SWYC 2018: Abiding in Christ

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GYC Southwest

Workshop: Dealing with Conflicts In Ministry

Dwayne Lemon

Dealing with Conflict and Adversity in Personal Liberty

We're going to be talking about abiding in Christ in conflict and adversity.

And again, we're going to look at this from the perspective of especially when you're doing some aspect of ministry.

And I'll make you aware of some things right from the beginning as it relates to that, but let's all begin with a word of prayer.

Let's bow our heads and let's get started.

Father in heaven, we are very grateful for the privilege to come together as a family to study your words of truth.

We pray in the name of Jesus that you would be in our midst and that you'll speak to our hearts.

Grant us your Holy Spirit, Lord, and may He give us understanding of the things that we need most.

Go to Matthew, the 28th chapter, and I want you to watch what the Bible says here.

And when you get there, just let me know by saying amen.

Every single 1 of us, unless you are not a baptized member of God's Church, every single 1 of us are called to ministry.

It varies, but all of us are called to ministry.

In Matthew 28, Jesus gave a command to the disciples.

The command that he gave to the disciples is found in verses 19 and 20, And it's the Gospel Commission, and here's what it says.

Now the word teach in the Greek is a Greek word, matheteou, and what it means is to make disciples.

So what Jesus was doing was commanding the disciples, go make more disciples.

So he says, go ye therefore and teach or make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

Then it says, teaching them to observe, how much?

Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I've commanded you and lo I'm with you always even to the end of the world now the same way that Jesus called the 12 eventually it became 11 because we know Judas apostatized but in either case when Jesus called the 12 they were all called in the same way that you and I are called.

Let's go to Luke 9 and I want you to watch how Jesus called them and in like manner he calls us.

So we're gonna look at Luke the ninth chapter and I want you to watch what it says as we consider verses 1 & 2.

Again, when you're there, please say Amen.

The Bible says in Luke 9 starting at verse 1, Then he called his 12 disciples together and gave them power and authority over all devils and to cure diseases.

And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.

How many of them were given power to heal diseases?

How many of them were medical professionals?

None of the 12 were medical professionals.

He commissioned them that he said, listen, I am calling you, but the call to come in was always the call to go out.

Jesus called them to himself for the purpose of giving them authority, giving them power that they might go out.

Before any of you are members of God's church, you should be disciples of Jesus Christ.

When we have a membership mentality, we actually can feel good about just having a membership, even though we're not doing the thing that was the purpose of the membership.

That's the reason why I don't like encouraging us to simply remember that we're members.

And the good news is that all disciples work.

Eventually when the 70 came in it was all 70.

So literally, if you are a baptized member of God's church, you are a minister.

You have been called to do some type of ministry.

Now again, there's various types of ministries.

You got evangelists, you got pastors, you got teachers, you got all sorts of different groups that can function in different ways.

But the key is that I need each and every 1 of us to understand you have all been called to some type of ministry.

You have been called not merely to come in and enjoy a membership, but you've been called to come in, be trained, and be equipped to fulfill the commission.

When I joined the church, It was not clearly taught to me that I was meant to be a disciple, to be a worker.

That was not really pushed to me at all, not much at all, even though that's what I became.

So I'm the guy, and you know, it's so sad that the sunlight and everything kind of blocks it, but nevertheless, you know, I'm this guy right here.

This was a hip hop group that I was a part of called Quiet Storm.

And we called ourselves Quiet Storm because we said we walk soft, but we hit hard.

And we would go to lots of clubs and parties and all of these different things.

And eventually, I started to go to Manhattan, New York, and just started to audition to work with a lot of hip hop and R&B artists.

So I started working with people like Queen Latifah, Brandy, Heavy D.

These were actually people that I worked with.

And I started to dance on stage and to perform with them in music videos and things of that nature.

And it's a shame that the sunlight's on that 1.

Y'all could have seen what I look like with hair.

But nevertheless, that was the older life.

Started to work with a lot of guys, Busta Rhyme, Tribe Called Quest, Wu-Tang Clan, a lot of these different groups.

Dealing With Conflict and Adversity in Ministry in the Home

Loving Father, we are truly grateful once again to come together as a family to study your wonderful words of life.

Lord, I pray that you might please abide with us and help us that we can learn how to put our trust in you and to allow you to be the solution to our problems and to know that as Jesus abides within our hearts, we are able to do so in Jesus' name.

1 of the things that I wanted to talk about in this session is the reality that when we accept Christ and we become a part of his church, you will find that sometimes what will happen is like I said, the first conflict is gonna be with self.

And the best way to overcome self is to constantly keep Christ in the forefront of your mind.

You gotta watch his life, and you gotta look at him.

Go to Matthew 11, and here's 1 of the chief things.

And it's really unfortunate because now that I do Bible work with others, etc., you know, and prepare people for baptism, I really take a different approach than probably what's traditionally done.

It is not that it's an issue to teach people the Sabbath, to teach them the spirit of prophecy being the testimony of Jesus, to teach them the sanctuary and to teach them the various reforms from dietary reforms and of course, dress reform and Sabbath reform even, as well as education reform, recreation reform, and the list goes on.

