain." My religion, friends, was in vain during that period of my life.

I was, as Romans 118 puts it, holding the truth in unrighteousness.

As I cried to God that evening, I desperately wanted victory, But I lacked elements that are necessary for victory, like the habit of consistent, daily, earnest study of the word of God, specifically searching for the solutions to the problems that challenge me in my daily experience.

I longed for my husband to be spiritual leader and priest of our home, to conduct family worship on a daily basis, to lead us to Jesus and to the answers that we needed so that we could become that happy, godly family that I knew God wanted us to be.

But he only conducted worship on a hit or miss basis because he was too busy.

Too busy with work, ministry activities, and commitments outside of our home.

So Lord, calling to your heart, well conviction came to me on Shante's seventh birthday.

As I sat around in the boisterous children's voices and I'm looking at this seven-year-old child, it dawned on me, I did not know her.

I did not know what her favorite color was.

I did not know what the name was of that thing she drags around that looks like a teddy bear once in a while.

I realized with sadness that I had lived for 7 years with this child.

And in my heart, while I longed to be a godly father, where was I to find the time?

Every moment was consumed in the practice of medicine at the hospital, teaching the art to up-and-coming physicians.

I also managed to make time for outreach and for service to others, but at home, I was failing.

What brought me to conviction that day, that something needed to change if I was to hear the words 1 day, well done, thou good and faithful service.

When the Lord asked me, where is the beautiful flock that I gave you?

Well, during the rest of our time this morning, we want to share with you the simple steps that God led us to take as we sought answers from his word.

There are 2 things that we as parents were missing in our lives that we came to understand were necessary, absolutely necessary for us to become the happy, cohesive, vibrant, fully functional, full of purpose, mission driven minded family that God designed every family to become.

The first Maria has already spoken of and brothers and sisters if you've not already done this we just plead with you to experience the joy.

There's joy to be found in a personal intimate real living connection with Jesus Christ.

It is that connection that gives us the strength to overcome the areas in our lives where we're having difficulty, that we can experience victory over our flesh and continual growth and grace, which transforms our marriage, our parenting, and every aspect of our lives.

The second is a strong heart-to-heart connection Amongst all members of our family, first with Maria and myself, and with each of our children, so that we become partakers together of all the blessings that God wants to bestow on families and through families.

Byron Smith

Janice Smith

Knowing Him as a Family, Part 3

But 1 by 1, all of those calls just dwindled away and I just...

And in the meantime, I kept getting calls from this school board chairman way up north.

Well, finally around May, the first time he called me had been in December, finally around May, I decided, you know, God talks to us in really good ways.

I decided that clearly he was calling me to go to this little tiny school way up north where I had never been before.

And you know, as soon as I recognized God calling me to do that, I was excited about it.

Why, I was going to the mission field, and I was dedicating my life to singlehood, to be in the mission field.

Well, I got up there and started teaching school, and it was a grand challenge as you can imagine, you know, a one-room school and everything.

And it was so cool because, man, I hadn't been teaching school for maybe a month and a half, and this is who I met.

Well, we got married, that was in, we met in October and we got married the following July.

And in the meantime, before we got married, we had gotten a call to go teach school in Ontario, California.

And actually, the Lantz's, Harold Lantz was on the school board there.

And we took the call, thinking that it would be a good opportunity for him to continue his studies in agriculture at Cal Poly Pomona.

And so we got married and packed up our stuff and moved to Southern California.

We had never, either of us, lived in big cities really before.

And so this was a pretty big change for us.

And started teaching school, really liked it.

The school had a work-study program, and so it was really, really wonderful.

And before we got married, We hadn't talked a lot, a little bit, but not a lot about having children.

But there was 1 thing we were on the same page about, and that was that we really weren't in a hurry.

We figured, you know, a couple years at least before we had kids.

Well, I was thinking 2, you were probably thinking 4 or 5.

We lived in Fontana, school was in Ontario, and then his college was in Pomona.

So we would drive in the morning from Fontana to Ontario, and around about, I would say, late October, I got hit with the baby bug.

And so from then on, every morning, we would be driving down the freeway to school and I'd be saying, sweetheart please just 1 little baby please just a little wee 1 that's all I want.

Well finally in January he said he gave in and so he said 1 month I'll give you 1 month to see if it works.

And 4 kids later, I'm so glad he gave in.

Well, when we got pregnant, I was, it was just, you have no, I mean, well, I guess you do.

And along with the excitement, suddenly I was struck, we both, we were so struck with this incredible responsibility.

I mean, we were going to be bringing a new life into the world.

And so we started reading child guidance more.

You know, of course, I had read it before, but really started reading it because we wanted to be responsible parents.

From my standpoint, There's a lot I could say about that But I'll just say once once she actually conceived and was pregnant, I was so excited.

Waiting until we could get The confirmation that she actually was pregnant was the longest 3 weeks of my life.

And you know, I was 1 of these kind of guys that as I was growing up as a teenager and so on, You would see some lady bring a new baby to church and all the other women would gather around and they'd say, oh isn't he or she so cute, isn't a darling little baby?

And I would look at them and I'd say, the only reason they're saying that is because they're wanting to be polite.

Those newborn babies, in my opinion, were the ugliest things.

And about the time that we got close to having our own baby.

Our last checkup, actually, we went to the hospital there in B.C.

And after we were done visiting with the doctor, I decided that we should swing by the nursery.

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ASI 2009 Morning Devotional

Knowing Him as a Family, Part 2

Transcript

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