It hurts to be empty. It’s hard to be alone. Yet not only is God speaking to us through the pain, He is also leading us to the only place where we can receive the fullest outpouring of His Holy Spirit: the place of utter helplessness and emptiness. Discover the thrill of “living on E” where all your comfort comes from Jesus.

GYC 2011: Fill Me

<p>It hurts to be empty. It’s hard to be alone. Yet not only is God speaking to us through the pain, He is also leading us to the only place where we can receive the fullest outpouring of His Holy Spirit: the place of utter helplessness and emptiness. Discover the thrill of “living on E” where all your comfort comes from Jesus.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

GYC 2011 Seminar: Reaching the Heart of a Broken World

Annie Morgan

Living on E

I want to welcome you to this seminar, the whole seminar is entitled Reaching the Heart of a Broken World, The first session is living on e this is going to talk about that our own personal journey to be close to Jesus and Some of the challenges that we face along the way and some of the fears that we come up against The thing to block us and and make us feel stuck in our spiritual journey You know I've met a lot of people in the church and also out in the community who feel like they want to give their life to Jesus and they want to have that daily experience with Him, but they find something inside of them that's even resisting that closeness with Jesus.

So that's a little bit of what we're going to talk about today.

And then tomorrow is entitled, or this afternoon is entitled, The Wounded Healer.

And we'll take a journey through our own lives as well as the life of Jesus to see how Jesus not only suffered, but he intentionally suffered everything that you would go through because he knew the challenges that you would face in your life.

That's tomorrow and then our session on Friday morning will be about how to share the message of a wounded Savior with others and how to minister to others because I come from a background of Bible work and teaching evangelism and in that background I meet hundreds and thousands of people and as I do every single person has some kind of brokenness in their life, some kind of experience that has been designed by the enemy to be a barrier between them and having faith in God.

And so Friday morning is going to be about how to reach out to people who are hurt and how to reach the hearts of people I want to welcome you this morning my name is annie morgan and you probably found my family with me my husband david is a pastor and evangelist and then I'm blessed with 2 little boys caleb and joshua that I pray will be faithful and be in god's kingdom And we're expecting another 1 in the month of May.

I also speak to you as 1 who has been at the low points in life when I wanted to take my own life and didn't think there was a reason to get up the next morning, at least not a good reason.

And so Many of the things that I will be sharing are not only from my experience in working with people, but also from my own journey and the struggles that I have faced along the way.

So I want you to know this morning that if you ever get discouraged, if the flicker of hope in your life is ever running a little bit low, that you're in good company.

Jesus has faced the trials that you face.

And there are other people that have been down that pathway and who have fought against despair.

And Jesus has lifted them out of that and that's the life that we now live.

And it's a daily journey but we have Jesus promise to be with us every step of the way.

So this morning how many of you would like to live on E?

Our conference theme is fill me, our earnest plea.

Now in order to be filled, you must first be empty.

I appreciate the hands that are going up.

And even if your hand goes halfway up, I don't know.

Our loving Heavenly Father, I want to praise you for the bumps in the road because they knock us down to our knees.

I want to thank you so much, dear Jesus, for the bloodstains that we see along the way, reminding us that Jesus has walked this pathway before us.

He has pressed down the thorns that wound our own feet.

He has smoothed the pathway for us, and we want to thank you for that.

Dear Jesus, I invite you to take control of this seminar.

I invite you to do what you want to do with it.

You know the capacity that you've put within each 1 of our hearts to know and experience Jesus.

We also recognize that there's an enemy who has been on our heels and around us trying to prevent us from having the walk with Jesus that will truly satisfy the desire of your heart and our heart for fellowship with Jesus.

I pray that today will be a meeting place between Jesus and us, and that today we will see more and more of the love that you have for us, and the great potential that is just on the other side of the step of faith.

We thank you for this in Jesus name, Amen.

Living on E, have you ever been deathly Afraid of something only to realize that the very life you're longing to live is Just on the other side of that fear has fear ever held you back from doing something Have you ever been like right on the edge of doing something, but then you hesitate?

How would you feel if you were driving down the highway and you saw this sign, no services ahead, pavement ends, next service is 126 miles, and you look at your gas gauge.

Now if your gas gauge says that your car tank is on full, how would you feel about that?

