Michigan Camp Meeting 2024: As For Me and My House

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Making a House a Home

Dane Zinke

01 Simple & Thrifty Ways to Make Home Beautiful

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.

Dear Heavenly Father, I just want to ask that you would come with us.

We just want to humble ourselves before you.

Lord, we want beautiful homes, but most importantly, We want our homes to represent you.

Thank you for your Bible and the promises that you give us.

And just thank you for being here in Jesus' name.

So, yes, As Amy said, I'm not an interior designer.

I am actually a patient care coordinator for Mission Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, but I do that remotely from Upper Michigan.

It's a good place to get things that is inexpensive.

But this was 1 of their wall signs and it just reminded me of this class.

By wisdom a house is built and through understanding it is established.

Through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures." So I can't even begin to imagine what Solomon's rare and beautiful treasures were.

But mine are things like pictures of my children on the wall, a metal watering can from my grandmother that's in my porch, and maybe like a Bible journal of my mom that's in my bookshelf.

So those are the rare and beautiful treasures that I want to talk about today.

And however, we know as Christians that it takes more than decor to make a house beautiful.

What to make it truly beautiful, I've got this picture frame on my wall.

These are my kids, they're about 5 and 7, smiling as big as they can, standing in front of a tent in our backyard that they're very excited to sleep in that night.

And it reads, the best things in life aren't things.

And I love that, it's so true, and that really should be the name of our seminar today.

To build a beautiful home, God needs to be the center.

And Satan works so hard to distract us even with good things.

But if God is the center of our home, that is truly the foundation of a beautiful home.

Number 2, loving relationships between husband and wife, parent and child, and between siblings.

If our homes are beautiful, but we don't have those loving relationships, it's not truly what it should be.

So, number 3, a beautiful home filled with meaningful things is only the cherry on top.

God as our first priority and real love for each other is the foundation.

So I love this quote from Adventist Home.

Home should be made all that the word implies.

So I know none of us have been to heaven, but I think all of us can imagine it would be welcoming.

It would be a place where Jesus is present.

And it would be a place that Our family would want to gather and grow and make wonderful memories.

So we want to create a place we generally want to love to be in.

So this is just kind of a little overview of some areas we're going to try to cover just briefly.

I told Amy the hardest thing about this was it was just an overwhelming task to think about what to include and what to leave out.

But your front entrance or your outdoor space, entryway, living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom.

And then Amy's going to share with us her knowledge of plant propagation because we both love using plants in our homes.

It's very thrifty because you can take a plant and and just take a cutting off of it and make another plant.

She's also gonna share something that she's very good at, and it's do-it-yourself furniture builds.

She made some furniture for her home that she's going to share with you and how she did that and how you might be able to try it too.

So Grace, Amy's daughter, Jake, and then Kaya, and of course our dogs, Frankie, Panda Bear, and Hunter.

And your front porch is really the first warm welcome that somebody gets when they enter your house, before they enter your house.

I mean, I don't know if you have thought of this, but even when you drive up to somebody's home, you already start to get a feeling for the home.

So, yeah, so there's 1, in this picture, there's just 1 simple tip I want to share with you.

But before I do, I grew up in upper Michigan and I lived in the South long enough after that, I had moved away, that I wanted to adopt 2 things from strong Southern culture.

That was Like a covered front porch, but a big space, a big enough space that it was usable and not just decorative, and then a porch swing.

I don't know if any of you have a porch swing.

When I built a house, I wanted those 2 things really bad.

What do you see in this picture that gives you a dramatic pop of color that is with all this natural tone.

So yes, these are flower pots that are my favorite color.

And in order to stick with the thrifty part of our presentation, I got these at Marshall's for a very inexpensive price.

Yeah, TJ Maxx, Home Goods, that type of a store.

So they're not only a pop of color amongst all these natural tones, but they also have a different texture.

They have that ribbed circular texture that's unlike anything around them.

