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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Pavel Goia Weekend

Pavel Goia

01 Can People Change?

Father in Heaven, we thank you so much for your love.

We cannot find the words to thank you and to praise you.

And Father, we right now Pray that you'll open the world.

And as you know every heart and every need, and you know the plans that you have for us, we pray that your Spirit may touch everyone, transform us, and Help us to see you, to know you, to love you, to commit ourselves.

Father, we pray in Jesus' merits and we thank you.

Tonight, I'm going to start with a message and I'm not sure I will be able to finish it, but at least we can start it.

And I'm going to give a couple of stories that my wife tells me not to tell the story.

She says, you encourage people to do the same.

But nevertheless, I'm going to tell 1 or 2 and then ask you 2, 3 questions.

And you don't need to answer except in your heart, in your mind, but do people change?

We, many times, we want to change and we make some decisions and some resolutions and we say I'm not going to lose my temper anymore or I'm going to eat healthy or I'm going to study or pray or whatever decisions you make, whatever you struggle with, whatever you know that God wants you to do, It may be something that you desire to do or maybe a sin that you want victory over and we decide and then we try and then we fail again and we feel discouraged and then we decide again and try again and then fail again or if it's a sin we ask forgiveness and then we do it again.

Is it possible to experience righteousness?

Do you have the peace, the joy that salvation brings?

I mean, real joy, real, let me say, crazy joy that you scream and jump.

If Christianity doesn't bring joy in your life, why would Christianity be attractive?

I'm not saying that we should look for joy and blessings.

I'm saying that We should have more peace and more hope and more joy than anybody else.

We should have more victory than anybody else.

We should have more power than anybody else.

Anyway, and so we are going to explore a little of these things.

I'm going to start with a story from my life.

My head cannot stop, I mean, all the time, too many ideas.

When people talk, I was young, I was then a student in college and so on.

When people would talk, before they could finish the sentence, I had a million answers, not 2 answers.

And not only that, I got ideas what to do, how to do it.

And always, because I had too many ideas and too much energy, I did a lot of pranks.

For instance, my uncle, I was only, I don't remember, 6, 7 grade, doesn't matter.

My uncle was fixing his car and fixing the muffler and that part of the car.

And I talked to him and he explained me that if the muffler is closed, if you put something to block it, the smoke cannot get out, there will be no exhaust.

Therefore, eventually the engine will choke and die.

It needs to eliminate the smoke, it needs to breathe.

Well, the pastor took the young people, all of us, camping And we went just short, we didn't go for a weekend.

We went in nature, Sunday morning, and we came back Sunday night.

And we had a bonfire and we ate together and we played a few games and we shared.

Well, during the meal, I ate some corn, corn on a cob.

I put the corn on the fire, nicely turned it around and then I ate the corn and then I got to the middle part that you don't eat and I got, as usually, always an idea.

I said, well, this goes perfectly in the pastor's car muffler.

So when nobody could see me, I put the leftover of the corn, the cob, in the muffler of the pastor's car.

Sure, that evening when everybody was supposed to go home, everybody, people got in the cars, The pastor started the car, he left.

He drove only about 20, 30 meters and the car cupped a few times and then the engine stopped.

And he tried again and again and again and again the battery started to die.

People looked, they, whoa, what is wrong here?

I go to the pastor and in a wise, humble way, I say, pastor, did you pray about it?

Oh, Pavel, I didn't think you are a pastor, come on, you should think about it.

They got around the car and they prayed that God would start the car while while they were praying.

I went behind the car and I pulled the corn from the muffler.

After they prayed he tried the car and the car started and they said miracle.

Well a young guy who didn't close his eyes during the prayer, he saw me and he told the pastor and the pastor got angry.

He forgot that he's supposed to have the patience of the saints and and you will never change.

Look, we get phone calls like 20 a day, every day from the things he does.

My father looked at my mom and then looked to me.

He said, you know, I was that way and my father prayed for me.

And my father looked to me and said, I am praying for you, son, and I know you will change because God has the power to change.

I was in a college and in a big church, I'm not going to tell you the name of the church, in the capital of Bucharest and in Romania.

We had an old pastor, 300 years old, I am exaggerating to make a point.

I don't know if he was 90 or 95 or 99, But he could hardly breathe.

You would think that he would die right there on the pulpit.

It would take him 10 minutes to say 2 words and then breathing, you know, ventilating.

Anyway, and so because the communist regime didn't allow too many pastors to go to the seminary, maybe 2 a year, and we had so many retiring, all pastors would stay there, you know, forever.