Confident I like that word you can feel confident you could sit back relax and enjoy the ride correct Because your tank is full If you saw that sign and your tank was just under halfway mark, what would start to take possession of your mind?

What if the gauge on your gas tank's capacity read E and below?

OK, you would definitely feel the great desire to fill up.

And would that take control of your life?

We don't want to have an empty love life.

We don't want to have empty hours in our day.

We don't want to have emptiness in our life because it makes us nervous we like to fill our life with something don't we but you know 1 of our greatest desires is to have fullness and we're gonna look at the different tanks if you will that are in our life There are some different tanks in our life.

And there's 1 that's very important to experiencing the fullness that God has for us.

So what do we spend all of our time doing or most of our time doing?

We're spending most of our time and most of our energies and most of our mental attention on filling up and that's good but I want to tell you that life with Jesus true life with Jesus begins with an empty tank and so there are going to be circumstances in your life that are going to bring you to that point of emptiness.

That point when you bottom out, that point when it's just not working, that point if you like an organized life, that point when all is chaotic.

If you like to have people around you, You're going to have that point when everyone seems to be gone and you're just alone with the 4 walls around you.

You're going to meet up with an experience in your life that feels so incredibly, desperately empty.

And you're going to want to run for all of your life to a filling station.

And all the while Jesus is going to be right there.

That is the meeting place between God and man.

The meeting place between God and man is the point of emptiness in your life.

And like I said, it's a different experience for each 1 of us because we have our favorite filling stations.

We have our favorite things that make us feel satisfied or content or happy or at peace.

And so the different empty spots in our life where Jesus wants to meet with us can be completely different.

For 1 person, it might be the loss of a pet because their whole life revolved around that pet.

For another person it might be a financial crisis.

But whatever it is that brings you to your knees and brings you to that place where you feel oh so desperately empty, That's the place where Jesus wants to meet with us because true life begins spiritually with what?

And I'm not going to ask you to raise your hands, but I know that in your experience, you've gone through that point in your life, you are going through it or you will.

Because Jesus so desperately wants to meet with us.

And he knows that he cannot do what he wants to do and what we want him to do until our tanks are empty.

And that means that We have to get through, you know, like the full tank and then the half empty tank and then at approaching E, we have to go through that journey in our life where we feel the approach of bottoming out.

We feel the approach of losing the things that we have clung to in our life.

Now I want to go back and do a little history.

We made the statement that all true life, spiritually, begins with an empty tank.

And I want to share with you from the book of Genesis what to me is an absolutely fascinating study from the Bible, fascinating study from the Bible of how all life began here on this earth.

All life began here on this earth with a state of confusion, chaos, and emptiness.

And if you look with me in Genesis chapter 1, verse 2, it says, the earth was without form.

Now, please give me some synonyms for without form.

Please give me some other words that would state the same thing.

The Wounded Healer

I want to welcome you to this afternoon's seminar, The Wounded Healer, and it's a blessing to be here together, and my prayer is that this can be a place where we come closer to Jesus and where we meet Him.

Sometimes the points of pain in our life are divine appointments.

Divine appointments between us and Jesus.

Let's begin with a word of prayer this afternoon.

Our gracious and loving Heavenly Father, I pray that today you will take this time and spend it with us.

Please take away anything that would blind us to your love and please open our hearts more and more to be filled by Jesus to be filled by your Holy Spirit we have a great need to be filled we were created with a longing and a craving for you and I pray that this day will be a day when more and more of our hearts are filled with Jesus.

Thank you for the wounded healer who approaches us when we reach emptiness in our life.

He approaches us when we're wounded, when we're struggling, and He comes very close to us.

I want to invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 1 and verse 6.

Please turn with me to Isaiah chapter 1 and verse 6.

Have you ever been deathly afraid of something only to realize that the very life you're longing to live was on the other side of that fear?

What is it that creates fear and that unwillingness to trust God.

What is it that creates that resistance when we come to Jesus and we have that hesitation to really give him control of our life?

Many times it's what Isaiah chapter 1 and verse 6 talks about.

In Isaiah chapter 1 verse 6 it says from the sole of the foot even into the head there is no soundness in it but wounds, bruises and putrefying sores.

They have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.

