GYC 2025: Seeing the Invisible

Jermaine Gayle

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Carry My Bones

I've been very blessed and I'm happy that I get to be here with you this evening.

I'm ready to get down to business, what about you?

Turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Genesis, chapter 50, verse 24 through 26.

The Bible reads, and Joseph said to his brethren, I am dying, but God will surely visit you and bring you out of this land "'to the land of which he soared to Abraham, "'to Isaac, and to Jacob.' "'Then Joseph took an oath "'from the children of Israel, saying, "'God will surely visit you, "'and you shall carry up my bones from here.

So Joseph died being 110 years old, and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.

And here is the ending of the book of Genesis, A Coffin in Egypt.

The title of my message is Carry My Bones.

So there Lord, I pray that you use this vessel of clay.

Break it if you have to, but let your light shine.

We pray that you may speak to your people, myself included.

We pray these things in the name of Jesus, our Savior, and we all say, amen.

It was my very first time riding shotgun in a hearse.

When the invitation was extended to me I was unsure.

I had conducted a funeral and the funeral director had come up to me and said Pastor Gail We appreciate all that you've done for us here today.

If you're open to the idea, we would love for you to ride in the hearse with 1 of our staff members to the gravesite.

And with me being Jamaican and all, some of those old superstitions were coming back to mind.

You see, my dear friends, I did not grow up a Seventh-day Adventist, and the years that I am an Adventist today are becoming slowly more than the years that I was not.

And the moment he said this, I thought back to my upbringing and the things that I learned growing up.

In fact, I'll tell you this with all honesty.

Between my house and my grandma's house, there was a grave.

And my dad used to tell me these crazy stories about the dead.

And I remember being so terrified that I would run from my front porch to my grandma's house nonstop until I get there.

My Dear friends, I ran in the dark so fast that I was before Usain Bolt, the Usain Bolt.

I got to my grandma's house and I picked up the thing that my dad told me to get and right there I would line myself up on that porch and I would get ready and run straight back to my house non-stop.

Because in my mind those superstitions were there.

If you slow down, the ghost would get you.

Friends, I am grateful for our message concerning the state of the dead.

It frees us from those old superstitions, but I'm going to be honest with you, sometimes the past revisits and we have to recenter ourselves, stay on mission.

And so here I am, sitting in this hearse.

I buckled my seatbelt and I closed the door, and the driver came in, young lady in her 20s, and now I feel I have to have a lot more courage.

And as I'm sitting there, we start talking.

We pulled off together, and my first question to her was, why did you choose this line of work?

And then she says to me, Pastor, this is not a job for me.

This is a calling, and I'm happy that I get to serve people at their lowest and and I hear her saying all of these things and I didn't respond for a little while there was a pause and she might have thought that I was thinking of my other question but what was going on in all honesty was those superstitions were coming back to mind and I felt myself with those intrusive thoughts taking the form of a prayer and I in my mind was there telling the Lord please don't let anything move back there and then I had to remind myself Jermaine you are a Seventh-day Adventist pastor and God wants you in a hearse because there are hearse drivers who need salvation.

I refocused my attention, surrendered my heart, and I said, Lord, this is where you want to use me today.

And friends, that day, More than just sitting shotgun in a hearse, I became co-pilot for a hearse driver.

I knew the area, we started talking and she would ask me where do I go next, I would tell her turn right, turn up the light.

We were driving, we were talking so much.

By the time we ended our conversation back at the funeral home, she turned to me and said, "'Pastor Jermaine, where is your church?

"'I would love to attend.'" There are moments in our lives when God calls us to face our fears so that he can use someone as fearful as you to save someone who is fearless, not about the job they do, but about the future that lies ahead of them.

God is in the business of saving hearse drivers.

And he can use whoever he chooses, whenever he wants to, wherever he wants to, to save people.

Are you willing to go the distance to save the people that God wants to save?

So 2 lessons I learned that day while riding shotgun in a hearse.

Number 1, God can use anybody he chooses.

Number 2, God is in the business of saving people wherever they are, including hearse drivers, and he needs you in these places, in these spaces, because friends, we have the message that the world is dying to hear.

By the time the children of Israel were ready to leave Egypt, Moses had already fought a good fight.

