ASI Scandinavia 2023: Look UP

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ASI Scandinavia

Plenary

Frank Fournier

Choice, Thoughts

I think we should probably start with a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, Lord, without you, whatever we do doesn't count.

It's not what we do or say that counts, but what you do with what we say.

And trusting that you have given me the words that you once spoken this evening, I look to you.

Speak to our hearts, this is what we want.

And we thank you for hearing that prayer and for communicating with every heart in this room today.

The title that I've got here for us to consider is Choice Thoughts.

And I chose to want to speak about our thought processes or how important the thought life is to us.

Sometimes I think we don't always understand how important our thoughts are and where they go.

And of course you've heard already that our theme is Look Up, and you can probably guess why they chose that title.

We're living in a world that is terrible, and being downcast is a real thing in this world for people.

Depression is rampant, and I don't know who you are or where you've been, what you've experienced, but there's no doubt in my mind you know that this world is in really bad shape.

Jesus is coming soon and you have the choice of thinking about what's going on in the world and you have the choice of thinking about what's going on in the world and you have the choice of thinking that Jesus is coming soon and that's a positive thought.

I think in The book of Colossians, C-O-L, I always think of Christ's object lessons when I see C-O-L.

So it's the book of Colossians chapter 3, verse 2, I'll just recite what it says.

It says, set your affections on things, where?

Above, and not on the things of this world.

Because as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

And so you want your thoughts to originate in heaven.

And this is what we want to speak about this evening.

Our thoughts, whatever thoughts they are, that we entertain, will determine who we become.

And not only that, they will determine also what you will experience in life.

And you'll see this in a few minutes when I read some of the quotations I brought with me.

In Heavenly Places, page 164, it says this.

If the thoughts are wrong, the feelings will be wrong.

Do you know that thoughts engender or thoughts awaken feelings?

I'd be surprised if you didn't know that, but you're looking at me pretty like you don't know it.

And they play on your thought life, right?

They give you thoughts, and when you have a thought, you awaken a feeling in yourself.

Most of you are old enough to know that Satan will send sexual thoughts into your mind.

If you entertain the thought, there will be sexual feelings that come with the thoughts.

Otherwise, also, there are countries in the world, and I'm thinking of India, I hope nobody's here from India.

But it just so happens in the news in India, there's been news about a gang of men gang raping women.

What happens in your mind when you think of something like that?

It awakens such anger in my heart that I'd rather not, I'd rather not.

Just today I was sitting in my seat in an airplane and I cast a look over this way and somebody's looking at a screen and in the screen there's a woman beating up on a maybe 12 year old girl.

It's just like, I don't want to think about that.

Because it awakens negative thoughts in my heart.

And thoughts and feelings combined make up the moral character.

And so we become what we allow ourselves to focus on.

But I think we need to be reminded about that all the time because We all have thoughts.

And I'll be speaking 4 times about this while I'm here.

So, Revelation chapter 12, we're going to verse 9.

Revelation chapter 12, looking at verse 9.

And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the devil and Satan, which deceives the whole world.

He was cast out into the earth and his angels were cast out with him.

So, what is Satan's objective according to this verse?

I don't know if you speak in Denmark, in church, but some places they do.

Now why in the world would he want to deceive the world?

And his work as far as he is concerned is to destroy everything that God loves.

But God created everything and if He loves everything then it is Satan's work to destroy as many things as he can because he wants to hurt God.

And so you and I must learn, if you haven't learned it already, and I'd be surprised if your parents haven't told you already, but bad decisions lead to negative consequences.

And so if you buy into a lie, what are you going to do?

It's going to lead you to make a bad decision.

If you make a bad decision, what can you expect?

Do you know that that alone, if we believe it, and I believe that we believe it, We believe that.

If we believe this, why is it then that we allow ourselves sometimes to make bad decisions?

Or we buy into a deception, half knowing that it is a deception.

Or we think that God is just trying to limit our enjoyment in life by, by what would be the right, restricting us.

God is trying to tell us what is true and what is right.

And if we would know all that is right, we would have the basis to make all the decisions in order to succeed in life and be happy in life and be wealthy in life and everything else.

And it's only because I've been fighting a cold for the last few days.

I thought I was winning, but I'm losing my voice anyway.

When I was young, I had 2 uncles who work in construction.

They built houses and I would hear them speak this way.

Now, I don't know if in Europe you speak this way, but they would say, that wall is true.

Eric Flickinger

Perseverance

This morning's message is entitled, Perseverance.

