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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Amanda Anguish

Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing

I want to share with you, well, this is not what I call it, but this is what I'm calling my talk, Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing.

I love the titles of Ellen White books, and I love her writings, so you'll see a lot of that incorporated into my talk, or into my talks, plural.

But have you ever noticed when you've been hiking, how hard it is sometimes, but then when you get to the top of the mountain, you get a beautiful view and it's like the, you know, the reward for all the hard work that you've done.

That's 1 of my favorite things when you hike and it's hard and everything but then you get to the top and then you get rewarded for it.

Well, if we look at the Bible, there's actually a lot of mountains referred to in the Bible, and many of them have blessings associated with them.

So if we look at the Sermon on the Mount, This is where we get the golden rule and we see the story of Nicodemus.

We also have the Mount of Olives and this is where Jesus wept over the city for us, how much he cared for us.

We have Mount Moriah and we're told that the temple was built noiselessly.

That was so important about this temple being built that they had to do all of the work before they got there because this was a sacred place.

And then we have Jehovah-Jireh, and that's where the sacrifice of Abraham was to, or not the sacrifice of Abraham, but the sacrifice that Abraham was to give of his son Isaac and then where he ultimately said God would provide.

And that's a reminder that God would provide for us as well.

And then we see the Mount Sinai, the 10 commandments were given there for us.

And then we have, that's where we were also shown the sanctuary pattern.

And then in the finale of the Bible, I haven't given you every single 1, but we also have Mount Zion.

And this is where Jesus reigns and we're going to live there eternally.

So there's a blessing on each of these mountains that was given.

Well, there was also a mountain in the Bible that was referred to, and this was the mountain that Jesus was taken to by Satan, and this is where Satan tempted Jesus.

And we see in Matthew 4, verse 1, it says, then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

And then skipping to verse 8 it says, again the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain and showeth him all of the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, and saith unto him, All these things will I give to thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." And in that point there where the ellipses are, we see time after time where Jesus was taken different places and was tempted of Satan.

And this too often represents 1 of Satan's favorite tactics with us.

He loves to wear us out and then promises a substitute for the real thing.

And oftentimes we go through this in our lives where we're taken through all of these temptations or all of these difficult times And then when we start to think, oh, we have to give up on God because God's not taking care of us, we are then confronted with that 1 last thing where Satan puts in front of us.

Oh, if you just do this, you can have release of all of those burdens and all of those things.

And I spent some time last night talking about how often, when we're going through our lives, We think, oh, all of these things are horrible, but Satan loves to use our minds as a place of battle for us.

And I think this is why I love my job so much, because we often don't see the mind as his biggest battlefield.

And we're often taken places and things happen to us, but the most important thing that the devil wants to get to is our minds.

Because like I said last night, if he takes something away from us, we're still us.

But if our mind is somehow impacted, that's the first thing I hear people say when they go through depression, when they go through anxiety, and all these other things that people are dealing with is, I just don't feel like myself.

And we go into this place of survival mode.

So I want to talk to you a little bit today about frustration tolerance.

Maybe you're not doing things that you want to do or you're doing things that you don't want to do.

There are people in your life that you can't seem to stand and you keep being confronted by these people, whether it's at your work, whether it's in your family, Wherever you may go, there always seems to be people that frustrate you.

And then ultimately, we often have to deal with the frustration with God.

How come he's not answering my prayers when I want them to be answered?

How come I'm not getting the things that I want when I want them?

These are all areas that we have frustration.

The definition of frustration tolerance, The amount of discomfort you believe you can handle or your flexibility in the face of frustration.

What is the operative word in this definition?

It's not how much frustration you can handle, it's how much frustration you believe you can handle.

Do you know many of us think we can't handle a lot more than we can actually handle?

Have you ever said to yourself, I can't take this anymore.

I'm gonna die if I have to do this 1 more time.

Do you know 1 thing we all have in common?

We've all said that and we're all still here.

Not a single 1 of you has not made it through.

But it's the amount of frustration we believe we can handle, not the amount of frustration we can actually handle.

Frustration tolerance also has to do with, or people with low frustration tolerance have a harder time disputing their irrational beliefs.

Last night I talked about The fact that it's not, and I talked about it today too in the sermon time, it's not necessarily how I feel and how I'm acting, it's what I believe about the things that are happening in my life that cause me to feel and act the way I do.

So frustration tolerance, people with low frustration tolerance actually have a harder time disputing irrational beliefs.

And it makes sense, because how easy is it for me to believe something that doesn't make any sense if I don't believe I have a lot of tolerance to deal with things.

So when we say things like, I can't handle it, that's actually an irrational belief.

Because if we've handled it, how can we say I can't handle it?

If we say I'm going to die, but we never die, is that true?

No, there's no truth to it because we haven't died, but we say these things all the time and we don't understand that.

How about the fact a lot of us, this is a first world problem, will say things like, I need this.

Unless you've been to a third world country, you realize what need really means.

Sometimes I'll go out with my friends and maybe we're shopping or something and I'll hear 1 of them say, because I know better now, than to say this.

Not that I haven't said it, but I know better now.

And sometimes my friends don't like me because I'll say, really?

I'm not their best friend at that moment.

Low frustration tolerance is also directly related to what we tell ourselves, think, and believe about our circumstances.

Many of us tell ourselves things that aren't actually true, and because we tell ourselves these things, we actually believe that we can't handle things that we can handle, or that God is going to help us be able to handle.

But these are some signs of low frustration tolerance.

If you like to take those quizzes, you know, to see where you line up with stuff, this is a quiz.

You don't have to raise your hand, but do you have a short fuse when things don't go your way?

Do you lack impulse control or don't follow through with promises or resolutions?

That's a sign of low frustration tolerance.

How about you ask questions but don't wait or pay attention to the answers?

How about lacking patience when things don't go your way?

Do you have poor affect regulation when things don't go your way?

Poor affect regulation means that You blow up, get moody, you get dramatic when things don't go your way.

How about you harbor grudges and complain a lot?

These are all signs of low frustration tolerance.

These are some of the things that people with low frustration tolerance say.

Alarmist phrases, remember Chicken Little?

I can't stand it, I'm falling apart, I'm going to die if I have to do this 1 more time.

Do you know what that's a picture of right there?

If I don't get something to eat, I'm going to...

Now, how likely was that, that he was going to die?

That's a sign of low frustration tolerance, when we can't wait for something because we want it, Not because we need it.

This is something else people with low frustration tolerance say.

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Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing

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