GYC 2014: At The Cross

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Plenary

Natasha Dysinger

Keynote Address

This message was presented at the GYC 2014 conference at the Cross in Phoenix, Arizona.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

So it is my privilege to introduce the speaker for tonight, Natasha Neblet, the president of GYC.

I was just quizzing her a little bit backstage asking her how I should introduce her and she said, whatever you do just don't tell them that I'm the boss and so don't remember that.

But She did say that she loves her home, she loves her family, and she loves orphans.

Now, we're often asked at GYC, some of the leadership, how do we go about finding leaders of GYC?

And I'll give you just a little bit of insight into the process of the board of directors.

We spend a tremendous amount of time and thought and more importantly prayer about the leaders of GYC.

We got together when we were going to select the leader of GYC.

We went down, we had our devotions, we did breakfast, things like that.

Natasha was up at 3 or 4 in the morning that same morning on her knees while the board of directors was probably sleeping.

We don't look for people that have qualities of worldly leadership, We look for people that have a deep relationship with their Creator.

And that's why we selected Natasha to be the president of GYC.

And so she went through this prayer session and then she came in and we asked her, what's your vision for young people?

And I remember very specifically, she said, you know, there are X number of children sold into sex slavery every year.

If Adventists don't do something about that, who do we expect to do about it?

She said, there's X number of people who are dying of hunger.

If Adventists don't do something about it, who do we expect are going to do it?

And I sat there and I was personally inspired by her story.

And so tonight, I get to introduce our president, our speaker, and someone that has personally inspired me, Natasha Neblett.

We have an interesting tradition that we do at GYC.

We have a Bible that goes with the president.

And this Bible has had the privilege of going to different places in China, actually all around the world.

Presidents have spoke out of this for opening night.

And so tonight it's my privilege to transition that Bible over to Natasha as our president.

And as I've said, she has absolutely inspired me and I'm confident she will inspire you.

And so here's the Bible and we're thankful and we're here to listen to you.

Let me tell you, this is an amazing moment for me, just to even take it in.

After a year's worth of planning, it actually takes more than a year's worth of planning for each GYC.

It takes about 14 months of planning or so, 14 to 15 months of planning.

So this conference has been a long time in coming.

We were planning it since before Orlando took place last year, 2013.

And to see all the conference calls, all the emails, all the work that the executive committee and the volunteers that have put so much time and effort into this conference.

To see it actually come to reality right here and right now is a truly amazing experience.

But all the effort, all the work, all the labor comes to nothing if we don't have 1 thing, and that's the Spirit of God.

So that's what we're seeking this week and this weekend here at GYC, the spirit of the living God to fall on all of our hearts.

And I'm so excited about the theme this year because it is the very center and it's the cataclysmic moment that took place in the existence of the most precious thing in the universe to me, and that is Jesus Christ.

Let's have a prayer, and then we will jump into our time this evening.

Heavenly Father, you know that I'm small, you know I'm just a girl, I'm young, you know that it's far, far easier to be up on the mountain behind our home just praying than it is to be on this stage.

Lord, not a word that I say tonight can benefit anyone in this room or bring any blessing to them unless your spirit accompanies me.

Please lift up your name tonight and I pray that your spirit would fall upon me and fall upon all the hearers here.

And everyone that's joining us via 3BN or the live stream, Lord, I pray that all of us would see Jesus and not a human.

Open our ears to hear what you would have for us right at the beginning of GYC.

We pray these things in the precious name of our King, Jesus Christ, amen.

I want to just say first, I said this once in my prayer already, but I don't know how many of you would necessarily pick up on this just from seeing myself with my executive committee and going around and planning and whatnot, but I am a very major introvert.

It is not easy for me to be up on a stage.

It is not easy for me to be in large crowds of people or even smaller crowds of people, but I have a God that just like enables and empowers.

And I am so thankful for Him, and He gives me freedom and He gives me peace.

And besides my God, I have an absolutely amazing family.

My parents, by the grace of God, I am what I am because of godly parents who have spent unnumbered hours praying for me.

And I don't know how many days this year my mother has fasted and prayed for me.

It seems like every time I turn around, she's just calmly going around the house and meal time comes and she doesn't sit down and I'm like, mom, are you eating?

And then I find out later she was fasting and praying for me specifically.

She's done this over and over again and she has fasted and prayed for the 2 of, for all of you as well.

My brothers have put in unnumbered hours, unnumbered hours and have accompanied me to the most wild places to support what has happened here today.

And last but certainly not least, 1 week ago today on Christmas Eve, the most amazing man in the world proposed to me and I said yes.

So I am very, very glad and very thankful to God that he has blessed me with an amazing man that knows how to care for my heart, how to protect my heart, how to lead my heart, and how to win my heart.

And if you get a chance, say hello to Paul Dysinger because he is the most amazing man in the world, and I am so honored that I will someday be his wife.

We're going to be sitting through so many plenaries, so many breakout sessions.

How do we gain the most out of it right from the start?

And this is what I want to be talking about tonight.

I'm pathetic at naming my messages, but if I was to name this sermon, it would be called The Impossible Life.

