GYC 2010: No Turning Back

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Devoted Devotions:  A Vibrant Devotional Life for the Last Days

Westney White

Bound by Devotion

This message was presented at the GYC 2010 No Turning Back Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

For other resources like this, visit us online at GYCweb.org.

It's a privilege for me to be here this afternoon.

How many of you have been here for at least 1 of the previous seminars here?

How many of you this is the first time in the seminar?

There's so many blessed options you can go through.

The title of this seminar is Devoted to Devotions.

A vibrant devotional life for the last days.

And how many of you think that the devotional life is important?

It's of vital importance and I'm glad to be here with you.

I've been doing evangelism, been doing Bible work, things like that, and I'm just simply a student.

How many of you are students of the Word of God?

How many of you love to study the Word of God?

This afternoon we're going to be studying the Word of God.

Looking into this topic of devoted to devotions.

My title this afternoon for this message is Bound by Devotion.

I want you to stick very close with me as we go through this message.

I believe it's the foundation of our devotional life.

Growing up, I grew up in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

I might share more of my testimony the last day.

But growing up in the Adventist Church, I really...

My parents always encouraged me to have devotions.

Always, you know, in the morning, go to the Word of God and pray and spend time with God.

And I don't know how many of you have experienced this before, but I went to the Word of God.

I tried to study, I tried to pray, but it just wasn't clicking in my mind.

Kind of just reading something and not really understanding anything or having it affect your life.

And so what I'm gonna share with you is my personal understanding of how God's shown me how to make a devotionalize something powerful.

And so God, I believe, is gonna bless us.

I've been accused, I've been accused at times of being, or getting excited about the word of God.

So if I get too excited, if I get too crazy, you gotta say, just calm down, Wesley, calm down.

You know, I kind of think of Paul in 2 Corinthians 5 when he said, you know, if I appear to be out of my mind, it's for God.

But if I'm in my right mind, it's for you.

So by God's grace, I'll be in my right mind as we go through this message this evening.

I want to ask you if you would please pray with me as we begin the message and get into the Word of God.

Dear Father in heaven, we indeed thank you, Father, for allowing us to be here at GYC, Lord.

There are a lot of friends here, a lot of people that we know, familiar faces, fellowship, Lord, but our true goal and true desire is to know Jesus, Father.

We wouldn't see our friends or our family members.

And that only Christ Jesus would be seen.

I pray that as we go through this message, as we go through the word of God, that we understand more deeply what devotion really is, Father.

Do not, Lord, neglect to hear this prayer, for we know you won't.

And we just pray you'd be here right now not only with us but in us.

The enemy's always trying to do something to discourage us or to get us down, but God is always with us.

Solitary Time with the Savior

I'm blessed and highly favored this morning from Jesus.

I don't deserve it, none of us do, but praise God that we have salvation in him.

We have an eternal life through him and we can learn more about him and how to get closer to him in this seminar.

And the seminar is entitled Devoted Devotions, Vibrant Devotional Life for the Last Days.

Let me see if anyone's been here the whole time or 4 times at least.

How many of you, this is your first time in this seminar?

I know you have a lot of options to go to, a lot of great messages that are being preached and presented, but we're glad to have you here in this seminar.

I've been blessed by hearing the messages.

It was not only me that presented, but also Taj Pakaleb.

He presented the first 3, and they were blessed.

And he talked about what 1 thing, or many things are helpful, but what?

Sitting at the feet of Jesus, praise the Lord.

The next 1 was about thirsty in a pool of water.

How We can be in the presence of God, but not have the presence of God within us.

And then we talked about how we need to have, how we can prepare our hearts to have a sensitive heart and a sensitive mind to receive the things that God desires to give to us.

And then yesterday, in my first presentation, we spoke about how bound by devotion, bound by devotion.

How many of you were here for that 1 yesterday?

How the Lord Jesus binds us to himself by his devotion, how it's not simply a devotional life, we're not living a devotional life, but how we're to live a life of what?

