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Mills River SDA Church

Practical Christianity

Cory Reeves

01 Practical Christianity

Today we're going to start a journey on what it looks like being a Christian.

And I believe nothing is as important as discussing faith.

This is Thanksgiving week, and my wife, midweek, when I was all excited about what I was going to preach on, she reminded me that this was my Thanksgiving week sermon.

But I do think that there is a time and place to reflect on the gift of growing in faith in Jesus.

And as I thought about that more, I decided to not change my sermon altogether.

I wouldn't have had much time to change at this point.

But what more do we have to be thankful for than Jesus walking alongside us, helping us grow in faith within Him, helping us learn to trust Him more.

It is 1 of the greatest gifts and I don't believe we fully even understand the topic.

Here's a fairly long quote and I apologize but it was too good not to share the whole thing.

It's from Letters and Manuscripts, Volume 5, Manuscript 24, 1888.

The third angel's message is the proclamation of the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

The commandments of God have been proclaimed, but the faith of Jesus has not been proclaimed by the Seventh-day Adventist church as of equal importance." That's a slap on the hand a little bit.

The law and the Gospel going hand in hand.

I cannot find language to express this subject in its fullness.

Not only have we not been faithful in proclaiming Jesus as we should, she can't even find language to express what we need to understand.

Do you see the importance of studying this topic?

Continuing the same quote, next paragraph.

The faith of Jesus is talked of, but not understood.

What constitutes the faith of Jesus that belongs to the third angel's message?

Jesus becoming our sin bearer that He might become our sin pardoning Savior.

He was treated as we deserve to be treated.

He came to our world and took our sins that we might take His righteousness.

Faith in the ability of Christ to save us Amply and fully and entirely is the faith of Jesus.

She says she doesn't have, in the paragraph before, she doesn't have words that we fully can understand, but it's like she attempts to tell us here.

Faith in Jesus can save us fully and entirely.

This is the message that we as Adventists need to do a better job of explaining.

This is the topic that Sometimes we hear this side, grace, and then we hear law over here.

You know, a story I have often wondered about and struggled with is Abraham and Isaac.

But before we go to that story, I want to do a little bit of history for us.

So we're going to first go to Genesis 12 verses 1-3.

Now the Lord had said to Abraham, get out of your country from your family and from your father's house to a land that I will show you.

I will bless you and make your name great.

I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you.

And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed." I want to tell you, last time I was here, I preached on this, but almost from Lot's point of view.

We're going to come back at it from Abraham and take a little bit different turn here.

God promised Abraham that he would become a great nation.

Abraham began to grow his faith by leaving his family, trusting God, stepping out in faith and moving.

However, if this was you, and God had promised that to you, you'd be like, man, I need to prepare.

As a famine hit the land, they moved closer to Egypt.

Sarah is said to be a very beautiful woman.

Knowing at this time many people lived long lives, Sarah at this point is already 65 years old.

I'm not going to ask if any women in here are 65.

And Abraham knew her beauty would put him in danger.

Abraham said in Genesis 12, verse 13, please say, you are my sister, that it may be well with me for your sake, and that I may live because of you.

It's interesting, it wasn't a complete lie, but why did he want her to say this?

Didn't he Know that God would need him alive to make him like the stars of the heavens God had made him a promise Did he not have faith in God's promises seeming to have learned nothing from the last time.

Again, 20 years later, at this point, Sarah is almost 90 years old.

I'm not going to ask if anyone's 90 in here, but at 90 years old, and I'm going to be very careful with any comments here Genesis 20 verse 2 reads now Abraham said of his of Sarah his wife she is my sister and a blimel ablum lek just slaughtered that king of Gerrera sent and took Sarah.

She must have been a stunning 90 year old.

Now in both of these cases God comes in and warns the kings that have taken Sarah, and she's returned with gifts.

The SDA Bible commentary reads, after the many evidences of the power and protection of God, he had witnessed another dismal failure of faith such as this is strange indeed." We consider Abraham 1 of the patriarchs of faith.

And here, we're saying another, another dismal failure of faith.

Abraham seems to be struggling with faith in God.

Faith in God fulfilling the promise he had given him.

God had promised that his descendants should be like the stars of heaven.

Abraham started to question if this would be all through his chief servant.

You see, back then, if you had no heirs, your chief slave would inherit everything.

However, God knew the thought that Abraham was having, and God said in Genesis 15, verses 4 and 5, this 1 shall not be your heir but 1 who will come from your own body shall be your heir God was clarifying for him in his questioning time he Then He brought him outside and said, look toward the heavens and count the stars.

If you are able to number them, and He said to him, so shall your descendants be.

In his weak moment, saying, you know what, God?

There is no way it's going to come from me.

It'll come through him, but it'll be in my name.

And God sets him aside and says no go outside look at the stars God is patient with Abraham God reiterates his promise Even in the middle of Abraham's lack of faith, God is walking with him, helping his faith grow.