And so I'm going to invite you to join me in prayer as we dive into this morning's message.

Father, we want to thank you for the opportunity and the privilege that you give us to learn of you, to be a part of the work that you are doing, to run the race with endurance, not for our glory or our honor, but for yours.

And we ask that you will encourage and strengthen us this weekend as we look at you, as we lift our gaze upward and see the wonderful plan that you have for us.

I'll begin this morning with a little quote from a book called Life's Little Instruction Booklet by H.

He says, in the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins.

If you've ever heard me speak before, you know that I like stories.

And there's 1 type of story that I like more than any other type of story.

This true story is a story of a little boy named Frederick Miles.

He was born in a town called Van Wert in the state of Ohio in the United States.

Now, typically I ask if anybody has ever heard of Van Wert, Ohio.

I'm guessing nobody here has heard of it, because in the US, 99.9% of people have never heard of Van Wert, Ohio.

It is a tiny little farming town up in the northwest corner of a state that not too many people talk a whole lot about.

While he was still young, he was crawling along the floor of the farmhouse, and he crawled underneath his mother's sewing table.

And when he crawled underneath his mother's sewing table, a long-forgotten needle embedded itself in his knee.

Now his mother and father didn't realize what had happened.

They knew that their son was uncomfortable and he was crying and something was wrong, but they couldn't see because the needle had gone all the way into his knee.

By the time they figured out what had happened, the wound had become infected and the damage had been done.

A portion of the needle was finally removed, but from that time on, his leg never developed the way that it should have from the knee down.

So, he had 1 leg that was normal, and 1 leg that, well, just wasn't.

Now, you can imagine working on a farm, that proved to be very difficult.

There's a lot of hard work that goes on on a farm.

It's not easy work and with 1 bad leg it was very difficult for him.

He did his very best, and by and large, he did pretty well, but it was a challenge.

Now, where he had some difficulties physically, he excelled mentally.

He scored high all through his schooling years and eventually decided that he wanted to go to college.

But when he decided he wanted to go to college, he knew that that leg was going to be a problem for him.

And so he made a decision that not too many teenagers have to make.

He made a decision to have his leg amputated.

So he took a train off to Chicago, Illinois, had the amputation done, went through some rehabilitation, and then went off to college.

Now that's not an easy subject, but he did very, very well.

He eventually was accepted into medical school and went on from there to do his residency at a hospital called the Mayo Clinic.

I don't know how many of you have heard of the Mayo Clinic before.

I figured more than you have heard of Van Wert, Ohio, right?

It's 1 of the most prestigious hospitals in the world.

And when he did his studies to become a doctor, he became what's called a thoracic surgeon.

A thoracic surgeon operates on everything within the chest cavity, heart surgery, lung surgery, esophageal surgery.

When he finished his residency, he came back to Ohio and opened up a practice where he practiced surgery for 40 years.

And during the course of his 40 years of practicing surgery, he was very successful.

He performed thousands of operations inside the chest cavity and never lost a single patient.

And actually, if you stop and think about it, it's a decent accomplishment for a one-legged farm boy from Van Wert, Ohio.

Frederick Miles has a last name that I haven't shared with you yet.

Frederick Miles Flickinger was my grandfather.

And he taught me a lot about what we're talking about this morning, and that is perseverance.

The importance of sticking with something, despite the challenges, despite the difficulties.

And as we are looking up toward Jesus' return, we need to make sure that we are ready from now until he returns in order to be ready to meet him when he does come, amen?

So let's take a look at a few stories in the Bible that will give us some encouragement, some hope, some examples of perseverance that we can learn from.

I'll invite you to turn in your Bibles to the book of Mark, Mark chapter 7, and we're going to find our first story about perseverance in the Bible.

This is the story of the Syrophoenician woman.

Mark chapter 7, beginning in verse number 24.

In Mark 7, verse 24, it says here, speaking of Jesus, from there he arose and went to the region of Tyre and Sidon, and he entered a house and wanted no 1 to know it, but he could not be hidden.

For a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him, and she came and fell at his feet.

The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth, and she kept asking him to cast the demon out of her daughter.

But Jesus said to her, let the children be filled first, for it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the little dogs.

And she answered and said to him, yes Lord, yet even the dogs under the table eat from the children's crumbs.

Then he said to her, for this saying go your way, the demon has gone out of your daughter.

And when she had come to her house she found the demon gone out and her daughter lying on the bed." How many of you have read that story before?

