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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Ignite Your Spiritual Experience!

Jerry Page

Experiencing God Through Prayer

To begin, she says, God can teach you more in 1 moment by the Holy Spirit than you could learn from the great men of the earth.

So you're in Loma Linda, you're learning a lot of things from great men, right?

But, and I'm here tonight, I'm supposed to share some things, but the Holy Spirit's what we need.

He is God, and he's here now, and he will speak to our hearts tonight, and whisper.

So, if what I say doesn't happen to meet your need tonight, the Holy Spirit can whisper the thing that can change your life.

So let's pray silently for a moment now and just invite the Holy Spirit.

You know, Jesus said in Luke 11, when the disciples saw what all he's doing, they said, teach us to pray so we can see miracles in our lives.

And he taught them the Lord's Prayer, then talked about the widow.

But in the end, he said, whenever you ask for the Holy Spirit, the Father always says yes.

So it doesn't matter what your week was like, doesn't matter how sinful you feel tonight, we need the Holy Spirit.

Just when I think I'm the worst, he comforts me and says, I still love you.

And then he also gives us the spiritual gifts we need, and he teaches us and uses us and brings things to our remembrance.

So whatever you need tonight, The Holy Spirit is the answer.

So let's just give him permission silently.

He said, when you ask, the Father says yes every time.

And I think all of us do, whatever point we're at in our life, our journey, our work, career, family, we need you, God.

We want to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

We want to be able to be a light for you, glowing with love and praise every day.

Yet we have A lot of things that drag us down.

So tonight, I just pray you will help us and you will ignite our spiritual life this weekend.

And I thank you for hearing, for answering in Jesus' name.

In case I forget at the end, I have a message that I hope can be a real practical blessing to you tomorrow morning.

It's called no limits, colon, thriving in all our relationships.

I also call it no limits, the joys of being dead.

So come and enjoy that with me And I'll try to give you a lot of practical things about getting along with people.

We've found it's 1 of our biggest challenges in life.

I don't know if you know who he is, but he's a dynamic guy in North America and another church that is quite funny and just dynamic.

He says, I talk so fast people think I'm Pentecostal, but I'm not.

So anyway, he was telling a story about when he was asked to go to a Bible college to preach their graduation.

And he said, when I got there, 8 young men took me in a back room, they gathered around me, they knelt, and I knelt, and they put their hands on my head, and they said, we wanna pray for you.

As a leader, I need all the prayer for my people I can get.

And he said, but as they began to pray with their hands on my head, they were very, very zealous.

They went on and on and on and on, zealously praying for me.

And he said, the longer that they prayed, the tireder they became.

And they began to kind of lean on my head.

And he said, I don't know if you've had 8 guys leaning on your head lately, but I sort of wish they would quit.

And he said, 1 guy, he wasn't even praying for me.

He was praying for some guy named Charlie Stolzfus.

He said, oh Lord, you know Charlie Stolzfus.

He lives 2 miles down this road, right by the school, in that little silver trailer.

Lord, he left his wife and his 3 children this morning.

Do something, save Charlie and his family, Lord, please.

He said, Lord, you know Charlie Sosfus, he lives 2 miles down the road on the right hand side in that little silver trailer.

Tony said, I felt like saying, you think God said, what was that address again?

He said he left his wife and his 3 children this morning Lord step in and intervene, save that family, do something Jesus.

He quit, The others finished praying and they quit.

And he said, so I preached my sermon, greeted the people, and went out to my car to go home.

Anyway, he said, so I got in my car, I was getting on the on-ramp of the freeway.

And as I did, there was this guy with his thumb stuck out hitchhiking.

And he said, my wife tells me, don't you ever pick up a hitchhiker?

Be dangerous, they could kidnap you and do something to you, take away, whatever.

And he said, anytime I can get somebody in my car to tell them about Jesus, I do it.

So he said, I picked the guy up and we're headed down the freeway.

And I looked at him and I said, hi, my name's Tony, what's yours?

And he said, my name's, what do you think?

I just got off the freeway, turned around and headed back.

He said, mister, Where are you taking me?

Because you left your wife and your 3 kids this morning, didn't you?

So anyway, He said, I drove to that road, 2 miles down the road, I pulled in his driveway.

He said, mister, how did you know I lived here?

So anyway, Charlie whispers in his wife's ear.

Once, tells a story about Tony to her, her eyes get big.

Tony said, I said to those 2 young people, I said, now listen, you 2, you're going to get in your trailer.

I'm going to talk and you're going to listen.

It was like I was God himself or something.

Unleashing God’s Power!

The biggest miracle God works is when people stay awake in the afternoon meeting.

So I'll be praying for you, you pray for me.

And let's pray a minute and just ask the Lord to put his word in your ear this afternoon that he wants you to hear.

Father, you're so good to us and we don't understand why you have been so intent on trying to save us, but we're so thankful.

