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Restoration Ministry

Restoration 2009: Expect It

Marc Swearingen

Love With a Risk

Running From Duty

The Pearl of Great Price

A Universal Cross

The Voice of Conscience

God’s First Promise

Iron Mixed With Clay

Christ Our Righteousness

By Faith or By Sight?

Questions and Answers with Marc Swearingen

A Knowledge of Evil

Our First Love

Well, hopefully we'll provide a blessing for you tonight so that your heart will be uplifted after a long day.

And tonight what I'd like to do is I'd like to share with you a message that I've called, Running from Duty.

And I wonder if there's anyone in here tonight that might be running from duty.

And I'm going to develop this thought as we proceed.

But before we do that, let's have a word of prayer together, and we will once again invoke the Lord's presence.

Father in heaven, tonight, thank you so much for blessing us through another day and seeing us through this day.

Lord, we've come into your house tonight seeking a blessing because we realize we need 1 in this time of earth's history.

So Father, we humble ourselves to you tonight.

We ask you to accept our heartfelt surrender.

We pray that you would cleanse us from sin and that you would bless our hearts with the Holy Spirit.

Please Heavenly Father, send your Spirit tonight.

And I pray that your message would come through in a powerful way to each person.

By the way, before I begin, I want to just mention, I know that we've mentioned these little expected cards that list the messages.

Some of you probably have already figured out, I'm kind of not going by the titles on this.

I'm just trying to let the Lord lead me as far as what to preach on.

But I'm going to try to announce the titles before every sermon so you have an idea of what subject we'll be covering.

But I want to say tonight that for those of you who don't know who I am, I'm Pastor Mark Swearengin.

I've been there for 2 years at the Hickory Seventh-day Adventist Church.

And by the way, my wife, Sarah, and our 3 children, Abigail, Jonathan, and Samantha, send their greetings.

They say hello and they wish they could be here.

And they sent me word earlier through a phone call and also through Facebook that they're praying for me in the meetings.

And it's always good to know that your family back home is praying for you.

They wish they could be here, but my wife currently is teaching kindergarten at our church school at our current church, so she could not get away for this week.

But I want to tell you tonight that I am a follower of Jesus Christ, that I love Jesus with all my heart.

And I really believe that He has changed my life in an incredible way.

And tonight I hope to share with you just an overview of my personal testimony on how I came to the point I'm at right now.

And I hope and pray tonight that you will be blessed as a result of that and that you will see how God is pursuing you even when you run from duty and that he wants you more than anything.

And hopefully tonight you'll see how God is leading in your life.

To begin with, I'd like to say that I grew up in southern Maine.

And of course that's a little Maine speech for you.

It's interesting, growing up there, people said to me, you're not from Maine, where's your accent?

And then when I left and lived in different places, they said, you're from New England, aren't you?

So I guess, I don't know what happened there with the accent.

But I grew up in Bath, Maine, and 1 day when I was 5 years old, my mother came home and made an announcement to the family.

She said, starting next weekend, we are gonna start going to church.

Now, the first 5 years of my life I never went.

But starting in that particular time, my mother dragged the whole family, kicking and screaming, to church every weekend.

And in fact, 1 time, my mother wanted to pick up a particular person that was in my class in school who wasn't in my peer group and I thought I was better then.

But she, nevertheless, was trying to be a good Christian woman and gave people rides to church when they needed it.

But nevertheless, what's interesting about that is 1 day my heart was changed when I was 10 years old.

And when I was 10, I made the decision to give my heart to Jesus Christ.

And I was baptized by immersion into a church in Bath, Maine.

And it wasn't a Seventh-day Adventist church.

But you know, I believe that I had a conversion experience at that young age.

And we should never discount God's ability to reach even the young people.

I mean, I'm talking about the real young people.

Now I'm not saying we should rush real young youth into baptism, but Nevertheless, we should never discount God's ability to reach even the little ones.

And I believe, this may sound crazy, but I believe that God's Holy Spirit began to speak to me in my thoughts even at that young age.

Because shortly after I was baptized, And by the way, when I was baptized, I saw my mother out in the congregation and she was weeping tears of joy that her son finally got the picture.

I'll never forget that picture of my mother just sitting there in the congregation just crying out in praises to God that her son made the decision to follow the Lord.

But I can remember after that baptism thinking to myself, why am I here?

Have you ever wondered what your purpose is in life?

Now I know some of you here are students here, so you may have figured that out already, hopefully.

But nevertheless, I wondered that, and you know, God began to speak to me through my thoughts.

I never heard an audible voice like some people claim, but I believe the Spirit of God speaks to the brain, nerves and the mind, and begins to work with us through our thoughts.

And he impressed my mind with the thought, you will be a minister 1 day.

And you know, because of my peer group, because I was educated in a public school, and I got caught up with the athletes, and played football, baseball, and basketball every year, and I started getting around the jocks and all this stuff, you know, I worried about my reputation.

And I thought to myself, well, you know, and I thought to the Lord, I said, Lord, wait a minute, you know, I can't do that because none of my friends are into religion.

What would they think if I went into the ministry?

I'd be the laughing stock of my peer group.

Soon thereafter, I was faced with a temptation.

1 of my friends who lived down the street from me was having a party 1 day after school.

This was probably a year or 2 after I was baptized, probably 11, 12 years old, right in that range.

And I'll never forget going home from school that day, I said, you know what, I'm going to that party.

There were all kinds of things that were going to be transpiring there that were not approved by God, as you can imagine.

And so when I went home, I got changed, I put my schoolwork away, and I could sense God working in my mind again, saying, you know, you really shouldn't go there, Because you'll be walking around the tree of knowledge.

And your mind will snapshot things that you have no business being exposed to at that young age.

But I wanted to go because self was still in control.

I had not learned what it meant to surrender my heart in the moment to Jesus.

And I went to walk out the door and something incredible happened.

And by the way, he never ever came home early from work.

And this particular day, he came home and said, son, where are you going?

And I said, I'm going down to David's house.

And he said, well, listen, I need you to run with me.

I knew that was a supernatural intervention to keep me from walking around the forbidden tree, so to speak.

And so I begrudgingly got into that car, shaking my fist at heaven, saying, God, I can't believe you're doing this to me.

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Series

Restoration 2009: Expect It

Running From Duty

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Who Issued Your Passport?

52m

Testimony

1h 5m

The Final Call

4- What will it Take?

1h

Plenary Sessions

A Father’s Love

1h 15m

Jonathan Zita Weekend at AH Florida

Your Call From God

48m

Falling & Failing in a Crisis

1h 20m

What is a Woman?

44m

Plenary

The Adventist Atheist

1h 1m

What If It's Better?

What If I Fail?

49m

Preaching from the Grave

1h 41m

Revelation Today Crusade

16. Prophecy’s Why So Many Churches

48m

Plenary

Different or the Same - Christian Standards in the 21st Century

1h 7m

Sound Doctrine