He had approached Pharaoh about 7 times, and they had these conversations, these negotiations, and Pharaoh refused to let the children of Israel go.

And I would imagine that by the time Moses ended the last meeting, if he came to a group of Israelites and they would ask Moses, well, how did it go?

Moses would have said, well, the final meeting, the good news is Pharaoh is willing to let us go.

Poor fellow, He could have saved himself a lot of trouble.

When I first came and told him, let my people go, he didn't believe me, and now Egypt is in a free fall.

The economy is tanking and all of society is in trouble, but now he's finally ready to let us go.

He lost his firstborn last night, but now he wants us to leave in a hurry.

Turn with me in our Bibles to the book of Exodus chapter 12 and verse 33.

I believe that this would have been Moses' response to the children of Israel that leaving Egypt was going to happen quickly.

The Bible says in Exodus chapter 12 and verse 33, and the Egyptians urged the people that they might send them out of the land in a haste.

For they said, we shall all be what everybody?

All were now off to the races, I imagine.

All the Israelites gathering their last bit of belongings.

There were the Israelite shepherds gathering their herds from the fields in Goshen.

If you go down with me to verse 38, this is what the Bible says, Exodus chapter 12 and verse 38.

A multitude went up with them also, and flocks and herds, a great deal of what, everybody?

There would not have been enough U-Haul trucks to accommodate this mass evacuation.

When Pharaoh punched the numbers back in Exodus 1, and verse 9, he had this to say about the Israelites.

He told the Egyptians, there are too many of those Israelites in our country, and they're becoming more powerful than we are.

To move this many people out of Egypt, therefore, for a scrappy 80-year-old guy like Moses would have been crazy.

The logistics team would have had to go door to door and I imagine a lady inside hearing the knock.

Hey, Moses sent us, It's time to leave Egypt.

The Bible tells us, my dear friends, in Exodus chapter 12 and verse 35, notice what it says, so the people took their what everybody?

I imagine the women are probably there trying to finish the baking for the night, for the evening.

The Bible says Exodus 12, verse 35, so the people took their dough before it was leavened, having their kneading bowls bound up in their clothes and on their shoulders.

Can you see them stepping beyond the threshold of their doorways with pots and pans clanging and perhaps in that moment if an Israelite were to look back above his doorpost, he would see the blood symbolizing, signaling that this trip was paid for by the blood of the Lamb.

Praise God, Jesus pays for slaves to leave Egypt.

My friends, pardon me for a moment, but in my sanctified imagination, I see the people of God spilling out into the streets and alleyways of Egypt.

I hear the bleating of sheep as shepherds coax them forward.

I see families rushing, calling names, gathering their children.

I see animals with their backs all loaded down with their silver and gold.

And while it would have been a miracle in itself to gather this many people in an emergency, which it was, what stands out to me, my dear friends, is not the chaos, but the pause.

Turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Exodus, chapter 13 and verse 19.

Don Mackintosh

Weimar University

Daniel 7, The Sabbath, and Health

Those of you who have been studying the book of Daniel with me this week, we got up to chapter 5.

Chapter 6 is a focus on the law of God, which is debated because of the, of actually a day of worship.

And Daniel was a Sabbatarian, and as we know, also a vegetarian.

But you don't have to be a vegetarian to be a Sabbatarian.

But he happened to be, and his friends, like we learned.

And he had to stand up for things that were the best for his health, not only physically, but also spiritually.

In Daniel chapter 6, he had to stand up against a bunch of days that were not really the right kind of days to worship on.

And of course he came out of that lion's den experience.

And then Daniel chapter 7, there's like all of these unclean animals again, like he encountered in chapter 1, but they're all pictured as going throughout time and history.

And then there's a very sinister little horn that comes up that tries to change God's times and laws or law that relates to time.

So Daniel 7 is actually about the Sabbath.

I'm not going to get into that prophecy too much today, except as a introduction for what I want to talk about today.

Now, if any of you were on social media or any kind of media this last week, many of you were not, but if you were, you noticed that there was a big focus on the Sabbath.

All kinds of news networks were talking about the Sabbath, And this was largely because of an individual named Charlie Kirk, who his last book he wrote was not about politics, which he talked about a lot, but about the Sabbath.