We examined the life of Paul, and we saw what drove him, what motivated him to live such a life, a powerful life of devotion.

A life that was willing to be stoned to the point of death and getting up and preaching the next day.

And we decided that we want to have that type of devotion, right?

And he got that devotion by seeing the Lord Jesus, by seeing a vision of him and having that vision be repeated in his mind over and over and over again, seeing the cross.

And we came to the conclusion that in order to be like Paul, in order to minister like he ministered, in order to change the world like he changed the world, we must see what he saw.

We talked about how we oftentimes say, yes, we should behold Christ, yes, we ought to look to Jesus, but what does that mean?

If we are really looking to Jesus, we would see the same things that we saw or that Paul saw in his time.

That same motivating factor of Christ, if we could clearly see him as he is, would transform and change our lives.

Why are we still like we are in this planet?

Why are we seeing the powerful things happen that happened to the apostles?

Have you ever asked that question before?

When the Bible says in John 12 verse 14, barely, barely I say unto you, he that believeth in me, the things that I do, shall he do what?

Also, and greater things than these shall he do because I go to my Father.

Christ promised us that, why aren't we seeing that happen?

So the message this morning is entitled Solitary Time with the Savior, Why we can't see.

Why when we go to the word of God, we look to Christ, we look to the Calvary, we look to the Gethsemane account, and we're not touched, and not changed, and not transformed.

Have any of you ever heard a person say, you know what, man, I just, I spent time with Jesus this morning and it just touched my heart, changed my life, I was crying, I was in tears, just seeing Christ upon the cross.

And then you go to that same passage and you read the same passage and it's like, well it didn't do that to me.

What blocks us, what's holding us from beholding Jesus?

What's blinding us from even our desire to read the Bible or our desire to pray?

That's the question that we're gonna tackle this morning.

So I hope you brought your Bibles, hope you brought a piece of paper and a pen to take notes.

Before we get into answering this specific question, I just wanna go into a few practical things of devotions.

And before we do that, what should we do?

We don't want Westerners, we want the Holy Ghost.

Dear Father in heaven, we thank you for bringing us here, Father, and Indeed, Lord, we desire to see Jesus.

Lord, we desire to lift him up to be able to behold him and by beholding him be changed to transform this very world, Lord.

So I pray that, Lord, the words that are spoken would not be my words, Lord, as Paul said, I speak not with enticing words of men's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and the power.

Lord, I pray for your presence to be here with us, not only with us, but in us, Father, in this message.

May hearts be clear, may there be no distractions from the enemy, Lord.

May, Lord, we receive a clear view, a clear view, Father, of the cross and of Christ.

And may the blinders be taken off, may the scales be taken away from our eyes.

So I just wanna go over, before we tackle this very important question, I want to tackle a few things of practical devotional life.

Now, because we're talking about spending time with the Savior.

So when is the best time, would you say, to spend time with Jesus early in the morning why a fresh mind I heard that what else that's what that's what Jesus did amen amen anyone else is a fresh mind that's what that's following the example of Christ why the morning first thing 1 thing is needful the city of Christ Seek ye first the kingdom of God.

Self waste us, we have to surrender ourselves to God.

That's right, that's right, praise the Lord.

Self waste us, we have to surrender ourselves to God first thing in the morning.

So it's the beginning of your day, it's surrendering yourself to God, it's your mind is more clear, and we're following the example of Christ.

Go in the Word of God to the book of Mark.

And you're all probably familiar with this verse.

Mark chapter 1 and let's look at verse 34 and 35.

And by the way, just so you know what's going to happen, this message, we have 2 more meetings today.

This 1 and the next 1, the next 1 is entitled, Something to do with Surrender.

Something to Do with Surrender

Welcome to the last presentation in Devoted to Devotions, a Bible Bent devotional for the last days.

I hope you've been enjoying the messages as you've been here.

