Too many have fallen prey to the shysters and frauds of financial world, but the greatest fraud of all will be that which robs the person of his or her eternal inheritance. Learn the two things you and I need to know to grow in grace and be assured of the promise of eternity.

<p>Too many have fallen prey to the shysters and frauds of financial world, but the greatest fraud of all will be that which robs the person of his or her eternal inheritance. Learn the two things you and I need to know to grow in grace and be assured of the promise of eternity.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Dalton SDA Church

How to Grow Spiritually

Chester Clark

Knowing Better

Leaping for Joy

Light in the Darkness

Giving Up, Giving All

Looking to Jesus

Thank you so much for that ministry and music.

Isn't it a wonderful thing to be precious in the sight of the God of the universe?

I'm so thankful that God's love is unconditional and everlasting.

You know, last week we were talking about the ministry of Jesus, and we were talking about some of the ways He ministered physically, spiritually, socially, emotionally, and how We need to both be ministered in these same ways and also to minister in these same ways, as the Church of God here in Dalton.

I believe that if God's people are here being fed in these ways, that we'll be able to touch many lives and impact many for the kingdom of God.

So today I just want to begin a study with you on how we can grow spiritually, how we can be ministered to by God spiritually.

Now there are simple answers and there are involved answers.

I like simple answers, and I think ultimately we can boil the whole plan of salvation just down to a few words, a few thoughts, But sometimes it's good for us to sort of look at it from different perspectives, right, for us to learn from different angles.

And for some of us, the rehearsing of the gospel is old news.

For others, it may be new news, but for none of us, should it grow old or boring, right?

Because we love to tell the story of Jesus and His love.

Today we're going to look at how to grow spiritually.

I want to start by sharing a story that might help us illustrate our point.

Some of you may have heard of these before.

They're called international reply coupons.

The idea was you could buy a coupon that could be used in any of the countries that were part of the United Postal Union.

It could be sent anywhere in the world, any 1 of those countries.

They could buy stamps that was good for international postage, and they could reply to your letter or offer or whatever it was just by cashing in this universal reply coupon.

There was a man by the name of Carlo Pietro Giovanni, and Carlo was an Italian immigrant.

And Carlo looked at this coupon and he thought, you know what, back in my native Italy, I can buy these coupons cheaper than I could buy the stamps in U.S.

So all I need to do is write a letter to my friends back in Italy and have them, send them some money, have them buy a whole bunch of coupons and have them send them over to me.

I'll go to the post office and cash them in for stamps and make money.

And this was Carlo's get rich quick scheme, you might say.

He actually borrowed some money and sent them over to family members and had them send the coupons back to him.

He began then to go, well, when he went to the post office and tried to cash them and he found out there was a lot of red tape he had to go through.

It wasn't quite so easy just to walk away with the cash, but nonetheless he began to go to his friends and promise them that if they would loan him their money, he would give them 50% return on their investment in 90 days.

Now that sounds like a pretty good return, right?

And so people began investing, and sure enough, he would give them money back.

And people began mortgaging their homes to invest with Carlo.

They began to empty their life savings to invest with Carlo.

A Boston financial writer wrote an opinion that it couldn't be possible.

There's no way he could be getting 50% return on this legally.

Carlos sued the writer for libel and won a $500, 000 settlement.

The Boston Post ran a favorable article about Carlos' company and the 50% return, and just below the Post article was an advertisement for a bank offering 5% return on savings accounts.

Here's this company offering 50% in 90 days and a 5% annual interest rate, which is better.

The next morning at 6 a.m., thousands of Bostonians were lined up outside of Carlo's office, wanting to give him their money.

In fact, on that 1 day, this was in 1920, on 1 day he took in 3000000 dollars from the individuals there in Boston.

The story spread like wildfire across the country and people could not get their money to Carlo fast enough.

The problem was Carlo wasn't buying international reply coupons.

In fact, 1 astute investor began to calculate, and he calculated that for Carlo to have invested this much money in IRCs, there would have to be in circulation in all the member countries, something like 160 million investment international reply coupons.

In actuality, there were only 27, 000 in the whole world that had been printed.

And so when the fraud was exposed and the company collapsed, investors lost $20 million in 1920 dollars, and 6 banks collapsed.

Carlo's full name, your last name you may be best familiar with, Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tobaldo Ponzi.

I'm glad they just call it Ponzi schemes, right?

Ponzi's scream became synonymous with financial schemes that robbed Peter to pay Paul.

You know, the people had genuine interest, right?

A genuine desire to grow their finances, to grow their financial investment.

What was it that they didn't know that allowed them to be taken by this Ponzi scheme?

What was it that if they had known would have prevented such a catastrophe for many of them?

Well, I believe that if they had known 2 things, if they had known where their money really was, and if they had known the character of the man they trusted, they would have been spared from this type of a loss, don't you think?

If they had known where their money really was, and who the man they were trusting really was, they could have been spared of this disaster.

So today I just want to look with you at how we can know better.

How we can, if we want to grow spiritually, right?

What knowledge is necessary for us to also grow spiritually as well.

I think that we need to know 2 things as well spiritually today.

I think that we need to know who we really are, and also we need to know who Jesus really is.

So let's pray together as we begin our study.

Father in heaven, thank you so much for promising to be here by your Spirit.

We want to become the spiritual men and women that you call us to be.

So, Father, I just want to pray that you'll help us as we study, that your presence might be here to guide our thoughts, that He might be our teacher today, and we thank you in His name.

The first thing I believe we need to know is we need to know ourselves better.

Some people might say, well I know myself pretty well, right?

Others of us, maybe if you've been married for a long time, your spouse knows you pretty well, right?

Maybe some of you young people know that your parents know you pretty well, right?

Maybe sometimes our parents know us better than we wish they knew us.

But the point that I'm making this morning is that we need to know ourselves, right?

Here is the text that begins to make us ponder this truth.

The Bible says in Jeremiah 17 verse 9, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

Who can know it?" Now some of us are gonna say, well I know who I am, I know how my Christian life is, I know I'm not a Christian.

Are there people that just straight up know they're not spiritually growing, they're not doing well spiritually, is that true?

Yes, there are people who are in that condition and they are very aware of it, they're very honest about it.

Now being honest about it doesn't save us, does it?

But at least they're not hypocrites, amen?

And sometimes we at least appreciate and value honesty.

There are those who will tell me, and I've had many tell me, look, I'm not a Christian.

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Series

How to Grow Spiritually

Knowing Better

Transcript

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