GYCSE 2018: Given to God

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GYC Southeast

Michelle Doucoumes

Eric Flickinger

Kyle Griffith

Michael Hasel

Justin Kim

Ester Lopez

GYCSE 2018 Q&A Session

I'm serving currently as the associate speaker of It Is Written.

And we're, of course, located right here in Chattanooga.

I teach here at Southern Adventist University in the School of Religion.

I teach archaeology and Old Testament and Hebrew.

And delighted to be here again for GYC this year.

My name is Justin Kim, I work at the General Conference.

I'm the assistant director and 1 of the editors for the young adult Sabbath school quarterly.

I'm Esther Lopez, and I am a nursing student here, first semester in the BSN program.

Hello, my name is Kyle Griffith, and I'm a biology major here.

I've been here now 3 years and I'm also from California.

I'm Michelle Dukamas and I teach business here at Southern Adventist University as well as overseeing our Enactus program for student entrepreneurship and the Institute for Ethical Leadership.

And I get to be your panel moderator today which is really fun because I get to ask the questions and they have to answer them.

But these are not my questions these are your questions.

These are the questions that have been sent in throughout the week and we're excited to go over them together.

And what you don't know maybe is that all these people on this panel have a wide variety of backgrounds, of mission experience, and also just a personal experience with the Lord.

And so keep it all in prayer as we discuss these things together and try to go into some of the questions that you all have sent and discuss that together.

So I'm gonna start with 1 here and address this to Pastor Eric Flickinger down there on the end.

I'm glad I'm glad he's willing to start us off, right?

Someone asked, I am struggling with opening the Bible, reading and studying it.

I think this is a challenge that most, if not all of us face at some point along the way.

How do you get there to open it and study it?

1 of the things that's helped me over the years, and I'm sure it's helped you as well, is to take Jesus as our example.

And in Mark 1, verse 35, it says, and in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out and departed into a solitary place and there prayed.

So 1 of the things that Jesus did was he got an early start on things.

I don't know if your life reflects mine at all, but I tend to be kind of busy.

And life kind of, it creeps up on us and the tasks for the day kind of pile up.

Getting an early start on things is immensely helpful.

Because many of us probably struggle with getting up in the morning and getting to the things that we need to do.

1 of the things that I've found has helped me is to get to bed early.

And I know getting to bed early is a challenge, especially when you're studying.

I remember back when I was a student at the university, I had a lot of assignments that were due.

And I felt like if I didn't get them done before I went to sleep, they weren't going to get done before the next day.

But what I also found was as I was working at 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock, 1, 2, 3 in the morning, I was rereading the same thing 5 times, trying to understand what I just read the fourth time.

The brain doesn't work real well at night, and so getting to bed early allows you to get the rest.

You wake up early, and you can get a fresh start on things.

1 other thing that I've found very helpful is to develop a routine.

It was Jesus' routine to get up early and to pray.

If you've watched YouTube at all recently, you've probably seen a video that has floated through on a regular basis about the first thing that you do when you get up in the morning is to make your bed.

If you do 1 thing as soon as you wake up, that starts the routine.

And if your time with God is part of that routine, which it ought to be, it just naturally flows from 1 thing to another.

All right, so those are some tips about how to get started.

If any of you want to add just maybe what you do when you study the Bible, how to get something out of it.

Yeah, there's a book called Power of Habit by Duhigg.

And there's something powerful about a habit.

And I think sometimes we may be a little bit afraid of habits.

We don't want to create the, just make it routine.

But There's something efficient about habits that we don't have to, there's not a lot of neurological energy expended upon brushing your teeth.

I mean, you mindlessly open the, I mean, whatever toothpaste you use, but you put it on your thingy and you put it in your mouth and you're brushing and you're da-da-da.

But how many of you are consciously thinking about it and like, oh, this is such a habit, this is just a chore?

And at your age, if you're still thinking there's something wrong with your teeth, but you're just brushing your bruh-da-da-da-da.

And then I think as disciples of Jesus, we need to have the habit of opening the Bible and reading it.

And I think we shouldn't feel guilty if we don't have that habit that's instantaneous.

Habits, they say on average, need 66 days to be developed on average, some maybe 127, some after 3 days.

But for me, I got to admit, there are some days where I just don't feel like opening the Bible.

I want to just watch YouTube the whole day, 24 hours, and that's wrong.

So I know that the habits have helped me go on through the low parts of my life.

And that's when, after the habit is efficient and you get to the habit of opening it, then you get into the neural exercise of understanding and reading and prayerfully getting through it.

So there's a renaissance of habits that are coming in this day and age.

And the crazy thing is this, the crazy thing is this, that there are things you can do to prime your mind to create habits more easily or easily, easily, easily-er.

Clearly English is not my forte as an editor.

And then this is what the crazy thing is.

Exercise is the 1 prime habit that if you start exercising, it affects almost every other habit in your life.

Stop drinking caffeine, stop drinking soda, sugary drinks.

And I'm like, water, it primes the brain, da, da, da, da.

This is what Adventists should have the best brains out there.

Need some sunshine, some water, and some exercise.

So we have been given this message almost 100 years ago.

But right now, the research is just coming up to par and helping out with our lifestyle.

So a long-winded way of saying we should read our Bibles.

GYCSE 2018 Q&A Session

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