So Sarah and Abraham, after waiting 10 more years, were tired of waiting on God.

Sarah wanted desperately to have a child and Abraham had become so desperate to have an heir.

This is when they took measures into their own hands.

Abraham finally has a son, Ishmael, with Sarah's servant, Hagar.

In our lives now, how many promises has God given each of you and when it doesn't seem to be working the way you think it should be working or on the timing you think it should be working on you go and try to figure it out for God on your timing You know we look at these stories and we think well I would have done it differently.

He's thinking There's not much time left.

Waiting on the Lord, not doing it our way, even when we think it accomplishes what God wants, is a problem.

Again, from the book, Patriarchs and Prophets 147, it says of Abraham, he had shown distrust of God in concealing the fact that Sarah was his wife.

And again, in a way, seems to have little or no faith.

02 Practical Christianity: Why Prayer?

So we're continuing the journey of practical Christianity and looking at what that means.

Last time we dealt with the important topic of growing in faith much like Abraham.

And we had encouraging news as we looked at his life.

We saw he didn't start with a great giant faith.

He started almost with weak faith and built to the great faith that we know Abraham, the giant of faith we know Abraham as having.

That means there is a path for us when we have little faith to be giants of faith as well.

We learned that growing our faith, we must know Him.

And that's the series we're going through, is we're going to focus on giving time to God, growing our faith.

White quote from our Sabbath school lesson this week.

If you read the extra ones, I'm sorry, I'm reusing 1 of those.

The extra Ellen White quotes at the bottom of some of the lessons.

But it's from 3 Selected Messages, page 186.

We need a power to come upon us now and stir us up to diligence and earnest faith.

Then, baptized with the Holy Spirit, we shall have Christ formed within the hope of glory.

Then we will exhibit Christ as the divine object of our faith and our love.

As we discussed last time, we need this power, this faith, to grow in us.

The only way this will be accomplished is allowing Christ in our hearts, allowing Him to be filled with the Spirit of God.

Then and only then, being filled with the Spirit, we've talked about this, when we are full of something so good and so great as God, It comes bubbling out.

And that is the point of our study of practical Christianity.

It's how do we allow Him in us in such a way that He lives and dwells in us and it comes bubbling out in the form of service, love, gratitude, praise, prayer, and so on.

I'm not going to make it through prayer and a communion Sabbath.

In fact, it's probably going to take 3 Sabbaths to get through prayer.

Today, we're going to ask the question, why prayer?

After this week, we're gonna look more specifically, and I'm gonna touch on this throughout, but what prayer?

And then the last section we're gonna look at is intercessory prayer.

But why do we need to pray for others is that section.

But today we're gonna ask why do we need to pray?

Why would we need to tell the all-knowing God anything?

Well, in Matthew 7, Jesus has just finished telling us to seek and we will find, to knock and it will be opened, and He proceeds to tell us about the narrow gate and then to know false prophets by their fruits.

Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.

Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, Have I not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in your name, and done many wonders in your name?

And then I will declare to them, I never knew you.

Depart from Me, ye who practice lawlessness." I hate to break the news, but this is a big deal.

This seems to be a group of people who are prophesying, done great wonders, even cast out demons.

It seems to be a people who know the truth.

Some people fall in love with the truth, but forget the relationship with God.

And some people just want a relationship, how can I just pray and just love and not understand the truth?

Jesus wants us to fall in love with the whole thing.

I want to know Jesus and have him know me.

Now, Amanda and I took a health evangelism class called Light.

Sorry, I'm playing with the wire, I must be.

We took a health evangelism called Light that was started out of Wildwood.

And this guy right here, James Hartley, taught it, most of it.

It was probably a 6 month's worth of class around.

And then we went to some meetings at ASI, and there he was.

And being the shy person, as you guys all know I am, I went running up to him and just started talking away like we were best friends.

He looked at me and I could tell he had no clue who I was.

I knew a little bit about him, at least what I saw on video, but he didn't know much about me.

Now to fix that every time I saw him at ASI or other meetings I would go talk to him and now we're friends.

But it took learning about me not just me about him right there's an important lesson in that that that prayer is a part of this relationship with God the text says He not only wants to get to know you, but not getting to know Him, we are turned away.

When he comes a second time, it shouldn't be sad and awkward for us.

I don't want any of us calling for rocks to fall on our heads or mountains to fall on us.

Begging to have our face hidden from God because we don't know Him.

But when He comes, I want Him to say, oh, it's you!

It's not by merit that I'm talking about that we're earning our self-salvation.

03 Practical Christianity: What Do We Pray?

You know, in looking at today's topic, prayer is such an important topic.

And you know, in researching for this topic, I decided I could preach this whole year on prayer and not have any problem.

So I will tell you this is not meant to be a comprehensive overview of prayer.

