When we have come to Christ, how do we stay in Christ and maintain a relationship with Him?

GYCE Focus 2016: Coming to Christ

<p>When we have come to Christ, how do we stay in Christ and maintain a relationship with Him?</p>

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GYC Europe

Daniel Pel

Immune to the Gospel

Alright, well, welcome to our commitment service.

We've come to the end of our GYC Focus event here in Leicester, but we have 1 message left and I'm honored to preach that message, and I'm grateful for that opportunity, and I'm glad that you're still here, that some of us might have already, some of the attendees have already left, but we're very thankful that you have stayed to the very end.

And I just want to welcome you to this service.

I also want to express my thankfulness to the GYC Focus team for the invitation to be here.

It's been a blessing, also that I've not only come alone but had the opportunity to take my wife and child with me.

So thank you very much for allowing us to be part of what is happening here in England, in Leicester.

And our prayers are with the GYC movement.

I remember for the very first time when someone handed me a CD with some messages on it.

I guess you don't do that anymore right now, but in 2003, someone said, hey, there's this movement in America, it's called GYC, you should check this out.

I'd been a Bible worker for already 2 years, but you know, sometimes you feel a little bit lonely in this part of the world.

I was ministering in Norway, and I'm thinking, you know, are there any on-fire young people?

And I'm listening to this CD and these messages from the 2003, which was actually the second conference that GYC did in the States, and I just got so encouraged by this movement, and ever since I've been following it and also had the honor to serve as – on the team of evangelism when GYC came to Europe the first time in Linz.

How many of you actually attended the Linz conference?

And so we had 2 conferences there in 2012 and 2014, and so here we are now in Leicester.

And I think these GYC Focus events are very helpful to build a grassroots movement in this continent of young people that love the Lord.

I think the target group of GYC, isn't that 18 to 35?

You know, I'm 35, so I'm just about to exit.

Actually, my wife, it's her birthday today, and she turned 36, so I can tease her now.

You know, I always said I will never marry anyone that is older than me.

And I ended up marrying my wife and she is turning 36 today.

How is it to be 36 and you're heading towards 40 now?

No, but we're so grateful to be united in the Lord and being able to share God's Word together.

It's such a strength to have a spouse that loves the Lord.

And so if you're not married yet, Pray that the Lord will lead you to a person that can strengthen you and encourage you and that you can work together for the Lord.

Our subject for this commitment service, or the title that I've given this message, is immune to the gospel.

Because I believe that the greatest danger amongst us as a people is not that you will walk away from Christ and forsake him altogether, but that you will become immune to his truth and His truth will no longer impact you in the way that it should.

Now certainly there is a danger that some will leave the movement altogether, but I think if my sensors are correct, that amongst a group like this, a greater danger is that we are no longer affected, that we're no longer moved, that we're no longer have that first love that God gave us when we first decided to follow Him.

And so what I would like to do in our time together here this morning is look at 3 areas.

Number 1, how do we experience our first love?

And then what happens when we lose that connection or how do we become immune to the gospel?

And then finally, we're going to look at how do we regain and retain our first love for the gospel.

But before we go any further and before we open God's word, let's have a word of prayer that the Holy Spirit will inspire us and speak to us in a very personal way, shall we pray?

Heavenly Father, thank you for leading us here.

Thank you for this GYC event that we've been able to participate in.

And Lord, as we've come to the end of our time together, I pray that you will once more speak to our hearts and our minds.

I pray that you'll move us through your word, and I claim your promise that you would send your Holy Spirit to remind us of the things that you've taught us, Jesus.

I pray that you'll remove all distractions from our minds and that we will go from this place encouraged and strengthened by you and by your word.

For this we pray in Jesus' name, amen, amen.

Turn in your Bibles to the book of John, the fourth gospel book, John chapter 1, as we begin our time together.

What happens when we first come to Christ?

What happens in that experience of having that first love for the truth and for the gospel?

We're going to go to a story in John chapter 1 of a young man that truly came to see Jesus for who He was and experienced that first love.

