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Village SDA Church

Confidence in Crisis

Ron Kelly

Confidence in Crisis - Part 1: When Nature Dies: The Almost Last Supper

Confidence in Crisis - Part 2: Survival in a Surveillance State

Confidence in Crisis - Part 3: Political Intrigue and Power

Confidence in Crisis - Part 4: The End or the Beginning?

Confidence in Crisis - Part 5: Prophetic Lockdown

Confidence in Crisis - Part 6: Faith Without Cloud or Pillar

Confidence in Crisis - Part 7: Covid-19 in a Post-Truth World

Confidence in Crisis - Part 8: Who Moved the Cheese?

Lord, we're gathering via the internet, most of us in homes.

But we're still looking, Lord, for You to speak.

As uncertainty has gripped our world, as instability has taken hold, we're praying that we would have confidence as we hide in the rock stand on the rock please bless us now help us to make the changes that you're calling us to make so that we could have the joy as we move forward to the finish.

We want to welcome you to Village Church this morning.

I'm preaching a message entitled, Who Moved the Cheese?

I want to once again remind you that come beginning June 12 I believe it is we will begin a local camp meeting here entitled Forward to the Finish.

We'll have a variety of speakers, seminars through the day, an early morning message, and some wonderful music and encouragement.

So if your conference is not having a camp meeting and you're available during those times, we'll go from June 20 to June 12 with a theme forward to the finish.

This morning though, in the seventh in a series entitled Confidence in Crisis, I want to talk with you about change.

Spencer Johnson wrote a book entitled Who Moved My Cheese?

As a matter of fact, it stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for almost 5 years.

Twenty-six million copies sold, 37 languages.

The stories of 2 men or 2 little people and 2 mice.

Coming each day to where they would get their cheese, finding it gone.

What has to come now is a new way of adapting.

And adaptation is indeed the subject matter for this morning.

How are we going to be on the other side of COVID-19?

Are we simply hoping for things to go back to normal so that we can go back to what we were?

And in the midst of the crises, he's working for transformation of purpose, of soul, of character.

All throughout our lives, we're going to find ourselves in moments of adaptation.

This morning, I'm going to bring to you 10 things that I believe should be different when the shelter-in-place rules are over.

I'm not going to address social distancing and masks.

We'll do our part to keep the spread of disease from going forward.

Some churches have actually opened across this North American division on this Sabbath.

I know our former associate, Joe Reeves, has a church in Idaho that was opening back up this morning.

I don't know when Village will open back up.

Here in Michigan, We're going at least through May 28.

And after that, by God's grace, we'll be able to have some kind of interaction.

And so hopefully, when our camp meeting forward to the finish is underway, we'll be at least able to have a small audience, if not a large 1.

But we're hoping that our online audience will be edified as we break the bread of life and consider how our corporate and individual lives should be focused to accomplishing God's work.

Number 1, I'm gonna start with what I consider probably to be the most preeminent Seventh-day Adventist spiritual disease.

It's a disease that stands in the way of healing most of the other challenges we have spiritually.

It's probably not a discourse without it.

But I'm going to speak to it again because I believe in this moment where we cannot gather, we ought to reassess and reapprise the privilege of gathering, which you remember, God says should happen all the more so as we see the day approaching.

Take your Bibles, open them up to Acts chapter 2.

There was a challenge to the established way of thinking in regards to what it meant to be a follower of Yahweh.

Judaism was turned upside down as Jesus came to represent the Father.

The cross was not what the apostles had in mind.

They didn't even like each other on Thursday night when they left the upper room.

James and John, conniving to be at the left and the right hand position through their mother, an elder as it were, at least in age, 1 to whom a request would typically be honored.

They were working to leverage their way into positions of ambition through their mom.

Yes, indeed, Peter was a little bit miffed with Jesus as well, who had told him some things about himself that he didn't agree with and he flat out denied.

Unfortunately, the burying of their souls would be the experience of the next 24 hours.

And here we come on the flip side on the other side of the cross and what is Jesus directing them to do?

Acts chapter 2 verse 1 and Acts chapter 1.