And this afternoon we just come together to think a little bit more about how we can help you, how we can cooperate in unleashing your power, unleashing your power, Lord.

We know that some things you have said, unless we ask, you can't do.

It's a rule you've set up somehow, the fairness of the great controversy.

We don't understand lots of things, but we believe that you are good, you are righteous, and everything you do is right.

So we thank you this afternoon in Jesus' name, amen.

They had neither of them ever been married.

And as they got up in years, they became friends.

And they began spending time together, really enjoyed each other's company, companionship.

And The man, over time, began to feel more for the woman than just friendship.

He wanted to tell her, but he was very, very shy.

And so he'd go home and he'd argue with himself, why don't you just tell her that she means a lot to you, more?

But finally, 1 day he said, I'm just gonna do it.

And so he went over there in the morning to her house and he knocked on her door.

She said, well, hi friend, how are you doing?

And he said, I gotta do it, I'm gonna lose my courage.

And she of course was shocked, threw her hands up in the air.

And she said, well, that's a wonderful idea, but who in the world would want either of us?

It'll take you a while, you just had lunch.

I like that story because I think that's the great question of the gospel.

And that's the great answer that comes down over the centuries through the gospel.

The mystery of the gospel is that God loved us so much that he gave his only begotten son.

Risked the whole universe that Anybody who believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

Okay, when you start to doubt your salvation, remember that's a promise from God to you and he doesn't lie.

So be encouraged that he wants you, he's coming back to get you and that's a great way to start the afternoon.

I struggle a little bit with what to share with you.

I've got several miracle stories I'd like to share but I want to share a teaching with you and we'll see.

You may get up and walk out when I share this 1, pretty wild.

How do you deal with healings or prayer for healing?

Imagine a lot of you have worked that through 1 way or the other in your particular environments.

But in our conference, we had a young couple that was very active.

They had done evangelism for years, and they came into our conference, and they were doing a lot of things.

She sang, people loved her, she's very gregarious.

They were also training our pastors how to do their own evangelism in the local church.

And if you know, if a pastor does the evangelism in his church, there's a larger percentage that people will stay than if the evangelist does it and leaves, you know, because the tie is with the speaker and that kind of thing.

But as time went along, people really loved them both.

But all of a sudden, the woman who was great at playing the piano and singing and everything, she began to have a problem on her right side and her hand would barely play the piano and she tried to walk up the steps.

She was a struggling young woman and so they became very concerned and we got people praying for them, what was the deal, and she began to to go for diagnosis and different people trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with her because she was becoming more and more unable to function on her right side.

She had a pituitary gland tumor, okay, up between her eyes and the forehead there.

And so they said, we've got to take that out.

You're going to take a surgery up through your nose.

And I don't know, again, how this would work.

If you're a surgeon, you can maybe help me.

But they said they would have to go up delicate surgery.

She could affect her eyes, possibly, or even be more serious if complications set in.

She and Dan had always been a team together.

They'd always been in everything together, in evangelism and what they did.

But now it was her, the diagnosis, not him.

And so she began to have a lot of anxiety and was struggling with this.

A lot of the people in conference began praying for her and she scheduled a surgery, but she was really worried.

We were gonna have an anointing the day before the surgery, but we decided to have Juanita Kretschmar come and talk to her.

I don't know if any of you know Juanita Kretschmar.

Kretschmar's wonderful missionaries that ended up, they came back from Brazil and had miracles down there in the Amazon.

They came back and took on New York City, had the Van Ministry Center, and the van was out on the streets in New York doing blood pressures and all this stuff all the time.

And they just had a lot of miracles happening in that massive city too.

Well, she's a real woman of prayer and she'd been a mentor to Janet and I and just she was always a woman of prayer.

10 Days of Prayer that you may know happens at the beginning of every year.

She took us over to the Van Center, and they used to have 10 days, first days of the year, they would pray.

And they would have a lot of sharing and prayer, and they didn't go out on the streets.

And so over time, that kind of developed into the whole world, doing a 10 days of prayer, and There's a massive number of people now that do that in January.

But anyway, she came over and she was, she, I think actually she got on the phone with her and was talking to her about her issues and her problems.

But she began to teach her about faith and trust and was helping her understand about healing.

And I don't know if how you deal with James 5.

You might want to look in your Bible if you brought it with you.

There are many passages about God's ability to heal, and that Psalms 103, that He heals all our diseases and forgives our sins and all of that.

And I'm sure many of you here have probably been involved in anointings.

Anita began to tell her about this passage.

And I know Derek Morris and I have been friends for years.

We've talked about this, studied it, and believe it's true what she was saying.

But she said, you know, when you come to the anointing, and I don't know how it is you've participated in some anointing, sometimes with anointings we try to make sure the person isn't going to be disappointed, right?

Because if you're anointing for cancer or something, we know that not everybody's healed like this cancer or whatever.