It's meant to be a small overview of prayer with hopefully some practical pointers that we can all learn to implement a little bit.

And hopefully it can help improve all of our prayer lives.

We started with in the series on we looked at growing in faith in Jesus.

We looked at Abraham's faith and how Abraham grew in faith over time and we learned that it doesn't happen suddenly.

Even Abraham had to work his way into a more faithful relationship with God.

And in doing that, 1 way we grow in faith is those 3 middle bullets.

We do it in prayer, we do it in study, and we then learn to give our all to Him.

And that's really been the focus of our series.

We're gonna do finished prayer, hopefully the next time we're together.

We'll do study and then we'll go giving it all to Him.

And then that faith, as we grow in that faith, it drives our obedience back to God.

I see some heads nodding when I was talking through it.

Then we also looked at prayer last time more in detail.

And we remember went through huge impacts people praying 456 hours a day and the impact it's had on this world.

Who had the greatest impact of all was Jesus.

And we know Jesus spent a lot of time in prayer.

And friends, if Jesus needs prayer, you better believe all of us need prayer too as well, right?

There's a, As we discuss the power of prayer, there's a quote that I thought summed it up great.

I'm going to reread it because it was so powerful.

By your fervent prayers of faith, you can move the arm that moves the world.

Prayer church is not power for you, but it is power for you to connect to in order to accomplish the great work that Christ has.

Understanding that the great controversy is all around us, that lives are at risk, why would we not want to connect our lives to this power?

This should be a major focus of our church and of our personal time.

The 3 bullets we discussed last time on prayer and for how we should know God, our first how we should know God, second to build our faith, to connect us to that power.

And then we also look, every big revival in our church is always connected with prayer before that revival.

Satan well knows that all whom he can lead to neglect prayer and the searching of the Scriptures will be overcome by His attacks.

By having us neglect prayer and study of the Scriptures.

Therefore, He invents every possible device to engross the mind.

So once again, how does he have us conquer us?

Neglect prayer and study the Bible, right?

It is interesting to me that she chose the word device because there is something that happens to us sometimes.

You see way too many people stuck with that thing right there.

I saw some of you wave it around just now therefore he invents every possible device it doesn't have to be a phone but that is something that comes to mind right to engross the mind he is trying to distract us Satan's goal is to distract us from prayer and from reading our Scriptures.

So today, we are going to look at what do we pray?

But friends, who gets to speak to the king of the universe can you imagine that the Creator God and it is interesting to me when Jesus taught His disciples how to pray, He didn't get up in front and deliver some lecture point by point.

He knelt down and taught his disciples how to pray.

He says you want to learn how to pray, then let's pray.

In the Bible as a whole, there are many other prayers.

You won't find lengthy discourses on prayer.

Can anyone guess how many prayers are in the Bible?

650 prayers that have been counted in the Bible kind of depends on how you count count a prayer and 25 of those are from Jesus and of the 650 it is recorded 450 times that there was an answer to that prayer specifically.

I would challenge you after today's sermon, maybe sometime this week in your devotion, study a couple of the prayers of the Bible.

And yet with all this power, with all the need for prayer, all the evidence, the book Medical Mission at Ministry page 303 asks, where are the men and I'll add women who will work and study and agonize in prayer as Christ.

She's asking where are the people who are willing to get on their knees and agonize in prayer again.

Now I'm gonna jump right into the Scripture.

Thank you young men for reading for me today.

But I want to go through it really quick, starting back to Matthew 6, starting with verse 5.

And we're going to go through this pretty quick because I do want to jump into some of the points.

And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets that they may be seen by men.

Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward." So this isn't saying don't pray in public.

This is saying there's a reason to pray in public, right?

If you're coming up here to glorify yourself, not your Savior, that's the problem.

So it's not the people who stand on the corner to pray in public glorifying themselves, long-winded prayer, but we should pray in private.

I would challenge you, if you're praying in public for you, you need to pray in private more until you get that right and then come here.

Verse 6, but you go when you pray into your room and when you have shut the door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.

And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words." We're going to discuss today that our prayers, particularly our personal prayers, are praying to a friend.

And when we talk to a friend, if I came up to 1 of you, Bill, if I came up to you every day and just said the exact same thing, really quick, really fast, and just walked away, it would probably not be the best friendship that Bill would.

Bill wouldn't say, I can't wait to see Pastor Corey today because he's just going to say the exact same thing and run off.

But that's the important part is God wants us to learn how to speak to him as a friend and we're gonna get into that a little bit more.

Verse 8, therefore do not be like them for your father knows the things you have need of before you ask him.

It's interesting, prayer is so interesting because if you overthink it and say, God already knows everything, why would I talk to him about it?

But there's something that connects us to God when we pray, when we share with Him.

Verse 9, in this manner therefore pray, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.

We're recognizing the Creator God, Our Father, who brought us into existence.

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