We can not rely on organizations to help lay the foundation for a life of service. We must be intentional about developing habits that will make service a natural part of living because “the greatest joy and the highest education are found in service.” Come find out how you can cultivate a life of service!

Michigan Camp Meeting 2022: Knowing the Time

<p>We can not rely on organizations to help lay the foundation for a life of service. We must be intentional about developing habits that will make service a natural part of living because “the greatest joy and the highest education are found in service.” Come find out how you can cultivate a life of service!</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Creative Outreach for Everyday Life

Amy Austin

01 A Lifestyle of Service

02 The Gift of Giving

03 Celebrating “the Holidays” in a Secular World

04 Called to Serve I

05 Called to Serve II

You are about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2022 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

Dear Heavenly Father, we just thank you so much for camp meeting.

And we thank you for the beautiful weather and for the fellowship and the encouragement and all the things that we can learn, Lord.

Lord, we just ask for your Holy Spirit to be here now that we will be inspired and encouraged and that we'll learn something new that we can use to share your love with others.

All right, well, for those of you who don't know me, my name is Amy, you probably read that in the little description.

What really defines me, at least I think so, if probably if you ask people that know me well, what they know about me, 1 of the things anyways would be that I just have a passion for outreach and for fun and creative ways to share Jesus with the world around me.

And when I say the world around me, I don't mean the globe, I mean those that are right in my sphere of influence, you know, my neighborhood, my community, my family even, and I love to share these ideas that the Lord has given me with you so that you also can reach the world around you.

So this journey for me started, I don't know, maybe 12 years ago.

And it started because I just really had a deep desire to teach my children how to share Jesus, how to be active Christians, how to serve others, And I guess I've always thought in my mind that active church members are not nearly as likely to leave the church.

And so I wanted my kids to be active, but I wanted it not just to be a chore, I wanted them to have fun and to love doing it.

And so that we started when they were very little and we started just doing all sorts of fun things.

And so it's kind of just ended up as a deep passion of mine and a love and I have just found that outreach can be so fun that it's fulfilling and that it's rewarding.

And I have found that it can become woven through every aspect of life.

Outreach and service have kind of become like a lifestyle and today's specifically and throughout the week, That's really what I want to inspire you with, is that outreach can become not just an event or a church function or something we do at Christmas or whatever, but that it can become a lifestyle and that we can look for ways to share Jesus in fun ways, no matter where we're going, no matter what we're doing, whether it's a holiday or we're going to the grocery store, it can be a lifestyle.

So that's pretty much what it has become.

And I see myself, it's interesting, a holiday or something is coming up and I'm thinking in my head, okay, how can I use this to share Jesus?

In Testimonies for the Church, Volume 5, it says, crowd all the good works you possibly can into this life.

I think that is so fantastic, because that's really what this life should be about, right?

It says, crowd all the good works you possibly can into this life, and it's Testimonies for the Church, volume 5, page 488.

Okay, so There's somebody in the Bible who knew this very well and that is Tabitha.

In Acts 9.36, it says, at Joppa there was a certain disciple named Tabitha, which is translated Dorcas.

This woman was full of good works and charitable deeds which she did.

So she was an amazing lady who lived by this principle.

She was full of good works and charitable deeds.

So that means number 1, She intentionally looked for opportunities to go about doing good.

And 2, that it wasn't just an occasional thing where her church provided an opportunity for her to do something.

So this shows us that she didn't just do good things when the opportunity arose, but she was looking for ways to do good, and she did it all the time.

There's your quote there about crowd all the good works.

At Joppa, which is near Lyda, there lived a woman named Dorcas whose good deeds had made her greatly beloved.

She was a worthy disciple of Jesus and her life was filled with acts of kindness.

She knew who needed comfortable clothing and who needed sympathy, and she freely ministered to the poor and the sorrowful.

Her skillful fingers were more active than her tongue.

That's probably a whole sermon in itself, but we're just gonna concentrate on the skillful fingers.

She was active and she was doing good things.

So she was busy, her life was full of good works, but we all know what happened to her.

So we all know what happened to her next.

The whole community was deeply saddened by this because probably all of their lives had been touched by this woman.

So but then they sent for Peter and he through God's power was able to raise her back to life.

And you might wonder, you know, why is 1 person raised back to life and another person is not?

Well, we have just a little bit of insight into why she was, and Acts of the Apostles talks about this further.