And so, because he was so sick and so old, good man, but nevertheless, people would sleep during the sermon.

I was at the balcony, I had a tube, like a straw, thicker, and with rice I would shoot in the head people who would sleep to wake them up.

And old people would sleep, young people would play games or look through magazines or talk or tell jokes.

Eventually, I started to be concerned for the church.

And my father said, there is no benefit to get upset with the church or to criticize the church.

The church is the people, the people is you.

If you really care, you got to do something.

You should not talk about it, but do something about it.

02 Growing in Christ

Father again, we pray that you will speak, you will transform, you will come with your presence.

Please fill us with your Spirit, that we may understand what you try to say, that we may know you more and love you more and trust you more.

I was trying to, I had 4 messages in mind and so far we didn't manage to finish 1 and so I am trying I'm debating to continue to start the other 1 but as we said in the beginning in the morning how do you grow real growth measurable growth in your relationship with God in your spiritual maturity growth how do you grow to be more like Jesus?

You may change your external behavior, smile, pretend, but you cannot change the human nature You cannot change your heart Nobody is good.

They never do anything wrong, but we all seen and so How do people change?

I'm going to continue the message drawing a parallel between Abraham and our lives How Abraham tried to have children and how we try to acquire righteousness and salvation Now listen carefully.

I'm gonna give an illustration imaginary illustration, okay we said Abraham was in Loma Linda and he graduated from whatever and Sarah was in nursing school and she graduated and they got married we said and they moved to Florida okay and they got a job and they got a house and now they try to have babies as we try to get righteousness and they try really hard no babies and when you try and fail and when you try and fail after a while you get discouraged and you get in your mind that you cannot do it it's like people who try to lose weight it's like people who try to get victory over anger It's like people who try to lose weight.

It's like people who try to get victory over anger It's like people who try to get victory over alcohol or drugs or whatever you try and you fail and you get discouraged Abraham tried to have children and they didn't manage so what they did they started to eat tofu That if you eat tofu, maybe you get pregnant.

You go to a Thai restaurant and you get tam yam soup with tofu, that's amazing.

So they ate tofu to get babies as we sometimes try to do things to get righteous.

We should eat healthy because it's the right thing to do not to become righteous or to be saved.

And then they went to Mark Finlay seminars and to Dwight Nelson seminars, how to get pregnant and yet they didn't become pregnant.

The more sermons you listen, You have listened to a thousand sermons in 20-30 years of being an Adventist.

Sermons are wonderful But sermons don't change a heart only God's presence changes the heart Unless you have a personal relationship with God we don't change The fact that we go to church, listen carefully, if you go to church and you don't encounter God, there is no benefit in going to church.

If you study the Bible, is it good or bad to study the Bible?

But if you study the Bible and you don't encounter God's presence, so many people read the Bible and then they fight and cheat and lie and kill.

It doesn't change you to study the Bible unless you encounter God's presence in the Bible.

Jesus told the Pharisees you study the scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life but they testify of me in John chapter 5.

Jesus implies You should not study the scripture just to get eternal life or this or that.

You should study them to get me Unless you study the Bible to know God it doesn't benefit If you pray wonderful, you should pray the Bible says pray without ceasing but if you don't encounter God in your prayer, then it doesn't help you.

So many people pray and yet there is no growth.

Unless you seek to know God, there is no merit in all we do.

Abraham tried to listen to more sermons on how to get pregnant and go to more seminars, yet no pregnancy.

They went to Cincinnati clinic to get pregnant and no pregnancy.

As we try really everything to change and grow and yet growth doesn't happen.

Now I want you to imagine Abraham is 75, Sarah is 65.

The Bible says Way beyond the time of bearing child.

She was the Bible says her womb was closed.

Okay, and so God tells him you'll have so many babies like the stars.

I Want you to hear what I say next in the Bible about 92% of the prayers The answer is not an event, it's a process.

In the Bible, most of the prayers, their answer is not an event, it's a process.

Abraham prayed for a child and God took 25 years to give him a child.

Would you be willing to wait 25 years to get an answer?

Moses, 40 years until God fulfilled the promise.

That's a long time to wait for deliverance, isn't it?

God promised him To put him over his family And then God put him in prison.

When God's plans start to be fulfilled, they always go in the wrong direction.

God told Moses, you are going to deliver my people, and then he went to wilderness.