We're going to look at the experience of Nathanael, John chapter 1 beginning in verse 43.

And I'm reading here from the New King James Bible.

The following day, Jesus wanted to go to Galilee and he found Philip and said to him, follow me.

Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter, and Philip found Nathanael and said to him, we have found him, capital H, Jesus, of whom Moses in the law and also in the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.

Now this invitation that Jesus gave to Philip was immediately followed up by Philip passing on that invitation to Nathaniel.

Now when you read a little bit further in the story, you find out that Nathaniel is sitting under a fig tree and he's contemplating and thinking whether or not Jesus is truly the Messiah.

And so when Philip comes to Nathanael, he tells him that he believes that Jesus is the 1.

For hundreds and hundreds of years, the Jews have been looking forward to the promised Messiah.

They had the Old Testament, they had the prophecies, they had the scriptures.

They were anticipating the coming of the Messiah, and there were a lot of expectations that were out there, and now the word had been going around that Jesus perhaps is the promised Messiah, and Nathanael hears about this, and he just needs some time out.

He just needs some time to think about this whole thing.

And so he finds a secluded spot, and he's sitting under a fig tree, and this was perhaps his favorite place to just have a quiet time, and he's going over all the evidence.

He was familiar, I'm sure, with the Old Testament Scriptures.

And he's thinking to himself, can it really be, can it really be that Jesus is the promised Messiah?

And so, Philip comes up to him and says, yeah, we found him, he's the 1.

But there is still an objection in the mind of Nathaniel.

Take notice in John chapter 1 and verse 46.

This is the response of Nathaniel and he says to Philip, can anything good come out of Nazareth?

He couldn't understand that the promised Messiah would come from such a place.

Perhaps he had thought that Jesus would come from Jerusalem, a more prominent city, a more prominent place.

And yet this objection is there, but at the same time he's seen Jesus, he's heard Jesus, and there's something that draws him to Jesus.

And when he gets the invitation of Philip, he is willing to come and check out things for himself, because Philip simply says in verse 46, the last part of the verse, Philip said to him, come and see.

Come and experience for yourself whether Jesus is the Messiah or not.

And so though there is this objection in the mind of Nathaniel, his willingness to experience Jesus for himself, to come and see for himself, is stronger than that objection.

And he gets up from underneath that fig tree, and together with Philip, They are now walking to Jesus.

I think many of us can relate to this because there was maybe a time or maybe there is a time right now that you are considering this whole thing of Christianity.

Perhaps you're considering whether or not it is true.

Is this just something that we've concocted in our minds, Adventism, the truth that we hold as a people?

Sometimes you might have those moments that you're driving in your car or you're sitting in your room or you have this quiet place out in nature or wherever it is, you're sitting in a library or in your bedroom or whatever.

And suddenly these thoughts come, like there's these objections that come into your mind.

And yet, there is then a decision to be made, what am I going to do with that objection?

Now, I believe that there's a legitimate place in ministry to meet objections.

As a matter of fact, I have spent the last 12 years of my life traveling around the world as an evangelist, teaching truths of God's Word and meeting objections in the minds of people.

I love to speak on topics like, there is a God of love even though we find suffering in our world, and explain what the Bible actually teaches about the origin of evil.

Because these are 1 of the objections that exists in millions of people's minds, how can there be a God of love if there's so much evil in the world?

So there is a place to meet objections, But I've also come to find out in the course of my ministry that by me meeting an objection and removing an objection doesn't necessarily bring a person any closer to Jesus.

Because some objections can only be removed in the context of a personal relationship with Jesus.

And I find this so fascinating in this story in John chapter 1, because here you have Nathanael sitting under the fig tree contemplating whether or not Jesus can possibly come out of Nazareth, but Philip does not sit down next to him and spend the rest of the day explaining that Jesus indeed can come out of Nazareth and fulfill the requirements of the Old Testament, but instead he says 3 simple words.

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Immune to the Gospel

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