Guest Speaker Bill Probasco – SDB Conference President

They like to thank you for the opportunity to come and share before you on this Sabbath morning. And as has been mentioned my name is Bill per basket on the conference presents this year and I am from the some of the a Baptist church in Shiloh New Jersey. Why if I can get or but a door opening here. No if you go right back to the beginning it think that they could do for a long thing. Yes I’m sorry. Theme. Yes try that one. OK no problem. Anyway my Yeah my wife Valerie has come with me and I have jokingly called her my chief of staff and very much so she is there for me. I don’t know if I’ve got that here yet. That’s all for later for later. Hopefully we got the OK. Worth area. Thank you Phil but I say my God put to it I have two different ones on there so I apologize for confusing Dave. But as I was saying my wife Valerie has come with me my chief of staff. She does travel around with me to several of these stops of going on but we have two children. My daughter Holly our daughter Holly is thirteen soon to be forty. And Liam is eleven and one of those pictures of course I think you can guess where we were the second one is actually last year on our way out to General Conference in Minnesota we had stopped off in Ohio and took a picture. So that’s that’s warmer weather indeed. So when I when I was asked to serve as conference President my wife and I did discuss possible venue’s and places to come and visit various churches throughout the denomination and didn’t know that we have a vibrant young church growing in Cumberland Maryland and that’s not too far away. So we we hope we have the opportunity to come and visit. So it’s a pleasure to be here. You know my my main purpose as the president of conference is to develop the theme for conference and to travel around to different churches and associations and talk about that theme. So I look forward to maybe sharing a little later today on some of the fun activities planned for conference for those of you that may not be aware conferences in Lancaster at the Bible College not that far away. So hopefully you can be encouraged to come out this July. Well right now I’d like to share on my theme and my theme for the coming year as many of you have probably heard is steadfast. Now I’m not sure why God gave me that as my theme. I’m not usually one who has God audibly speak to me but on this occasion he did. When I was asked at a conference two years ago if I’d be willing to serve as the upcoming president almost immediately I had this word steadfast in my mind. I don’t want to. What does being steadfast mean. I had an idea but you always want to double check a definition so its definition is to be loyal or stand firm on something so if you are steadfast you are steadily holding on to a belief to a position to a choice you’ve made and I think everyone is steadfast about something. I enjoy bike riding. My friends say I’m a steadfast bike rider. I like to get out an exercise that’s my way of unwinding and relaxing with my hectic schedule of the long winter. I have not had the opportunity to be quite as steadfast as maybe I would like but it’s still something I like to do and when I get the opportunity I go out on my my bike rides. My wife will be coming home from work will call me if I get home before her. She says Where are you. So one on the road because of course now the cell phone in catch anybody anywhere. That’s what I like to do. Those that know me know that I’m a steadfast fan for a particular football team and I have followed them for many years. You know right now they’re having a good run but I’ve been through fans and to me I’ve been a fan for over thirty years. I’ve been through a two and fourteen season. I’ve been through twenty years where they didn’t win a playoff game. Going through that stretch you become a steadfast fan. We find a new team. That’s how that works. I love history. I like to visit presidential sites whether it be libraries houses they’ve they’ve lived in or even grave sites. You could argue that I’m steadfast in my desire to seek out these places. Just ask my kids. I have visited the. The only Pennsylvania president whose birth and death site is nearby. Now there’s no native Marylanders but the closest we could get would be a highly regarded Pennsylvania president as anybody know who that might be. That’s James Buchanan who had the unfortunate record of being in office when the civil war actually started So unfortunately he’s probably not that highly thought of amongst them historians. My kids being as wonderful as they are bought me an app for my phone to help me locate these presidential sites wherever I travel. Lucky them. I have actually overstated over visited these places and here my son is refusing to get out of the van and go to another site. So I guess maybe you can be overly steadfast at times. So I’ve learned a lot about our our past leaders of this country through my reading and through my travels. Some overcame much. Others seem destined for the position. Still others may be questionable why they were where they were. No my sermon title today is has your time passed to be steadfast and it brings to mind one obscure president how many have ever even heard of President Chester Arthur. A couple hands very good very good. He served eighteen eighty one to eighty five. Very personable when I met him. Larger than life. I actually did meet him I stopped by his place. I introduced the kids. You get the idea of what I do to my children. So I pray for them perhaps. Well now making this into a full blown his. Actually let me give you the Reader’s Digest version of the eighteen eighties. In the eighteen hundreds it was commonplace that with each new president nearly all the government jobs were given out to supporters and friends of the president. It’s a term called patronage. I still hear that today. Patronage Yes you do need experience in international trade to be a tariff collector. Just experience pal around with the senator. It was connections are not qualifications that mattered. Trouble with patronage is once they were out of office you were out of a job. Enter Chester Arthur following the Civil War He became a close friend of a senator from New York named Russell Conkling and the senator had a lot of power and he used it to put his people in the positions he want. He pulled strings and put Chester