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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

K'dee Elsen Crews

Summoned to Court

It's quite strange being up here, other than for singing or doing announcements, which can typically glaze over people's heads.

But it is an awesome, awesome privilege to be up here this morning.

Funny fact about me, I'm a huge introvert.

Huge introvert, especially when I was little, that I was a pastor's kid, and so my mom would always try to put me up front.

It was so bad that at 1 time she asked, she tried to give me a dollar.

She's like, Katie, I'll give you a dollar to go up front.

And the dollar for a kid's a lot, especially back then.

That does not mean I was bribed to be here, up here this morning.

It's just a testimony already of what God has changed me and how he has worked in my life.

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Katie Olson.

It's a long program, but with that it's also been a blessing to be here at Advent Hope for the past 5 years, growing with God, making such beautiful godly friendships, And a part of me always knew that I would be up here this morning, partly because Arden had asked me, I think my first year of attendance here.

I think he was, yes Arden, I think he was trying to scare me, but when I said yes, he was quite surprised.

But more so because God has been impressing on me to share for quite some time now.

And so when Adrian and Caleb and the Bible team asked me to speak, I said, of course.

Of course, not thinking about my introvert, but more so saying, yes, I know that God wants to share through me.

But the question is, well, what do I share about?

So I started to think about different sermons, and I have this long list of sermons, which you might say, like, why does she have a lot of sermon ideas?

And that's again, because I'm a pastor's kid, and I'm extremely close with my father that I have this weird habit when I do my own devotionals or I listen to sermons that I think about sermon ideas and I write them down.

And so I was like, okay God, I got this long list.

I thought about, oh, morning devotionals, right?

So a lot of us struggle with our morning devotions.

I don't mean just morning as in morning time, but I thought about morning as in weeping.

You know the difference between morning and mourning?

And so I was like, oh God, we can talk about that.

I thought about binge eating in the church because I'm a psychology major.

And sometimes we come to church expecting a feast.

But God then started to say, well, Katie, what about your personal testimony?

You know, a lot of those excuses start coming, which I'm sure a lot of you can relate to.

And I said, you know, maybe it's too personal.

And I was like, no, God, I'm not, which you can probably guess where this is going.

God started urging me and urging me, but before I begin to share I want to just have God's blessing upon the sacred hour together.

Dear gracious Heavenly Father, we just thank you for the privilege it is to be able to commune with you on this Sabbath day.

Lord, I don't think we think about it often, but we are able to spend full 24 hours with the creator of the universe.

And Lord, we pray for your presence here, not just in this room, but Lord, for your spirit to be near and dear to our hearts this morning.

Lord, you have a very special message, not just for these people, Lord, but even for myself.

So we pray that you may tailor the message to each of us as individuals, Lord.

That we may hear the message and not just be hearers of the word, but doers, O God.

That we may leave here transformed by your word.

I pray that your words may be in my mouth, oh God.

I quote your word that says, do not worry what you'll say or how you'll say it, for it will be given to you the hour that you speak.

For it is not you who speaks, but the Spirit of the Father who speaks in you.

So Lord may your spirit speak through me this morning.

So God started urging and often we're very stubborn with God and we start fighting back but God gradually and kind of really a little sneaky started kind of convincing me and he convinced me by 3 main ways.

The first way was what is a testimony and so we're gonna look at in the Bible so in the Bible we're gonna be turning to John John chapter 3 but just some context So the word for testimony in the Greek originals, martyreia.

And I'm not no Greek scholar, but many of you might say, hey, that looks like martyr, right?

You may have all Greek scholars in you, but it's basically translated in English as testimony, testify, witness, to bear record.

And you'll notice this connection between testimony, testify, witness in these verses.

And actually you can see this throughout the Bible, but we're just gonna highlight a couple of verses.

And this is basically the foundation for my message this morning.

Of God started to urge me by telling me what is a testimony.

So John 3 verse 32, and it reads, and what he, talking about Jesus, has seen and heard that he testifies, and no 1 receives his testimony.

And we're gonna turn a couple pages to chapter 19, verse 35.

And it reads, "'And he who has seen has testified, "'and his testimony is true, "'and he knows that he is telling the truth so that you may believe So here I like to when I'm reading my own Bible I like to highlight or circle kind of reoccurring themes and you see here in these verses that seen testify testimony seen heard Testified telling the truth you start catching this idea that a testimony is essentially what we see, what we hear, and we also see this in Acts chapter 22 when Saul is talking about the conversion, this conversion story to becoming Paul, where it says, the God of our fathers, this is Ananias speaking to Saul at the time, the God of our fathers has chosen you, that you should know his will, see the just 1, and hear the voice of his mouth for you will be his witness to all men of what you have seen and heard.

Then Jesus speaking to him later in verse 18 says make haste and get out of Jerusalem quickly for they will not receive your testimony concerning who?

So we see this link toward in testimony with seeing hearing and experiencing Jesus.

So when I was like God I do not want to share my personal testimony, God started saying, Katie, it's not even yours.

So testimony, seeing, hearing, witnessing, testifying that you have known Jesus.

Then he started educating me, well, what's the testimony of Jesus Christ?

In Revelation, we see that even in the very first verse, it says, the revelation of Jesus Christ was given to John, his servant, who bore witness to the word of the God and testimony of Jesus Christ.

And many of us can kind of quote from memory Revelation 12, 17 or 14, 12, which talks about the saints in the last days.

It says, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ or the faith of Jesus.

And I said, testimony of Jesus Christ is the faith of Jesus.

If I'm losing anyone yet, don't worry, it'll all come together at the end.

But basically, you started educating me that the Testament of Jesus is also the faith of Jesus.

This is often known as the chapter on faith, right?

Some of us call it the hall of faith because it talks a lot about these individuals who have gone before us and their faith and their experience.

And a little bit of background, So this is a plug for Wednesday Night Care Group.

We have, amen, George is saying amen, because it's at his house.

We've been studying the book of Hebrews, and it's been such a blessing.

And through this study, God has been kind of teaching me as well and so when we before Hebrews 11 Hebrews basically the book often us we think oh that's about faith no the whole book is just about Jesus so It starts off in the first chapters as Jesus is better than the angels, Jesus is better than the prophets, he's better than the priests, he's our high priest, right?

But then all of a sudden we get to Hebrews 11 and we forget about Jesus, and we start focusing on these people, right?

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Summoned to Court

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