And this book came out and was covered quite a bit here in America.

There were other things about the Sabbath this week as well.

There were various court cases in America.

There were other things around the world.

But it seemed like a really hyper focus on the Sabbath.

So I thought, you know, I better talk about it today.

And This book that came out actually sold out on Amazon and was number 1 in that particular category of religious commentaries, probably because Donald Trump wrote an endorsement, might have something to do with it.

And so he wrote an endorsement, endorsing the book, and this book then just, everybody bought it, or at least all the copies they had.

And so I thought maybe today we'd look a little bit at the Sabbath.

In that book that was written, it said, it's a manifesto against the constant busyness of modern life.

Abandoning the Sabbath has contributed to emotional exhaustion, anxiety, depression, relational breakdown, and spiritual confusion.

There was nothing on the screen after I put all those slides together.

I'm not upset at all, I feel very good about that.

In fact, I'm feeling so good that I, I'm feeling better than I think I should.

My support staff is here for emotional support at least.

Okay, so I think maybe it's coming up now.

So all of the various news networks, and then Donald Trump's endorsement there.

And this idea about busyness, abandoning the Sabbath has contributed to anxiety, depression, all these different things, and especially in the demographic of youth.

This is the most suicidal, depressed, lost, confused generation in history.

And of course, this individual had a front row seat to that, visiting hundreds, if, I don't know if 1000, but many, many college campuses.

So when he was looking at all that, he also himself was getting anxious and depressed, and he talked to someone who said, have you ever considered keeping a Sabbath?

And the book tells the story of his own personal testimony concerning the Sabbath, helped him get over the anxiety and the burnout, potential depression he was experiencing.

So then I went and I looked at the Amazon website and I wanted to read some of the reviews.

And the first review I read says, what an amazing book, I would encourage you to get the book, but you do not have to wait to learn about the Sabbath.

Please visit your local Seventh-day Adventist church this Saturday.

And I was like, well, I think I might do that, since I'm already scheduled to go, but I thought, wow, what a great endorsement.

And then it went on and 1 of the other things, it says, did you know that the Seventh-day Adventists are the happiest people around?

I said, well, you haven't been to my church.

So let me play you what I listen to here.

Theologists, they did this study a few years ago where they were studying the happiest people on earth.

And 1 of the groups of people they found were happiest is a little Christian sect called the Seventh Day Adventists.

You can tell from their name, they are like really religious about keeping the Sabbath.

Now not only were they some of the happiest people on earth, they on average, bookmark this in your head, this is going to be real important in about 30 seconds.

They on average live 11 years 11 years 11 years longer Than the average American now, can I show you something?

All right, this is so it's so cool I like numbers.

I'm gonna show it to you on my calculator.

So, you know, I'm not cheating the numbers Okay now let me show you this.

So what we just said so the average lifespan in America remember they live 11 years longer than average American.

Okay the average lifespan in America is 77 years.

Okay 77 years now But what we want to know for the purpose of this is how many days does the average person live?

So all we got to do obviously is multiply 77 times 365.

The average person is going to live 28, 105 days.

Okay, now what we want to know though is, okay, if a person kept the Sabbath in an average lifetime, How many Sabbaths would they observe?

So obviously, a Sabbath, the command is once every 7 days to take a day of rest, holy unto the Lord.

So what we need to do to figure out how many Sabbaths would the person observe, obviously we just got to divide the number of days by 7 to get number of Sabbaths they'd observe.

So if you do that the average person in an average lifespan would observe 4015 Sabbath days over a 77 year lifetime.

Now okay cool fine that's a great little fact, Josh.

Now, I'm just curious, I'm just curious, if you said it in terms of years instead of days, how many years worth of just Sabbaths Would a person enjoy during their lifetime?

Well obviously 365 days in a year, so we just need to divide that number by 365 and we'll know exactly how many years worth of Sabbaths they observed and guess what it is exactly 11 Now some of you are like that's insane And then the rest of you are going, I know this is really cool but I don't know why!

That the average person observes 11 years worth of Sabbaths in their lifetime.

And that's the exact number to the day the time that God added to the lifespans of the people that kept the Sabbaths.