God told Joseph, you'll be over your family, and then he was a slave and then in prison When God's plans start to work they always go in the wrong direction and you say what's happening in my life Since I started to pray everything goes wrong because God cannot make you before he breaks you we would always mix our deeds with God deeds because that's how we are we need to do something in order to feel good And before we understand that there is nothing you can do to save yourself, God cannot work.

That's the reason it is by faith, through grace it is the gift of God so nobody could take credit for it.

And we need to learn to work but only what God says and only in his power You cannot have a board meeting make a plan and ask God to bless your plan It's like Joshua like Let's have a board meeting and plan how to take Jericho and after we make a good plan We had 3 meetings and they lasted until 11 p.m.

It doesn't work that way in order to have God's blessing.

You need to receive God's strategy You don't go to God with your plan to get God's blessing.

You go to God with an empty brain, receive God's plan and then you have his blessing.

God needs to have us give up not our bad stuff but also our good stuff.

And only as you surrender all, God can give you the plan and the blessing You follow me and So God had to let Abraham exhaust all his resources all his plans and get to the point that there was no hope and then God could work and Every time when God starts working we have to finish our resources And we get so scared that we don't need that anymore and then we find a way When you start going down don't get scared it is God working on you If Joseph didn't want to go to prison, he would have never been Prime Minister of Egypt.

If Daniel didn't want to be a slave in Babylon, he would have never been Prime Minister of Babylon.

I'm not saying that when you go down you'll be Prime Minister.

But I'm saying that when you pray things are gonna go wrong.

It is God teaching you to trust fully in Him and 0 in self.

God's plans, when they work, they seem to go in the wrong direction.

Because the Bible says that all things work together.

You don't need to understand in order to believe you need to know him and trust him in order to believe and So back to the story when Abraham had no more hope to have children no more hope to change to acquire righteousness Salvation and so on When Abraham had no more hope God said now I'm gonna give you children so you know that it was me You cannot take credit for it.

And so what happened God instead of giving him children It took another 11 years and then Abraham says, you know, I need to do something about this and he slept with Hagar or however you say it in English, Agar, Hagar, whatever, English.

He slept with her and he had Ishmael and that made a mess for the generations to come.

When you get involved to help God, you make a mess.

God is absolutely able to do what he promised.

And then, after 11 years, he realized that he did a mistake.

And it took another so long until 25 years later all together from 75 to 100 no children.

I Would get tired waiting If you pray and you don't get an answer Oh God doesn't answer God answers spirit voice says that to every every means every to every honest prayer an answer will come Coma, but it is wrong to assume that God answers in the time.

We want the way we want God answers but the way he wants and if we knew the end from the beginning a different paragraph we will choose the same path and so finally Abraham is 99 God shows to him and says next year you'll have a baby I want you to imagine 99 a Baby Sarah is 89 and in that moment God says next year very specific Abraham getting his Chevy and goes to the gas station.

He's on the steering wheel You know driving he gets at the gas station and his hand is shaking Putting gas in the in the car and on the other side is Jim his next-door neighbor Hey, man, I heard you changed your name from Abraham to Abraham Uh-huh.

03 Incredible Grace

Dear Heavenly Father, we praise you for bringing us back safely and with full bellies to this afternoon meeting.

We ask that your Holy Spirit will be outpoured on each heart that is here, and specifically Pastor Goya as he shares.

May his words be straight from you, Lord, and touch our hearts in the way that each of us needs to be spurred forward.

We praise you for the sunshine that you've given us in this next little bit with Pastor Goya.

And in your heavenly and in your heavenly name we pray, amen.

All right, Pastor Goya, the time is yours.

Again, I'm glad to be with you and I'm glad when you finish because then I'm gonna go home and be with my wife even better As we start I'm gonna try to talk about 1 of the most simple subjects in theology that we all know very well and we think that we master the subject but it seems that is a subject that we all struggle with.

We all think that we understand grace and God's grace is beyond human understanding.

Because I have a tendency to try to scream I'm not sure that you can hear.

Okay I'm gonna start with 4 stories and I want you to Tell me the difference between the first 2 stories and the last 2 stories, okay?

Long ago, before I was in ministry, my wife and I had quite a few businesses, not only 1 or 2, not big, but 1 of them we had a little enterprise making clothing and bed sets and towels and swimming suits and sports suits and all type of clothing.

And in that time, we also had the big garden.

If you have a garden, you are my friend already before I know you, you know, I love gardening.

Remember when God created Adam and Eve, He could have given them a million gifts.

He gave them 1 gift and that was a garden.

And we had about, I would say, maybe 1 acre or less, only strawberries.

