MTYC 2010: You Are My Witnesses

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Montana Youth Conference

MTYC 2010 Breakout Seminar - Relationship

Justin Howard

I’m Already in a Relationship!

The name of the seminar is, Have You Thought About It?

And have you thought about all these things that take place before a relationship?

Have you thought about the influences of the people around you?

Have you thought about the consequences of making decisions concerning the relationships that you're in?

I'm going to share with you today a little bit about the personal relationship with Jesus Christ that you need first.

If there's anything that you need to consider openly and honestly with yourself, it's this, Do I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?

Because if you don't have that, then you don't need to be in a relationship with anyone else.

And I'll tell you from personal experience, if you don't have a relationship with God, your influence in the life of another person is destructive.

You know the scripture, the wages of sin is death.

The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

In other words, if we're living outside of a relationship with God, we cannot be living a holy life.

It's a sinful experience that we're living.

And if we take that into a relationship with someone else, then we're bringing that damaged situation to them and the Bible says the wages of sin is death.

And if we're living a sinful life we only have death to look forward to and if we get into a relationship with someone else and we begin to share our experience they only have death to look forward to and it's not a real good picture is it?

So the good picture is that the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ.

If I have a relationship with Him, I have life in me and my influence won't be negative, it will be positive and I'll be drawing, hopefully by God's grace, other people who want to spend time with Jesus.

So it's imperative that we have a relationship with Jesus Christ first.

And I think that beyond anything, that's what God wants to have with us.

I remember about a year ago, I think it was, maybe 2 years ago, I was moving out of an apartment and we had 1 thing left in the apartment and it was a couch.

I was very busy, I was still working full time and trying to get everybody moved from 1 place to the next and all that was left was this 1 couch.

So I called a buddy of mine and I said I have 1 more day to get this couch out of the apartment because if I don't get it out They're gonna take it and get rid of it for me.

So he says sure I'll help you out So later on in the evening, we decided to go pick up the couch at the apartment.

I met him at a gas station We took off together in his truck and we went to the apartment opened up the door.

It was locked Walked in went to grab the couch and guess what wasn't there?

So we thought, well maybe somebody broke in.

It was a little apartment so there weren't tons of windows and I went and checked the windows and the doors nothing was open it was all locked.

Management didn't say anything about it they didn't take it we still don't know to this day what happened to it.

So I told my friend Don I said Don I'm sorry I dragged you out here this late at night to pick up a couch and I said we can just head back to the gas station.

So we headed back to the gas station and I was just thinking about all the things that I had to do and how busy I was.

And when we got back to the gas station we pulled in beside my car and I looked over and there was another truck sitting in the parking lot of the gas station where my car was.

And in it was a lady, and you could just see her face.

She was just saying with her facial expressions, I need help.

And I kind of shrank from that because I thought, you know, I don't have time for this.

I just, I don't want to bother with it." So I was talking to Don and before I could say anything, Don says, hey, maybe we should help her out.

I thought, oh man, all right Lord, I'll stick around.

And so we went and asked her, do you need some help?

So Don's a mechanic, he takes a look at it and he sees that we can't fix it.

So we decided to stick around with her and help her out until someone else could come and take her to get some transportation and take care of her truck.

Well, in the process we began talking and as we talked she shared with us that she had been in a Christian experience and she shared that she was leading out a ministry in her church but After a while the church had rejected her and no longer was she a part of that church, she wasn't a part of that music ministry that she was involved with before.

And then I just had a question in my heart, I asked her, I said, are you having personal Bible studies?

And you know she looked at me and she says, who are you?

And so I told her, I said, I'm a Seventh-day Adventist.

And I said, I was just wondering whether or not you've been involved in Bible studies.

So we moved on into the rest of the conversation, and she basically said that she had not been in a relationship with Jesus for a while.

And as we began to talk, she began to share with me a little bit about why she hadn't been in a relationship with Jesus.

She had once been in 1, but the relationship was broken, and she then began to tell me what had happened.

She had gotten involved with massage therapy, but it wasn't the massage therapy that you necessarily go to school for, you understand?

Okay, on Craigslist she was kind of promoting herself and letting men know that she was available for work.

And when she was talking to me about it, she was just telling me that she didn't mind doing it, but in the process she was being taken advantage of.