Arthur in as the head of the Port of New York. Now to get in without getting too complicated on you that’s a very lucrative job in eight hundred seventy S. because almost all the international trade in the United States would come through the port of New York. But by eight hundred seventy eight the current President Roh through the haze grew tired of this patronage and had Arthur fired for being unqualified. Who’d have thought he really didn’t have any qualifications it was in a position ever held where it was a public position and he had been slid in there as one of the cronies of this powerful senator. Well two years later it’s time for a new presidential election. And James Garfield is nominated to be the president. Well as a nod to his very powerful senator from New York they nominate Chester Arthur to be vice president. Imagine that he’d just been fired from a job for being unqualified. Maybe vice president. Well the Garfield Arthur ticket wins for weeks after being for weeks after the inauguration the new president is expected to meet with job seekers to fill these patronage positions. There are stories told of Thomas Jefferson in answering the door to the White House with slippers on to greet people seeking seeking seeking jobs within the federal government. Anyway you get the idea that anybody who helped out in the campaign the campaign in any small way would come looking for a job and they did by the thousands. The president had to meet and greet all these people coming through and as you can imagine this does not screening out the undesirables the unqualified Even the mentally ill. And one such man named Charles Uto felt in his mind he had campaigned so hard for for the Garfield Arthur ticket he deserved to be an ambassador. He was unfortunately mentally unstable and came several times to the White House each time being turned down. Well finally he grew so frustrated he shoots the president President Garfield in the back and Garfield dies from the attack three months later. Modern medicine wasn’t the reason Giteau gave was that now the Chester Arthur was president. Maybe he’d finally get one of the jobs he deserved. What was true. Poor chap Arthur to do well. The belief was he was going to start handing out jobs to all of his men because that’s how he got where he was in fact. I searched on Google presidential patronage and this is one of the first images that comes up. That’s Chet Arthur any at all as jobs who all his cronies one hundred fifty years later that’s the symbol for presidential patronage because that’s what people fought to everyone’s amazement. President Arthur set out to do what port collector Arthur would never have done. He set out to reform the patronage system. No one else was ever going to rise through the system the way he had with a slap on the back by the time his administration ended. Journalist for writing no man ever entered the presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted as Chester Allen Arthur and no one ever retired. More generally respected by friend or foe. Chester Arthur had reached a watershed moment in his life and he acted on it not for glory or personal gain for a change but because it was the right thing to do. He saw his time had not passed to become steadfast. Had he always been steadfast. Certainly not. He could have easily said I’m not the right person for the job but something happened something dramatic and it changed his life forever something that would make him steadfast in a cause. You know something happened something dramatic on the road to Damascus. You see a Pharisee named Saul sent out to round up some Jewish heretics and cart them off to jail. But a great late encircled him and his whole life began to change. He was asked a simple question and we read about in the book of Acts Saul Saul why do you persecute me. And that question changed his life forever. Something that would make a soul steadfast. In a cause and that cause was spreading the Gospel everywhere he could. He certainly hadn’t started out with this this is planned he Star In fact he started out dragging Christians off to prison or watching them get stoned in the case of Stephen after encountering Christ on the road to Damascus he could have followed Christ and yet said I’m not the right person to reach out to the Gentiles. I mean think of my history. But he didn’t. Now I can’t say that I’ve had the same dramatic event occur in my life. Salted nor have I reached the lofty title of conference President my predecessors expense thankfully but when I was seventeen years old I was in a car accident and I was lucky to walk away from it. I think of your experience this week how how close that could be. I know others that have had similar accidents that were gravely injured or even killed. I thought God had a purpose for me with my life and I can’t say that I’ve always been the perfect Christian sense that most people can’t but I have tried to be steadfast in the purpose of sharing with others the love of God Whether that’s at work or when I was in school or amongst my friends. I coach basketball. I’ve done this now every winter since I’ve been married. Our church has a basketball league. The interesting thing is the only rule for being able to play is attending church Sabbath school or youth group you know you have to dribble the ball a minium can’t say as a coach but as a steadfast commitment our church has made and I’ve me to reach the youth at church. Now I’m sure my wife doesn’t appreciate losing every Saturday night during the winter. But she respects me and supports me in that you know my daughter plays too she’s the one up front there the Bonnie at the top. My wife’s going to start coming out. She likes it or not and I can walk away from this commitment but I do. Even years when we don’t want to single here where we don’t win a single game like this past year. I know for some of these girls their commitment to the basketball team is the only thing that ties them to our church or youth group and maybe that’s an unfortunate statement on their commitment but it’s a start. Maybe it’s a seed I can help to plant that one day save their soul. God calls us to be steadfast in our faith and you can’t be steadfast without being invested. I coach because I enjoy it. I feel if I didn’t enjoy it and some seasons are harder than others the girls will quickly realize that it didn’t really matter to me