Scott Ritsema had a relatively normal upbringing, yet his life was engulfed in media and sports. Day after day it was the same routine until at the age of 17, he started to study the Bible. Scott learned the effects of media on the brain and has now dedicated his life to sharing with others the truth that set him free!

<p>Scott Ritsema had a relatively normal upbringing, yet his life was engulfed in media and sports. Day after day it was the same routine until at the age of 17, he started to study the Bible. Scott learned the effects of media on the brain and has now dedicated his life to sharing with others the truth that set him free!</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>

Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Scott Ritsema

Renewing of the Mind

Father in heaven, we are grateful to be considered servants of you, to be adopted as sons and daughters of you.

Thank you, Father, for being here with us.

We ask for your presence in a mighty and marked way that we might recognize that we've been with Jesus today.

The scripture we're reading for this morning's sermon, which is entitled, creatively, Testimony.

I'm sharing my testimony this morning for the first time, and I couldn't think of a better scripture than Romans 12, 1, 2, and 3.

In Romans 12, 1, 2, and 3, we get 3 key ideas that will feed into the remainder of the message this morning.

Romans 12, verse 1, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

The Lord has called me into service and sacrifice of my preferences and my way of doing life to follow His way.

And I'll tell you something, it turns out not to be much of a sacrifice, doesn't it?

When you follow the Lord's way, it brings fullness of joy and blessing.

Reading on, and do not be conformed to this world.

There was a time in my life that you'll hear this morning I was conformed to this world, but the Lord has brought the message of healing salvation into my life as the rest of this verse reads.

It says, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Verse 3, for I say, through the grace script given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each 1 a measure of faith.

When we have our faith in God and salvation through Jesus Christ, is that something that we manufacture from within ourselves?

God is the 1 who has granted us the ability to even have faith, amen?

And that idea of not thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought, you know, I look back on my life, and those who have seen media on the brain may have seen the pictures and the images of me in the rock band, and I look back and wonder, how does a pop punk band bass guitarist slash sports worshiping slash emerging church guy and political activist, that was me, over the past 2 decades, become, end up a Seventh-day Adventist Christian who is calling families to, unplug from media, Do you see the irony there, right?

Calling families to homeschool and moving to the country and practice country living, the contrast couldn't be more stark.

And so I can't wait to share the message of how I came to this position in my life.

And even as we talk about a testimony, that scripture we just read really needs to feed into it as well because you can talk about your testimony and then it's about you, right?

We should not think of ourselves more highly than we ought.

I've only found that I've gotten in the way of the Lord again and again.

And I look at wasted years in my life and I repent of that and I grieve that and I don't think highly of my own story but I do think highly of the Lord who is telling that story in my life and each 1 of your lives.

1 thing I know for sure is that it's all about Jesus Christ and his grace and his salvation in my life.

I wanna start with a question that I get almost every weekend.

I present Media on the Brain pretty much every weekend at a different church around the country, and I always get the question, Scott, how did you get into talking about the topic of media?

And what brought you to this ministry, of Belt of Truth Ministries, where you share these topics?

And since I get that question, I'm always kind of scrambling to informally answer it and quickly, and I've never systematically sat down and kind of outlined my story.

And then I also get the question, How did you become a Christian?

How did you become a Seventh-day Adventist Christian?

That story also I've never had the opportunity to tell.

So I sat down and just kind of prayed through and thought through the past few years.

And I'll tell you something, growing up, a lot of people say, you know, I had this sort of traumatic experience of, you know, rebellion in the world of drug abuse, or I had all these horrible things happen to me when I was a child.

You know what my child, I can describe it in 1 word, normal.

I had a normal, pseudo-Christian, American cultural upbringing, with a little bit of religion and a lot of entertainment.

My good friend Chad Cruiser's here this morning.

Probably got into a lot of things that we are not proud of in our teen years.

And that's kind of the normal way childhood is done in America today, right?

I hope you're coming to the messages at Mentone and follow what our ministry is putting out, because it's not just about what we don't do with the media.

It's also how do we replace that with something better.

So this childhood experience of normality is not inevitable, but it unfortunately is so common.

Just like Adventist youth today, in my research, I found that there's a 25 to 1 ratio of entertainment consumption to spiritual food.

