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Ceres SDA Church

Anil Kanda

The Butterfly Effect

We are going to be jumping into the Word of God.

And I believe that God has something very special in store for you.

But the 1 thing he asks on your part is to have an open mind and an open heart.

So right now, we'd like to go to the throne of God and ask Jesus to give us that right now.

Why don't we bow our heads for a word of prayer.

Father in heaven we thank you so much for your goodness and for your kindness.

Thank you God that we got to see a baptism, 2 baptisms.

We got to see children being dedicated to you.

Thank you for the music and the testimonies.

Lord, you have blessed our church today in a mighty way.

We pray and ask, God, as we open up your word, that these blessings would continue.

And Lord, according to Ephesians chapter 3, verse 20, you would do exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or imagine.

God, I don't want to preach a message or a sermon.

We pray that heaven would pour out its spirit upon this congregation this morning.

It's really good to have our call porters here.

I'll tell you this, I did call portering 1 summer, and I did it in the year 2003.

That's a long, long time ago, and I never forgot.

That 1 summer that I did call portering, It changed my life.

It was something that really pushed me to my limits, and it taught me a unique way of witnessing.

Many times when we're trying to witness to somebody, or we think to ourselves, man, I wish I had something to say to this person right now, and words sort of escape us.

We really don't know how to start the conversation or how to take it towards something very spiritual.

At that moment it's always good to have a piece of literature.

When the spoken word fails, the written word will prevail.

And so it's always good to have some literature in your hand to have some in your car This is always a wonderful thing to do with in fact if you want some literature you go talk to those call porters They'll get some for you All right, the name of the sermon is called the butterfly effect The Butterfly Effect.

I know some people have asked the question, wait a minute, this seems to be the title of a movie, a Hollywood movie.

I actually walked into Kmart yesterday, and I saw The Butterfly Effect movie and The Butterfly Effect Part 2.

And I thought to myself, this is not what my sermon is about.

And so, we're going to understand a little bit about the butterfly effect and how it applies to our spirituality and our lives as Christians.

In physics, there is a theory, and it was hypothesized by a man by the name of Edward Lorenz.

And in 1960, he basically articulated a theory that was already being sort of grappled by a lot of physicists.

And it's this thing called the butterfly effect.

In other words, it describes how there are small actions that can take place that will ultimately lead to very big and massive events taking place.

For example, the analogy that's quite used often is the flapping or the fluttering of a butterfly wing will lead somehow way down in a period of time to a massive hurricane in South America.

And this was an individual, Edward Lawrence, who actually began to understand this theory when he was trying to predict the weather using some calculations.

And because he messed up on 1 of the calculations by a fraction of a percentage, it led to completely different and really different and big results that were far different from the predicted results.

In fact, this is the reason why a lot of meteorologists or weathermen actually have a difficult time predicting weather because of all the variables that are involved that affect weather.

And so this theory basically teaches that in large scale systems, small actions can lead to huge changes.

Small actions or variations can lead to huge changes.

We can see this in the human body, in the circulatory system, how small changes can change, have massive effects.

We can also see this in the stock market, where slight fluctuations will lead to something really big.

And so when we're understanding this butterfly effect, folks, you're going to see that it also applies to spirituality.

In fact, when you study the Bible, you will see that certain individuals, individuals who did, or just committed small actions or did small things, seemingly small things, led to huge and massive and great revolutions.

We're going to be taking a good look at somebody in the Bible where there are great events that can be tied to something that he did.

Something that he apparently did in the Scriptures.

The Bible actually says only 1 verse about this individual, exactly what he did, that had a ripple effect that in these cause and effect over and over again it led to massive changes in the course of human history in the course of human history in fact we're going to take our Bibles and we're going to go to the book of Ezra, the book of Ezra.

We can look at our church today, and we can see that we are part of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

But folks, I want you to understand something.

This church was started by a group of people during the 1800s.

And the reason why they started this Seventh-day Adventist church movement is because of a fulfilled prophecy.

This prophecy actually took place, or the beginning of this prophecy began in the 400s A.D.

And it took place because of what 1 individual did in his influence that he had upon a certain king and His influence led to a great revival In fact this individual Ezra also started 1 of the greatest revivals in all of Israel, it led to the completion of the temple and the walls, the temple and the walls in which the Messiah, the Messiah, the Promised 1 actually walked into.

Just this small action had this ripple effect that changed the course of human history.

Generations later, and what this individual did had no clue what was going to take place as a result of his actions.

Everyone take your Bible, we're going to the book of Ezra, Ezra chapter 7 verse 10.

And watch what the Bible says in the midst of the book of Ezra.

It is this 1 verse that described what Ezra did that had this ripple effect that changed the course of human history, that led to tremendous events taking place.

Watch what Ezra chapter 7 verse 10 says, For Ezra, what's that next word?

Heart to seek the law of the Lord, to do it and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel.

What this man did in this 1 verse led to huge cataclysmic events.

All because he did something that seemingly when we sort of read it in the book of Ezra it really doesn't seem like a big thing but when you actually trace cause and effect you will see it was this particular action that led to so many other things that would take place in history.

The Bible says, for Ezra prepared his, what?

Heart to seek the law of the Lord, to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel.

And that question is, how do we prepare our hearts?

You know, many times we like to think, well, the best thing for me to do, I need to prepare a sermon if I'm going to be preaching.

Before you preach a sermon, before you prepare for the sermon, you need to prepare your heart.

Before you prepare your reports for work, you need to prepare your heart.

Even before you do your homework, you should prepare your heart.

Even before preparing your canvas, you should prepare your heart.

In anything big that you are doing, or even relatively small, there needs to be a very special process of preparing your heart.

If you're going to come up here and do music, even before you prepare your Psalms, You should have a time in which you are preparing your heart.

It was Ezra's action of preparing his heart that led to this massive revival in all of Israel.

It started and completed the temple building.

It helped a group of people who were sitting down, who were refusing to do any more work, who had become sleepy.

And 1 man's revival in his own life led to an entire nation being revived.

I never forgot, I was doing an interview in the conference about a few years ago, they were interviewing me for a pastoral job and you know 1 of the administrators, he really likes to just bring the hammer down and he likes to make sure these sort of young recruits can handle pastoring a church.

And so he looked at me in the midst of the interview as I was trying to pontificate and sound really smart and intelligent, and he says to me in the middle of the interview, what are you gonna do when the church doesn't wanna grow?

What are you gonna do in the church when everybody is asleep and nobody wants to work and do the gospel, or give the gospel?

And I said, well, then he continues, and he continues just to sort of chide me and hit me, and he says, What are you going to do in the church when everybody is asleep and nobody wants to work and do the gospel, or give the gospel?

And he continues just to sort of chide me and hit me.

And he says, what are you going to do when you are stressed out of your mind and you do not feel like working for God, what are you going to do?

And I never forgot, the Lord gave me the right answer.

And it silenced him too, which was really great.

I said, I'll remember what Ezekiel 37 says, that even dry bones can live again.

And he sort of, just like he got punched by the spirit, he stopped and said, that's good.

Folks, I want you to understand something.

It is possible to live again spiritually.

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The Butterfly Effect

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