These things still need to be taught to new believers, no question about it.

But these are some things sometimes we don't spend enough time on.

Look at Jesus's instruction in Matthew 11.

In Matthew the 11th chapter, right, look at verse 28 and the Bible says in Matthew 11 and verse 28, Jesus says, come unto me, how many?

Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and then he says and I will give you rest.

After he makes that promise he then gives this command.

He says take my yoke upon you and do what?

Now do you know Jesus actually told us what he wants us to learn?

He said, take my yoke upon you and learn of me, then what does he say next?

What do you think Christ wants us chiefly to learn of him?

How many of you have gotten a lot of studies on humility when you were joining the church?

What is 1 of the number 1 problems that we have in the church?

Now Jesus said, take my yoke upon you, learn of me, for I am meek and I am lowly in heart, and that's how you'll find rest unto your soul.

The more that we understand and learn the humility of Christ, that's why I keep going back to it, How does God say I'm willing to be destroyed so that I can save evil people?

That's why the Prophet of God says we're gonna spend eternity trying to understand the love of God.

That's crazy, because that was the only thing I knew what to say.

I don't understand why you would do that.

God is simply saying, because I am the embodiment of love.

And then Jesus says, now I want you to learn this about me.

Because my brothers and sisters, when you come into the church, when you come into the faith, when you accept these truths, make no mistake about it.

Number 1, you're gonna go through conflict just with yourself.

This is why you got to compare Scripture with Scripture.

You remember in our last session we looked at Matthew 16 and verse 24 where it says, if any man will come after me let him do what?

I taught this before but it's worthy to look at it again.

You see, the reason why repetition is so important with God's people is because we have a natural tendency to forget.

We have a natural tendency, God's people have a natural tendency to forget what God has said.

And it's for this reason that the Bible is just loaded with repeats.

The book of Deuteronomy is known as the book of repeats.

Because we need to have things stated over and over and over again.

And so Matthew tells us, if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.

It says in Luke 9, right there in verse 23, and he said unto them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.

It says in Luke 9, right there in verse 23, And he said unto them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross, What?

You cannot take a break from self-denial.

Now what is going to motivate you to do that?

You got to keep the true education in front of you.

You got to keep the key source, the chief source.

That's why my appeal, I think more people should have stood up personally, but that's why in my appeal I said, how many of us have failed of allowing Jesus to stay in the forefront of our minds etc because you have no idea how easy it is to not put him in the forefront.

It's very easy to put Jesus in the backdrop.

It's like really easy and so a lot of us have learned to do that.

And so we put them in the back and we say, I got this.

I'm taking control of this situation right now.

And we go in and a lot of times a lot of damage takes place.

I want you to learn my humility and I need you to take up your cross and I need you to do it every single day.

Because the human mind has a natural tendency to forget.

Human mind has a natural tendency to forget.

I stand in agreement with Pastor Morah that there are a lot of people who profess present truth.

Dealing With Conflict in Public Ministry

We thank you so much for the privilege to come back together as a family, to study your wonderful words of life.

We thank you for the privilege to allow you to speak to our heart.

I pray that you might make your words plain to us.

We ask for your Holy Spirit, for he truly is the only effectual teacher of truth.

And may he come and minister to our hearts and open our eyes.

Help us behold wondrous things out of your word.

This is our prayer that we do ask in Jesus' name.

All right, well, yesterday, we were talking about abiding in Christ in conflict and adversity.

But what we did was we divided that because there are many areas that we run into conflict and adversity and are called to abide in Christ.

And so what we did was we talked about abiding in Christ in conflict and adversity in ministry.

The first thing we learned yesterday was that we are all called to be ministers.

We all have a ministry and I cannot emphasize that enough.

We have to get to a place to say, Lord, you brought me in this faith for a reason.

And it was certainly not to just sit back and relax and observe and to be a spectator.

And so as a result of that, we all have been called into some type of ministry, some level of a quote unquote personal ministry.

And the first area of conflict and adversity that we as God's disciples will face is the conflict with self.

The Bible says, if any man will come after me, let him do what?

You don't take a break from denying self.

And so we learn that throughout our journey, we're going to run into situations where we're going to come across things that we don't want to do and we don't want to embrace.

And when you embrace that cross, what did we learn to do?

That When you run into those things that are like a cross and we have to bear it, it is something that appears very bad, very difficult, but we know that in the end it's gonna produce what?

Jesus said it was for the joy that was set before him that he endured the cross, despising the shame.

Now, you'll remember that that means practically for us that when there are certain things in life that God calls us to, we must not have 1 type of vision, but we have to have a other type of vision.

Who remembers the types of vision we talked about?

Macrovision, you gotta be able to look beyond.

You have to see what is the end result of me doing this.

And when you see that the end result of me doing this, God is glorified, man is edified, you are blessed.

When that takes place, we can say that it's worth going through even this thing that appears to be like a heavy cross upon us, knowing that God gives us strength.

