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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Fay Kazzi

The 4 P’s: Predicament, Praise, Purpose, and Potential

And I am currently about to graduate from an MS in Nutrition and Dietetics here at Loma Linda.

It was a wonderful experience, and I really was thrilled to be here.

So I decided to share something that's very near and dear to my heart.

And it's an experience that I had a couple of years ago.

But I think what's more valuable than that experience is the parallels we can find in the Bible that reflect that.

And so I'm going to go share that part in the Bible, then I'll share my testimony.

The title of my presentation is predicament.

It's predicament, praise, purpose, and potential.

Predicament, praise, purpose, and potential.

And these kind of come in consecutive order.

The predicament comes before the praise and the praise comes before the purpose and the purpose comes before the potential.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this beautiful Sabbath day and for this time that we can come and share the things that you've done in our lives.

I pray that you'll bless each soul here and I pray with all my heart that I will be hidden and your truth and your precious words will be heard, and that all this will be to your glory.

We ask this in your holy name, and we thank you.

So I'm going to ask you all to turn to 2 Chronicles chapter 20.

This is about the story of King Jahashafat.

Now, when I usually mention the story, a lot of people don't really know what I'm talking about, but just for a raise of hands, who knows the story about King Jahashafat?

Now, I first came across this story right before I started my undergrad.

And it basically was a very encouraging, it really pushed me to do things I didn't think I could do because of this simple story.

So I'm not gonna read through the whole thing, I'm just going to give you just an idea at the beginning and then I'll stop at a couple of verses and comment on them to see how it relates.

So King Jehoshaphat lived in the era a little bit after the exile from Egypt and during the beginning of the settling in Canaan.

The thing that he did that's so interesting is that he reacted to a problem that he had in a way that normally people don't react to when they have a problem.

Before I get into that, I want to first just stop at, You know how I mentioned the word purpose.

And they found out that in the past 2 decades, the rate of suicide went up from 4% to 62%.

And so they were so stunned with these crazy statistics that they did the research and everything in studies to find out why.

And the main reason they found why these suicide rates were going up is because of lack of purpose.

People didn't understand why they were on this earth.

As a result, when things went bad, they didn't understand what they could possibly do to make it work or to make it better.

And if you look at the definition of purpose, it's the reason for which something is done or created.

If you don't have a reason for why you are created, your life is basically miserable.

If a person doesn't know who God is, doesn't know what God is, doesn't know that they have a role in the great controversy, that they have a role to vindicate the name of God, they can lead a very miserable existence.

It's a difficult, unpleasant, or embarrassing situation.

It is the expression of gratitude and admiration.

We already said what purpose was, now potential, latent qualities or abilities that may be developed and lead to usefulness.

Now keep these 4 Ps in mind as we go along.

So King Jehoshaphat, he started reigning at 35.

So basically, what happens to King Jehoshaphat is that he has his army, and they're going to war.

And then what happens is that the Ammonites and the Moabites and Mount Sur, another group, so 3 groups gathered together to come against King Jahashafat, to utterly destroy him.

Now we know it was a much bigger group or company than his own group because if you notice in verse 2 it says, And there came some and told Jehoshaphat, saying, there cometh a great multitude against thee from beyond the sea on this side Syria.

And behold, they be in Hazaz-zontamar, which is in Gedi.

So the point is, if it was a normal-sized group, nobody would come say, oh, a great multitude's coming.

The fact that somebody had to come say a really big multitude is coming is safe for us to assume it's a lot bigger than his group, right?

So his natural reaction was, of course, he feared.

But then he did something I really am amazed by, and if you jump down to verse 6, he does the following.

So here he is, big huge group coming against him, he's an inexperienced young king, and here he has to fight against this other army that's coming against him and notice his first reaction when it comes to dealing with the Lord.

He said, and O Lord of our fathers, wait sorry, verse 5 and verse 6, And Jehoshaphat stood in the congregation of Judah and Jerusalem in the house of the Lord before the new court, and said, O Lord God of our fathers, art thou not the God in heaven?

And rulest thou not over all the kingdoms of the heathen?

And in thine hand is there not power and might so that none is able to withstand thee?

Art not thou God, verse 7, who didst drive out the inhabitants of this land before thy people Israel and gavest it to the seed of Abraham thy father forever?

In other words, I'd say he's admiring God's characteristics.

He's remembering what God is and who God is.

The predicament was big huge army coming against me.

Now normally, when we do have a problem, this is what we do.

I really thought you were going to be there.

We don't usually go and say, but God, you're so big.

We normally inflate the problem to where it actually gets bigger than God.

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The 4 P’s: Predicament, Praise, Purpose, and Potential

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