Pastor David concludes his series on Back to Basics with the message entitled: Back to Basics: Fitness Witness.

<p>Pastor David concludes his series on Back to Basics with the message entitled: Back to Basics: Fitness Witness.</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>

Hillside O’Malley SDA Church

Back to Basics

David Shin

Back to Basics: Morning Manna

Back to Basics: The Breath of the Soul

Back to Basics: Fitness Witness

You make all things beautiful in your time.

We thank you for the work that you've started in our lives and for the promise that you will complete it.

We thank you for Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith, for we ask these things in Jesus's precious name, amen, amen.

Right now, the country of Venezuela is going through a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions.

I didn't know this, but Venezuela has the world's largest oil supply, even greater than Saudi Arabia.

But due to some mismanagement and corruption, they are facing a crisis in which food prices have skyrocketed and 1.3 million people are facing starvation as a result.

And it has completely redrawn the social landscape.

I wanna read an article from a story that was written on the crisis in Venezuela.

For many low-income families, the crisis has completely redrawn the social landscape.

Mothers go days without eating, shriveling to the weight of children themselves.

Young boys leave home and join street gangs to scavenge for scraps, their bodies bearing the scars of knife fights with competitors, crowds of adults storm dumpsters after restaurants close and babies die because it's hard to find or afford infant formula, even in the emergency rooms, and children are arriving with the same weight and height of a newborn.

The devastation that Venezuela is experiencing right now, and currently the government is not allowing any humanitarian aid to get into the country and the doctors are not allowed to document even the data as to exactly how many children are dying because of starvation and malnutrition.

The recent trend has been that women are choosing to be sterilized instead of bare children that they're unable to feed.

And the story goes on to say that the lines outside of these sterilization clinics go for a long time as hundreds, if not thousands, of women are making this just incredible decision to choose sterilization rather than to bring a child into the world that they are unable to feed.

Stories are told of mothers that are unable to find formula so they're having to mix water with rice starch to feed their children, and it's damaging the internal organs as the liver and these children are dying.

We need to pray for Venezuela, amen, that the Lord will just touch the leader's heart so that they will open this country to humanitarian aid and many individuals are unaware of this crisis that is taking place there.

These mothers are grappling with this unimaginable decision of whether to bring someone into this world and then have the challenge of being unable to find the resources to feed their children and they're having to choose not to bear children at all.

This is a very important aspect of human life.

It's important to be born and it's important to have the proper nutrition and resources after birth.

And the same is true for the Christian life as well.

It's important to be born again, and it's also important to have life after the new birth as well.

You need to have new life and also you need to have spiritual life and nutrition after you have experienced the spiritual birth.

Now in our status quo class we're going through the sanctuary and for those of you that are in there just bear with me as I do a brief review.

The sanctuary depicts a model of the Christian experience.

There's many things that the sanctuary points to, but 1 of them is our own journey from birth to growth in our Christian experience.

This is a bird's eye view of the Mosaic Sanctuary, as though you're looking from the top down.

You have the courtyard, the outer compartment, which has 2 articles of furniture.

You have the altar burnt offering and the laver.

Then you have the holy place, which has 3 articles of furniture, you can see them there, the table of showbread, the lampstand, and the altar of incense, and then you have the most holy place where the Ark of the Covenant resided.

Now Adam and Eve were here in Edenic perfection.

They were able to have a face-to-face communion with God.

Because of sin, the entire human race were out here.

And so This is a kindergarten illustration, as it were, to help us to understand that God wants us to bring, God wants to bring us all the way back to that face-to-face communion with God, that Adam and Eve had.

And he does this through 3 distinct processes.

You have the altar of burnt offering and the labor, baptism and the new birth.

And then you come into the holy place and you'll notice that there's 3 distinct articles of furniture.

You have the table of showbread where the bread resided, you had the lampstand where the light was, and then you had the altar of incense.

Scholars have made the application that these 3 articles of furniture refer to in application to our Christian experience.

You have the table of showbread, man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God, the word of God.

You have the lampstand, which is the Holy Spirit shining through us.

An application there is ministry or witnessing.

And then you have the altar of incense, which the book of Revelation indicates signifies the prayers of God's people.

So you have 3 distinct elements that are essential for life after the new birth.

So after you're born, Those 3 elements are important to keep you alive spiritually after you have become alive When a baby is born into the world There comes this startling realization that this baby cannot just be placed on a shelf and it's amazing so much of the focus is on the birth but then you realize it's like after birth is a whole other reality my dad said enjoy the time when the baby's inside, because once he gets out, then life dramatically changes.

It's the same way, We can't assume that when a baby's born, it's like, oh, that's it, praise God.

The baby requires daily care and nurturing, and it's the same way in our Christian experience.

We're born again, and then through divine grace, there are 3 elements that keep us alive after we become alive.

All right, now we need to be born again first.

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

There's 1 application that came out, Bible study, prayer, and ministry, and 1 of my colleagues came up with this interesting way of putting it.

All right, that's an important way of looking at it.

So read, feed, prayer, air, witness fitness.

So if you are struggling in your Christian experience, let's say you've had a born again experience and you find that things are not up to par, you're not feeling that your experience with God is the same, here is a good spiritual assessment to ask yourself.

And typically what you will find is that 1 of those 3 areas have been kind of diminished.

And that's an assessment that you can take.

When's the last time I took in prayer or prayed, breathe?

And when's the last time I exercised spiritually?

And We talked last week about prayer, prayer being the breath of the soul, and breathing is so important that there's a part of your brain that makes this happen automatically.

Can you imagine if we had to consciously focus in order to breathe.

Oh, I forgot to breathe for a half an hour.

And I know Exercise is a very challenging thing, but witnessing is like exercise.

And so today I want to talk a little bit about the last 1.

We did our first part of the series on the Word of God, the second 1 on prayer.

And today is Witness Fitness, and there's a text that I want to bring out to you about witnessing.

Mark 5, verse 19, the Bible says, "'Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you.

It's telling your story about what God has done for you.

Now, if you've experienced something just wonderful, which we have through the grace of Jesus Christ and the love that He's shown to us, it is telling the story of what God has done for Him.

Now, this is from the book Steps to Christ.

And by the way, I try to read this book every single year, and it seems like it never gets old.

I want to encourage you to get that little book, Steps to Christ, and get it online and read it through.

There are so many gems in there that are practical for the Christian experience, And here is 1 of them in relationship to witness fitness.

A man who would refuse to exercise his limbs would soon lose all power to use them.

Thus the Christian who will not exercise his God-given powers not only fails to grow up in Christ, but he loses the strength that he already had." Very important point in relationship to ministry and witnessing.

Series

Back to Basics

Back to Basics: Fitness Witness

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

By the Grace of God I Will

39m

Anticipation

Pt 1-The Holy Spirit and Creation

57m

These Things We Know

These Things We Know: God Fights For Us Part 2

46m

The Disciples Who Gave Up Everything

33m

Encounters With Jesus

Jesus’ Encounter at Simon’s Feast

44m

What Time Is It

57m

Last Day Events

Armageddon and the Seven Last Plagues

1h 5m

The Parable of the Talents

1h 9m

These Things We Know

These Things We Know: God Stands for Us

48m

The Beatitudes

Blessed are the Meek

39m

Self-Inflicted Dysexecutive Syndrome

40m

Experience The Power

The Power of Helplessness

1h 18m

Sound Doctrine