This verse talks about some of the things that happen to us through the experiences of life.

And it calls them wounds, it calls them bruises, and it calls them putrefying sores.

Is it something that's fresh or is it something that's old?

But the rest of the verse, it tells us that these wounds, these sores, haven't been closed up.

They haven't been bound up and they haven't been healed or soothed with ointment.

And so today we're going to be talking about the wounded healer who as we will discover has chosen to identify with every point of human suffering we know that he was tempted in all points of life as we are but he was also he was also wounded and bruised in every way that we are and this is because he knows, he knows that there are experiences in life and we're caught in the crossfire in the great controversy between God and Satan.

We're caught in this crossfire and we get wounded in the battle, we get knocked down and Satan wants to take us out but Jesus has won the victory And he wants to come close to us and he wants to bring healing to us.

And we looked in our last class at living on E, living at that place where all of our dependence is on Jesus, where we bottom out and we hit the bottom and we realize I can't do it God, and I don't have anything in me to make it another step and when we do that jesus meets us there and he can give us the life we've been longing to live that freedom and that joy that we can have in jesus but in order to take that step of faith to really trust god we have to be willing to open up our hearts to Him.

And this, as we read in Isaiah 1 verse 6, in our hearts are wounds and bruises and putrefying sores that need to be bound up by the great physician, by the wounded healer.

Questions often come through these difficult and painful experiences.

Are you afraid to trust Him, like we talked about in our last class?

And you don't have to answer, but we often discover that not only does the love of God have the ability to draw us and bond us tightly to Jesus, but because of sin, because of the wounds in our life and the hurt and the pain in our life, often we come to Jesus like this.

And this is when you just flip the polarity on the magnets here.

The same magnetic force that could bond us to Jesus and draw us to Him actually caused us to push away and repel the closer he gets to us.

And many people have shared with me, and I have experienced this myself, times in my life when I just have this little bit of an arm's length relationship with God.

I keep him just, just a little bit at a distance so that I can maintain that, what I call safety.

He wants to come close to these issues in our life.

Wounded, afraid, Isaiah 1, verse 6 tells us that this is what happens to us in the journey of life.

Hebrews 4 verse 15 says, We have not an high priest that can't be touched with the feelings of our infirmities.

In other words, we have a high priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

And he was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

And many times we hear the part of the Gospel message, Jesus died for your sins.

But Jesus did not only die for your sins, He also suffered for your pain.

Jesus lived on this earth for 33 and a half years.

It doesn't take that long to die and to take on our sins and to die on a cross.

He chose to intentionally go through all the phases of life, all the different human experiences, because he knew there would come a day when you would struggle to trust him.

And he wants you to have that confidence that he's been there, that he understands, and beyond that he has faced the enemy head-on and he has destroyed the enemy's power in every area of our life.

They wonder, at those low points in my life, and this sometimes is what makes us hesitate to trust God, hesitate to give Him control of our life because we look back at those low points and we don't necessarily see God there.

The Bible promises in Isaiah 63 verse 9 that in all of our affliction he is afflicted.

And the angel of his presence saves us in his love and in his pity he redeems us.

And he bears us and he carries us all the days of old, but we don't see him all the time.

Here's from Review and Herald, June 28, 1898, All the abuse and suffering that man could heap upon his fellow man were endured by our Lord and Master.

Now we're going to find out more what that all means.

The story is told from the Holocaust and in an attempt to stop any attempts at insurrection and things like that, 1 day we came back from work and we saw 3 gallows raised up in the assembly and every single person was required to walk past these gallows and as they did there were 3 victims that were being made examples 3 victims were hanging in chains, 1 of them the little servant the fat eyed angel 3 victims were mounted together onto chairs.

The 3 necks were placed at the same moment within nooses.

And so all the folks there being marched past, watching this as an example of what would happen to them if they should dare defy the authority.

But the third rope was still moving, being so light the child was still alive.

For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony before our eyes.

You know, we like to put a blind eye to some of these things, but the atrocities that have been done on this earth and the suffering people have gone through is just it's unspeakable.

For more than half an hour he stayed there and we had to look him full in the face.

Behind me I heard a man saying, where is God now?

