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Weimar University

Calvin Kim Weekend

Calvin Kim

02 Are You Struggling with Fear?

Dear Heavenly Father, we just want to thank you, Lord, for your rich blessings.

We want to thank you for the Sabbath day and the special blessings that accompany keeping your Sabbath day holy.

And at this moment right now, I just ask for your Holy Spirit to draw near, and that, Lord, you would anoint my lips, and that we would hear a word from heaven.

So Derek Adams, depressed after splitting up with his girlfriend, decided to take all the pills in his bottle.

Fearing that he might die, he asked his neighbor to take him to the hospital.

Upon arriving at the hospital, he collapsed.

Shaky, pale, his blood pressure dangerously low.

So they started doing tests, toxicology, lab reports.

They gave him 4 salines of fluids, and he didn't seem to be getting any better.

A physician was called in who was part of a clinical trial for antidepressants who had prescribed these medications to Derek.

And when he came, he shared that they were just sugar pills.

Within 15 minutes, Derek, he just came right back to normal.

He was told he had a metastatic tumor and he had 3 months to live.

After he died, they did an autopsy and discovered that the tumor was a benign tumor.

Ellen White says in the Ministry of Healing, many die from disease the cause of which is wholly imaginary." What's alarming for me is that she doesn't say, some people die of disease that's wholly imaginary.

The Bible, of course, tells us in Proverbs, for as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.

Now I share these stories just to underscore the power of what we allow to enter into our thought life.

Obviously God knows as he created us, so it's not a surprise that In his perfect wisdom, he puts a book in the Bible, the theme of which is the mind.

Does anyone know which book of the Bible, the theme of which is the mind?

Hebrews would be Jesus Christ, our heavenly high priest.

And the book that has to do with the mind is Philippians.

If you think of all the verses you would know off the top of your head, as was just mentioned here, Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.

There's words like one-minded, like-minded.

Forgetting that which was behind and reaching forward.

Whatsoever things are, true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report, if there be any praise, do what?

So God knew how important our thought life is, but Satan knows this too.

And so Satan wants to hijack our thought life.

And he has a method that I think that He uses more than any other method.

Does anyone know what Satan does to derail God's people?

And I will submit that this is Satan's most oft-used method of bringing us down.

You know why I feel confident saying that?

Last night I shared what's the number 1 most oft-repeated command in the Bible?

Do not fear or some form of be not afraid or fear not.

By virtue of the fact that this is repeated more often than any other command in the Bible, I believe that this is Satan's number 1 MO, or mode of operation, or as in Latin, Modus operandi.

Christian psychiatrists Frank Minnert and Paul Meyer say that anxiety is the most common mental disorder they encounter at their network of clinics across our country.

So it is no surprise that God repeats this command more often than any other command.

John 10.10, 1 of my favorite verses, tells us that thief cometh not but to steal, kill, and to destroy.

Jesus says I am come that they might have life and they may have it more abundantly.

Steal our peace of mind and then as a result kill and destroy and take away our health.

Fear has adverse effects on our physiological health, can damage your cardiovascular system, affect your GI, cause ulcers, affect your long-term memory, can also impair your immune system.

Now, I'm not talking about the normal, healthy fears.

Do you know what these 2 fears are that you're born with?

Fear of falling and the fear of loud noises.

They did studies with little babies, and when they put them next to a glass that's clear, guess what?

So we have certain fears, and these fears are there to help us with our fight-or-flight response and to protect us, so that we don't go too close to the edge of a cliff and get hurt.

I'm not talking about these kinds of fears.

I'm talking about the kind of fears that we do not want to experience, that we were not designed for.

Now, anxiety, to keep things simple, is just persistent fear.

For example, when you're on an airplane and the plane drops, you instantly get fearful for a moment, and then what happens for most of us?

But for others, that fear continues, and that's anxiety, because it's an irrational fear, a fear that the plane is going to crash.

Now the problem with fear is that fear just can start as a thought, but it can become an emotion and take control of us.

The problem with fear is at best, it may keep us from being productive, but at worst, it can impede us from living out our potential that God has for us.

For others, it may get to a point where all of a sudden, fear may start leading you to engage in negative behavior, substance abuse and things like that, that definitely are detrimental to our health.

And for some of us, fear can just be straight out crippling and paralyzing.

I remember hearing these words many, many years ago, and I never forgot it, that the anticipation of death can be worse than fear itself.

In my dental practice, for some people, the fear of just coming to see the dentist is much worse than the dental procedure itself.

Sometimes fear can be so scary that death would be a welcome reprieve for some people.

To further underscore this point, in surveys people have stated that they fear public speaking more than they fear death.

Years ago, I was speaking at a church in Riverside, and I was out in the parking lot throwing up because of my nerves.

But for most people who do this, the more you do it, it gets easier.