And so guy after guy throughout her life would try to make the moves on her and try to do things that she didn't want to be a part of.

And time and time again she was hurt by men in her life until it drove her completely away from the Lord, and completely away from any positive, good, holy relationships with guys.

In the process, it led her into an illicit relationship with another woman.

And as we talked, I realized that God had a burning desire to bring her back home.

And that's why I was there at that moment in time.

She had also locked the keys in her truck and she couldn't get back into it.

She had no ability to get anywhere and I had her right there in front of me.

And So she began to share with me this whole experience.

I told her, I said, you know, God loves you.

And I said, what I've sensed right now is that He's calling you back into relationship with Him.

And I said, you don't need to put it off.

I said, it's something that He wants you to do right now.

And we began to talk more and she kept getting pages on her phone and she kept looking at it and she kept shaking her head.

We would continue to talk, I would share with her about the love of Christ and the danger of the situation that she was in.

And she kept getting more text messages and more text messages.

And finally she looks at it And she says, I can't believe this.

And she shows it to me, and on the screen it says, are you talking with Jesus?

She says, I feel tonight that my eternal salvation is at stake.

And I couldn't have agreed with her more.

I asked her to make a commitment to the Lord and she said that she would think about it and as we began talking it's like that moment in time started up again phone call came in hey someone's coming to help door was unlocked and all of a sudden she was back in her truck we were heading off in another direction and that moment was over And I realized more than anything that night that God wanted to be in a relationship with her.

And the reason that the relationships that she was in were broken and they were hurting was because she didn't have 1 with God.

And God was appealing to her that night, hey, I still love you, I still want to be in a relationship with you, and possibly, just maybe, there is a good, positive, Christian relationship waiting for you out there.

But we can't have 1 unless we're in 1 with Jesus Christ.

Why is it that so many young people struggle with this idea of being in a relationship with God today?

Conformation vs. Transformation

I just want to share some practical worldly principles.

This is obviously not a complete list, but it's just something that kind of sparks some interest and some thought with you.

And as we're working through them, by all means, share some of your thoughts.

And maybe there are things up there that you're thinking about that I haven't put up there.

Number 1, when it comes to worldly principles, 1 of them is establishing relationships based on emotion or feeling.

Sometimes we get all caught up in the emotion of the fact that this person likes me or that girl stared at me or she smiled at me or he came by and gave me his t-shirt or sweatshirt or whatever guys and girls do now in high school.

But getting caught up in the emotions and the feeling of a relationship and not basing it on principles.

Number 2 up there it says establishing relationships based on physical attributes alone.

Now is it wrong to want to be married to someone that's good-looking?

Matt said that just like no with a big smile on his face.

In fact, God says it's okay, but that cannot be what we base the entire relationship on.

Okay, that's what we talked about moments ago when we talked about getting old and gray and wrinkly and saggy, okay, those good looks will eventually go away and all we have left is gray hair if any hair at all and then hair in places we never thought it would be, okay, and so these things are going to happen and we cannot base our relationship on physical attributes alone.

God wants us to be ravished with our husband or with our wife and to enjoy them in our years of youth, but to also establish that relationship, that connection that will last past the years of our youth.

Also establishing relationships based on financial or social benefits.

I know that people have been married before because they think that this man can take care of me, he's got a great job, and he's secure, and he makes a lot of money, he's got a nice home, and I know that with him I'm gonna have everything that I want.

A person has a high standing in their community, or they're very well-known, and people like them, and they like to be around them and spend time with them and they're the the talk of the town and they're the top dog at the party, you know what I'm saying?

And so people a lot of times will look at that, it's appealing to them, they want that But that's not what we base our relationship on.

Another worldly principle is getting too close too soon.

What's it mean to get too close too soon?

Before you actually know who you're actually getting close to.

Getting into the relationship too quickly before you know who you're getting into relationship with.

I've been married for just a couple years now.

And I'm just now getting to know a woman that I've known for over a decade.

And I've been in conversation with her for years.

And so getting into a relationship, getting too close too soon.

When you're rushing and you're in a certain point where you have to stop, and then there's nothing left, and you don't know how that first goal is going.

So you rush in, you give too much too soon, and then it becomes a relationship that you're not necessarily interested in any longer because you haven't developed what's necessary first.

