GYC Conference 2024: Wherever He Goes

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

The Greatest Battle Ever Fought: Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane

Harley Southwell

01 Claustrophobia: Journey to the Heart of the Earth

02 Resisting Unto Blood: Tempted Beyond What We Are

03 Sleeping or Weeping: Which Disciple Will You Be?

04 Why the Son Had to Die

05 What to Do If You Betray Jesus: Can You Be Restored?

I am a pastor from the South Queensland Conference in Australia.

Now technically, I only just qualify for being from the South Queensland Conference because the area which I minister is right on the, literally on the line of the Tropic of Capricorn.

I have walked upon, I could literally throw a ball from my house and it would go over to the Tropic of Capricorn line.

And so the border of the Northern Australia Conference is from the Tropic of Capricorn.

So that's just how close we are into that area.

This area here is the region of central Queensland, overlaid with Wisconsin.

I was recently there, so I was just sharing this there.

And the 2 churches you have here, we have Emerald and you have Longreach.

Longreach is a proper outback town and that is the size of the district which we minister in.

So it's a pretty large district, takes about 4 and a half hours to drive between the 2 churches.

And every star that I've got on there, that's the place where I've gone out and done a visitation or ministry or something.

So the district itself, the area I've ministered to is quite large.

But it's really, really exciting to be out there.

But some pastors in Western Australia pastor areas larger than even Texas.

Just 1 pastor for a couple churches in that.

Australia's a large country, but 95% of the population lives within half an hour of the ocean.

And so I'm part of that 5% that's inland, a bit in the outback.

So the town of Emerald is a town of 16, 000 people.

We've got a church there with about 40 people attending.

Got a lot of young kids there, so that's great.

And we recently did an evangelistic outreach, which was successful.

Emerald is named after the green fields, but what's interesting is just down the road from Emerald there's a place called the Gemfields, which has the largest deposit of gemstones in the southern hemisphere.

And there you can find lots of sapphires and rubies.

1 time I was visiting 1 of my church members out there, and we were just going for a walk along the main road.

He just bent down and picked 1 up off the road that had just come up in the rain.

That's how abundant the sapphires and rubies are in that area.

It's a very interesting area, the gem fields, because it's kind of like the Wild West out there.

People just go, they stake a claim, and they put up a caravan and then just start digging in the ground right around where they live and just start bringing up the gems there.

The other thing that Emerald is known for is we have all around Emerald there's lots of these huge coal mines and these are some of the largest coal mines in Australia and they're sending coal out to places like China and India, getting exported out to there.

And when we were first driving into the area, my wife was like, wow, look at those mountains, those plateaus over there.

And I'm like, those aren't mountains, those are the mounds of dirt that has been lifted and moved out of these huge holes in the ground.

But we do have some plateaus and mountains around as well.

This is Blackdown Tablelands National Park, just in our area.

Beautiful area for hiking and swimming and camping, with some beautiful rock pools to swim in and waterfalls to explore around and it's just, yeah, it's a really nice place.

The other church we have is a little church plant out at Longreach.

Out at Longreach we've got about 7 folk attending there, but a few of them are not Adventist, and so that's exciting as well, some contacts from the community.

The main industry for Longreach being an outback area is its cattle, beef, and you'll often see the road trains driving past loaded up with cows and sheep.

But also tourism is a major aspect of this as well.

And yeah, so that's Longreach is where Australia's airline, Qantas was founded, So there's a large Qantas museum there.

But as you're driving around, you'll be coming past some of these large road trains.

Some of them can get up to 123456, or so, 7 trailers long.

I think the ones that I've never passed 1 longer than 5 trailers, but they can get quite long.

And let me tell you, when you're overtaking 1 of those on a narrow road, it's a bit of a stressful experience.

Hopefully no one's coming over that hill towards us.

Sometimes as you're driving along, a policeman will come and tell you to pull off onto the side of the road and wait, and you have to wait there for about 5 minutes and then 1 of these oversized loads will come trundling past with the mining equipment for the mines.

So this here, these are the dump beds on the dump trucks and you'll often get them rolling past.

So it's a really interesting place to be doing ministry and it's quite exciting to be there.