In other words, check this out, God is essentially going, every time you gave me a day I added 1 to you.

Maybe that's why the Adventists are the happiest people around because of that kind of stuff.

So, and there's all kinds of science that backs up what he said.

You know, they take all the science and they do a meta-analysis, which just means they put it all together and really try and impress you.

And a meta-analysis makes these bars or these connections even thicker.

The more studies involved, the thicker the correlation on this slide.

So the effects of Sabbath keeping on physical health, notice that huge, robust arrow that goes from keeping the Sabbath and physical health.

And we could drill down and look at a lot of those different things.

Diet, exercise, religious support, religious coping.

Yeah, that's some, but those are pretty weak little arrows.

But the strongest connection comes from keeping the Sabbath itself, ends up keeping you.

A strong connection, well, positive religious coping, that's a little stronger there, religious support, pretty strong, but again, a very robust muscular connection between Sabbath-keeping itself and mental health as well.

Justin Kim

The Ten Plagues

Stephen Waterbrook

The Fire that Sends

Dear Heavenly Father, we have this consecrated time where we can ponder our lives.

We're here not by accident on this New Year's Day, but we're here to seek You as You reveal to us the invisible things of our lives.

And so we pray that during our time together, we will catch a glimpse of that invisible will that you have for our lives and how we can meet you at that burning bush and see you in a new way.

Please send your angels and your spirit as we spend this time together.

I am honored and humbled to say that I have been a part of this movement from its earliest spark, Before we knew what it would become, and frankly, I never imagined we would reach the year 2025.

When we packed up after that first small conference in Southern California and prepared for the second in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I remember the phrase that passed almost reverently from person to person, something is happening.

We said it because we believed it, that God himself was stirring, that we were witnessing the first vibrations of the last great movement before the return of Christ.

We knew we were entering the final sprint of Earth's history.

In those early days, we operated on conviction more than capacity.

I remember sitting with friends on borrowed furniture, stuffing folders, addressing envelopes, licking stamps, and mailing invitations to that first GYC conference.

We had no budget, only credit cards and faith.

We were literally putting money we didn't have onto plastic, trusting that if God had truly called us, he would pay the bill.

You could say that GYC, as you'll see on the slide, is partly responsible for nearly everything most precious in my life.

I met my wife Katie through this movement.

She has been my closest ally in both adventure and exhaustion.

And somewhere between those conferences and the mission fields that followed, we found ourselves with 3 children who I pray will catch the same vision.

Children who already sense that faith was never meant to stay within the borders of convenience and comfort.

And for that reason alone, I will always be grateful that GYC exists.

Tonight or this afternoon as we open Exodus 3, we are stepping again onto holy ground.

Whenever God's people settle into comfort, He kindles something that demands attention.

He does not necessarily begin with institutions or committees.

He begins with a single soul who stops long enough to notice that a bush is burning.

So let us open the Bible together in Exodus 3.

In Exodus 3 we find This passage, and the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush.

So he looked and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed.

Then Moses said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.

This afternoon we're discussing from the fire to the nations.

I was born in Muskegon, Michigan in February of 1978 after a record-breaking blizzard and raised in the Lansing suburb of Okemos, a Midwestern town that appeared peaceful from the outside but felt far less so within our home.

My father, an orthopedic surgeon, was quiet and detached.

My mother, a nurse, was loving but unstable, wrestling with alcohol even as she tried to hold our world together.

My sister Sarah and I grew up in a house that could appear normal to strangers but pulsed with loneliness once the doors were closed.

I learned early that conversation was not connection and that stability could vanish without warning.

I had to figure things out on my own, to read the room before I entered it, to make sense of moods that shifted like the Michigan weather.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

Carry My Bones

1h 37m

Daniel 7, The Sabbath, and Health

46m

The Ten Plagues

1h 5m

The Fire that Sends

1h 15m

33 Years and Forever

36m

Whose Son Are You?

52m

Crossroads: Which Way, Lord?

47m

Out of Egypt, Upon This Mountain

46m

Different

1h 32m

Unfriended: The Enemy’s Lies About Connection

47m

How Deep is Your Love?

53m

03 Life and Death

23m

Sound Doctrine