We will get the most out of GYC if we do 3 things.

The first is if we're honest about ourselves and where we really are.

Bible says that we ought not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think.

First is if we're honest about ourselves.

The second is if we recognize that There is something bigger about Christianity than we actually have in our hands right now.

It never stops, and there's something more to be attained, no matter how long we've been in this walk, if you have never given your life to Christ, or If you have done so over and over and over again for years, for 20 years, for 30 years, for 40 years, however old the oldest person in here is, I don't know.

But if we have given ourselves over to God every day, there's still an eternity more.

There's something bigger than the Christianity that we just have in our hands right now.

And the third thing that we'll get the most out of GYC is if we are willing to be true to the Word of God and who it declares Jesus to be.

I'm going to start out my message with 2 stories of people that are actually currently alive and walking on this planet.

I think you'll understand once I actually tell you the stories.

I'm not confident if they are alive right now.

2 separate stories, but before I get into that, who can tell me where the term Christianity or Christian was coined?

Antioch in Syria is where the term Christian was coined.

It probably was actually not a very complimentary name.

Christian, by the very etymology of the word, Christ, I-A-N, the suffix, Christian, the Jesus people, essentially.

Antioch in Syria was the very center of what Christianity, of where that in Jerusalem, it was just the very center of how Christianity then spread and went all over the world in 1 generation.

I have a passion because Christianity is just about snuffed out of the nation of Syria today.

Christian Berdahl

From Broken to Breakthrough

Thank you young people for that beautiful music.

If you know anything about our ministry, you know that music is 1 of my little hot buttons.

Before we begin, I'd like to have a word of prayer.

Gracious Heavenly Father, we come before you on knees bowed and hearts bowed.

And we ask, Father, that you would bless us now as we go through this testimony of how amazing you are.

Lord, you said, if I be lifted up, I'll draw all men unto me.

And so This testimony is not about me, Father, it's about you.

And we want to meet you at the foot of the cross this morning.

So please, Lord, bless us with the Holy Spirit now.

No matter what you have gone through, no matter what you are going through, and no matter what you will go through, if you are the surrendered child of God, you will get through it.

And that's good news this morning because I know a lot of us are going through trials and tribulations.

If there's only 10 of us having trials, then we're probably not doing something right in our Christian walk.

I told a brother last night, he said, how are you?

I said, I'm blessed, but I'm trial laden.

And he said, then you must be doing something right.

Because friends, when we come to Jesus, when we meet Jesus at the foot of the cross, the devil puts his cross hairs on you.

And that's the only reason that he hates you.

What he wants to do is to dive into God's heart and he wants to tear it apart and he does that every single time that we surrender to the devil and not Christ.

The devil takes a little piece of God's heart, if you will, because he's taking each 1 of us.

Maybe you want to be the man or the woman that stands for God even though the heavens fall.

You might say, but I'm going through stuff you don't understand, Christian.

I'm going through some things that are so hard right now.

With God on your side and you surrendered to Him, you can make it through.

I stand here as living proof you can get through a lot of junk.

And by the time I'm done with this testimony this morning, you're gonna see that that's true.

Not maybe, not sort of, not maybe someday, but today, right now, with God, you can make it through.

I don't know what it is you're going through, but God knows, and that's the 1 that really needs to know about it.

If you have your swords with you, you may start wielding them now.

There hath no temptation taken you, but such as is common to man.

So in other words, there's nothing that you're going to go through that Probably somebody else already hasn't.

But God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you are able.

In other words, God is so good at helping us through our problems.

No matter what problem we have, He's going to help us through it.

Faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you're able.

But with the temptation will also make a way to escape that you may be, " what?

So if God is saying you can bear it, if God is saying that you can get through this, then maybe you're the 1 that's wrong.

Because God said it and I believe it, and that settles it for Christian Berdahl.

If we are the surrendered children of God, notice there's a key phrase there, Not proclaiming just to be a child of God, but if we're truly coming to God and saying, not my will, but your will be done.

If we're truly surrendered, then there's power in the Word of God for us.

If you've given your life to Jesus Christ, I hope you have.

If you haven't, this will be a great weekend to get on your knees and ask the Lord to do for you what He's done for many of us in this room.

So if we're surrendered and we've given our life to Christ, Christ will never allow, God will never allow anything to come to us that our measure of faith cannot handle.

So Maybe you have little faith right now.

Well, God's not gonna send out of balance huge trials that you can't handle.

In fact, friends, when you become a Christian, trust me, you're going to have trials and you're gonna have issues.

But don't fool yourself into thinking that the world doesn't have problems.

And so I understand what it's like to be fully in the world And it wasn't trouble-free.

I had just as many problems, but I had no helper.

But now as a Christian, I have an ever-present help in Jesus Christ.

That is so amazing to me that God has given His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

And while we're here on this planet, we're going to have trials.

And it really becomes a choice to say, well, are we going to be big boys and big girls and just say, okay, we're gonna have trials, stop whining and complaining about it, and let's go forward in spite of those trials.

That was a great, perfect place for a hearty amen.

