Empowered

ECYC 2011 Seminar: Comfort Zone

Daniel Dragan Stojonavic

Eastern Canada Youth Conference

Illuminating the World with His Glory

Our Heavenly Father, please give us your Holy Spirit and understanding of your will.

We see the task and the importance of what we have to do for your kingdom, and thank you for this privilege, And thank you for the power, for the faithfulness to your promises that we see day by day.

This was my first pastoral meeting in Germany, and this is a true story.

I have to say this is illuminating the world with his glory.

When I came as a pastor in Germany, we had a meeting and they presented me as a new pastor, as is always the case.

And they asked me several questions and I was there answering.

And then, close to me, next to me, it was an old pastor.

And he said to me, Is it for the first time that you work in a German speaking country?

And the next question was, do you understand the meaning of the word pastor?

And he gave me the hand and he said, welcome to the club of German shepherds.

This was my first true story, welcome words coming to Germany.

Right now there is another story, how to be a good shepherd, to illuminate the world with his glory.

And you cannot, you cannot by yourself, by your methodology, by your quality, skills, everything, charisma, everything that you want, you can never achieve to illuminate the world with his glory.

They will tell you, be like Buddha, and you will be illuminated.

Because Buddha means someone who is illuminated.

I don't have time to go through all elements.

And you will understand that everybody has solution.

But nobody is able to illuminate the world with his glory.

And still, when you read the Bible, illuminate the world with his glory, it's Revelation chapter 18, you know this story.

Eliminating the world with his glory is the task for the end time remnant church.

Will we sleep right now waiting for the later rain as we say?

When you read Ellen White, when you read the Bible, you will understand that today God has a mission for you.

And again, when you see that the, as we said already in Revelation chapter 18, that the mighty angel came and the earth was illuminated with his glory.

So we understand the impact, the huge impact of this mighty angel.

So if you look at the Psalm 96, verse 1 to 3, you will see the same concept.

In general, sing to the Lord Jewish people.

But sing to the Lord all the earth, which means that it is a universal message and that we have something to do to help the work, the mission of the remnant, of God's remnant in order to help everybody to sing.

So the universal mission is almost everywhere.

If you look at the Old Testament, prophets, psalms, even Torah, you will find the idea of universal message.

For example, Abraham, and you shall be a blessing to all nations.

To sing to the Lord, this is the main purpose of the remnant, to sing to the Lord the new song to help all the earth to sing the same song.

This is what we said just before our previous presentation, was to say to everybody that the true message is the message of wonderful love that we see in God himself.

When we meet God, we understand that he has a message of peace, the message of joy, the message of hope, and of course, the message of love.

So I remember a church father, Augustine, said very rightly, he said, our old human nature wants to sing old songs.

Our new spiritual nature wants to see new songs.

Why it is so, says the church father Augustine, and this is idea coming from his book, he said, because of the fact that when we come to God, we become a new creation.

And the new creation cannot sing old songs.

Which means that if we learn others to sing our old songs that we sing already 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, we are already bored to listen to the same message.

How can we, how can they be enthusiastic about listening to our message?

Which means that we need, day by day, to have a new experience with God in order to have something new to present to people.

The same old message, but new because God is always new.

Do you know Lamentation, book of Lamentation chapter 3?

And our message, so my goal this evening is to show you that it is possible to illuminate by God's grace the world and to help them to sing.

It's so easy that doing evangelism you can sing.

I presented 3 things, 2 this morning and 1 this afternoon.

I was told that the last 1 will be something practical.

So something practical, we will try to see how it is possible to be part of God's project in order to help others around us to sing.

And you, when you, when you see here, sing to the Lord, bless his name, proclaim the good news of his salvation.

From day to day, declare his glory among the nations, his wonders among all people.

When you read this text, you understand immediately.

Don't proclaim Seventh-day Adventist Church.

We have nothing to show to others if it is not God himself.

The true story of evangelism is the story of God.

We have nothing to present about Seventh-day Adventist.

And you will see immediately after what is the meaning.

And this message of salvation can illuminate his glory.

If this morning I said that the book of Revelation chapter 18 is very closely connected to the Revelation chapter 14, because the book, the chapter 18, is telling again the same sangod message.

It is fallen, it is fallen, Babylon the great.

And in chapter 18 you have again the same story, the same message.

So, This is what I learned and for several years, and even today, if I have someone who doesn't know the identity of Seventh-day Adventist church, usually I start my Bible studies with him doing 10 presentation, 10 Bible studies about 3 angel messages.

But 3 angel messages are not an anthology of doctrines.

It's not a collection of you have to do this, you don't have to do this, and something similar.

It's more the presentation of God himself.

And the only right attitude at the end of time, at the judgment time, the right attitude is to worship God.

I don't want to spend too much time, because you will understand easily how important it is at the end of time, and especially in the book of Revelation, to talk about the true worship.

I'm only afraid that we never have time to talk seriously about what kind of worship do we have individually and as community of believers, because it is necessary.