We appreciate you being here, and we obviously know there's lots of wonderful things that you've been going through.

And if you haven't caught some of these messages, I encourage you to go to AudioVerse, amen?

We can go back and get all these messages and be blessed throughout the year.

This message is going to be a shorter message than the others.

We're going to have a little question and answer afterwards.

So if you'd like to, if you have been thinking about any questions, go ahead and write them down and we're going to answer those questions.

We've been going through and understanding more about our devotional experience, what that really means, not simply a life or a devotional life, simply time with God in the morning, but really being more of a life of devotion, amen?

Constantly living a life of devotion to God.

And we talked last time about the foundation, amen?

We need to have a firm foundation in who Christ is and revelation of his character, amen?

And now we're gonna talk about, I believe a key, a key thing in understanding our devotional life and being able to see our devotional life or our life of a devotion in practice, the evidence or the process.

How does God relate with us in this process?

Because our devotions are designed to get us to where we are devoted to God, not only that, but also to get us to where we are like Jesus.

So we got to understand how God relates to us in the process of getting there to where God desires us to be.

Dear Father in heaven, we thank you, Lord, once again, that we can be here and that we can hear your word.

Lord, I have nothing good within myself, Father, but we desire Jesus.

And as we see Christ, Lord, everything else will be just falling in the line.

All the doctrines, all these things we'll see more clearly if we can see Christ first.

Let us see how He relates to us in this process of becoming like you in our devotional life and maybe become more like you as a result Father.

We thank you and praise in Jesus name, Amen.

Alright let's go straight into the Word of God.

Let's go back, let's go to the book of Matthew.

Matthew chapter 16 and we're gonna see an interesting story about this surrendering and what we're surrendering to and what this process looks like.

And really this is kind of a continuation of the last message that we were talking about, the revelation of who God is and his character.

And in Matthew chapter 16, Jesus asks a question.

And this question is of vital importance.

When we all get to Matthew 16, verse 13, let's say amen.

Verse 13 says, when Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples saying, who do men say that I am?

There's a lot of talk about me in the streets, a lot of talk about me in the synagogues.

Sometimes we're interested in what people think of us, amen?

But Christ is asking a different question here, as far as who people are saying that He is.

And they answer, so they said, some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah, or 1 of the prophets.

So that's what they say, yeah, you may be Elijah, you may be a prophet raised from the dead, you're a great teacher, This is what people are saying.

In verse 15, but who do you say that I am?

Simon Peter answered and said, you are what?

You are the Christ, the Anointed 1, the Messiah that was promised from years past.

You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.

Now is that important for us to understand that?

Isn't it important for us to believe that Christ is the Messiah, the living God, and believe in him?

So he asked him that question, and that question is very important, And he said yes.

And look at Christ's response to that question, or that answer.

Jesus answered and said to him, blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for what?

Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven." So he had a revelation from the Lord himself.

It wasn't just something that he thought up in his mind, but he had received this from the Lord.

Continuing on, verse 18, and I also say unto you that you, Peter, on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.

And whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

So Peter, I mean, Christ has come to him after giving this little sentence about what he is.

You are the Christ, you are the Son of God.

After that, he's like, whoa, you have received that from above.

That is not from flesh, that's from above.

Actually, there's a quote about that I want to show you right now.

About how important that statement really is.

Peter had expressed the truth, which is what?

And Jesus now honored him as the representative of the whole body of believers.

Now of course we know from this text, like we can explain it later, about how Peter's not the rock, amen?

So he was gonna, we're built on Christ, and Christ is just simply, or Peter was just simply a representative of Christ.

But this simple word, you are the Christ, the son of God, It's like he knew who he was, amen?

He knew who Jesus was, a correct answer that was revealed to him from above.

Series

Devoted Devotions: A Vibrant Devotional Life for the Last Days

Something to Do with Surrender

Transcript

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Sponsor

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