and I was not invested. Either way either way you look at it. The thing about being steadfast is you have to have some commitment some investment. If I say I’m going to be steadfast about Marilyn history here in Maryland you can tell pretty quickly whether I’m really invested in or not. Maybe maybe I’m able to identify a few things. As you know Fort McHenry is Ocean City. Kalra Can Jr But I really don’t necessarily know much about the history of the state you know if if these things were really important to me I would be invested. Be able to talk about how the county was an early Catholic Haven Aleksey key border state during the Civil War how the Mason Dixon line runs just a few miles from this very spot. If it means something in my life you can tell pretty quickly. That goes for our churches as well. Those churches that are strong and growing are invested. What are they invested in. Jesus Christ how does one know. I think you can tell God is working in those churches and those churches are working for God Now I thought how could I see if the Full Gospel S.T.B. churches invest how many of you know what a vanity search is if you go online and type your name in and search and see what comes up. That’s considered a vanity search. So I did a little vanity search for you. What did I find. I find a a church bold and bright pastor leading the flock a congregation ministering to others a servant of God on fire for church growth. You’ve performing Christmas plays. I think that’s great. It shows and invest in church sits here in the mountains west of the mountains of western Maryland a steadfast church looking to grow. We need as I said when you’re invested you are steadfast in what you do and when you’re invested in God you trust in him. We read in Jeremiah Blessitt is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose trust is the Lord for He will be like a tree planted by the water extends its roots by a stream. I will not fear when heat comes but its leaves will be green and it will not be anxious. In a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit and in the verses preceding this it talks about the man who trusts in man that man is like the heath of the desert inhabiting parched places you can picture these stepping off and rolling through the. The ghost tales you know sort of somewhere in the in the Wild West Heath is a grub like plant and it’s an obvious contrast to the man who trusts in God and is a well watered tree. That’s where my logo comes in you see the river flowing by this great entry. I think God gave me a mental image of a strong tree planted by the river and there are scriptures to back that up. This tree that is steadfast it stands firm against rain storms tremors. Now thinking back to my examples. President Arthur not a lot of resistance but pushed through a change in policy that bore fruit for decades. Saul having a lot of doubters in his change but I doubt we’d have a New Testament if not for his efforts through the Lord and on a much less grand scale I know that even when my basketball team can’t even seem to dribble the basketball I’m still able to pray with him. Practice and before games and hopefully plant that seed of faith in them. It took President Arthur being thrust into a position to take action. So what happened to him and President Garfield. Hopefully wouldn’t happen again. It took Saul an encounter on the road to Damascus on his way to arrest more Christians to make him steadfast. They became steady and firm invested in what they were doing. Maybe they weren’t before but they became so God dramatically entered their lives well down a road. Some might think you could not turn back from. But God allows you to rinse. Are you running down the wrong route. It doesn’t matter. God is so steadfast so invested in each one of us that we don’t need to be perfect. God allows us to turn around. God allows K. turds. God allows us to back up and God allow us to turn the car off and walk if that’s what it’s going to take to get us going in the right direction. God has such steadfast love for his children. He wants us all to experience it and it’s never ever too late to do so. So share that love in a steadfast way and thank somebody for doing what they do. Show that you are invested in by God is in you. Thank somebody for what they do today. Even if you don’t know that person or them very well maybe leaving church today thank somebody who are working with the children’s ministry for teaching a Sabbath school class or a Bible school as you were growing up you know for preaching every week or just coming out and fellowship in a little bit goes a long way. Think back to my logo about the tree planted by the water side. When you’re surrounded by other trees the wind outside doesn’t seem as bad. So God plants forests not one tree hill it’s because actually he did that any two thousand years ago there was a tree on a hill and his son was nailed to it. For us nothing more than that can show investment of God steadfast love for us because of that one tree upon which Christ was nailed. We are stronger. Last year’s conference President had as his theme choose I think that’s still our theme. Let’s choose to be steadfast and I hope to see a Lancaster. God bless you. If you and I don’t play time games and then they told all right man. Oh oh oh he was a really mean. A The yeah. Oh the game. He told me again every day. Oh the man. All right now. They hand me the hand wrong he was the man. They may let us pray Heavenly Father we thank you so much for your grace for your mercy. Father’s saying it’s never too late to turn around. Father God thank You that as long as we have breath there’s still hope for we can never fall so far that you would not bring us back. We call out to you we thank you so much for that over this thank you for the love that you have for us and got to just break your spirit be upon each of us stores we spoke in Sabbath school we would just be overflowing that your love would just splash out of us or God they would share your love with others in Jesus’ name. Just pray that your angels what would watch over each one of the coming week and or bless or time of fellowship. This afternoon as we gather around a meal just pray to bless our conversations for your blessing upon a food or to nurse of our bodies and we thank you for all things in Jesus’ glorious name. God’s people said do you know do you. Then.