Now, from that, we learned also that when we come to Christ, where's the first place that our ministry is gonna be established?

That's gonna be in the home, isn't that right?

And we learned that as we embrace Christ, whatever way we've embraced Christ, we're going to bring that into our homes.

And unfortunately, a lot of times, if we have been fanatical in our embracing of Christ, we're gonna bring that fanaticism where?

We're gonna bring that thing right into our home.

And many a times that is going to create conflict and adversity.

And so there was something Jesus said, what was the chief thing that Jesus said he wanted us to learn about him?

Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.

Then he says, take my yoke upon you and learn of me.

He said, for I am meek and lowly in heart.

If we could learn the humility of Christ, I wish I would have learned this when I first joined the church.

I just wish that that thing would have been made real plain to me to say, Dwayne, this is the focus.

The humility of Christ will produce commandment keepers.

The humility of Christ will produce the best health reformers.

The humility...I mean, if we have the humility of Christ, every other blessing is gonna fall right in place.

It is that wicked thing called pride that constantly gets in the way and that prohibits us from doing the very clear things that God has called us to do.

And by the way, if you ever have a burden upon your life that is so heavy that it feels like it's almost crushing you, I have something to tell you, and it is a 100% fact.

Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest unto your soul.

He says, for my yoke is and my burden is.

So wait a minute, if you're taking on a burden that's so heavy that you feel it's crushing you, I can assure you Christ did not give you that burden.

His burdens are that which we can bear through His strength.

And so whenever you got that, and I'm very serious about this because there's a lot of burden bearers in this room, especially in ministry.

Those of us who are in ministry, we are burden bearers, hands down, guaranteed.

But the reality is, is that God says, listen, I never called you to take on these burdens.

And it seems like it's crushing you to the point we can almost see it on your face.

Jesus says, I didn't give you that burden.

And so there are a lot of burden bearers and I'm very serious about that.

That's why when I was at Heartland and I did that message called, when you have nothing else.

And we talked about how a lot of us as burden bearers take on more than we can handle.

In fact, I think this is so worthy of reading, letter 3B, 1881.

You know, again, I told you, when you got electronics, use it for the glory of God, right?

So I always make these nice notes in my phone.

I thought to myself, this is just so powerful.

Letter 3B, 1881, it says, when 1 poor mortal will try to stand under heavy burdens as though he must carry them or everything perish.

Do you know how many gospel workers are stricken with this disease?

Especially when you run an institute, especially when you run a self-supporting ministry.

When you run ministries, there's a time and place that the devil's gonna tell you if you don't do it, it's not going to get done.

And we will literally adopt that mindset and it will do something.

Peter Chung

Andre Waller

Questions and Answers in Conflicts in Ministry

Father in heaven, we thank you for the things that we have learned, the things we've been studying.

Lord, we realize that conflict is definitely something that's very real that's happening amongst us as your people.

We pray that you'll give us wisdom beyond our years, because we desperately need it.

We need to understand more faithfully your grace on how to respond to these things as Christ would have us to respond.

And so, be with us as we talk 1 with another during this session now.

And we thank you for hearing our prayer to this end, for we ask it all in Jesus' name, amen.

I'm gonna go ahead and invite Brother Wilder, Brother Peter, to come on forward.

And again, we have been privileged to be in ministry for several years and you know self-supporting work didn't know it didn't start out like that Bible workers canvassers etc we have historians on the panel so got a good amount of knowledge here.

And therefore, we're just hoping that God can give us what is needed for you at this time.

And so what we wanted to do was open the floor for questions because we're talking about abiding in Christ during conflict and adversity.

And we talked about 3 types of conflict, heart conflict, just the battles with self.

We talked about the conflict sometimes we have in our homes.

And then we talked about conflict we have in ministry.

And so what we want to do is give you an opportunity to go ahead and ask your question.

Is there another person or is it just yourself?

All right, so JR and JR, they both have their microphones.

Series

Workshop: Dealing with Conflicts In Ministry

Dealing With Conflict in Public Ministry

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Identity Theft

4. Lessons From 1888

1h

Toleration, Liberty, and Personal Freedom

06 Toleration, Liberty, and Personal Freedom

1h 1m

Workshop: Dealing with Conflicts In Ministry

Questions and Answers in Conflicts in Ministry

1h 17m

Righteousness by Faith

Revival and Reformation in the Last Days

1h 11m

The Alpha and the Omega

1h 11m

Plenary

Overcoming Tribulations In Ministry- Part 1

1h 12m

The Great Controversies: Relativism's Beauty and Fundamentalism's Beast

On What Basis: The Beginning of Controversy

1h

Being Adventist

Born Adventist or Born Again?

1h 2m

Nonprofit Leadership

The Joyous Response to Annoyance

1h 10m

Fieldwork

Follow Me

50m

The Three Angel's Messages

02 The Everlasting Gospel

1h 7m

Got Thinking Problems?

Coping with Our Problems - Part 1

1h 13m

Sound Doctrine