But if you have a front porch that has natural tones, a lot of times your siding is going to be tan or white or something.

Try to bring in a dramatic color change, something that's different.

I have a few slides here that I'm going to skip over because I think I have too many.

I'm sure most of you here have flowers as you enter into your home.

It's probably 1 of the easiest and best ways just to bring a pop of color and just natural beauty.

And I'm just going to tell you about 4 of them that I love that are super easy because I do we have anybody here that's a real gardener a real green thumb okay good nobody else Okay so these I'm just gonna tell you 4 because I have a lot more than 4 but red geraniums and geraniums come in all different colors but for me the red geraniums are tied to a special memory.

So our family went on a vacation to Mackinac Island.

And of course, if you've been there, there's red geraniums all along the Grand Hotel.

They're not only beautiful, but yeah, they are connected to a special memory.

I did not know this, but you can winter them and keep them all year round.

And Amy's going to tell us how we can do that.

I would just always get a new 1 year after year.

My other flower I love is the black-eyed Susan.

I think I planted probably just maybe 3 small pots of those and they spread, but they don't spread to the point where it's hard to manage them and you're constantly having to dig them up but you basically once you plant them you don't have to do anything else they just come up on their own through the mulch through whatever they're super hardy and I love them.

Diego Silva

Melissa Silva

02 Becoming One

Well good afternoon, We're so glad you're here.

She's originally from Quebec, Canada, and I'm Diego, originally from Brazil.

We are a multicultural family, so we're going to be talking a little bit about the complexities of becoming 1, not just in the context of different cultures, but there are many things that make the union of husband and wife complex.

As was mentioned, today will be more about marriage.

Tomorrow we'll deal with the broader concept of healthy relationships in the family with children and other things related to that.

So regarding my other seminar, I'm doing First Corinthians, studies in First Corinthians in the morning.

That's 930 in the admin building, class 150.

There's a whole lot to choose from so I know it's hard but not really making a plug just telling you that's what I'm doing.

I'm also here for my friend Giancarlo's ordination which happened last Sabbath.

We are actually currently in the process of selling our house in Oregon and buying a house in Tennessee.

And So there are a lot of moving parts in our lives right now, but being here actually is a good thing.

We need to kind of get our minds off of all the stuff going on.

We've done this marriage seminar in various places.

So the full seminar related to marriage it's called from dysfunction to relational wholeness and you can find if you're interested in the full series we have in English and Portuguese in English you can look it up on the Warren Seventh-day Adventist Church YouTube channel, which is here in Michigan, or the Sandy Seventh-day Adventist Church YouTube channel.

I don't think anyone here is interested in that 1, but if you are, I can tell you how to get to that 1.

So this will be a condensed version we do it in 5 parts we're going to do it today it's gonna be a summary but also Melissa why don't you introduce the rest of our family.

Yes so we have 2 children Abigail is 10 years old and Caleb is 8, and they're loving their J1 and primary meetings.

They should be out there swimming perhaps this afternoon.

And we lived for 6 years in Brazil when we first got married, and then we came back to the United States, and our children have been born and raised here in different parts of the United States.

Moving from Oregon to Tennessee is not the only big change in our lives right now.

So We have homeschooled our children up to this time, and starting in the fall, they're gonna be going to school at 1 of our Adventist schools in the Collegedale area.

So it's a big change for both children, maybe more so for mom.

So we are excited to share this seminar with you.

So this first part of today's seminar is called God's Plan for Marriage and we usually do this in a full hour so we're going to condense it but we're going to give you the gist and you'll get the gist and then we're going to get into the complexities of becoming 1.

I want to mention that we would like for this to be interactive.

Like I said, we have it recorded online, so the interaction will maybe break up a little bit of the recording.

They'll edit later but I'm not concerned about that.

I would love to hear questions, comments, some of you may even want to share personal experiences.

We're gonna ask you to keep them brief just because we do have a short time and another a number of people here but we will begin with a passage found in Matthew chapter 19 verse 4 Melissa what would you read that for us?

Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?

Matthew 19 4 so this is Jesus answering a question posed to him about divorce so The Pharisees come they really are not coming in good faith, they want to set up an awkward situation for him, but they're asking about divorce and what terms are appropriate for divorce.

And what I would like to point out in Jesus' answer, we're not gonna spend a lot of time on this, they come with Deuteronomy 25.

That's really the only mention of divorce in all of the Pentateuch.

Jesus does not engage with them on their text.

When Jesus is asked about an issue related to marriage, he's going to point his audience back to the beginning, because if you read the Torah, if you read Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, It is all God-inspired instruction about life, about relationships.

But all of this instruction is given in the context of sin.

It's given in the context of the train has already gone off the rail.

And so as helpful as it is to have these instructions because they are God-inspired and they're given to help mediate and remedy the problem of sin.

If you really want to understand God's ideal for marriage, God's plan for marriage, you don't go to Deuteronomy 25.

And this is where it may be a little revolutionary.

God is there working with Adam and Eve in the context of sin and rebellion, but there's a very oft-quoted text in Genesis 3.

I believe many men, more men than women, love to quote it, and it's Genesis 3, 16 and 17, and God is addressing Eve in the context of sin, and he's basically telling her these are the consequences of sin and God says he referring to her husband Adam will rule over you And that is what we would consider, what we would regard as God's post-sin arrangement.

The dynamic there is in the context of the train has gone off the rail.

When Jesus is approached about marriage, he's going to take his audience back to the beginning.

And so if you go back to Genesis 1 and 2, what you're going to find is 3 very simple, clear ideals that we believe God had for Adam and Eve and all couples from the beginning.

So we have, do we have polygamy in Deuteronomy?

So that's where I say if you really want to know God's plan, you don't go to Deuteronomy, even though Deuteronomy is good.

In Deuteronomy, God says that if a man has 2 wives and he loves 1 more than the other, he shouldn't cheat the son of the woman he loves less by giving him what is not due him.

It's a great law, but it's given because the train has gone off the rail.

The fact that polygamy is mentioned in Deuteronomy and is not condemned, but the law is given in the context of trying to minimize the damage, yes, doesn't mean that that's God's plan.

So if you want to know God's plan, you have 1 man, 1 woman, right?

From then on, did Abraham have more than 1 wife?

Did he have children with more than 1 woman?

Did David, a man after God's own heart, he did have concubines and youth.

But everything past Genesis 2 is not really reflecting God's ideal, it's reflecting God's attempt to get things back on track.

And so what do we have in Genesis 1 and 2?

Monogamy, we have a heterosexual union, and we have permanence.

And Jesus, in Matthew 19, he's addressing the issue of permanence.

So they wanna know, well, when can we do this divorce thing?

Moses commanded us to issue a certificate of divorce and Jesus says in the beginning it was not like that.

So even divorce, a necessary evil in a world of sin, Jesus says, is really not based on the ideal.

Having said that, so today we're gonna talk about marriage and we're gonna talk about the concept of a partnership.

And so Melissa, read for us Genesis 1, 27 and 28.

03 The Dynamics of a Healthy Family

Kind Heavenly Father, thank you so much for guiding us.

The older we get, the more we realize how little we know and how much we need your help.

And so we ask that your Spirit be present guiding our presentation and just helping us, Father, more and more to make home in Eden on earth.

For those of you that may not have been here yesterday, my name is Diego and this is Melissa.

Melissa's originally from French Canada and I am originally from Brazil.

We are a multicultural family and we have been blessed by that and challenged by that at the same time.

And we are sharing with you not as authorities on the subject of marriage or children, but as fellow learners and people that are on the journey together with you seeking answers from God and life experience.

Yesterday I mentioned that our presentations are part of a larger series that we do together.

It's called From Dysfunction to Relational Wholeness.

And for those of you that would like to watch the full series, you can look up on YouTube.

You can just type in the search engine of YouTube, Sandy Adventist Church.

