Michigan Camp Meeting 2019: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Families

Gail Micheff

Leading Our Families

Father, thank You so much for this new day.

Thank You for this privilege and opportunity to be here at Camp Meeting.

And Lord, for this group of people who have a burden for families.

We have a burden for reaching out and for sharing.

And we just want to thank you for bringing each 1 here.

This morning as we talk and we share and we pray together, we ask that Your presence will be here in a powerful way.

We know that the devil is attacking our families, and we want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem with that.

So we're asking for your thoughts, your ideas, your wisdom and guidance in this.

So what we want to do here today is just share resources with you.

That's pretty much what my department at the office is, is to have resources for you.

And also, we do several different retreats.

We have marriage retreats, we have a family retreat, things like that.

But the biggest thing that I can give to you is resources.

Another thing that we're really working on, and I need to get a lot better with this, is putting more resources on the conference website underneath the Family Ministries page so that when you go to that site, you'll be able to find how to do whatever.

So you'll have, just go and there'll be links that either take you to somewhere or we wanna start doing some videos, some training videos, so that you can click on there, this is how you do this, or This is how you do whatever.

So that is something that is in the works.

So what I want to do is share just a few different things that you can get online.

And this white paper that I put out here, I kind of just did a couple websites, and then I did how to get to what I'm going to show you, because we didn't have Wi-Fi in here.

So, if you've ever wondered what your responsibilities are if you are the Family Ministries leader, or if you're just interested in finding different resources, 1 of the first things that you can go to is the AdventSource website.

And that's, you're going to find that right here on the top of your paper.

And this tells you exactly how to get to this little book here.

Now, it doesn't look like the same book that you got, but this is just the new cover.

I went through, now this is your catalog, so that's where you're going to find their resources to buy, but This is free.

You could buy this, but this particular, they have it on their website.

I had some extras, so that's why I have them here for you to take.

So if you were to want it, if you instead of paying for this, this is how you go to the website and download it.

This quick start guide, it just has ideas in it for you how to get started with your ministry.

Tells you who your members should be on your committee, who you need to talk to.

Like you go to your pastor first and things like that.

So it kind of walks you through, like right here, potential family ministry committee members.

It tells you at least 1 single person, at least 1 married person, the status school leader, the home school leader, personal ministries leader, different ones like that.

This just kind of walks you through, tells you kind of what your duties are.

And I would say that in each church, you're going to have to kind of tailor it to your members, because some of our churches are very, very small, or they have no children, or you know what I'm saying?

So you're going to have to tailor your, you know, what you do to, and as far as getting members as well, people on this committee, you know, you might, there might only be a couple of you.

But anyway, this kind of tells you how to go about brainstorming ideas, implementing, all of that kind of stuff.

It gives you some ideas of things to, that you might want to, like empty nesters thing, marriage strengthening programs, different stuff like that.

It gives you holidays, the things that you might want to celebrate there at your church.

And then in the back it has a family profile form which you can give to each of your members and kind of get an idea of what the interests and the needs in your church are.

So this 1 has the same stuff in it, just like I said, it has a different cover.

Another thing that you can download, and I don't know if any of you have ever seen it before, it's called the Family Ministries plan book.

It's called, this year, It's Reaching Families for Jesus, Strengthening Disciples.

And the whole thing is, It has sermons, it has stories, it has different seminars that you can do.

And then in the back, it's leadership resources.

And it has, let's see, gives you some of the different resources that Adventists have put out.

And then in the back, It has a part for family ministries policies and purpose statement, and it has how to give presentations, it has surveys, more surveys in the back.

And these surveys are a little bit more in-depth.

So, you know, even if you didn't want to download the entire book, I would suggest these surveys would be very, very helpful to kind of find out the needs of your families.

It gets whether they're married, single, never been married, all kinds of stuff.

The ages, you know, and then there's another 1 that gets the ideas of the things that people might be interested in or their needs.

Oh, this is not, this is a book called the Family Ministries Plan Book.

It should be, you should be able to purchase it, But if you don't want to purchase it, right on this white paper, I put how to get to it so that you can actually download it.

So instead of purchasing these, I think, I can't remember how much they are, but they're probably like $12 or so to purchase it.

So I've given you, on this white sheet of paper, back up to Advent Source.

