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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Brian Hindman

Where Is Your Faith?

We are preppers, not in the sense of physical preparation, but as in the sense of spiritual preparation.

That is what we want to do, and that is what I hope this evening will be a blessing to you as we study an important subject, I believe.

Now, just now, we need to be preparing for the Lord's second coming.

All of these events, the tragedies and the violence that we see tell us, the Sermon of the Lord says, that the end of all things is near and we should be preparing just now.

Well, I would like to have an additional word of prayer before we get into our subject this evening.

So if you would just bow your heads with me and let's pray.

Our Father and our God, Lord, I thank you so much for the Sabbath, a tremendous blessing, a blessing that we probably don't even fully realize and grasp and yet you've given this to us.

It's been said the most valuable thing that you can give to someone is your time and the Creator, the God of the universe, has given us His time.

What a precious, precious blessing, the most valuable gift, your son and the time that you would have to to share with us and help create in us a new heart and a new mind with new lives.

Lord may we be transformed this Sabbath day by a connection with you and I pray also that you would have a special nearness and be an added blessing on those who are grieving and suffering emotionally, physically, and just come very near them and help them to know that you will never leave nor forsake them.

Lord I pray this in Jesus precious name, amen.

Okay our subject this evening is entitled, Where is your faith?

And that's based on a question that Jesus himself asked in the Gospels, 1 of the Gospels.

This, which you have in front of you, is the product of my own personal study.

When I was a child growing up in the church, the Seventh-day Adventist church, I oftentimes heard a lot about faith, but I did not realize and understand what it really meant to exercise faith.

And so to me, faith was always an abstract concept, something that maybe people that had advanced double or triple PhDs could understand, but not some lowly lay person like myself.

And so I launched into a study of the word of God based on a Bible verse and a statement from the spirit of prophecy, which you'll see shortly, both of those.

And as a result, this is what you have in front of you.

And I have a lot of material so I'll try to go quickly but I have, it's a consolation to me that you have the study guide if you would like to follow up and do some further study on your own.

This is certainly not all that could be said about faith.

It is an incredibly important topic, but I also want to lay out this weekend, my plan is to, of course this evening we're going to be studying the subject of faith.

Tomorrow morning for the Divine Worship Hour we're going to be looking at finishing the mystery of God, and that's going to connect with faith as we see what the mystery of God is plainly from the Bible tomorrow morning.

Faith connects with finishing the mystery of God.

And then the third presentation is entitled the blessing of Bible memorization.

And that also connects with finishing the Mystery of God.

If you don't know what that is yet you want to be at church tomorrow morning.

And then our fourth and final presentation, Let's Go Home, will be a study from the Word of God on some key texts about the Second Coming of the Lord and did you know that we can actually do something about it?

The Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy tell us we can do something about it if we really are anxious and long to see our Savior come.

So, I hope you will see the thread throughout all of the messages this weekend that there is a connection.

But we'll begin at the foundation level, where is your faith?

And so if you have your Bibles, I hope all of you do, turn with me to the Gospel of Luke chapter 8, and we're gonna read a short passage, Luke chapter 8, verses 22 through 25.

Luke chapter 8 and we'll read verses 22 through 25.

I get excited when the audience is excited.

1 of my students is actually here, right here near the front, Haruka, it's good to see you.

And I've been teaching history in high school for the last 18 years.

But I just recently resigned my position this last school year so that I could attend AFCO, Amazing Facts Center of Evangelism.

And I quit my job teaching history because of a Bible verse that I will share with you in our fourth presentation.

There's a verse that I just was so impacted by, I said, Lord, I've got to do more for you.

And I'll share that with you in our fourth and final presentation.

But anyway, I'm used to working with young people.

And I'm glad to see a diverse group here this evening.

Luke chapter 8 verses 22 through 25, the Word of God says, Let us go over unto the other side of the lake.

And there came down a storm of wind on the lake.

And they were filled with water and were in jeopardy.

And they came to him and awoke him, saying, Master, Master, we perish.

Then he arose and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water, and they ceased, and there was a calm.

And he said unto them, here's our title, where is your faith?

And they being afraid wondered, saying 1 to another, what manner of man is this?

For he commandeth even the winds and water, and they obey him." My question to you is, why did Jesus ask the question, where is your faith?

Does anybody know the answer to that question?

Jesus is asking them where is your faith?

I'm asking do you know why he asked that question?

All right, if I do my job this evening I'm gonna come back to this story and every single 1 of you will definitely know the answer.

That's my job, is so that you will definitely know the answer to why Jesus asked that question.

So let's go now to our first question, and we're going to see now, the question is, How important is faith?

This is a Bible study based on the Bible and on the spirit of prophecy.

My words have no meaning and no value to save anybody.

We want to know what the Word of God says.

And so, our first question up here says, how important is faith?

And it says in the Word of God, Hebrews chapter 11, verse 6, but without faith it is what?

It is impossible to please Him, for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that seek Him." How?

All right, so faith is absolutely essential to be able to please God.

Does that sound important to you, yes or no?

Without faith we cannot please God at all.

So there's the Bible verse that really spurred my study to want to know more about this topic and what it means to be able to please God because I want to please God.

Now this also motivated me to a greater study of where it, I'm sorry, of what faith is.

And you have the references on your study guide.

All of you, all the references, biblical and spirit of prophecy, are on the study guide.

But I have it up here on the screen, and it says here, the knowledge of what the scripture means when urging upon us the necessity of cultivating faith is more essential than any other knowledge that can be acquired.

The knowledge of what it means to exercise and cultivate faith is more important than, I could ask some of you the classes you're taking and I probably would have no clue what the class is even about when it comes to medical the medical field and medical things but the most important knowledge that we can have based on inspired testimony is how to exercise and cultivate faith.

It says here, we suffer much trouble and grief because of our unbelief and our ignorance of how to exercise faith.

So what are the 2 things that cause us to suffer much grief?

Where Is Your Faith?

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