Satan will do everything possible to disturb us.

And it is a surprise for me, but the reality is so.

ECYC 2011 Seminar: Seekers

Jonathan Zita

Seek

Our Father in heaven, we thank you for your faithfulness towards us.

We thank you for waking us up today and giving us so many blessings.

We thank you for the privilege of reading and understanding your word through the help of your Holy Spirit.

So as we open your word at this time, instruct us, O Lord.

May it have a subduing, a sanctifying effect upon us.

And Lord, may this word cause us to be a powerful influence to those around us as we leave this place in Jesus' name.

The title of the workshop is actually, does anyone know what it is?

But the actual theme is not, the actual theme is how to be a witness or an effective witness for Christ.

And meaning how do, how can I be a modern day missionary in a highly secular world?

I don't know where you guys came from, but you obviously drove from somewhere.

And just driving from the 401 to here, you passed a lot of buildings.

Every day you pass by hundreds, maybe thousands of people if you take the metro.

And most of the people that you pass by don't believe in God.

Some people believe in God, they don't believe in Jesus.

Some people believe in God and Jesus, but their belief of God and Jesus doesn't really influence their life, right?

They go to church on Christmas, and if they go to church, Christmas, but it has no impact.

It doesn't change anything in their lives.

So the question is, how can I be an effective witness, and I say the word effective because I know people that are witnesses, but they're not very effective?

How can I be an effective witness to secular individuals?

Whether in my school or work or gym or mall or wherever I go, how can I be that kind of witness?

Stats tells us that here in Canada, it's about 85% of the people don't go to church.

You know, I work with literature evangelism, and we realize that when you go door to door, we realize the amount of people that don't go to church.

Now, we know that it's not church that will save you, But it just gives you an idea, you know, if I have some kind of spiritual interest, wouldn't I want to gather around people that have spiritual interest also, if you understand what I mean?

So people, it just shows a reflection of where we are in our society where God or things of God is really, is not a priority, right?

So how can I be empowered to be an effective witness for Christ?

So you can go to conferences like this, you know, this is a very inspiring conference.

Some of you have gone to a conference called GYC.

You know, you see other young people on fire for God.

Or you can go to church and be inspired also.

But I believe unless we understand the principles of how to be connected to the source on a consistent basis to be an effective witness, then It's kind of like a coal, a piece of coal that is warm.

You know, when you blow on it, what happens?

But as long, you have to keep blowing on it.

If you don't blow on it, whenever the wind stops, whenever the breath stops, then it comes back and becomes black again.

And these conferences are like that sometimes, where you have a call and then it's like this nice thing of oxygen and you light up and you're so encouraged, then you go back home, and then the breath stops, or Sabbath finishes, or you had a good speaker.

Then you go back home, and you become black again.

And the truth is that if you just put the coal by itself eventually with no oxygen, it dies.

And unfortunately, I was at the first GYC that they had in 2002, I think it was.

But there are people that went to that GYC that are not Adventist anymore.

So what I'm saying is that we need to understand certain principles beyond just going to be inspired in a conference or Or going to church to get our inspiration We must learn to be effective witnesses and there's where the title or the theme comes to be a seeker Our workshops gonna be based on 2 fundamental principles Can someone or actually I think you could all say it, Matthew 6.33, can you say it with me?

The kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.

It's very basic, but we're going to start building from that how to be able to seek the kingdom of God, his righteousness, because God tells us that this is what should be their most priority.

Is he seeking secondly or is he seeking first?

So this is the highest priority in our lives of what we should seek for.

So we're going to seek his righteousness.

And so the first principle is to seek God, and then to turn around and to seek others also.

How to do that in a practical, step-by-step way.

When I was a teenager, I was in my before, I guess, junior year, and I decided to go do literature evangelism, go knock on the door and save souls for Jesus, right?

I experienced amazing testimonies, answers to prayer.

Just the fact that you get out of your shell to go and speak with people about God, trying to help them to know Him better.

And if you haven't tried it, I encourage all of you to test it.

You may not be cut out for it, but you can at least try it for a summer and see what your life will, God will do with you.

And the year before, I was voted to be president of the student body or student government or student association.

So the last year after I did my year of canvassing, I came back, and it was a busy year.

And then we had all kinds of things going on.

We decided to start a store in the school to fundraise to get money and we were doing good financially as a student body.

We had all these clubs that we started to do like photography club, computer club, and all kinds of activities.

And of course, 1 of the big things that I had to work with and organize was dances.

And, you know, this is just after an amazing experience with God.

And I have to come back and I have to organize all this stuff.

And there's like a fight going on within me, because, and that's the year I also got baptized.

You know, that December I gave my life to God, and I decided I'm going to follow Him all the way.

And you know, as a teenager, there's this strong, what's the term, desire to be accepted, you know, to be cool.

OK, so it was amazing how when I look back and I analyze, like I would organize the dances, hire the DJs, everything.

We would sell stuff and make a lot of money.