They have a resource catalog, which I just gave you.

I gave you their resource catalog, but that's a free downloadable.

They have a Family Ministries curriculum and the Family Ministries handbook.

So those are actually, you can download those as well for free, and Those are actually classes that you can take to learn more about family ministries.

And then the starting of family ministries in your local church and the evangelism outreach, all of those are free resources.

And if you go to the North American Division's website, Like I said, you can get this Family Ministries plan book, and that's another really helpful.

Also, you can see, if you go to the Adventist Family Ministries website, you'll see there's other free downloads under resources.

In this directory of counselors, you can actually plug in your state, and it tells you all of the counselors that would be in your state throughout the areas.

And on that topic, we also, as a conference, have...

It's not on my website, but I'm going to actually get that under the Family Ministries part.

But we have...Laurie Snamen has put together a counselor directory for the state of Michigan.

It has all of the Adventist counselors and it also has Christian counselors and she's actually gone through, called different ones, kind of found out what their philosophies were and those kind of things.

So this is on our conference website, but it's under the Ministerial Department.

So if you wanted to download this, I didn't make copies of these, but this is the counselor list.

It has their names, it tells what their specialty is, it gives you all their information for contacting them, and it also tells whether they're an Adventist or whether they're a Christian.

So on the left-hand side it has, you know, whatever county that you're in and then tells who they are.

So that's another resource that you can use.

But the North American Division has it for the entire North American Division, a counselor list that you can, that you can.

They also have newsletter archives and a video library of different things.

So just something that you might want to check out on their conference website.

Another thing that I found, and I don't, Oh, I don't know if I brought any of these.

And I thought I brought these, but maybe I didn't.

Jim Micheff

The One Thing

Father in heaven, you've already read our hearts.

You know how easy it is to proclaim that we are Christians.

And yet you know in our hearts all of us are struggling because sin is prevalent everywhere we go.

The devil knows our weaknesses, he studied those weaknesses, and he puts temptations right before us in a way that makes us dishonored.

Doesn't make us, But we yield to His temptations and we dishonor You.

And for that, we ask for Your forgiveness.

But Lord, tonight we want to claim in Jesus' name what He promised.

And if it was according to His will, and we asked in His name, you would give it to us." So Father, we are asking for the Holy Spirit because we know that we're in trouble.

We don't even know what to pray for unless the Holy Spirit guides us.

And when we open up your word to try to understand the guidance that you have given us in your word, we don't understand it.

And without Him to give us in the interpretation for our own lives in a practical way, it will just be theory.

So tonight, Lord, I pray that you would speak to us in a way that will cause us to take a step closer to you.

Open up our awareness so that we can sense your presence, so that we can hear your voice.

This we ask in Jesus' name, knowing that you are answering it, and we thank you for it, amen.

And like many stories start off, I want to start off this story like this.

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, there was no death, there was no sickness, there was no sorrow, and there was no pain.

There was no arguing, there were no enemies, and no 1 feared anything.

Everyone worshipped God, and it was their greatest delight to obey every command that he gave.

There was perfect harmony in the universe, which is a term used to describe the total existence of where life is.

What was it that caused this great sense of peace and harmony?

Well God created an environment of freedom.

But this freedom could only exist in the realm of God's authority.

Because you see, it was built on the foundation of God's law.

Love, which is the law of the universe, was written on the hearts of every creature.

Because love doesn't force, God also gave the power of choice.

His creatures could exercise this free will to choose to embrace God's authority or not.

As love poured out of God to his creatures, the natural response was allegiance to Him.

And they did this by rendering the highest form of love that was possible to give, also known as reverence, and sometimes referred to in the Bible as the fear of the Lord.

Motivated by this love for their Creator, it was their desire to obey every command He gave.

Recognizing and embracing the authority and willingly submitting to it.

You see, God was the supreme ruler of the universe and He was the recipient of their worship.

The great Creator's authority was never questioned.

You See, this is what it was like in heaven before sin.

But something happened that changed everything.

How do we know that that's not just 1 of those fairy tales?

The way that we know that is that God wrote it down, He told prophets and they wrote it down and God allowed them to compile it into what we know is the Bible.

It's interesting that the Bible was never written to prove God's existence.

The Bible was written from the standpoint that God is the Creator and the Authority of the Universe.

