AMEN Australia 2019 Conference: Witnesses Unto Me

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Adventist Medical Evangelism Network Australia

David Haupt

Opening Sabbath

Father, before we open your word, it is our prayer that your spirit will guide us.

Reveal new gems out of words that we know so well.

May your name be glorified, and we be drawn into an intimacy in relationship with you.

Matthew chapter 5, Jesus is entering into his public ministry and popularity is starting to flourish and he is surrounded by people that believe that they are a special nation because of their heritage of what they have.

So Jesus takes his disciples and wants to prepare them for the message of how to become the salt to this world and the light to this world.

And he says to them in verse 3, blessed, in other words, inner peace will be yours, are the poor in spirit.

Friends I would like to recommend to you that the poor in spirit is those people that have found themselves at the foot of the cross and now with a light from the cross discovers their own spiritual depravity, realizing that they have nothing to offer if it is not for Jesus Christ.

There is nothing within themselves that they can be proud of.

And when we get to the point where we discover our own spiritual depravity, what will we do?

Verse 4 says that we will mourn our condition.

When we mourn our condition because we have discovered our own spiritual depravity, then we become meek because we realise that we've got nothing to give if it was not for Jesus.

When I become meek because I'm mourning my spiritual condition, Then, verse 6, I start to hunger and thirst for righteousness.

It is then that I realize that I need that hour alone with God very early in the morning.

It is then that I realize that I cannot go into my practice, I can't go into my workplace to do anything, not before I have discovered The instilling power of the Holy Spirit.

When I am hungering and thirsting for righteousness because I've become meek, because I'm mourning my spiritual depravity, Then I will become merciful to others.

When I become merciful towards others, my life is in such a stark contrast to the world and the way that the world practices that they will sit up and take notice.

Because of the Jesus that is starting to reflect his character through our life.

When I've become merciful because I'm hungering and thirsting for righteousness, because I've become meek, mourning my own spiritual condition, then, verse 8, I become pure in heart.

When I become pure in heart because of the inworking of the Holy Spirit, I've become merciful due to the hunger and thirsting for righteousness because I've become meek and mourning my own spiritual depravity.

In a suburb of Sydney in 1999, a group of over 300 volunteers came together and worked 5 days a week, sometimes till close to midnight, with people that no 1 else wants to work with in a place called Cabramatta.

1999 Cabramatta was the drug capital of the world.

Every morning before the doors of that center was opened, an hour was spent with the volunteers in reflecting on the life of Jesus Christ, because we had nothing to offer the clients if we had not first sat at the feet of Jesus.

Very soon, the message was in prison that if you get out, go and search, go to Cabramatta, go and search for the address center, because they are different to any other of the 23 other services in Cabramatta.

You see my friends, when we discover that we have nothing to offer if it is not for Jesus, and we mourn our spiritual depravity, and we become meek, not proud and puffed up because of what we have to offer, realising that we've got nothing if it was not for Jesus.

And therefore we hunger and thirst for righteousness and we become merciful towards others and we become pure in heart and we become peacemakers.

Today in the conference that I am working, 1 of our ministers came from that prison came from that prison to Cabramatta to find help and discovered far more than help from drug addiction and criminality.

1 of the people that today work in the division office came from that prison in search for help.

I preached the other day in 1 of our churches in North New South Wales Conference and after the sermon as I stood at the door to greet the people, a gentleman in his late thirties with his teenage daughter walked towards me, put out his hand, and as I took his hand in my hand, he said, thank you for showing me God's love in Cabramatta.

He said it was in Cabramatta, at that center, that I discovered Jesus.

It starts with a discovery that I have nothing to offer if it was not for Jesus.

May it be that during this Sabbath hours, we enter into an intimacy with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and may he and his light become the light that we reflect through our life.

Gracious Father, we don't invite you into our midst because you have been waiting for us all along.

And therefore we just thank you for being here.

And may it be that during the Sabbath hours especially, we may enter into that close union with you.

I pray above all, Lord, that our churches could be activated to a level where they will discover their missional DNA will capture the heart of Jesus and therefore, mourning their own spiritual depravity will search for an intimacy which only you can provide.

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