You kind of give all the tangibles, if you will, if I can say it like that, and you give some of the personal intimate things that you have, but you've not developed a strong continuous relationship with them.

What are some ways that we can get too close too soon?

Anybody else wanna share a thought or maybe clarify?

I think like oftentimes you can get too close too soon because you're like delusional.

Like you're living in a fantasy land that doesn't exist.

Like you're, you're, you're placing upon this person, a character or personality that you don't even know if it really exists.

And you're saying like, oh, they're this or they're that or they're this, but you don't even know if they're this or that or this.

And so when you're like deluding yourself, you'll get too close too soon because you think you know what they are, but you really don't know what they are.

And obviously, like a practical way of getting too close too soon is letting your mind just go off into married romance land.

You see a girl, and you don't even know her.

I mean, she could eat cats for breakfast.

And then you're just like thinking, oh, she's this, she's that.

And then before you know it, you're like in the Alps with her, or like in Hawaii with her.

Daydreaming too much about a girl that you don't even know.

What's another way that you can get too close too soon?

Like he said, setting upon them something that they aren't.

Even if you know they aren't what you're expecting, and you kind of still go, oh, they'll change.

And so you go ahead with the relationship, even though that person is not going to change.

It goes back to that thing of Samson that you said before.

It's like, when you see the other person, they're going to meet all my needs.

And it's emotionally, especially, like thinking of that person.

I know that you brought up in the seminar, but I think all of us sometimes imagine that some person is gonna meet all our needs and that's an impossibility that will never, never happen.

And I think that's 1 way that we trip ourselves into looking for somewhere else.

But it's impossible that marriage with the best person, that person will never meet all of our needs.

And that's a safeguard I think that helps us to be more conscious to our relationships.

You know what's interesting as you guys share with me, these things, you're telling me basically what we've been talking about that things are these ideas, these thoughts, this getting too close too soon actually takes place right here first we have these ideas and these thoughts of what can be but we're not dealing with reality And the reality is that we don't even know the person that we're thinking all these things about.

It doesn't mean that it can't happen, but it just means that we better be really objective about it and prayerful about it and get to know this person on a social level and on an intellectual level, if I can say it like that.

Get to know them and then we'll find out what they're really all about.

Another thing, and we'll talk more about that, we're coming to the godly principles next, but the next thing here it says enjoying worldly entertainment together.

Hey Let's go out and do this and that or the other.

What are some things that young people do that really may cause a premature situation in a relationship?

Okay, why would that be something that would be premature or cause premature?

A lot of young couples go to the movies and it's a dark, cozy environment and normally they're watching some romance and you get this whole idea in your head, and you're sitting next to the person you like, and things start happening.

Unequally Yoked Together

Father in heaven, we want to thank you that we can talk more about relationships this morning, and I pray that you would inspire us with your thoughts.

Give us your spirit and help us to understand what your plans are for us.

And Lord, we know that the relationships that we have with other people, especially the opposite sex, are so very important in your eyes.

And we know how devastating they can be if we're not following you.

And so we pray, Lord, that you would help us to see clearly and follow you.

In Amos chapter 3 verse 3, what does the Bible say?

The Bible says, Can 2 walk together except they be agreed?

Can 2 walk together unless they be agreed?

What happens when you just don't get along with someone?

How easy is it for you to spend time together?

It's like, man, I wish they would get out of the room.

How can 2 walk together unless they be agreed?

There is nothing more calculated to lead away and destroy young people as unconsecrated, unholy, uninspired relationships with the opposite sex, okay?

Nothing more calculated to destroy a relationship with God and with each other, especially maybe when we consider even relationships with people from another faith.

There was a young lady that I met in New York, and good young lady, comes from a great Christian home and worked with us in the mission trip.

Last year came this year and what I found out is that she had went to Boston for a while to be a nanny.

And she met that someone at another church.

See she was a Seventh-day Adventist Christian, but she was attending a church there, and at the church there weren't very many young people that she was communicating well with.

And so here she was, she was wanting to develop rapport with people, have relationships with people, and really kind of just establish that friend base while she was there.

She's young, she wanted to go have fun and do things, but she wanted to make sure that these friends were Christians.

Nothing wrong with that, but what happened is she didn't find what she wanted, okay?

