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Living Water

The Unhindered Gospel

Daniel Pel

Something or Someone?

A Pattern or a Person?

A Perfect Mirror

What Does God Remember?

A New Identity

Dying in Order to Live

God’s Sustaining Power

Reality Check!

Father in heaven, we're so grateful to be here and I want to ask for your Holy Spirit to guide me now.

Your Son promised that when we ask we will receive, and Lord, we ask because we know that in and of ourselves we do not know what to say, we do not know how to present you rightly, but Lord, as we surrender our lives to you, we just invite your Spirit to take control.

May your Spirit speak to each 1 of us individually here, and may we discern your voice, I pray, in your precious name.

All right, well, I would like you to turn to Romans chapter 8, and we're going to begin our time together in Romans chapter 8.

We're going to go to some other verses as well this morning.

I want you to take notice of Romans chapter 8 and verse 28.

This is a very well-known scripture to many of you, maybe some of you know it by heart.

You have oftentimes quoted, perhaps in difficult circumstances, to gain encouragement.

Romans chapter 8 and verse 28 says, and we know that all things work together for good to those who love God and to those who are called according to his purpose.

For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Moreover, whom he predestined, these he also called, and whom he called, these he also justified, and whom he justified, these he also glorified." We're going to see if we can understand a little bit better what Paul is saying here, what the Spirit is saying here.

And I believe that these verses, what it does when we read them and when we contemplate them, it really gives us this bigger picture.

Sometimes we think of the gospel as merely events in our lives, maybe even a moment in our lives that we can look back and say, okay that's where the gospel began to work in my life, and we put a date to it or a time to it.

Or we look back and we say, well, there was at this moment in my life that I had this experience with the gospel.

But I believe that as we take a bigger look, a bigger picture of the gospel, we will find out that it extends even beyond our lives.

The gospel started with God thinking of you even before you were born.

So God has a larger plan, a bigger picture, And I think that if we can tap into that picture, if we can grasp it a little bit better, we will see and realize that God's sustaining power has been with us and upon us all throughout our lives and that He has allowed circumstances to shape us and mold us to bring us to Himself.

Sometimes when I hear people share their testimony, and I know that they mean it well, and I've probably used this language myself, we will say things like this, I went through this and this and this experience, and then I found God." How many of you have heard that?

Or maybe you've even said that yourself, I found God.

But actually, to be more correct and more scriptural, we should say God found me.

As a matter of fact, God has revealed Himself in many ways, and He has been pursuing you.

And so when you came to the acknowledgment of God, He knew you long way before that, before you were born.

You're in the mind of God, you existed in His mind.

And so to grasp this larger picture of the Gospel will, I believe, really help us to experience a paradigm shift in our understanding of who God is.

God appointed the very place where I was born, the circumstances around my birth.

He knew where I was born, how I was going to grow up, the things that were going to happen in my life, and God wants to shape all these circumstances in order for me to come to the point where I say, God, I want you in my life.

I want to just, I want to stop for a moment and allow you, you have been pursuing me all of my life, I want you to take a hold of me." And so it's not us finding God, but it's God finding us.

And I believe if you look back for a moment on your story, on your experience, on your life, you will be able to trace the hand of God as He's been pursuing you, as He wants to take a hold of you.

In the book of Acts chapter 17 when Paul is talking to the Athenians, He says to them that God knew the boundaries of their dwellings and their appointed times.

In this language, Paul is really saying that God knew where they were born, when they were born, the circumstances around their lives, and all for the purpose that they would, and he used that language in Acts chapter 17, that they would grope after him, that they would feel after him, that they would search after him.

And maybe when you just think about the circumstances of your life, maybe if you look a little bit more careful you will find the fingerprints of God all over it.

You know I think of my own life, I was born in the country of New Zealand.

I don't have a Kiwi accent, I apologize for that.

But I grew up in New Zealand, but I was only 10 years old when my parents, They moved back to Holland.

When they got married, they decided that they wanted a whole new start, a new beginning.

And my mom had watched once a nature documentary on TV about the country New Zealand and she thought it was absolutely stunning and so she said to my dad, why don't we go to New Zealand?

And when you look at the globe you will find out that Holland is about as far away from New Zealand as you can get.

You know, you just stick a pin through the earth and you end up in New Zealand.

Many people call it the end of the world.

And as I said here at opening night of the week of prayer, I said, people call it the end of the world, but those that are from New Zealand know better because it's the beginning of the world.

And so I was born in New Zealand, I grew up in New Zealand, and my father, he was a carpenter and he worked and he sustained our family.

But some difficult times came, and a couple of the contracts that he had, they fell through, leading into a very, very difficult situation for my family, to the very point where there was really, they couldn't pay their bills anymore, and they were looking into going back to Holland.