So I think sometimes the Adventist leadership, our pastors and us, we've kind of wanted to make sure that this person doesn't really expect to be healed, in case they're not healed.

And that's okay, except that we almost go in with this attitude like, we don't see many healings anymore, so don't expect too much out of this.

So anyway, Juanita was talking to her, and if you look at James 5, Is anyone among you suffering?

No Limits! Thriving in Relationships

When we pray for your baptism every day, when we ask for it, you come, you fill us.

We're at a time in history when we need you in special ways.

This group wants to be part of that last movement.

We believe the latter rain is coming very soon.

We see the signs in our world all around us.

You've waited so long for this movement to really come together and do what Joel, too, says we should do, to pray, to repent and to seek you with all our hearts.

And then the Mighty Movement will be successful.

Say what you want to say to all of us, I pray, including myself.

Told you last night I miss my wife when she's not here.

Some of you heard her speak and she's filled with the spirit too.

Since her change in life and my change, our new experience, she was ignited in her spiritual experience I can tell you.

But Not long after she had kind of this renewal, it was back a number of years now, but some ladies asked her to go with them to Russia.

And the walls had come down just very recently.

And they said, Janet, we want you to come with us.

You're having this wonderful new love relationship with Jesus and you're testifying and God is working in your heart.

We want you to go with 3 of us and we're going to go over to Russia.

They've asked us to come and travel across the country and to talk to the spouses, the women of Russia, because they've been under communism.

They really don't know much about having a devotional life, knowing Jesus, that kind of thing.

So we just want to go and share with them.

And so she came to me, she said, Jerry, what should I do?

I mean, I'm so glad you can go with them and you'll be such a blessing and it'll bless you.

You'll be strengthened and encouraged as well." And so she said, but Jerry, we have 2 boys, remember?

If I go away for 3 weeks, what'll happen to our sons?

I'm a conference president, but I can be Mr.

Mom." And so she doubted a little, but she said, okay.

She put some food in the freezer for us and everything, and off she went to Russia for 3 weeks.

And Things were going pretty well for about 2 weeks, and then I became very grouchy.

But she wasn't coming home for another week.

We were sitting at the table for supper, and I'm no cook.

I've never been worth anything with my hands, but just my mouth.

So anyway, we're sitting at the table with my 2 sons and we're eating spaghetti.

So we're eating spaghetti and Zach, who's now 6, 6 and pastors where we live up in near Paso Robles, he's playing airplane with his spaghetti.

Mrow, mrow, mrow, mrow, went into his mouth.

Tyson's a little older than him, and they're just laughing.

You know, Zach's eating his spaghetti that way.

I said, Zach, will you sit up to the table and eat your spaghetti right?

You want to spill sauce on your pants again?

So anyway, we needed more spaghetti sauce, so I took the glass jar out to the kitchen, put it in the microwave to heat it up.

And you remember I said I don't know anything about cooking.

So I didn't know how hot that jar would be when I took it out of the microwave.

So I took it out, glass jar, burned my perpetuous fingers and smashed on the floor.

Spaghetti sauce went all over the kitchen.

I have never heard my sons laugh so hard in their whole life.

Daddy said sit up to the table and eat your spaghetti.

Then he paints the whole house with spaghetti sauce.

The longer I serve him, the more I love him.

When I get proud, arrogant, maybe pointing my finger at you and saying you're not doing what you should be doing, God has a way of humbling me.

If you lift yourself up, I'll have to humble you to save you and help you.

And I wanna talk today a little bit about Jesus and what I think is 1 of the greatest needs of this church.

Pastors, teachers, leaders groups all over the world.

And before I left the GC, I wrote an article in Ministry Magazine about it, the joys of being dead.

And I showed it to Elder Wilson, we were talking before I left, and he said, Jerry, that is the greatest need of our church worldwide.

Series

Ignite Your Spiritual Experience!

Unleashing God’s Power!

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

AMEN 2013: Plenary Sessions

Final Breakthroughs

1h

Keys to Growing a Powerful and Vibrant Prayer Ministry

1. From Contained Mediocrity to Contagious Christian: Gem’s Story

1h 3m

Ignite Your Prayer Life!

3. Practical Helps for Igniting Your Prayer Experience

36m

Power of Prayer

When God Doesn’t Answer Your Prayers

57m

Morning Devotional: It's War Time

It’s Wartime - Part 8: Marching Orders

53m

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

05 From Click to Christ: Winning Souls with BSO

1h 9m

Knees, Keys, and Please!

2. Encountering God

1h 5m

Presenting Persuasive Appeals During Keys to Revelation

03 The Holy Spirit Makes Appeals Appealing

58m

Experiencing the Revival

1h 16m

Transformed

Only by His Spirit

1h 17m

The Key to Finishing the Work

The Ultimate Call

59m

Plenary Sessions

We Will Remember God’s Mighty Acts

1h 8m

Sound Doctrine