However, we just literally the day before we came to GYC, started our trip to GYC, we got a call from another conference, the North New South Wales Conference, and we'll be moving down to Newcastle, just about an hour and a half north of Sydney in February.

Primarily moving down there to be further involved with the Youth Rush work in Australia and New Zealand.

So I'll be shared part-time between Youth Rush for the South Pacific Division and also the local church where I will be pastoring as well as being the Literature Ministries coordinator for the North New South Wales Conference as well.

So very exciting new role to be stepping into, and we're looking forward to that a lot.

So, that's just a little bit of an introduction of where I'm coming from, and so you can get a bit of an idea of that.

And we'll start into our third session now, which is sleeping, fighting, and fleeing, how to fail as a disciple.

Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you so much for your great love for us.

And as we spend some time this morning once again in the Garden of Gethsemane, And as we look at it from 2 different perspectives this morning, from the perspective of the disciples and from the perspective of the Father, we just pray that your Holy Spirit will be with us, bless us and guide us, that you will illuminate the words of scripture, the thoughts that are there into our hearts and minds that we may clearly understand, we ask in Jesus' name, amen.

You know, As I mentioned in my promo for this seminar series, it says in Desire of Ages, it would be well for us to spend a thoughtful hour each day in contemplation of the life of Christ.

We should take it point by point, and we should point by point and let the imagination grasp each scene, especially the closing ones.

As we thus dwell upon his great sacrifice for us, our confidence in him will be more constant, our love will be quickened, and we shall be more deeply imbued with his spirit.

If we would be saved at last, we must learn the lesson of penitence and humiliation at the foot of the cross." And so that's what we've been doing at this seminar here.

We've been spending this thoughtful hour meditating upon the life of Christ, especially the closing scenes.

And yesterday, especially, we looked at it from Christ's perspective.

What was happening with Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane as he was experiencing that claustrophobic experience and also how he was able to get the victory for us there.

Today though, we're gonna be looking at it from the perspective of the disciples.

What do you do when the strong person in your life suddenly becomes weak?

Some of us may have experienced this before with maybe a parent that we were very close to, who was a mentor or a mentor or a grandparent.

Someone who was close and who we always went to for advice and for encouragement.

And they were always there for you, but then suddenly maybe they get ill, or they have an accident, or maybe they get dementia.

And suddenly that person is no longer there that you've relied on for strength for so long.

And it suddenly doesn't feel like you can go to them anymore for that encouragement.

What do you do when that strong person in your life suddenly becomes weak.

I think we need to, when we're looking at the experience of the disciples, we need to recognize that.

This is someone who they've always seen as being strong, as someone they can rely on, and suddenly in the garden I guess so many things change.

And they see him in a different way than they've seen him before.

In Mark 14, turn with me and your Bibles there, Mark 14, we'll be spending a bit of most of our time in Mark 14, we'll be bouncing around between the different narratives.

I will of course as I said have the verses on the screen but I do always appreciate if you have your own Bible here to have an imprint in front of you so you can see the context around the different verses and you can make highlights and notes as well.

I mostly put the verses on the screen just to emphasize certain points.

Mark 14, verse 32, it says, then they came to a place which was named Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, sit here while I pray.

So we can only begin to imagine the sudden effect that the disciple, in the disciples, of the sudden change that came over Jesus in Gethsemane.

Until that moment, he had been, it seemed, in control.

Planning, directing, teaching, guiding, telling them, hey, I want you to go into this, into the city, you're going to find these signs which are going to lead you to go to the upper room.

And then a couple hours later, he's shaking.

That control, that clarity of which he was speaking just hours before, is gone.

And he says, hey, I want you to stay here and watch with me.

He seems to be falling apart and warning them as well, hey, you're going to collapse around me as well.

And he began to be troubled, deeply distressed, and verses 33 and 34, and he said to them, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death, stay here and watch.

You know, when we are, when we've experienced times of great stress in our lives, or sorrow, or we've been whacked by life in some sense, we often desire companionship.

Series

The Greatest Battle Ever Fought: Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane

03 Sleeping or Weeping: Which Disciple Will You Be?

Transcript

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Sponsor

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