In fact, a lot of people wanted to stay up until the stroke of midnight just to say, Happy New Year!

In fact, I hope and pray that this is the most connected year of your life with Jesus Christ.

Because if you're the most connected in 2015, then you're going to be the most successful for God.

Most surrendered, the greatest servant than you've ever been.

Maybe you've been a heathen and a mess this whole past year.

Well, today is a new day and today we must choose Whom we will serve.

I Want to live my life for Jesus and I know that I can live a life to glorify him because he's promised this and This is only going to happen if we meet Jesus Christ at the cross?

Are you daily meeting Christ at the cross?

Or are you waiting and you're only meeting Him, oh, every seventh day?

Stephen Bohr

Unquestioning Surrender

What a wonderful experience it is to be here at GYC.

I've been to many of them and every single 1 has been a huge blessing to my own spiritual walk with the Lord.

Before we begin our study together this evening we do want to ask for the Lord's special blessing and so I invite you reverently to bow your heads with me as we pray.

Our Father and our God, your people are gathered here in this holy place to open your holy book, pleading for the help of the Holy Spirit to help us understand the message that you have for us.

We ask, Father, that you will manifest your power in this place, that Christ might be seen in all of His glory, and we might be inspired to follow in his footsteps.

We thank you, Father, for the privilege of approaching your throne boldly, and we do so because we come in the powerful and precious name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

In our study this evening, I would like us to focus on the last 3 words that Jesus spoke to his father when he was on the cross of Calvary.

Those 3 words that Jesus spoke were the following My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Words that are found in Matthew 27 and verse 46.

The second saying that I would like us to focus on is very short.

It's found in John chapter 19 and verse 30, where Jesus cried out, it is finished.

And the third word of Christ that I would like to focus on is the last that Jesus spoke from the cross, the words Father into your hands I commend my spirit.

Those words are found in Luke 23 and verse 46.

But before we focus on these 3 words of Jesus from the cross at the end of his life, we need a little bit of background of things that happened immediately before.

In order to understand what happened before we need to comprehend something about the Old Testament sanctuary service.

When an individual sinned in Israel they would bring an animal to the court of the sanctuary.

They would place their hand upon the head of that animal, whether it be a lamb or a goat or another type of animal, and they would confess their sin on the head of that animal, thus transferring their sin from themselves to the animal.

In other words, the sin was transferred to the animal while it was alive.

The animal bore the sin of the sinner while the animal was alive.

It's significant that the sin was placed on the head of the animal.

It's where thinking, reasoning, and feeling occurs.

Now I want us to visit the events that took place immediately before the cross.

Sometimes we think that the cross tells the whole story.

But the events that led up to the cross are just as important as Jesus hanging on the cross of Calvary.

When we think about Jesus bearing the sins of the world we usually think of Jesus on the cross, but actually the sins of the world were placed upon Jesus, not at the cross, but in the garden of Gethsemane.

I'd like us to turn in our Bibles to Matthew chapter 26 and verse 38.

Matthew 26 and verse 38, where Jesus is about to begin his passion in the garden and he pronounces these words of anguish, Matthew 26 verse 38, then he said to them, he's speaking to his disciples, my soul is exceedingly sorrowful even to death, stay here and watch with me.

Notice that in this verse we have a connection between sorrow and death.

Jesus said my soul is exceedingly sorrowful even unto death and it's sorrow that is going to lead ultimately to his death.

Now in hard times we usually look for support from our friends, but Jesus found none.

Those he came to save would soon be crying out crucify him.

The disciples whom Jesus begged to pray for him in the garden, went to sleep.

Judas, whom Jesus called his friend, betrayed the Lord.

Peter was denied Jesus, And the last time that he denied Jesus, he did it using vulgar language.

In the garden, the disciples would all flee.

And that's the reason why We're told in Isaiah 63 and verse 3 that Jesus tread the winepress alone and none were with Him.

In the seventh volume of the Bible commentary, page 934, Ellen White explains about Jesus.

He died outside the camp where felons and murderers were executed.

There He trod the wine press alone, bearing the penalty that should have fallen on the sinner.

He tread the winepress alone and none was with him.

And we're going to notice that as Jesus hung on the cross it seemed like even his father forsook him because he cried out, my God, my God why have you forsaken me?

So he didn't even feel the support of his own father.

Let's follow Jesus now a little closer into the garden.

Matthew chapter 26 speaks about a cup that Jesus was going to drink.

3 times Jesus uttered a prayer of anguish to his father.

We're told there he went a little further and fell on his face and prayed saying oh My father you can just hear the passion in his voice my father If it be possible let this cup pass from me nevertheless not as I will but as you will and then we're told in verse 42 that Jesus prayed the same prayer again It says there again a second time, he went away and prayed saying, Oh my father, if this cup cannot pass away from me unless I drink it, notice he had to drink what was in the cup, your will be done.

Then we're told in verse 44, so he left them, went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words.

3 times Jesus cried out in anguish to his Father to take away the cup, if it were possible.

And of course, the question is, what was in the cup that was so difficult to drink?

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