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Oklahoma Academy

Karen Holland

The Dangers of the Horizontal

Father, thank you that we could come together this morning and worship you.

And I just pray, Father, that you will fill me with your spirit, that you will fill each of us with your spirit.

We need to be receptive to your voice this morning, whether we're speaking or whether we're listening.

I pray for your Holy Spirit and that you will lead and guide this morning and I thank you for this in Jesus name, Amen.

Several mornings ago I woke up quite early, sometime probably between 3 or 4, and I started thinking about, or continued thinking, because I think I've been thinking about it, prior to that a conversation that I had had earlier in the week.

And I was thinking about the fact that it's a, it's not just a one-person struggle.

I think all of us at some point in some way at some time struggle with this idea.

So I want to start out with a little story this morning from my own life that kind of gives you the idea of where we're going, what we want to talk about this morning.

And I shared this story with the individual that I had the conversation with.

I was 18 and I had graduated from Academy and I was so excited to be going to college and leaving Academy behind.

And I was just, you just can't imagine, I was just really excited.

And I had gotten accepted into the nursing program at Southern.

And So I went directly from high school into the nursing program.

And during the nursing program in the freshman year at Southern, it's not that way anymore, but it used to be that during your freshman year and the second semester, we always went to Orlando, Florida for the second semester of school.

Because Orlando had a very large Adventist hospital called Orlando, Orlando, no not Orlando, Florida Hospital, thank you.

Florida Hospital, And so they took us down there, they had the dormitory that we lived in, and we studied nursing and a couple other classes from there and did our clinicals in the Adventist Hospital that was there.

And while I was there, I started looking around.

And I went to the local Adventist Church.

How many of you guys have been to Florida Hospital?

So you know where the Adventist church is, just down the way.

There's a big lake there outside the hospital and just down the way there's the Adventist church.

And I was going to the Adventist church, going to the Florida Hospital, and I started looking around at these people.

And I thought, are these people Christian?

And by what I saw, I thought, well, if this is Christianity, then I don't want it.

And So, at some point, I don't remember exactly where in the semester, I decided it's not for me and I stopped going to church.

And I would, you had to sign out on Sabbath, you know, where you were going, what you were doing.

I don't know if they do that anymore, but they had to when I was there.

And so I would sign out to the beach or, you know, somewhere, but not to church.

And of course that didn't enhance my spiritual walk.

I came back to Southern because we had a summer class that we had to take called cardiac.

And so I was doing this and I still wasn't going to church and I don't know where the big shift came in my mind and how but I do remember thinking and somehow realizing that all of these people here are not my example and that my example of who a Christian is, the real Christian, is Jesus.

And so I needed to, rather than looking at all of these people over here and deciding that they're not, so therefore I wouldn't be either, which I probably wasn't in the first place.

Now I wish I could tell you that all my spiritual ills were over at that point and but that's not true but that was like something that out of that experience I learned.

I still wandered in the wilderness some after that, but that's not my point today.

What I realized is that Jesus is my example.

And I had very little understanding of the growth process.

As a young person, that just didn't compute in my head.

You know, the idea that you start over here in your Christian walk and you're going here and next year you may be here because you're continually growing and next year you may be here because you're continually growing, and next year you may be here.

So these people that I was looking at could have been here.

I was evaluating them by what I thought ought to be over here, right?

But I wasn't able to see the growth because I didn't know, I didn't ask them, you know, where have you come from?

You know, so they had been back here, they had given their lives to the Lord, and they were moving.

So I didn't have any concept at that time of the idea of growth, which I think is so very important.

I was just a very black and white thinker, very concrete thinker, and so either you were a Christian or you weren't a Christian.

There was no, I became a Christian and now I'm in that growth process kind of an idea.

And the other thing that I learned through that experience is that I'm a very poor judge of somebody else's heart.

I'm a very poor judge and I shared another story in this conversation I'm not going to share it with you now but I would like to if you would if you look at your bulletin you see the title on the front of the bulletin is what?

And if I were to give it a subtitle, I would say the dangers of the horizontal.

And I really enjoyed the air show Monday night and all the different things that were buzzing in the air.

But 1 of the things that struck me was when the planes were taxiing.

I don't know if you noticed that it was when the planes were taxiing that they had the most probability of falling over on their nose, of flipping, of damage, because they were they were just taxiing.

They were feeling every bump, every little hill that they went down, their nose went down.

So it was it was actually some feels really weird at this thing.

Okay, it was actually when they were on the horizontal that they had the most issues.

When they actually got up in the air and they got vertical, Wow, you saw the loops that they could do and all of the things that they could do in the air was amazing.

It was the horizontal that gave them trouble.

So I want to look at that with you this morning and I want to do it through several stories.

And our first story, and you can look it up if you'd like to, I'm not going to quote it directly out of Scripture, but it's in Matthew 17, Mark 9, and Luke 9.

And I'll just be real honest with you, I always thought this story was kind of boring.

I never really understood the nature, the idea of the story, and it's the transfiguration.

And in the story we find that Jesus, after 6 days, that's what it says at the beginning of the chapter, after 6 days, and prior to that, Jesus had been talking to his disciples about the fact that he was gonna go be killed, he was gonna go give his life.

He was talking about those things and the disciples were really upset about these things because that was not the narrative that they were used to.

And then they get to the base of this mountain and Jesus takes 3 disciples.

And so what do you think the 9 were doing?

Yes, they probably spent the night sleeping because it was nighttime and in Desire of Ages it talks about how they, the sun went down and now they were making their way to the top of the mountain in the dark, and Jesus was there to pray all night.

He encouraged his disciples to pray with him, and they did for a while, and then they fell asleep.

But the 9 at the base of the mountain, they might have slept, but they were worried and complaining about the fact that they weren't on the mountain.

And when they got up in the morning, you know, they might have been asking themselves questions.

So they were unhappy, complaining, bickering, whatever you want to say.

And the visitors came in the form of a father with his son.

And you remember that the son was possessed and tortured, tormented by a demon.

And so they brought, this father brought the son there.

Now it wasn't just them, there was a whole crowd that kind of gathered around.

And so did the disciples, had they been given the power over demons?

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The Dangers of the Horizontal

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