How to decipher God’s will for your life.

<p>How to decipher God’s will for your life.</p>

<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>

Hendersonville Seventh-day Adventist Church, NC

David Wright

Fair Weather Faith

Well, and you probably all have been curious what book I'm looking at up here.

For those of you that can see, can you read it?

The Guinness Book of World Records, 1998.

I was looking for 1 of these, and every library I went to, they were checked out.

And so I finally got a hold of Jennifer Kuhn, I said, do you have a copy?

But I remember as a kid loving to just finger through here and see all the wild and random things.

I mean, here's a picture of a guy with 57 glasses on his chin.

What are you going to do when you grow up?

This is 1 string bean down here, or green bean.

Here's a world-size pumpkin, here's an onion.

They didn't have pictures of the tallest.

And they talk about 1 of the shortest men being, well that's the tallest, is what, where is he?

Oh, the shortest man, here's 1 I was gonna share.

He's only 22 and a half inches tall and weighed 37 and a half pounds.

That would change things for you a little bit, wouldn't it?

There was another 1 back here I thought was interesting.

Of course, the whole book's kind of interesting.

For those of you guys who are into working out, this guy set the record for the most push-ups back in 93 in a 124 hour period, 46, 001.

There's a little star here it says for rules, see page 300, they know you're doubting.

And then this 1 I thought was interesting I shared this with my youth has to do with computers in 1998 this is a huge breakthrough This book isn't turning pages for me like I need it to.

It is a 4 gigabyte dynamic random access memory chip.

And they go on to say, it has the capabilities of storing 6 hours of audio data.

I have an iPod now that fits in my pocket that I have over a month of solid sermons.

Anyway, there was another record that was set and maybe this could be something that would be a Pathfinder badge, something you could accomplish.

This 1 was by a Remy Bricka was his name.

The date was 1988, April 2, and he crossed the Atlantic, setting a record.

He left from Spain, the Spanish Canary Islands just south of Spain, went all the way across the Atlantic to Trinidad, just north and east of Venezuela.

3502 miles, but how he did it was what was unique.

Well, he had these polyester ski floats attached, 1 on each foot, and he made a motion kind of like when you're cross-country skiing, and he had some form of paddles that he would do and all this kind of stuff.

I think it took him 60 days to make that journey all the way across.

And when they asked him about his experience, do you know what he said?

Well it was fascinating and all, but what really was kind of annoying was the slow pace of it.

Do you think he perhaps was reading his Bible and was inspired?

That's the story I want to look at this morning because I believe there's some lessons there that Jesus wants to teach us.

What circumstances surround that rather strange story, honestly?

What ways does that story apply to us, to you and me today?

So let's turn in our Bibles, if you brought your swords this morning, to Matthew, is the account that speaks of Peter walking on the water.

The only account really that speaks of him walking on the water.

Matthew chapter 14, and we'll begin in verse 22, but Let me give you a little bit of a, well, we'll read the first verse and I'll give you some background.

And there we read, immediately, Jesus made his disciples, perhaps a better translation is he strongly compelled his disciples to get in the boat and go before him to the other side while he sent the multitudes away.

Now if you're like me you recognize we're kind of coming in, in the middle of a story in so many ways.

And as you glance back in your Bible, you see that just moments before, he has fed the 5, 000.

And so there's this huge multitude there, yet we see this haste, this urgency of Jesus to leave, to break it up.

We probably have some reluctancy of the disciples, what's exactly going on?

The reality of the situation is Jesus had become too popular.

The crowd wanted to appoint him king right there.

He could make Judea an earthly Paradise, land flowing with milk and honey.

He could break the power of the hated Romans.

I mean, think of the endless possibilities.

He could heal the soldiers wounded in battle.

And you know, if he comes along, it's kind of like having the cafeteria he could feed everybody He could conquer the nations and give Israel their long-sought dominion this is our chance everybody's saying But poor Jesus he's too modest he's too humble Left to himself.

And so they collaborate together and they agreed to do Jesus this big favor after all he needs our help and they desire to make him king by force for they themselves have a service in this too but also they want to exalt Him as their Deliverer.

We gather that from John's account, chapter 6, verse 15, where Jesus perceived, it says, that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king.

He departed again to the mountain by himself alone.

And while we're in that line of thought, think about the disciples for a moment.

Were they always to be known by their friends and their family as followers of this false prophet?

I mean the whole church at that time condemned this man, saying he was following a rebel.

But at this moment, this was the moment they had been waiting for.

We can't let this opportunity pass us by.

And after all, why wouldn't Jesus want to relieve us of all of this pain and uncertainty and really, honestly, just the heckling that we've had to receive.

Doesn't He want to make our way less painful?

And I have to ask, do you ever seem to perceive God's will better than He does?

To know what needs to happen at this very moment?

Do you ever have selfish, self-serving plans for God?

Do you ever find yourself angry and upset if God doesn't lead in your life just like he's supposed to?

For their disciples, the love of honor had blinded them.

Fair Weather Faith

Transcript

Description

Sponsor

Recorded

Related

A Faith Worth Believing

48m

Encounters With Jesus

Jesus’ Encounter with the Disciples in the Storm

43m

Unlock Revelation

16. US in Bible Prophecy

1h 14m

Dylan McWilliams Weekend

“But If Not”

52m

An Outworking of His Will, How?- Part 2

55m

Plenary Session

A Touch of Faith

1h 57m

Cultivating Faith

Cultivating Faith

1h 35m

A Sure Foundation

31m

Encounters With Jesus

Jesus’ Encounter with the First Disciples

43m

Sabbath School 2nd Quarter 2024: The Great Controversy

02 The Central Issue: Love or Selfishness?

33m

Encounters With Jesus

Jesus’ Encounter with the Disciples on the Sea

39m

Unlock Revelation

How to Have a New Start- Part 3: Faith or Feeling

36m

Sound Doctrine