GYC WEST 2019: Let These Stand

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GYC West

Dee Casper

A Much Needed Reform

God in heaven, I thank you for the privilege to be in a beautiful place with beautiful people, and they even trusted us with a beautiful message.

Sweet Jesus, I pray that you would descend into this place, that you would speak to each of our hearts, and as I seek to strike a balance and to address both sides of an issue.

God, I just pray that you would bless us.

I pray that as we use and lean heavily upon the pen of inspiration this evening, that it would be abundantly clear what your intention is with this health message and the blessing that's meant to be for us, and how this is 1 of the components in which you will enable your people to stand.

So it's entitled A Much Needed Reform, and I'm coming from 2 different angles on this.

We're gonna be dealing with the topic of health and just the overall topic of health reform.

So there are 2 reasons for why we've given this title and the message is basically broken down into 2 parts to do so.

So the first part of our message on a much-needed reform is the why of the health message.

Why it's a blessing for us in the connection.

You would do well if you haven't read it.

Read section 2 of Councils on Diets and Foods.

It's a section entitled diet and spirituality.

So that's what we're gonna deal with so the whole point of God giving us reforms is Relational in nature and I wish that I wish that I wish that when we discuss topics of reform, we highlighted this and highlighted it regularly because there are many people in our ranks when they hear the word reform, their immediate thought is to cringe And it's because they've interacted with people who are self-proclaimed reformers.

Like, we're bringing reform to a world that doesn't believe the things that God wants them to believe.

Whether it be the Sabbath, whether it be the health message, right, the investigative judgment is taking place.

It's a lot of stuff, but we all have crossed paths with some of these crusty reformers, right, those people that just don't have a lot of tact, right, they're machine gunning people, they're shaming people for eating something or wearing something or whatever.

And so for some people, as soon as they hear the topic of reform, their immediate thought is, ugh, right?

Or like those repressed memories come back.

And so I believe if we were communicating regularly, the whole purpose of the reforms is not behavior modification.

God has no desire to just preach a message of behavior modification.

What God wants is a transformed heart, and the logical outflowing of a transformed heart is a change in behavior.

And we'll address this more in the topic of mental health later.

So God is seeking to improve relationship, not regulate behavior, right?

He's not a warden who's making sure you're in your cell and doing what you ought to do.

God has created us with free will, but he wants to inform that will to make decisions that are in our best interest.

And God wants to commune with his people and he wants to have the best communion possible.

So he gave us this to improve our fallen condition and draw us even closer to him.

All right, so telling God because, or telling people because God said so is not good enough.

Us preaching a message, God said so, you better do it, is not good enough.

It's bad parenting to say because I said so.

There's better reasons than because I said so.

We can inform the will because we were told that we should train our children to self-govern.

Which means we need to train them to think.

And the response many times that we say, God said you should do fill in the blank.

If people don't know who God is and how he feels about them, their response could be very much like Pharaoh's, who's God that I should care?

This is why the first angel's message, by the way, is not fear God and give glory to him.

The message begins with the everlasting gospel.

It would make no sense if I came up to you and said on a street corner someone who's not a Seventh-day Adventist came up said, fear God and give glory to Him.

The context setting for that statement is the everlasting gospel.

And Ellen White said the everlasting gospel, 1 of the ways that she defines that everlasting gospel is the same gospel that was preached in the Garden of Eden, a suffering Messiah.

The everlasting gospel makes the judgment make sense.

And the logical response to the everlasting gospel is to fear God and to want to give glory to him.

But it's easy for us to take the Reader's Digest version of the first angel's message, but we forget the whole context.

And you know how the 3 angels' messages ends?

So I believe a more productive way of sharing the reforms is communicating the character of God and his motives in giving them for our good.

It makes the medicine go down much better.

Our flesh longs for food that we shouldn't be eating, right?

Our carnality longs to put stuff on our body to make ourselves look good that we maybe shouldn't be doing, Right?

Let's not make it any harder for people by just guns blazing without communicating the loveliness of who God is and the fact that it makes sense.

It's common sense why he gave us this message.

So God's people at the end of time are going to be so closely connected with God that regardless of what comes against them, they're gonna stand though the heavens fall because they know Him intimately.

There's an experiential knowledge they have of God and it shines forth.

And to best equip them to have this type of experience, God calls His people to a life of simplicity, right?

A life of simplicity that focuses on what matters most and removes the things that would hinder such an experience.

So, the whole point of reforms is basically what you see in Isaiah chapter 5.

God clears the stones, right, out of the ground.

He's removing the things that would hinder the growth of the crop, and then he plants the choicest vine in Isaiah 5.

Because he's wanting the crop to produce good fruit.

The entire point of reforms is to remove the things that would hinder growth.

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A Much Needed Reform

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