But I would not go to them, because it's Friday night.

But yet, I organized for all these people to go and party.

I started to get more and more convicted on certain things.

Kingdom of God

Our gracious Father in heaven, we invite your presence in our midst at this time to sharpen our minds, to give us a clear understanding of a little bit more of your character, of what you desire for our lives, what you desire to do in us and through us.

We want to be seekers, seekers after you, seekers after lost souls, as you manifested that kind of experience when you were down here.

Teach us how to seek, and may you fulfill your promise for us to find.

My name is Jonathan Zita, and this workshop, the theme is seekers, and this specific 1 is the kingdom of God.

So just to rehash a little bit of what we covered last time, we covered principles on how to seek.

So, Christ is saying that above everything, paramount should be the seeking of God through His righteousness and the seeking of the enlargement of His kingdom.

So everything else that we do in life, the person we marry, maybe where we work, what we do in our spare time, should kind of fall under those 2 categories because those 2 things are what should be our focus.

Last time, last workshop, we focused just on what are the attributes of a seeker?

Because if I'm able to truly seek well, if I can really seek fully according to God's plan these 2 things, then I can truly fulfill God's purpose.

And I believe that that is the key of where lies empowerment, to fulfilling God's purpose for his purpose for me in this generation.

If I am to seek, there should be some kind of preparation that is done.

In Ezra, it talked about how Ezra prepared his heart to seek, to do, and to teach.

Preparation has a lot to do with, we found out with, Danielle, do you Remember?

Has a lot to do with a plan, meaning he had a plan.

So if you go Ezra chapter 7, verse 10, we find out that there is a plan.

We talked about humility, which is another attribute of seeking.

And from, you know, being told from a, first of all, a woman, to a girl, being a slave, being a nation that their gods weren't able to conquer, and then to being sent a servant instead of having the prophet go out to him.

So step after step, being told to wash, assuming that he was dirty, and going to the Jordan which was polluted.

So step after step, we found that A seeker is 1 that is humble.

And the last point that we covered is a seeker is persistent.

And we looked at the story of the man that was looking for loaves of bread.

And persistence, does anyone Remember the definition in dictionary?

Or a couple dictionaries, I looked it up.

The definition is persistence to the point of annoyance.

So that's The bottom line of the story was he didn't get what he wanted because he was buddy-buddy with the guy inside the house.

Now what we want to do is to take some of these attributes of being a seeker and we want to put all our heart into how that can we seek for the enlargement of his kingdom.

So this session will be a little bit more practical things on how I can use my influence, the words that I have, or talents that I have in a practical way to be able to reach my friends for Jesus Christ.

So it's going to be a little bit more of a practical basis.

But before we share different tips or things of how we can be able to be a practical witness for Christ.

I think it's important to base ourselves on the Bible and spirit prophecy.

So, real quick, This is something that some of you may have seen, but I just want to put emphasis on it once again.

I need 4 volunteers to read Bible text for me.

So we're just going to get our foundation of, Before we start talking about practical ways to share our faith with others, the foundation will give us a little bit of what should be our motivation and our focus.

And when Jesus went out, he saw a great multitude, and he was moved with compassion for them, and healed their sick.

So Jesus was moved with compassion, which led him to do what?

Now Jesus called his disciples to himself and said, I have compassion on the multitude because they are not continuing with me.

And I do not want to send them away hungry, lest they faint unaware.

So Jesus had compassion on these hungry people so he gave them a Bible study.

Because that's what you do when you have compassion.

So these people were sick, and what did he do?

These people were hungry, he had compassion, he didn't give them a Bible study, he didn't heal them because they didn't need to be healed.

So once again, we see that term compassion.

And I want you guys to note that because that should be our foundation of witnessing.

He sees them as sheep without a shepherd.

He teaches them to be able to instruct them in the path of righteousness.

People are confused and so he teaches them.

So this is the woman's name, I believe it is, the widow.

I don't know what happened to her husband, but definitely out of the picture because she's a widow.

And because Jesus has compassion on her and she needs Jesus, He has to explain to her the 2300 days so she can have hope.

If you have the 2300 days, then you can really see that there's no more time prophecy after 1844 and therefore you can hope in the second coming of Jesus.

His Righteousness

So the first session was on how to seek effectively.

Does anybody remember what were those 2 emphases for those who were there?

Meaning there's no point in just seeking God with having no plan or seeking to do anything that is God-related, whether it's seeking the enlargement of his kingdom or his righteousness without a plan.

When I want to do ministry, there are many things that are not pleasant to me.

And sometimes, If you do true ministry, how can I say that?

I was listening to the great controversy the other day.

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All Teachings

Illuminating the World with His Glory

1h

Seek

1h

Kingdom of God

1h

His Righteousness

45m

All These Things

48m

False Leaders

46m

False Gods

42m

False Unity

41m

False Revival

41m

Untainted Mind

59m

Untouched Body

57m

A Double Golden Cup for Every Unclean Spirit

58m

Sound Doctrine