Michigan Camp Meeting 2024: As For Me and My House

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

The Joy of Giving

Amy Austin

01 The Generous Life

03 Fill Your Toolbox

04 What Can I Do?

05 Delivering the Message

02 Intentionally Prepared

You are about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2024 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

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

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for an amazing week.

Thank you for the way that you have blessed us, Lord, and the way that we've been a blessing to others.

We still have a few more days, and we just ask for your Holy Spirit to be poured out.

Help us to understand your will for our lives and how we can share your love with others.

How many of you were at last night's meeting?

So I'm not gonna even talk about Mark Finley actually, although his message was fantastic.

Did you hear the special music that the Landis siblings sang?

It was so good and I thought to myself, wow, I just resonated with it because that is me, a simple, ordinary person.

The beginning of that song says just ordinary people.

He chooses people just like me and you who are willing to do what he commands.

God uses people that will give him all, no matter how small your all may seem to you, because little becomes much as you place it in the Master's hands." And I just love that because I am so completely honored that God has used me and that he wants to use me and that he will use me in the future.

So I want to do everything I possibly can to be ready when he needs to use me.

So today we're going to talk about filling your toolbox.

Just like a carpenter puts tools in his toolbox so that he can do carpentry, we as Christians need to be ready.

We need to have our little missionary toolboxes filled and ready.

And it doesn't mean we know everything at once, but we can continue to grow and we can continue to collect resources and be ready when those opportunities come our way.

So we, there is a chair there or on the front here.

So we're going to talk about different tools.

You know, you could just sit by and wait for God to bring opportunities to you, and He does that.

But we need to be intentional about looking for opportunities everywhere to give and to serve, to help others, to share Jesus.

We have neighbors, we have friends, we live in communities that are full of people and services that we can be a part of.

We have so many opportunities to be the hands and feet of Jesus.

So we have to pray for these opportunities and the Lord will open doors.

So be intentional, don't just wait passively.

Actually right here at camp meeting, I don't know about you, but even just yesterday I had so many opportunities to be a blessing to somebody else.

People were overeating with us and somebody came up to me and asked me if they could have my granola recipe.

Because my husband, during a few weeks before camp pitch, a lot of the AV guys come weeks before, and so he was feeding them 1 week, they had my granola and this guy loved it.

And so I went inside and I'm like, do I have enough granola to share?

Because my husband will be here next week too, so I was checking it out.

Anyways, so I gave it, I got a little bag of granola together, it was for George.

He like held that little bag of granola to his chest.

So he's like, this is even better than the recipe.

And then someone came by actually to share something with me.

And in the course of the conversation, she shared a few things, some health challenges that she was going with and I just felt impressed to pray with her.

So I had the opportunity to pray with her.

It was raining when I got done with this class.

And so, yeah, we were in D-loop, in the front of D-loop, so people are always walking back and forth, which is no problem at all, but this lady comes through and she's standing under the awning because it's raining and raining.

So Kaylee is like, do we have an umbrella?

So she got Elijah's umbrella and she went out there and walked her to her trailer.

So I mean, these were just little things, small things, but they were meaningful to those who we were able to serve.

And so we have to train ourselves to open our eyes and open our ears to just see when there are people that need what we can give them, how we can help them.

And it doesn't have to be costly and it doesn't have to be time-consuming.

1 of my favorite quotes of all time is this from Last Day Events.

It says, crowd all the good works you possibly can into this life.

And if I could only, if I change 1 thing about it, I would just say, crowd all the good works you possibly can into each day, because there are just things around us that we can do if we will open our eyes and look.

The Bible says in Galatians 6.10, As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men." So every day, in everything that we do, we need to make it about sharing Jesus, looking for how we can serve.

So I met Jackie earlier this week and she told me about something that she has on her heart.

I can't remember if she used the word initiative, but it was the Love Your Neighbor Challenge initiative, something.

She said, I'm gonna try to go around to 8, pick 8 neighbors, right?

And every month go and visit them, take them something, do something for them.

So you guys, we're all gonna help her, but we're gonna help ourselves.

Because I actually have been praying that the Lord would help me reach my neighbors.

I have never lived in an area where I just somehow didn't interact and get to know my neighbors better than I am right now, but I'm on this long road.

Everybody lives way back off the road, and I'm the only 1 that I see walking up and down the road, our family.

So on occasion we'll talk to somebody and we have gone to their doors and introduced ourselves.

We took applesauce to all the neighbors that were home on this road 1 time.

So but anyway, so what I want you to do just for a minute here, if you had 8 neighbors and you were going to, that you had chosen, and you were going to go see them once a month, what is 1 thing that you would do?

So just think here for 30 seconds or a minute, think about it, and then if some of you want to share, somebody can write all these down or all of you can write them down and then you'll have more ideas when you go home and want to reach out to your neighbors.

Well if it was me I would pick the same thing for you know the first month I would do the same thing for everybody then otherwise you're coming up with lots and lots of ideas but If you have so many ideas that you could do something different for every neighbor, hey, that's okay.

Everybody think, and then I definitely want you to share.

So this is a two-parter, but we have, my son loves chickens as pets, and we have lots of dogs in the neighborhood, and it's a farm area, so instead of yelling at them when they come out.

But we give them dog biscuits in a box or something.

We made a box for a lady, I knew she was, we have some migrant workers because it's all farming and we have dairies and so I had Saul at our church, Desire of Ages in Spanish, we had 1.

So in the box, we did that and she about just fell over and my Spanish is pretty bad, but we got through the conversation.

Yeah, and then get this though, like you said, they bless you back.

And it was so, it was almost uncomfortable.

She made like these special flans and these apple like huge kind of, I don't do pies.

So It was so, it was, it was back, but we were, and then she had a little puppy and then we took her on a walk to try to make her, but it was interesting because they bless you back and you're like, oh no.

Series

The Joy of Giving

05 Delivering the Message

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

The Joy of Giving

02 Intentionally Prepared

40m

Sabbath School 3rd Quarter 2024: The Book of Mark

04 Parables

28m

Creative Outreach for Everyday Life

01 A Lifestyle of Service

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Christ’s Way to Happy, Growing Churches

Biblical Secrets of Church Growth

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Living Free: Building a Better Brain, Body, and Habits – for Good!

5. Leaders Lighting The Way

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The Doctrine of Personal Ministries

Part 2 - Who Fed the 5,000?

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Christ’s Way to Happy, Growing Churches

Creative Outreach Ministries That Work

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Amazing Disciples

7. Friendship Evangelism, Part 1

52m

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

Sharing the Three Angels’ Messages in 30 Seconds

01 Sharing the Three Angels’ Messages in 30 Seconds

1h 4m

The Heart of God

51m

Sound Doctrine