The amount of time spent in TV, movies, and video games versus the amount of time spent in Bible study and prayer is literally a 25 to 1 ratio among Seventh-day Adventist high schoolers in Michigan in the polling that I did.

That was kind of my experience as well, playing in the band.

Ironically, I ended up talking about media.

My own grandfather was a salesman for Zenith, bringing the televisions of America to the American homes in the 1950s.

And I find that The apple falls pretty far from the tree in that regard.

But to me growing up, I thought I was a Christian.

I'm listening to Metallica and getting into all of this horrible stuff in my lifestyle as a teenager.

But to me, Christianity meant, Hey, all you have to do is ask forgiveness for your sins, and you inevitably sin because you're a human being, and you will inevitably continue to sin, because we are all suffering from total depravity that will just continue right up until the time Christ comes.

There will be no transforming by the renewing of our minds.

But that was what I believed Christianity was, was just getting God to not be angry with me over my sins was the essence of salvation.

God doesn't get angry over our sins in the sense that it keeps us from receiving salvation from him.

What keeps me from receiving salvation from him is not his attitude toward me, but my openness toward him.

He's reaching out his gift of salvation for each 1 of us, we can receive it.

And that salvation reaches into the very core of our soul to transform, not merely grant us a legal pardon.

I do want forgiveness, because I've wronged him.

When you wrong somebody, you've got to seek their forgiveness.

And that indeed what Christ went to the cross for.

Well, at about age 17, I started to get interested in religious things.

Started to have a little bit of a conscience about some of the music I was listening to and some of the entertainments I was involved in, gave up a lot of that satanic type of music and stopped drinking and really started to say, you know what, this religion thing, there may be something to it.

But, you know, surrender was kind of slow to come.

I want to fast-forward through my conversion story now, because I'm answering the question how I got into media on the brain and then I'll circle back around the second half and tell you the conversion story.

But in 2008, that's the year that I joined the Seventh-day Adventist movement and at that time in the about the year, year and a half after that, major changes were coming into my life.

I'll tell you more about those in a minute, but I was reading Spirit of Prophecy, conviction all over the place, over and over again, conviction on this and on that.

You know, Scott, how much time are you going to spend watching Michigan State basketball games?

I know it's March Madness right now, pray for me, please.

Those old neurons, you know, seek attention, and the things you've enjoyed in the past.

But as I'm experiencing these convictions, I'm also getting very excited to present and share and teach the things that I am learning in 2008-2009 as I'm coming into the church.

I still am a teacher I guess on the weekends but I was a teacher for 11 years from 2003 to just this past year and so whatever I learned I want to teach and so I'm just fired up I'm saying all right who can I tell about these these truths and I was in Michigan in 2009 And I'll tell you about how I ended up in Michigan?

But nonetheless, I was at a church, brand new into this church in Michigan, and they said, boy, this young man has some energy.

They had no idea how twisted some of my beliefs were even at that point as a Seventh-day Adventist.

But praise the Lord, they brought me under their wings, and the pastor of the Wyoming church there, Dan Rocker, the Sabbath school superintendent, Tom Majure, these 2 men said, we really need to bring this scout Ritzema in and help him channel that energy that the Lord has given him.

They put me in superintendent Sabbath school and eventually gave me the pulpit and very careful about talking through some of the issues that we were discussing, but nonetheless, even got an opportunity to present a little bit of public evangelism in the form of a Bible lecture series, and that is where true purpose is found.

I finally was fired up for the first time in my life about something real, something meaningful, something eternal and that really was what transforms you ultimately.

But nonetheless the other subjects I had been a teacher of, economics, history, political science, they all of a sudden started to get very boring to me because I'm opening the Word of God and I'm going, wow, this is amazing.

These truths, this system of thought that comes together so clearly and so truly and so powerful to transform and change lives.

This present truth that is so urgent at this time in history makes everything else seem so boring, amen?

I'm going, Praise the Lord for this present truth.

By the way, guys on the mic, am I coming through good enough on the mic?

Okay, because I'm a ways away from it and it's starting to slide down on me.

I just want to make sure the audio is getting recorded okay.

So nonetheless, oh, the brother's gonna help me out with that.

Renewing of the Mind

Transcript

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