And you know, many times I've known God is here, He's always here, He's with us in all of our experiences, but there have been times that I've been in Bible studies and people have asked me and they've poured out their life story and they've said, where is God in my life?

And at those moments you have to really be grounded in your walk with Jesus and you have to have an experience with the wounded healer in order to be able to confidently say, He is with you.

So this man behind me heard another man saying, Where is your God now?

And he heard a voice within him answer back with a question.

And then the answer came quietly to his mind.

So when those victims were hung and had a painful death, Where was Jesus?

In those moments of pain, tears blind our eyes, and we can't see Him for who He really is.

So as those people are hanging on a gallows, Jesus is hanging on a cross.

And he finally had the answer to that heart-rending question.

Reaching the Heart of a Broken World, Part 1

I'm just curious, I can tell by just recognizing some of you, but how many are here for the first time this morning?

We are going to be talking this morning about reaching the heart of a broken world.

And just a little recap, in the first session we talked about the work that God does in our hearts to prepare us for the filling of the Holy Spirit that's called living on E and just to bring you up to date we talked about the experiences in our lives that bring us to that point when our tank is on empty and we don't have any human resources to cope or to put 1 foot in front of the other and deal with life and we discover that that is the place where true spiritual life begins because it's when we're empty that God can fill us And so many times we live our life filling our own lives with the clutter of stuff and human relationships, and really even subconsciously making that a higher priority than our relationship with God.

And so what happens is it's like stopping at a gas station, and your tank is already 3 quarters, 90% full.

And you pull out the nozzle and put it in your gas tank, but all you can do is top it off, because there's only enough room for a little bit of God in our lives.

And then we also looked at the issues of trust that prevent us from wanting to live on E.

The trust issues that prevent us from wanting to give complete control of our life over to God so that we really truly can be empty and turn to him for all of our needs.

And then yesterday afternoon, we looked at the wounded healer.

And we looked at the wounds and the bruises and the issues, the abuse and the trauma that every single 1 of us has gone through.

We don't always recognize it in our life, but the battle wounds have affected all of us.

So we looked at what Jesus does to meet us at that place of pain and overcome the fear that is caused by that woundedness in life.

So that was yesterday afternoon and this morning it's going to be a little bit different focus.

They've asked us in our Friday morning sessions to focus on evangelism and outreach and so this day we're going to be looking at how to understand people and how to reach them at their heart level, how to get to the heart of people, how to move our conversations to the heart issues with people, and then how to share Jesus with them.

We do have some resources when you enter the exhibit hall.

Right at the entry there you will see the Gospel Net booth.

And if you've attended any 1 of the sessions that we've done here, we have a free DVD that we'd like to give to you.

And that's an overview of the Wounded Healer.

It was recorded several years back at Hope Channel, and it was a different title.

But that's an overview of the Wounded Healer.

So if you would like to have a copy of that, just stop by the booth, and my husband David will probably be the 1 there, and just tell him you came to the class, and just get your name and email, and you can have that DVD.

We also have a 12-part CD series and the only reason I mention this is because every time we have a seminar like this there are people that are touched by the message of a wounded Savior and they recognize the need that they have for Jesus.

And that 12-part set is designed to walk you through your journey of being born again into the family of God and redoing your life and the history of your life through the eyes of Jesus who is not high and lifted up, distant from us, but is Emmanuel, God with us, the wounded healer, who can come right inside the wounds in our life and bring his healing and his love and his truth to replace every lie of the enemy.

So that CD set will walk you through a personal journey with Jesus the wounded healer.

And then some of the evangelism topics we're going to cover this morning are covered in more depth in the DVD series Awakening Spiritual Interest.

So I just want you to know that these are available if they can be a blessing to you in your ministry to other people.

Is there anyone that comes from off the continent?

I come from Washington state, so I come from that northeast corner of here.

Can't you hardly wait for the day when we we can all be around the throne of God together that's going to be such a beautiful day.

And I just pray that this morning's message will do something to encourage you in your ministry for Jesus, so that your life can touch more and more people's lives, and we can all be in the kingdom together.

Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer and begin our class.

Our loving Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for the work that you are doing in our lives.

I thank you for the purpose that you have for us, that you have designed and created us to be the dwelling place for fellowship with the Almighty God.

