<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Ithaca SDA Church

Taylor Hinkle

Building God’s Church- Part 2: Challenges

Why don't we go ahead and bow our heads for the prayer for this message, asking for the Lord's guidance to be with us.

Father in heaven, we thank you so much for the privilege of coming to you this Sabbath.

Lord, we come week after week seeking to know you more, And Father, we just desire that this Sabbath would be different from others.

That Lord, it wouldn't just be another sermon that we hear, but Lord, we'd really hear Your voice speaking to our hearts.

And Lord, we're in need of Your Spirit to do that.

There's no person that can bring a message from you without your spirit working.

So Father, we just plead that you would be here in our presence, that your word would be heard, and that our hearts would be inspired.

Now, how many of you like difficulty and challenges?

Does anyone enjoy failing at things that they attempt?

I think the fear of failure is probably 1 of the largest hindrances to success and any lines of work.

You know, in high school, 1 of my least favorite subjects was Spanish.

And it's not because I didn't think it was important.

I lived in New Mexico, and so half of the people spoke Spanish, and many of them only spoke Spanish.

But the reason why I very much disliked Spanish class was because I was often confronted with challenges and failure in order to succeed in the class.

In order to be able to learn a language, you have to be willing to fail, right?

How many of you have ever just started speaking another language perfectly?

Oh man, I was hoping someone would raise their hand and I was gonna go to you after church and ask how you did it.

But we realized that with success in any line, we often have to find challenges and failure first.

Now, my teacher would often coach me through it.

And she would say, read this word, and I would mumble it softly because I didn't want to be heard by the rest of the class.

And she would say, well, prove you can say it.

So I'd write it down so I didn't have to say it.

And there was all this sort of different struggle because in order to find success, it requires vulnerability and failure.

Well, a famous inventor who I think could arguably be called 1 of the most powerful or intelligent inventors of all time by the name of Thomas Edison, was a person who was not on the other side.

In other words, he had issues as well that he had to work through in order to find success in his work.

In a biography written by 1 of Edison's close friends in 1910, called Edison, His Life and Inventions, his friend recounts the story of walking into Edison's work office and as he walked in there, there was a table that was about 3 feet deep and 15 to 20 feet long.

And on this table were these little pieces of metal wrapped up in little packages all the way across this table and all around and people were coming in to experiment how they could get these little nickel-ion batteries to work.

Well Edison was there working away, working away, and his friend just kind of observing it, seeing what's going on.

And his friend, being the wonderful friend that he was, said an interesting statement to Mr.

He says, isn't it a shame that with the tremendous amount of work that you have done, that you haven't been able to get any results?

Now, just when you need a little bit of encouragement, there's nothing like a friend to come along and help, right?

And as Edison is struggling away, his friend's like, you know, it's so discouraging.

You're not getting any results and listen to Edison's response.

I know several thousand things that won't work.

Now Edison, what made him such a powerful inventor and such a persistent, intelligent engineer was the fact that failure was not an issue for him.

In other words, when Edison met challenges, He was willing to work through them and persist through them in order to achieve the result that he knew was possible.

Now many of us in life are met with failure and difficulty, and oftentimes if we are to stop at the challenges, we discount ourself of the success that God longs to give us.

Now, Edison was willing to persist because he knew that it was possible to harness energy inside of a small little cell that we call a battery today.

And Edison was willing to persist because he figured if he could work 3 lines together, hook up these wires and spread it throughout the community, he could start what we call power plants today.

And You see that this man was so faithful in the work that he was given to do because he knew that success was possible.

Now as we look at the Christian life, how many of us often become discouraged because it's hard to remember that success is possible.

You know, last week we had the opportunity of looking at the story of Nehemiah.

You remember that for those of you who are here?

Nehemiah, and we looked at the condition of God's church in the time of Nehemiah.

Was it a good condition or a bad condition?

The church of Nehemiah was broken down, the walls were torn down, the people were discouraged, and it was a critical condition for God's church.

Now it would have been easy for Nehemiah to look at the difficulties that were facing God's people at that time and say, well, I might as well just stay in the king's palace.

I don't have to worry about what's going on back in Jerusalem and with the worship of God and the building up of God's church.

No, we saw last week that what made Nehemiah so successful was number 1, that he had a burden for the Lord's work.

And out of that burden for the Lord's work, he persisted with the Lord in prayer.

And thirdly, he didn't only pray, but he asked the Lord to use him as an instrument of revival in that time.

But as you look at the story of Nehemiah, you realize that Nehemiah didn't just have everything handed to him.

In other words, he was not problem-free in his trying to receive revival for the people of God and building up his church, but Nehemiah was often met with difficulty.

Now, we just read the Scripture reading and it was found in Ephesians 6.

It tells us that we do not wrestle against what?

Flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in high places." So what did it say?

We don't wrestle against flesh and blood.

The Bible tells us that as we're faced with challenges in our lives, who are we wrestling with?

Well, the struggle is not with the people that we see.

It's not with the people that we come in contact with, but it's the devil himself.

It's the devil who is the 1 who is doing all that he can to discourage us.

But the problem is, is 1 thing, is that we see only the people who Satan uses to discourage us.

Often times that brings division amongst us.

We find reasons to be upset at the people that Satan is using, instead of pressing forward for the victory that God promises.

Now this morning I want to look at a few of the ways that Satan, right, we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and rulers of darkness in this world.

In other words, Satan was using people even in the time of Nehemiah to bring discouragement to Nehemiah and God's people.

And the question is why was Satan trying to discourage God's people?

Well, he was trying to prevent the revival that God wanted to happen, right?

He wanted to prevent the up-building of God's church.

Now do you think the devil wants to do the same thing today?

Does Satan want to prevent the revival in each 1 of our hearts?

In other words, does he want us to just feel like we're a hopeless case and we can never be close to God?

Back to Menu

Building God’s Church- Part 2: Challenges

Transcript

Sponsor

Recorded

Related

Building God’s Church- Part 1: The How To’s

36m

The Sanctuary

9. The Longest & The Last Time Prophecy

58m

Dylan McWilliams Weekend

Our Tactical Advantage, Part 2

1h 4m

The Lord’s Vineyard

39m

GYC SE 2012 Seminar: Lessons in Warfare

Special Forces

51m

A Witch and the Powers of Darkness

6m

Practical Truth for Perilous Times

7. The Peril of Novelty

1h 6m

Elijah

03 Willing to Give Up Everything

55m

Righteousness By Faith

3. Righteousness By Works

1h

Evangelism

Missions In the 21st Century- Part 2

41m

David Guerrero Weekend

01 As It Was so Shall It Be: What Is A Christian Suppose To Do?

51m

The Remnant Responds

1h

Sound Doctrine