And we also have done it at the Warren Seventh-day Adventist Church here in Michigan.

And so the full series is available on those YouTube channels.

I'd like to summarize yesterday's presentation and perhaps even entertain questions or comments.

We didn't really get a chance to do that yesterday.

We were talking about the complexity of becoming 1.

When Jesus was asked about marriage, he pointed his audience back to the beginning, God's ideal for marriage.

And what we find in Genesis 1 and 2 is a partnership between man and woman as they were given the task to rule over the earth and exercise authority together, not 1 over the other, but together over God's good world and God's creation.

And it talks about the concept of 2 becoming 1 flesh.

And in the context of sin, that can be very messy and very difficult.

And we talked about that yesterday and what that looks like.

We talked about how, even though the Bible teaches the idea of the wife submitting to the husband, and it talks about in the context of sin how in the hierarchy of the family the husband will rule over the wife, but when we as Christians understand that Jesus is bringing God's people back to the original design as much as possible, and that he's trying to restore the original intent of God for humanity and the image of God in humans, then we really want to, as far as possible in our marriages, strive for the ideal.

And what we find in Genesis 1 and 2 is not 1 exercising authority over the other, but the idea of partnership.

And we talked yesterday about mutual submission.

Yes, Paul talks about submission, and he does say that the wife submits to the husband.

But if you look a little more closely and nuance it and look at context, what Paul is really, really going after is the idea of mutual submission.

No 1 is in charge, per se, and leadership in the context of the gospel is not exercising dominion over another, but it's actually serving the other.

We talked about differences, and we talked about how differences between 2 different people create gaps of communication.

The most obvious, for example, is different languages.

If she speaks French and I speak Portuguese, then we're gonna have a gap in communication, right?

But even if we both speak English, we have other differences to sort through.

If you understand that women are wired differently than men by design, there are differences.

There's biological differences and there's also brain differences.

French Canadians, in many ways, are very different from Brazilians.

The French Canadians in general are more concerned with punctuality and being there on time.

Brazilians may be a little more relaxed in that respect.

And the list of differences just on culture alone goes on and on.

Melissa is a risk-averse by nature, by personality.

We come from 2 different homes with various traditions and various personalities and various different home dynamics that create more differences.

And so are these differences a liability to our marriage?

And Paul, in the New Testament, in the context of the church, he also had to make a decision about what to do with differences.

Because the biggest people groups that he was trying to bring together, the 2 main people groups, Jews and Gentiles, the easy path would have been to just have Jewish Christian congregations and Gentile, Greek Christian congregations.

Or have the Greeks just merge into Jewish culture and become completely Jewish.

Yes, which is what the Jewish Christian missionaries of Jerusalem that gave Paul such a hard time throughout his ministry really wanted.

They wanted to integrate the Greeks, but according to their terms.

And that becomes unhealthy in a relationship.

And so Paul understood that there were cultural differences in the church.

He understood that there were socioeconomic differences.

There were slaves, and there were slave owners within the churches that Paul organized.

And Paul understood that there were these differences.

There were younger members, there were older members, there were men and women, There were Jews and Gentiles.

And in Paul's mind, how do we work through these differences?

Well, if you go to 1 Corinthians chapter 12, Paul talks about the Church, and he uses the metaphor of a body.

And Paul in Ephesians will use very similar metaphors to talk about marriage.

And so what Paul says about the church in many ways applies to marriage as well.

We have members with different gifts, different personalities, different cultural backgrounds.

But Paul says the body is 1 and has many members.

And how do you become 1 when you have many members?

Well, you can adopt Hitler's approach, and that is conformity by force.

And many husbands, and sometimes it can be the wife, will bring unity in the home by imposing their will, their personality, their cultural preferences, their convictions of right and wrong, their conscientious understanding of what is right or wrong, and every member of the household has to conform without thinking for themselves.

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Making a House a Home

03 The Dynamics of a Healthy Family

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