But at that time, and this is such a pivotal moment that I see in my own story of how God intervened and how God showed his love in a very, very real way to my family.

Because it was just prior to them returning to Holland that there was a Christian family, a Seventh-day Adventist family, that said, you know, we want to help you to get back on your feet and so we would like you to come into our home and you can stay here when you've had as long as, so that you can figure out things and that you can just look into how you're going to move forward from here.

And so as a family we moved in with them and it was really like an anthill because I have 4 siblings and this other family had 5 kids, and so you can imagine what that's like.

But we lived there for a couple of weeks for a few months I believe it was, And during this time we saw practical Christianity put on display.

And we talked this morning in the Sabbath school about, you know, it's 1 thing with all the cliches of Christianity, but it's another thing when you actually know Him, when you know Jesus.

And how do you know Him when you see Him on display in the lives of others, amen?

And here we, our family could see a display of Christianity, of practical Christianity in helping us as a family to figure out what we're going to do next.

And eventually my, as a family we moved back to Holland and that's where I spent most of my teenage years, in the Netherlands.

When I came to my late teen years, I had the conviction very strongly that I wanted to serve God for the rest of my life.

Now, as a teenager I really had been living my life with 1 foot in the world and 1 foot in the church, you know what that means?

You know, going along in the routine of the church life, but also going along in the routine of what a teenager does in this world.

But it came to a point that I really made the decision, Lord, I want to give you everything.

I want my life to have meaning and purpose." And so I went to this camp meeting, and it really stirred my heart when I heard these messages about, also about the shortness of time, and I thought to myself, you know, yeah, we are living in solemn times, and I want to be a proclaimer of the Gospel.

Now this decision matured as I came into my early 20s, and as I shared with you earlier in this week of prayer, I was baptized when I was 20 and I decided to go to a missionary college, a mission school which was in Scandinavia at that time.

And I will never forget that when I made that decision to go to this mission college and to actually stop the education that I was in at that time in order to go there and to be prepared to do whatever the Lord wanted me to do, that people in my church thought that I was just going a little bit too far.

They thought that, you know, okay it's 1 thing for you to be, you know, engaged in Christianity, in the church maybe, perhaps you can do a Sabbath school or you can do this, but for you to really just stop your education right now and go to this mission college and then what is going to happen after that, how are you going to live your life, what are you going to do, That's just a little bit too radical.

And so I would hear that even from church members that, you know, that's something you shouldn't do.

And, of course, from family members I would hear, you know, how are you going to, how are you going to, what are you going to do after that school?

And where are you going to go, and how are you going to pay your bills, and is there any future in that idea that you have there?

And I remember very well, and there were a few, a handful of people that supported me in this, and I remember very well that I started even doubting if this was a wise decision to take.

As a young man to basically go and to go to this school that I knew very little about, but I did know that it was a preparation to share Christ, and that's what I wanted with my life.

I thought to myself, is it true that I'm radical?

Is it true that I've lost the plot, that this is not something that I should do with my life?

And it was at that point that I really prayed to the Lord, and I prayed that the Lord would speak to me.

And I said, God, you've got to give me a promise, an assurance that I'm on the right track.

That I know that this decision is not something that I have made but that you want for my life." And I prayed earnestly and I said, God, I have your word here, I believe it, I want to build my life upon it, and now you need to speak to me.

And I took my Bible, And I don't recommend that you do this always, but this worked for me at this moment, and God, you know, He winks at the times of ignorance.

And I said, I take my Bible, I'm going to open it up, and you've got to give me something.

And so I open it up, and I open it up to Luke chapter 12.

And I want to share this passage with you this morning, so you can turn there, Luke chapter 12.

And there might be moments in your life where you say, you know, there was this verse in Scripture, there was this passage in Scripture that sustained me through that moment.

Perhaps you've even put a date besides that verse.

You say, you know, this passage, I read it again and again and I can't just remember how it sustained me, how it helped me, how it encouraged me.

Well here in Luke chapter 12 was just such a passage that really sustained me in ways that I can't even begin to comprehend.

Luke chapter 12, and take a look at verse 22.

Now the moment that I opened up the Scriptures and I read this, I was worrying like crazy.

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Series

The Unhindered Gospel

God’s Sustaining Power

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Eye Care

Touched by Grace: Reflecting Christ Through Practical Community Eye Care

44m

Seminars

Origins of Self-Supporting Work

1h 9m

Faith and Reason in the Christmas Story

35m

These Things We Know

These Things We Know: God is the Finisher

49m

Plenary

Shopping for Pearls

53m

The Last Supper

20m

As We Near The End Of Time

31m

Throne Exchange

30m

Self Forgetfulness

36m

Pathfinder Parade

21m

Harnessing the Health Professionals in Your Church

9m

Why We’re Still Here

53m

Sound Doctrine