01 The Simple Key to Multiplying Blessings in Your Life

If you just bow your heads with me and we'll just begin with prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, you're so good to us.

And I just pray, Lord, that I'll just be a conduit for your Holy Spirit to speak through.

If you could put the PowerPoint right up if that would come up.

And the title of tonight's message is the simple key to multiplying the blessings in your life.

I've been in ministry for about 12 years.

I'm a dentist in Washington, but I consider that my tent making and ministry is my passion.

And so I used to be a part of a ministry called Army Bible Camp.

And when you're involved in Adventist ministry, Adventists love acronyms.

Now, just for the word faith, there are 27 acronyms that I know of for the word faith.

Do you know of any acronyms for the word faith?

I'm gonna share with you just a few of my favorite ones, and you think of the ones that you like the best, okay?

Isn't that a beautiful acronym for faith?

Now, spiritually speaking, what does food represent?

So it's like the Word of God always in the home, because we know that faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.

Is this the experience that you're having in your faith journey with God?

Are you experiencing a fantastic adventure?

When you pray, do your prayers hit the ceiling and bounce back?

Or do you see answers to prayers happening in your life all the time?

Are you experiencing showers of blessings?

Are you standing on the promises or just sitting on the premises?

If you apply the simple keys that I'm going to share with you tonight, I guarantee you or your money back, that you will start experiencing showers of blessings in your life.

Now, 1 of the things when I was a part of Army Bible Camp, it was a revival-based ministry, and so we'd bring in all these speakers that would teach us how to study the Bible and just 1 of the tips I learned is if you want to study something then to look at the opposite the antithesis for example if you want to study light you should study darkness you know if you want to study the wise virgins also study the foolish virgins And so the antithesis of faith or the opposite of faith would be unbelief.

And as I was looking into unbelief, what was interesting is that unbelief actually manifests symptoms.

Just like when you have COVID, you have symptoms.

Coughing, fever, shortness of breath, and we know there's a myriad of symptoms.

Well, I discovered that unbelief also manifests symptoms as well.

Does anyone know what these symptoms of unbelief are?

And I'm going to show this to you from the pen of inspiration.

Too often we grieve the heart of Jesus by our unbelief.

Our faith is short-sighted and we allow trials to bring out our inherited and cultivated tendencies to wrong when brought into straight circumstances, we dishonor God by murmuring and complaining.

You know, if you have unbelief, you just are prone to murmur and complain.

For fear, we will actually be talking about that in Sabbath school tomorrow.

The children of Israel here, you know, we see God just parting the Red Sea for them.

Nevertheless, when the spies saw the walled cities in the Promised Land, they allowed unbelief to enter their hearts.

And returned to the congregation with a faithless report.

By the words they spoke, they leavened the minds of the people with unbelief.

The record tells us what effect their murmuring had." And you are all familiar with the story of the serpents that were biting the Israelites, right?

Do you know why God allowed the serpents to bite the Israelites?

Here it tells you, to punish them for their ingratitude and complaining against God, the Lord permitted fiery serpents to bite them.

Why is murmuring and complaining such a great grievance to God?

So imagine God, we just have to recall in the past how God has led and provided for us.

He tells us in the word, I will take care of you.

He provides for all of our needs, and then when we complain, you know what we're telling God?

We're telling God that we don't trust Him.

Do you know what it means when you tell someone you don't trust them?

Do you see why this is so offensive to God?

I'm going to pick on my wife because she knows I share this when I share this presentation.

So you know, if you know me, once in a while, she bumped into my thigh.

And you know, if you hit somebody in the right place, you don't even have to hit him very hard, and it hurts, right?

She bumped into my thigh and I go, honey, that hurts.

Now that's what you call adding insult to injury.

03 No Greater Bliss

I'm just gonna start with prayer real quick.

Dear Heavenly Father, You're so good to us.

I just pray that anything that I do and say here will bring glory and honor to your name.

I invite your presence to be here with us.

At our F5 events, we do a lot of icebreakers because we want to mix people up and get them to know each other and so 1 of the things I do is a common icebreaker is I ask people what is the most blissful thing you have ever experienced in your life?

The definition of the word bliss is perfect happiness.

And you can just start thinking of what's the most blissful thing you've ever experienced in your life.

1 person shared something about just kayaking on the lake, and it was just so beautiful.

1 of the most blissful experiences I ever had was, we had just summited Mount Rainier, we climbed through the night, And when you're on that mountain, you get tired of that backpacking food, tired of power bars.

And as we're coming down at that high altitude, you've got to eat, but you have no appetite.

And back at camp, there was some food with some fruit in it.

And I was just hoping that my friends who stayed behind or got back early did not eat that food up, but that they would have left it in when I came back.

You know, When I ask these questions, the answers are often times, most of the answers are things that are fairly very simple.