We'll start with Acts chapter 1 first beginning with verse 4.

Acts chapter 1 verse 4, gathering them together he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, which he said, you have heard from me.

John baptized with water, but you baptized with the Holy Spirit will be not many days from now." And then over to chapter 2, verse 1, on the day of Pentecost had come and was fully come.

The great spiritual bad habit that has settled down upon Seventh-day Adventists is the habit of not gathering.

Whether it be a camp meeting gathering, whether it be a spiritual convocation, whether it be an evangelistic event, whether it be a prayer meeting, the first thing that will have to change if we're gonna be ready for what's coming next, which we don't know at what frequency the birth pangs will continue to roll upon us, but 1 thing that will have to change is we are going to have to get closer to each other.

Now you say I come from a little church, I know more than I want to know about the people I go to church with.

We must come to know each other in Christ.

There must be this growing love for each other.

The second thing is that we're going to have to look for the power and the provision, the act of administration of the Holy Spirit.

It's 1 thing to put our best minds around our best challenges.

It's another thing to run straight into a COVID-19 crisis and know that the Christ who led you up to it can lead you through it and you can surmount it in his name.

It's not for us to just add a little bow on our meetings of a short prayer.

It's time for us to actually start seeking the Lord more earnestly.

I know in our local church school, we're creating a revisioning committee.

It's time for us to assess what it means to be discipling our kids for the hours we have them in our local schools.

It's actually time for us to be as a church asking, are we really achieving the fullness of our obligation when we simply gather week by week?

God is wanting to give us the assurance of his presence through the Holy Spirit, and he's wanting us to have the confidence to move forward in spite of obstacle.

But in order to do that, we're gonna have to be more bonded and more corporately dependent upon the voice of God speaking through the experience of the group.

Board meetings go hard sometimes because we don't like each other.

Sometimes they go hard because we come from different points of perspective and we don't know how to show respect to each other in a committee meeting.

I'll tell you what, when the emotions of a group are all running the right way, they can handle some pretty difficult discussions without coming away broken and bruised.

If the Spirit of Prophecy can write, we should be where prayer is wont to be made, why are we wanting there?

Yes, this is the preeminent Seventh-day Adventist corporate bad habit, and we have relegated the meetings for spiritual progress to being for the old and the less busy with less important things to do.

If you come out of this COVID-19 moment and you're content to keep pressing on without that which will fill you up with strength for what's coming before you, you're missing out on the blessing of divine confidence.

You're missing out on the brotherhood and the sisterhood of divine support flowing from a brother in Christ or a sister in Christ.

It is not for us to rush into our meetings without leaning on the Lord and without being able to lean on each other.

Why don't you go to the evangelistic meeting?

What is it that you've got going on that's more important than praying for the person who's presenting and asking God to show you something new about the diamond of prophecy which is turning in another presenter's hands waiting for you to learn something you haven't learned before be touched in a way you haven't been touched before.

There are blessings that God is preserving and reserving for those who care enough to come to his house.

Be like me as I anticipate a wedding for 1 of my children, sending out invitations.

And all I'm asking for is the honor of your presence.

But you've got this excuse and that excuse.

Series

Confidence in Crisis

Confidence in Crisis - Part 8: Who Moved the Cheese?

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

The Most Popular Lie in the Church

34m

It Happened Because of Prayer

Give Him Not Silence

42m

Seminars

Beholding Christ in Service: Reflecting His Character in Our Work

1h 1m

Encounters With Jesus

Jesus’ Encounter with the Woman with the Issue of Blood

40m

Preparing For the End of Time

1. Why Prayer Matters

45m

Fill Me with the Spirit

50m

Scary Stuff

39m

Restore

05 Promise Seeker- Honoring Authority in a Dysfunctional World

46m

The Parables

The Two Sons

40m

Turning Stones Into Bread

1h 13m

Health

Depression and Anxiety - Blessings in Disguise

1h 34m

David Guerrero Weekend

01 As It Was so Shall It Be: What Is A Christian Suppose To Do?

51m

Sound Doctrine