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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Bill Krick

You Are Strong

The best part of my life is knowing Jesus Christ.

The second most important and wonderful part of my life is my family.

My wife Heather and my three-year-old and my five-year-old.

Thank you for inviting me to Advent Hope.

Some of you have been very gracious to us.

We appreciate that I want to tell you briefly before I have my 2 young folk come up and talk to you briefly I'm say about my first visit to Advent Hope.

I Had heard that there was some sort of Sabbath school at Loma Linda and They really studied the Bible seriously studied the Bible and They had speakers or whatever.

And so I thought that's cool there maybe there's you know, I've 30 people around the table discussing the Sabbath school lesson.

And to my shock, when I walked in about a year ago, I saw over 200 people and there was no place to sit.

And as I looked for a place to sit, the speaker had just gotten up and started speaking.

That was like the only seat right about there where the speaker was.

And so I walked down the aisle and as I walked down the aisle I looked down the rows.

It was actually it was a different configuration.

I looked down the aisles and there I saw a whole row of young adult laps.

And On each young adult lap was an open Bible and Then this is all happening in milliseconds, you know And then I as I'm walking quickly try not to be it too obvious I look down the next aisle and it's the same thing and I go to the next and my eyes catch the same thing A whole row of young adult laps with open Bibles and I thought to myself this is nuts praise the Lord If what I hear about you is true You like studying the Bible, Is that true?

You believe in the authority of Scripture Well before we dive into our topic in our scripture today I've asked my 2 young friends to share their personal testimony We work in Central California conference and also with Souls West, which is Pacific Union conferences, outreach, leadership training school in Prescott, Arizona.

We work with youth and young adults who want to serve God with all their hearts and all their lives and with their time and talents.

And Nelson Ernst and Heidi Bryant are 2 such young people.

So I'm going to ask first Heidi and then Nelson to come up and share a little bit about their personal testimony.

And then we're going to dive into the word and talk about what that what it actually means from the word about the expert from the experiences that you're going to hear.

Thankfully, I grew up in a home that was Christian, and so I grew up knowing all about God.

I grew up going to Sabbath school, and I, like you'll hear Nelson, got all of my little stickers for getting my memory verse right.

And I actually grew up in Wichita, Kansas far away from here and I grew up in the country.

It was a blessing to grow up there because it was away from many of the influences that can sweep young children away but it was a blessing to grow up there.

I firmly believe in the verse Proverbs 22 6 that says Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it I saw that fulfilled in my life.

Although I did have a time where I went away from God and went away from what I had learned, I do realize that my parents raising me in the right way was definitely what helped me come back to Him years later.

And I just want to share briefly my testimony of what God's done in my life.

I'm sure many of you have tons of stories about how God's worked in your life.

But I've seen God work in my teenage years in high school.

When I went to 3 Angels School there in Wichita, I started getting mixed in with the wrong crowd and following my friends, basically, down the wrong road.

And I remember experiencing a turmoil of beliefs inside of me.

It was like as if I had grown up with this nature of loving God, and yet all of my friends were trying to get me to go against that.

I would go to church and I would say, Happy Sabbath, God bless you.

I'd shake hands and I would give everyone hugs.

But then when I would walk away with my froth slipping into things that everyone at church would be abhorred to know that I had done.

And I realized, if you guys, you probably have read 2 Timothy chapter 3, I had a form of godliness, but I was completely denying its power.

It's like I was always learning about Christ.

I was always understanding who He was and all these different things, but I had never come to a knowledge of the truth.

John 14, verse 6, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

It wasn't until during that time of, I guess you could call it rebellion, my parents started praying.

I was about ready to knock on the door to ask my mom something.

And I hear something in the background and I ended up putting my ear up to the door because I wanted to hear and I wasn't just going to bust in And I realized after putting my ear up to the door that she was in there crying and praying for me by name praying that I would come back to the Lord.

And I know that I'm here today because of intercessory prayer.

I encourage any of you parents out there, you know, when I first realized that she was praying for me, I got mad.

And I knew that something was going to happen and I was actually very frustrated but all during that time I know the Lord was working in my life and 1 thing during that time I was in a very rebellious relationship with a young man in high school.

It was taking me down the wrong road as well.

But it's amazing that overnight, I lost all feeling in my heart for this young man.

I woke up the next morning and I didn't have any feelings.

And I didn't know what had happened, but looking back I realized it was the Lord answering my mother's prayers.

And I went to school, I ended up breaking up with him and he his jaw dropped because he couldn't believe it and I said I didn't understand it either and I continued on my life that night I went home and gave my life to God for the first time for real I got down on my knees I said a God I'm sick of living my life for myself, and I'm sick of living it in the world, and I want to go back to what I knew was true.

You know, from that time on, I asked the Lord, you know, what can I do for you?

And I actually ended up going to Oakland Academy for my senior year in high school.

I love how you guys love to study the Bible.

It's a blessing for me just to dig into the word and see that God is real and claim those promises and experience it.

And I went and did canvassing in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Went knocking on doors, sharing literature with them.

And after that I went to Souls West, the college that Bo was talking about, and I really learned the beauty of personal contact, of knocking on doors and talking to people one-on-one, and bringing them to a spiritual decision for Christ.

And it was just amazing just to realize that God had so much in store.

And even now I'm a part of something called GLOW, and you guys can check it out at goglow.org.

But it's something that is, it's shown me that my experience with God, I need to take it to a whole new level.

And I'm realizing that God has divine appointments for me everywhere I go, every single day, all the time.

It's not just on some afternoon where I go out knocking on doors.

So that's transformed my walk with God as well.

But I just praise God that He's taken me from where I'm at to where I am now, and I'm thankful for the promise in Jeremiah 24, if you guys want to turn there.

It says, Jeremiah 24 and verse 7, this is a promise I claim each day.

Jeremiah 24 and verse 7, Then I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

For they shall return to me with their whole heart.

And I just praise the Lord that God says, I will give you a heart to know me.

You don't have to think of 1 on your own or find 1 somewhere at a grocery store or supermarket.

And I just pray that you guys can claim that every day too.

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You Are Strong

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