That I thank you Lord for your amazing combination of power and humbleness, your ability to rule the universe and to have all the resources available for every situation we face in life, but yet at the same time, your ability to gently touch and quietly, powerfully heal the wounds in our lives.

Dear Jesus, please reach our hearts in a deeper way day by day, so that we can recognize the heart needs of people around us, and we can reach out to them in ministry and we can take the life that you've given us, Lord, this limited time opportunity to prepare people for heaven and we can live it to its fullness because once we get to heaven, Lord, we'll have everything that we've ever wanted But we will not have the opportunity to save a soul.

Please remind me again and again of my weakness and my emptiness.

And in that realization I pray that you'll pour your Holy Spirit and your wisdom through me today.

Open our hearts and our minds, Lord, so that we can know what it is that we can do to take another step in ministry for you.

And I praise you for this in Jesus' name, Amen.

I count myself very privileged to have begun my training in ministry with some teachers that were very focused on reaching the hearts of people.

And I have discovered day by day in working with people that that is the key to leading a person to Jesus and helping them to stay with Jesus.

As we looked at yesterday, the heart is a big black hole that has been shaped and designed by the Creator to be the dwelling place of God.

And until God takes residence in that hole, that hole in the heart will operate like a vacuum.

It will operate like a magnet, always trying to pull other things into the heart.

So until Jesus takes residence in the heart, the heart will be forever searching.

So until we as lay workers and evangelists, until we reach the hearts of people we will continue to see them searching and seeking in other places so the real key to ministry is to reach people at the heart level now 1 of the challenges of reaching the people's heart is that the heart is inside, which means the outside can often look very different from the inside.

So as you approach somebody, they can be wearing the latest fashions, They can be driving the best car.

And they can look like they've got it all together, and they're so successful, and they have no need.

Yet on the other side of their life, where things really happen, they may be broken and totally at a loss for what to do in their life.

I want to tell you a little story about an atheist in Manhattan.

We were working with a team of Bible workers in preparation for NET99 with Pastor Doug Batchelor.

And as we were there, we were going door to door.

And door to door in New York City is fun because it's high rises, you know, with a gentleman that you have to get past at the entrance.

And they don't let you in to do religious solicitation.

1 of them was we would have a special gift for someone in the building.

It didn't have to be somebody we knew, but we said, you know, we have a special gift for 1 of the, you know, apartment numbers.

And they would let us in, we'd go to that 1, give the gift, and then make our rounds to the rest of the building.

And, you know, we were not soliciting, we were giving things, but anyway, it was still hard to get through that barrier but there were ways anyway 1 of our students from Russia 1 of our bible workers from Russia he knocked on this lady's door and she cracked the door you know that quarter of the way open and and looked out suspiciously at him and she said to him, I'm not interested, I'm an atheist.

But he looked at her and in the way that only he could do because God had really touched his heart.

His own heart had the love of Jesus filling it.

Series

GYC 2011 Seminar: Reaching the Heart of a Broken World

Living on E

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Evening Devotional

The Practical Nature of Scripture

1h 34m

GYC 2012 Seminar: Unleashing the Power - A Practical Guide for Finishing God's Work

Beyond Good Intentions

1h

Angelo Grasso and Justin Kim - One Step at a Time: Pathways to Spiritual Growth

Among Thorns: Subversion - Growing Against the Grain

43m

Morning Devotional

Nevertheless

1h

Ron Clouzet ~ A Voice Behind You: How To Know God's Will For Your Life

When God Speaks to Youth

1h 12m

Devoted Devotions: A Vibrant Devotional Life for the Last Days

Bound by Devotion

59m

The Wheel of Faith

2. The Fisherman and the Flute

1h 10m

Social Justice in Prophecy

Divide, Conquer, Unite: Social Justice Role in Bringing About Sunday Law and Persecution

1h 1m

Knees, Keys, and Please!

5. Victory in the Final Conflict

1h 4m

The Dragon Revealed - Martial Arts, Mysticism & The Coming Last Great Deception!

4. Yoga, Tai-chi and Eastern Mysticism – the Roots of the Tree?

57m

GYC 2013 Seminar: The Gay Puzzle: Loving Gays to Christ

06-Turn Around: Q&A

1h 16m

Morning Devotional

The Belly of the Beast

1h 7m

Sound Doctrine