As you read through that story, does anything make you feel uncomfortable about that story?

Here's a woman whose child is possessed by a demon and she comes to Jesus and says, please heal my child.

He says, no I'm not going to heal your child.

One Little Thought

I wish I could move around more and meet with more people, but I've been trying to get rid of this, whatever this is, and trying to get a little sleep as well, which has been a blessing to me, my wife and I both.

My wife is in worse shape than I am, so you don't see her very well.

I hope she gets better before the weekend is over.

Heavenly Father, We're here to hear the Word of God.

And we're anticipating that your Holy Spirit will come down and reach into every heart.

We want to become more and more like Jesus all the time, so that in due time, the Holy Spirit can give us, come down in latter rain power, and the whole world be enlightened with the glory of the character of God as it is seen in His people.

Thank you for hearing us tonight and speaking through me.

And we're going to read verses 1 to 4 in Genesis chapter 3.

Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.

And he said unto the woman, Yea, has God said that ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden.

And the woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of all the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said you shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.

And the serpent said unto the woman you shall not surely die.

So what did the serpent just just do here?

Now if you think about it long enough you come to realize that a lie is just a thought and this is what the serpent did he implanted a thought in Eve's head and it caused her to ponder It caused her to think in terms, could it be?

And in order to reinforce what he has been saying, we go to verse 5.

And Satan says here, "'For God does know that in the day that you eat thereof, "'then your eyes shall be opened, "'and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.'" Wow, it's really a wonderful promise.

Do you know what makes a temptation a temptation?

What is it in a temptation that makes it tempting?

Do you know that in every temptation there is a promise?

If there was no promise in the temptation there would be no temptation.

I mean what would be the point of a temptation when you don't gain anything out of it?

So Satan has to take whatever it is he's offering and make it so attractive that you think this is better than anything else and I would rather have this than that and and and in the end it's a lie.

God makes promises in the Bible and Satan makes his promises.

What's the difference between the promises of God and the promises of Satan?

Do you know that at this point when we begin to realize that a temptation is filled with promise and every promise is a lie.

Then we begin to think, well what's the point of falling for the temptation?

And if we realize that then we wouldn't be so easily drawn away from truth to lies.

And I hope, I hope we're making sense here.

And besides that, he comes to Eve and he makes a promise.

And now I have to think, well, what in the world?

What is it that he could promise Eve that she would be tempted to leave what she has to go for what He is offering.

I mean, there was nothing missing in her life.

She was the most beautiful woman in the world.

Albeit, she was the only woman in the world.

But I do believe that when God created this woman, she was probably the most beautiful woman that's ever existed.

And she was also married to the manliest man in the world as well.

And besides that, they were holy and they were living in paradise.

When I think of Living in paradise, because I come from Northern Canada, I think of places like in the Mediterranean where there's palm trees and nice beaches and the water is like bathtub hot or warm anyway and everything is just, the fruit is just out of this world and you can rest and everything is great.

Well, I bet you paradise for them was a lot better than that.

There was only 1 thing in the whole universe that Eve did not have.

Yeah, There is nothing He could offer her.

And He promised her that she could be as Gods if she ate this fruit.

We're in chapter 3 still looking at verse 6.

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and the tree to be desired to make 1 wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also to her husband with her, and he did eat.

So there you have it in response to 1 thought.

Adam and Eve decided that they would throw the whole human race under the bus.

So with that, Satan, I can imagine anyway, I don't know where this would be written, but I can imagine with that, that Satan went running over to God and said, now wait a minute here.

You said that if in the day that they eat thereof they will surely die.

And I don't know what Satan understood but apparently he didn't understand that God had an alternative plan and that he could put in motion the plan of salvation and that's what he did.

So he began to harass Adam and Eve with feelings of guilt and shame and sorrow because they could see all around them the leaves were falling off the trees.

They're having to kill a picture for themselves, the Messiah that would come in the future.

They must have been filled with self-recrimination all the time.

And friends, Satan has been doing the same thing over and over and over again with every individual in the world.

Now, there's no doubt in my mind that some people experience more guilt than others.

Some people do worse things than do others.

And at 1 time or another, we're going to find ourselves in the place where we have done something wrong.

And we are filled with guilt and shame and we feel bad we we beat ourselves up because it went that way so when you feel guilt when you have fallen how do you deal with that situation Do you know that the most natural way to deal with the thing, I think it just comes naturally, that if we have fallen and we feel guilty, then we think that the best approach to this thing is to stop doing the behavior.

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