No 1 ever says, it's when I bought my first car, or I bought my first house.

It's always something, some simple experience, and it usually costs nothing, or the cost is very negligible, Just like that tasty meal I had right there at base camp.

Just this week, 1 of the most blissful moments of yesterday was just God hearing and answering my prayer that my daughter is enjoying her experience at Youth Rush, because that weighed heavily on me all week.

I didn't want her to resent her dad for encouraging her to go do this.

You know, knocking on doors and getting rejected is a character-building experience, but it's, you know, you hear stories of some people quitting and leaving, and that's just, I didn't want to, I didn't want my daughter to experience that.

The pen of inspiration says, there is no greater bliss, perfect happiness.

There's no greater bliss on this side of heaven than in what?

Tell you a quick story about a friend of mine.

It's stopped because of COVID but I showed up and there was a new guy there and a lot of times I like to gravitate towards new guys.

You know, new people, they don't know everyone.

It seems like everyone knows each other and his name is Charlie Rocket.

And we started running, and this guy was running fast.

And 1 thing that all runners want to do is they want to be able to run faster.

You'll never meet a runner that goes, you know what?

No, every runner wants to run faster and they want to be able to run longer.

And I said, Charlie, I want you to help me to get to be a faster runner.

And so we met again and we went swimming together and he's teaching me different tips and stuff.

Anyways, I asked him, I said, do you want to go hiking with me?

Cuz he was living in Olympia alone, his wife's in Japan by herself.

And so he goes, yeah, I'll go hiking with you.

And so, and then as I was thinking about it, my church is up north, he lives down here, for me to go to church and go all the way to Olympia and go back, it's really out of the way.

And I normally wouldn't invite someone I just became friends with to church.

Normally I will invite them to go hiking.

But I said, you know what, it would be easier if I just picked you up in the morning and you went to church with me.

And to my surprise, he goes, I'll go to church with you.

So he goes to church with me, and afterwards we went hiking, we had a great time.

Not too long after, I cannot remember if it was just a few weeks or a month or so, or a couple months right afterwards, he sends me an email.

A dear and wonderful friend of mine, who's not even in the church, intended that I confess to you the depression that I can't work through.

Training and helping people, being the encouraging coach, is probably the only thing that is keeping me sane.

While I know I can help you succeed, I'm fighting a mental illness that admitting would even shame my wife.

I can't help you if I'm not a model for your own success.

I've been bragging to my friends how I met this individual whose life I can help change.

Can I confide in you without being judged?

I feel your church and you might be the only ones that I can confide in.

But I don't know where to turn except the church.

Your congregation even for 1 day helped keep me alive.

I'm sorry to unload this on you because you wanted a running buddy and have inherited a suicide.

He's apologizing and I'm praising God that my friend recognizes his need for Jesus in his life and I'm like Lord you put me in his in that place right there.

Can you attest to the veracity of this quote that there is no greater bliss on this side of heaven than in winning souls to Christ.

Running is gratifying, Winning souls is satisfying.

God valued us so much, he risked the failure of heaven.

We're told, for us, took the risk of failure and eternal loss.

1 day when we're in heaven, if we should have any regrets, and it's debatable if we'll have regret in heaven because the definition of regret is feeling of sorrow, and we're told in heaven we will not have sorrow.

But should there be any regrets in heaven, I think the universal regret will be that we did not do more to bring others with us to heaven.

Not only is this the most blissful work, we are told that this is the greatest work to which human beings can aspire, is the work of winning men from sin to holiness.

The irony of life is the more important something is, the less instruction and education we receive about it.

When I speak to youth, I tell them the most important things in your life is your relationship with God, that's a given, who you marry, You spend the rest of your life, that will affect your usefulness for your number 1 relationship with God.

We get almost no instruction in high school and in college about how to find that spouse.

You may go to a seminar, you may go to a camp meeting and they may speak about it.

Many people like me, you go to college your first year and you're floundering around trying to decide what to do for a career.

In high school we learn physics, biology, chemistry, pre-calc, we learn all these classes, most of which, some of it's useful, some of it's totally not useful, you'll never use it again in your life, and yet what about what you're gonna do spending the rest of your life?

And then we come out, and they never teach us about money management, so everyone is leaning on people like Dave Ramsey to learn how to manage your finances.

And so here's a topic, it's considered the most important work.

It will bring you the greatest bliss, and unless you go to a Bible college, or you're blessed to be able to go to a summer canvassing program, or go to AFCO, or a Bible training school, or a conference like GYAC or iShare.

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Series

Calvin Kim Weekend

03 No Greater Bliss

Transcript

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Parts

02 Are You Struggling with Fear?

34m

01 The Simple Key to Multiplying Blessings in Your Life

32m

03 No Greater Bliss

42m

Sound Doctrine