And then we had corn so much that you'll get lost in the corn.

And we had orchard of fruit trees, and we had about 50, 60, I don't know, tomato plants, and we had maybe about 40, 50 eggplants, and we had maybe 100 pepper plants and we had so much you will not believe and we went to the garden but they asked me to do some evangelistic meetings with the local church the local pastor and so We went to the garden to pick up some strawberries And came home And we had to run to do evangelism But we are so dirty from the garden that we took a shower and had no time to watch the kids And kids when they go to the garden and they eat strawberries and they become like little pigs, you know, dirty all over.

And so we had no time to watch the kids and the Church was just like from here to there just a few homes from our place So we talked to the neighbor.

Hey, we have to run I do evangelist Would you watch our kids and she said absolutely I'm gonna take my kid go over and they will play together good She didn't She got a phone call and she spent 1 hour talking and she left our kids alone.

But we harvested several buckets of strawberries and We had a few containers that were like this shape and deep, full of strawberries.

And our kids knew that we share with the neighbors.

But in that time during communism, the communist government used to turn the electricity off 4 hours a day, every day, to save energy.

And they would turn the electricity and they would turn the water off.

So we taught our kids, when you go to the bathroom, you flush, okay?

If it doesn't clean, you take the toilet brush and clean it after yourself and then you flush again and if the water is off there is a bucket of water here use this 1 well the kids said dad said that we should share they invited all the kids from the neighborhood they all ate strawberries what is okay And then they found honey and they ate honey.

And then they found some nice boiled corn and they ate corn.

And then they went back to strawberries and then back to honey and then water and then corn.

And then all the neighborhood decided that they need to go out, but then the water was turned off.

And the kids left, and my 2 kids, our 2 kids, they look and they said, Dad said that we should flush, but there is no water.

But he said that we could use the toilet brush I don't want to be too descriptive in the sermon but the week before my wife and I painted the whole house.

And our youngest kids 3 years old, threw the toilet brush, tried to clean.

He says, this is a better color than my mom's paint.

And the oldest 1 says, it's too dark, we need some red, let's put it in the strawberries.

Toilet, strawberries, walls, toilet, strawberries, walls, until they painted everything to this level because they could not reach higher.

When we came home, the smell, you could feel it from far away.

When we entered the house, He was in front of the door with the toilet brush.

My wife started to cry I Started to laugh I said I did it too, but they passed me they do better than me My wife says are you laughing instead of punishing them?

We had to move out of the house and pay a team to scratch the dirt all the way to the brick.

It was a brick house because the smell was in the wall and after a week of scratching then to apply new mud and then to paint and then I mean it was a whole remodeling process all over again.

My wife got sick, she was angry, she was frustrated.

She's the calm 1, she's always, I don't know how she could be so calm.

I don't have as much patience as she does.

But at this point, I was laughing, you know?

So I took the kids and I talked to them and I said, listen, I did a lot of stupid stuff and my father forgave me and I forgive you too.

I'm going to give you the second picture.

We had a neighbor, before I was a pastor, when we had the sewing business, the clothing business, We had a neighbor that he had the clothing business and he was also a Seventh-day Adventist in the same church singing in the same choir and he had the sewing business.

We made a large profit, when I say large, a little bigger than people could imagine.

He had no salary He came begging for help.

I have 2 little girls Would you please help us?

I gave him 50, 000 meters double cloth, basically like this and like that.

So basically 100, 000 meters of cloth material.

So he would have enough for more than 3 months for his business if he had to pay me for that Would have been a treasure He says I'm not sure if I will be able to pay you I said you don't need to pay me it's a gift work it and from the profit invest so you could have more from now on.

Next day I had the economical police searching my house to put me in prison.

And in Romania in that time if you came missing in your inventory you would either pay or go to prison.

And they said to me, we know you are stealing cloth.

We know that you are gonna be 50, 000 meters short.

I said, no, I'm not gonna be any meter short.

They checked everything and everything was in the books as in the inventory.

Perfect to the penny, to the inch, perfect.

I said, how did you get this information?

Well, your neighbor said that if you gave him 50, 000, how much do you steal to be able to give him 50, 000 and you don't even feel it?

That's the reason he doesn't have job because you took all the market and you steal all the cloth and you cover the whole city and the whole country and da da da He went to the police to turn me in after I helped him gave him a free gift.

You follow me And I said no, no, no, I didn't steal it.

It was free grace cheap salvation for him, but it was not cheap for me.

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Series

Pavel Goia Weekend

03 Incredible Grace

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

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