What she needed was there, But what she wanted wasn't there.

She wanted a fun, exciting, big group of people who were out having fun all the time.

And so she didn't find it in this little church over here, so she went to another church and she began to find those types of people, but they were living a totally different faith experience than what she was living.

And So while she was there in that group of people she began to meet other young people, she began to meet other young men and as she met these other young men she found 1 that she was attracted to that grabbed her heart.

She got to know him a little bit better and as they got into a relationship things progressed and I don't know to what level but I do know the end result.

The end result was that finally she had to break off the relationship with him and it was very hard because what she thought in her mind is that I can get in a relationship with this guy, he's a Christian, he follows the Bible and because of that things will be okay and I think that probably in the back of her mind she's thinking I can win him to the faith, to our faith, to the Seventh-day Adventist Church And when it came right down to it, that wasn't what he was thinking.

And so the question, how can 2 walk together except to be agreed, was actually being fleshed out in her life.

And she was asking that question to herself, how is this going to be possible?

And praise God she was able to actually think through all this and get out of the relationship before it was too late.

Because you know who knows what can happen if you get into a relationship like that it heads off down the road and you make commitments that you shouldn't be making and you make deals if you will that shouldn't be made you end up married to a person like that you can lose your whole religious experience, your whole Christian experience.

So there is nothing more calculated to lead away or destroy a young person as a consecrated self initiated godless relationship with unbelievers and even though it's a different face.

Now if you think that it's of no consequence to choose a company of unbelievers, I want you to think again.

No they're unequally yoked technically, okay?

They're not happy with each other and I bet anything if that donkey was big enough you take that bull Okay, and that's how it can be sometimes in our relationships And that's how the influence that these relationships Work in our world today, and if you look all the way back in the book of Genesis chapter 6 you'll find that people are actually being unequally yoked together even back then.

Genesis chapter 6 And we're going to begin in verse 2, and then we'll look at verses 4 and 5 also.

It says, And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose." Why did these sons of God take these daughters of men as wives?

What really moved them to go and marry them?

I don't think I could have given a better explanation.

Here's a group of women, if you will, who are beautiful, pretty, on the move, and their physical attractions and their worldly appeal began to appeal to the hearts of the sons of God.

And so they said, you know what, they're beautiful, they're fun to be around, they're awesome, I think I want to spend the rest of my life with them.

And they didn't even think to ask God about being in a relationship with them.

Well, and also the Christian girls were probably plain looking, quiet, and they were wanting to settle down with family.

They weren't the type that were exciting and more stuff that was like, wow, she's kind of good looking and stuff like that.

And so there was a difference between them.

And if you're with that type of group, where it's different than the normal group that you're with, it can all of a sudden have an appeal to you, that you didn't think would ever happen.

And I think it was Wes that said that sin is actually fun.

And it does for a moment, but the end result is no fun.

I can tell you from personal experience just seeing people and spending time with them and even being in that type of environment where you have young men who are Christians but they are losing their Christian experience and they see all these good looking girls out in the world who are fun and fast and exciting to be around and they are really catering to their wants and their needs, if you will, but not catering to the whole religious experience and developing true relationships, I've seen them just get sucked in and get completely lost.

And what Satan does is he completes this false environment, this false society, if you will, false community, And He draws people into it saying, hey, it's fun, it's exciting, this is where you need to be.

These people really get you, they understand you, when in reality once you get into it they don't understand you at all.

They're just there because they want something from you.

And if we don't have consecrated hearts it's the same situation, we just want something from that other person and it ends up being a situation where we are unequally yoked together with unbelievers.

And I just want to let you know that you can be unequally yoked together with believers, unbelievers even in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

So when you are picking and choosing someone you better be careful And like I said in the first seminar, make sure that you understand what God is asking of you, number 1, and how He defines the relationship that you want to be in so that it's a safe environment to enter into.

And I guarantee you, you'll be able to see that wolf in sheep's clothing a mile away once you spend time with Jesus.

It says that the daughters of men were fair and they took them wives of all which they chose, not that God chose.

And then it says in verse 4, there were giants in the earth in those days.

And also after that when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bared children unto them, the same became mighty men, which were men of old, men of renown.

And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Series

MTYC 2010 Breakout Seminar - Relationship

Conformation vs. Transformation

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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