Dorcas had been of great service to the church and God saw fit to bring her back from the land of the enemy, that her skill and energy might be a blessing to others and also that by this manifestation of his power, the cause of Christ might be strengthened.

So it was all for the cause of Christ, for blessing others that she was brought back from the dead.

The Lord knew that was the lifestyle that she lived.

So in this story of Dorcas, Christ illustrates the nature of the true Christian spirit.

He shows that the truly converted heart will live a life of intentional good works.

Not because they're working for their salvation, but because they truly love the Lord and because they truly love others and are seeking to share Jesus with others.

They want others to be saved, they want others to know Jesus.

So there are many, many ways that we too can be full of good works.

And so over the course of this week, that's what we're going to talk about.

I'm just going to share with you how our family has tried to cultivate a lifestyle of service and how we've taught our schools and churches.

My husband's a pastor, so we've been around and so Our churches get the benefit of this and the schools and just anybody else who wants to learn this type of thing.

Our desire has been just this, to cultivate a lifestyle of good works and to teach others to do that as well.

And the first place to start is in the home.

Ministry of Healing says, "'The home is the child's first school, "'and it is here that the foundation should be laid "'for a life of service.'" Now, I'm really thankful that my parents tried to do this.

That might not be the case for you, and that's okay, because as long as we're breathing, we have the opportunity to learn this and to train ourselves to do this.

In my childhood, it was all sorts of things from in-gathering to adopting a homebound grandparent, going on mission trips, lots of different things.

The thing here is that we cannot rely on our churches or schools or outreach programs to do this job for our children or for our school children or for ourselves.

We have to learn how to cultivate this lifestyle of serving.

So I'm gonna share with you 6 ways to help get you, your children, your schoolchildren, your grandchildren, yourself, used to and excited about serving others.

So the first thing we're gonna look at is that we have to make serving a priority.

Kind of like Daniel purposed in his heart that he wasn't gonna defile himself with the king's food.

We have to purpose in our heart, we have to determine that this is something we wanna do and then we have to make it a priority.

So just a couple little things that you can do.

This is, you see, it's even in a plastic bag.

It's not glamorous or beautiful or anything, but at 1 point we made little homeless bags.

And so there's a can of soup in there and some different snacks and some glow tracks.

A friend of mine who sews much better than I made this little packet.

And then there's toiletries and booklets and things like that in there.

So however you wanna make it, it doesn't have to be the most glamorous.

But if you make these, depending on where you live, there's obviously more homeless people in some places than others.

But if you stash those in your car, then you're ready for a hungry homeless person when you come upon them.

Or if you don't have homeless people in your area, then you probably know somebody who might be eating alone at some point, supper, invite them over.

Or there's people also that can't get out and so you could make and take food to them.

So just making it a priority, stashing things, having things ready so that you can minister at a moment's notice.

Another way to teach the love of service, this represents helping at home.

So whether you have children or grandchildren, or even at school, there's responsibilities at school, We can learn to serve each other.

Even if you have no children at home or in your life, if you're married, you can learn to serve each other at home.

You know, doing the dishes, replenishing the toilet paper.

Also, we want to make sure that we affirm, whether it's our children or our spouse or anybody who is making this effort to serve others, we want to affirm them.

Series

Creative Outreach for Everyday Life

01 A Lifestyle of Service

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Creative Outreach for Everyday Life

05 Called to Serve II

57m

Presenting Persuasive Appeals During Keys to Revelation

03 The Holy Spirit Makes Appeals Appealing

58m

Acts: First Generation Lessons for Last Generation Believers

7. Guile

57m

Sharing the Three Angels’ Messages in 30 Seconds

01 Sharing the Three Angels’ Messages in 30 Seconds

1h 4m

Let My Pastors Go: 1844 to Heaven, Why So Long?

02 Are Our Efforts to Grow the Church Actually Shrinking the Church?

1h 1m

Presenting Persuasive Appeals During Keys to Revelation

02 How to Give Persuasive Appeals

59m

Sabbath School and Personal Ministries: Getting the Most Out of BSO

05 From Click to Christ: Winning Souls with BSO

1h 9m

Unusual Witness

How to Reach People Living in Your Neighborhood

1h 10m

The Key to Finishing the Work

The Ultimate Call

59m

Plenary

Panel Discussion: Personal Evangelism

46m

With All Boldness

With All Boldness Part 2

57m

The Three Angels' Message

07 The Fourth Angel’s Message

1h

Sound Doctrine