And it was written to tell us the facts, the truth, about where we came from, about why we're here, and about where we're going.

So everything that we know as Christians about the Bible has its reference in God's Word.

Everything that we believe as Christians has again its reference in God's Word.

The Bible tells us that God created everything.

Angels were a part of God's creative plan and he ordained that they would help to coordinate and govern the universe.

But at least it tells us that there are cheraphim and seraphim.

But it does tell us about 1 angel in particular.

It was an angel that was called Lucifer, who was a cherub.

He had the special privilege and assignment of being the closest being to God Himself.

God allowed him to come into his glory, the inner circle of his glory.

It was Lucifer's title to be the covering cherub.

Oftentimes God would relay his purposes to the universe through Lucifer.

Lucifer made his way around the universe, and as he did, he carried with him a love for God, directing all creatures to give their honor and worship to God.

Somehow, in the course of his work, He started to think of himself as higher level than the other creatures.

He had reverence for God, a fear of God, and somehow His thought of who He was started to grow, and as it did, the distance between His reverence for God and His thought of who He was and how important He was, started to shrink.

Until his thought of who he was was equal with God.

As he went around doing God's work, he received the respect appropriately from the other angels and creatures, honoring God who gave him that authority.

But it was in his mind, the thought, I wonder what it would be like to be God and get reverence.

After all, I should get more than just respect.

And unconsciously at first, but gradually and ever so slowly, His reverence for God started to diminish.

As he went around the universe, instead of trying to gain glory to give to God, he started to take glory.

And he came to the point where he felt like he was ready to take God on.

Now when he lost his respect and reverence and fear of the Lord, he no longer honored God's authority.

And therefore, he no longer honored God's law.

He found fault with it and he started to then expose those questions that he had in his own mind to others.

Now in an environment where there was no falsehood, you can understand how easily someone could have wondered.

Lucifer started to misrepresent the character of God.

God is a God of justice and terrible majesty.

When God gave the 10 Commandments on Mount Sinai, God showed His majesty.

The heavens shook, the mountain quaked, thunder rolled, and sinful man fell in the dust.

In the presence of no sin, God still has terrible majesty.

And because God's character was maligned, and doubts were raised in their mind.

Some started to believe what Lucifer was saying.

Thus he drew a portion of the angels in his rebellion against God and His authority.

Lucifer set himself up as the leader of opposition to God.

Thus, his name was changed from Lucifer, the light bearer, to Satan, the adversary, and thus began the great controversy between Christ and Satan.

Satan was the first to engage in sin, introducing it to the universe, and thus All of us have encountered an experience with something God never intended us to have.

Isaiah 59.2 tells us that it was our iniquities, our sins that have separated us from God.

I don't want to be separated from God by sin, do you?

There is something that we must understand about sin.

And if we don't understand this aspect of sin, we'll never be able to get rid of it.

Because it's possible for us to embrace something that we've had so close to us for all of our life and not recognize it for what it is.

And so tonight, we're asking the Lord to show us the root of sin.

So I want you to open up in your Bibles to Romans.

Romans chapter 8, Romans chapter 8 verse 6.

And if you have your Bibles, please follow along.

There is an added blessing, I believe, when you have God's Word right in your hands.

For those who don't have it, it's up on the screen.

Series

Families

Leading Our Families

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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1h 21m

Emmanuel Institute - Ignite Your Church

Ignite Your Church - Part 13: Disturbing our Monotony

1h 15m

2-Applying the Faith

Connected Relationships In a Disconnecting World

1h 16m

Building Homes of Hope and Wholeness

02 Relationships and Marriage

59m

Fieldwork

Follow Me

50m

Closing the Back Door

Closing the Back Door - Part 3

55m

The Doctrine of Personal Ministries

Part 5 - Mining the Manual

1h 16m

Relationship Revival

5. ‘Making’ Love

1h 4m

The Doctrine of Personal Ministries

Part 4 - Doing the Wrong Job Well

1h 18m

Advising Love: From Attraction to Anniversaries

3. Advising Love’s Commitment: Engagement and Wedding

1h

Women in Adventist History: Roles, Relationships, and Rewards

Women in Adventist History - Part 5

57m

To Have and to Hold on

Ten Relationship Challenges and How to Meet Them - Part 2

1h 14m

Sound Doctrine