Summer Camp: Guided By God’s Word

Camp Pinecrest is over for 2016, but the experience provides a lesson for this week’s Sabbath Thought.

This year, camp began on Thursday, June 23, with the arrival of 49 staff members and about 60 campers. It is a remarkable thing that over 100 people can get together and create something that is pleasing to God. It is not only an outcome that is pleasing to God, but is most encouraging as well.

When we go to camp, we are, first of all isolated. There is little traffic to contend with and no TV’s to be seen or heard. The teens turn in their electronics on Friday and, as a result, there is no distraction from what we are trying to achieve for the next week.

Outside of our little community at the camp, the world goes on as always. People continue to choose from the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil whether they know it or not. Sadly, man seems to be choosing from the tree of death more than the tree of life. What we are doing in Fredericktown, Missouri is of little import to the world at large. But from God’s perspective our week long gathering is of great significance.

Why is camp significant from God’s point of view? And why is it encouraging to the participants young and old?

Camp is significant to God because you have 49 adults from all over the Midwest. Volunteers from diverse backgrounds, points of view, temperaments, and various levels of spiritual maturity come to serve as staff. The overriding feature of those who give of their time at camp is their willingness to yield to God and one another so that the teens can be well served. More importantly, if the teens take the time to consider what is taking place they can see the atmosphere at camp is produced because of the application of God’s way of life.

Paul summarized what takes place at camp each year, “from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love” (Ephesians 4:16).

Should we be surprised by this positive outcome? Absolutely not! God’s way, when applied, always works. It always has and it always will.

For Liz and I in our position of administrating the camp, it is easy to focus on the minutiae—the injuries and the human failings that inevitably happen when you run a summer camp. But to only see the negative is the miss the bigger picture which is most encouraging.

We are encouraged by camp because above all we can see the staff making sacrifices, willingly helping one another, and being willing to help even when it is not their job. To put the outcome in terms of this year’s camp theme, they are willing to be “Guided by God’s Word.” This willingness to submit to God and apply the truths of the Bible is an annual reminder that God’s way always works.

With that encouragement in mind, we look forward to Camp Pinecrest 2017.

Gary Smith

There Is A Way That Seems Right To A Man

As we look at the present world, we can see that it is filled with problems: hunger, ignorance, poverty, sickness, disease, hatred, violence, and war to name a few.

Everyday mankind struggles with these various problems, but men only seem to make limited, if any progress, with the myriad problems. Sadly, this is not a condition that is recent in origin. The problems we face trace all the way back to the first man and woman, Adam and Eve.

Adam and Eve received clear instruction from God on how to live. God told them, “And the Lord God commanded the man saying, of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17)

God gave man a choice. To walk humbly before God by eating of the tree of life, or to walk in a way contrary to God by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Regrettably, Adam and Eve chose what the book of Proverbs describes as the foolish path. They chose the way that seems right to a man (Proverbs 16:25), and the end result of that path is death.

Death is the ultimate consequence of choosing to live a life apart from God. In the meantime, what impact did the choice of Adam and Eve have? “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). In other words, Adam set the pattern of sin and all of his descendants have followed that same path.

Sadly, mankind is going to continue to follow the way that seems right in their own eyes, and the problems we face on this earth will not be resolved.

However, as the Sabbath approaches, we might consider that God in His mercy has opened our minds to see that there is a better way. It is not the way that seems right to a man, but it is the way that seems right to God. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

One cannot gain knowledge of spiritual things if he begins at the wrong point, refusing to fear the Lord (i.e., to recognize God's character and respond by revering, trusting, worshiping, obeying, and serving Him).

The outcome of the fear of the Lord is described throughout the book of Proverbs, but the introductory verses give us a foretaste of what we can learn with the fear of the Lord as our foundation. “To know wisdom and instruction, to perceive the words of understanding, to receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, judgment, and equity; to give prudence to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion — A wise man will hear and increase learning, and a man of understanding will attain wise counsel” (Proverbs 1:2-5).

What a difference it will make once man learns that it is only through the fear of the Lord, and the application of God’s truths, that all these problems that plague mankind will be eradicated one by one.

Each Sabbath is a reminder that a world in which the “fear of the Lord” is foundational is sure to come.

Enjoy the Sabbath day,

Gary Smith