The morning Manna will be provided at 6am. Thanks.

Studying In the Crucible with Christ in the SSnet.org series Lesson 4, may the Holy Spirit be the speaker to your heart. 

The Topic today is: "Suffering to use a Christian for Himself making them more pure showing their weaknesses and they lean on Him" for Morning Manna in the Sabbath School Lesson In the Crucible with Christ".

The Opening Hymn will be 229 "Spirit of the Living God" 

The Sabbath School Quarterly, downloadable from SSnet.org in the Teacher's Edition is on page 63 and for the laymen edition or Standard Edition, on page 44.

The SSnet.org site allows anyone, anywhere to read the lesson in their own language. Choose your own language to see God speaking also to your heart.

---Ellen White presents great insights about Suffering. There are many reasons that suffering suddenly comes over us: it is the prophetic last days or Time of Trouble period that kicked in (still future or very near?); my individual character is fine but God has windows of onlookers in heaven that He want to demo me to them; my individual character has some weaknesses and the Holy Spirit's role is to point out sin and lead to righteousness; it is a learning experience for myself about myself; and who knows, other reasons as well?

---Ellen White in this citation from Testimonies for the Church vol. 5 page 316 [easy to remember: John 3:16!] described for us that sometimes suffering is to show us our weakness in character and to fix it as He wants it.

---The natural man asks always why God left me when trouble comes. No He doesn't. It is your testing time and you should know who you really fight against: self in the wrong hands of control! Either myself in Satan's hands or self-seeking ventures following Satan's lead more and more into the world and its habits and cultures.

---Cultural romanticism will not help us in our character growth. Culture habits are like social pillows to help people fit in with everybody and that gives a nice pleasure in the feelings. But it cannot help the character at all.Cultural transformation is needed wherein the participants consciously select with biblical glasses on the senses according to God's Word and will.

---Characters have to be tested by God. Maybe unfallen worlds are asking for a test to see proof of endurance against temptation? Maybe Satan is accusing us on the basis of our sin-history long ago? But God knows better and is confident that we are going to lean on Him, lean on Christ, lean on the Holy Spirit, all the same thing and outcome.

---I watched a video of a non-adventist pastor of Malaysia who told his story this month: He said that he was pastor of a very big youth church where they sing loud, with spotlights, with everyone raising their hands and shouting 'Amen, hallelujah'.

---The young people got ecstatic emotional experiences of cracking down for God, or for God as he thought. He was for 13 years their pastor. Young still. He organized the leaders. He programmed them and control the whole program to get the youth act according to their festival style of worship: dancing, acting, swinging while singing, focusing on the self until they cry...

---Then he resigned this month.

---Reason? He read Matthew where someone said to Jesus, "did I not preach or teach for You? And the Lord said: I do not know you".

---Suddenly, his eyes opened and he saw his youth worship style as "program based" and not "content based". Where is the Word of God? It is "self-based" and does not really prepare the youth for the future. He got worried and resigned.

---There is a lesson for us in this as well. Transformational Youth Ministries in Adventism based on these festival/emerging church styles, are not the ideal of God. Period. Ask this pastor of Malaysia. Kinetic movement worship with loud acoustics and strange melodies borrowed from the “Canaanites” Ballad styles and fashion around us, is not God’s way either.

---The young pastor asked himself how many people he came in contact are non-believers? He could not count ten. His busy program planning for control and God's youth cut all changes of meeting non-believers.

---So he resign not to put his light under a bushel but to bring out God's Word to the non-believers, he said.

---Watching his video with examples of his old preaching style in the youth meetings, definitely convinced that he needed a serious change. The Holy Spirit cannot be heard properly in loud digital synthesizers, drums, electrical guitars, and self-focused songs with marshmellowing Christ over it. Cannot, the Bible says. Why? The individual needs to know their Bibles to perceive evil.

---If one neglects regular Bible study, one is going to fail the test.

---So start immediately reading God's word every day.