GYC SE 2015: Gripped

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GYC Southeast

Steve Bauer

Gripped by Grace

Tonight I get to preach about my favorite topic.

And so if I get excited, pardon me, because I enjoy this very much.

Just to orient you before I officially get rolling tonight, for those who were absent last night, we spent our time on Paul's theology of sin as an enslaving power.

And Thus, while Paul does talk about a law of sin in my flesh, in his dynamic, he doesn't talk so much of us having a sinful nature as much as we are enslaved to something that makes our will and our efforts ineffectual.

And therefore, the solution is not just trying harder and making right choices.

And so we left you on that bad news last night, and Tonight we're going to start bringing the good news and tomorrow is going to be very practical about how to conduct yourself in the middle of temptation when you're in the battle.

And so we're very nuts and bolts more seminary oriented.

I will call his name Fred, and some of my theology majors have heard this story in class, so I don't want to give you PTSD, and I apologize now.

Fred was raised in a good Adventist Christian home.

The kind of Adventist home where you'd have worship every evening, went to church faithfully, good vegetarians, high standards, the whole 9 yards, right?

These were not out there on the progressive edge of newfangled theology.

These were good, old-fashioned Adventist Christians.

Now Fred's a little older than I am, And so he went to the now defunct Pioneer Valley Academy where I went.

And it's a shame now, every institution I've gone through in the Adventist Church through bachelor's degrees now closed.

So I'm not sure what my jinx is, but anyway, done.

He went to Pioneer Valley Academy, fell in with some questionable friends, and it was there that he got introduced to beer.

Went to AUC, Atlantic Union College, which is now closed down, they're trying to reopen it, but we'll see what happens.

He went to AUC, and there was able to get fully addicted to alcohol.

Shortly after graduation, he got a job, married his college sweetheart, and it didn't take very many years for alcohol to ruin his life.

He lost his marriage, custody of the kids, lost his job, etc., etc., etc.

By the time I met him when he was age 50, he had been through 25 detoxes.

Now if he started detox around age 25, 26, that's about 1 a year.

My medical people tell me it's kind of like having varicose veins inside your esophagus and as you drink that irritation, these develop and they get bigger and bigger and eventually 1 of these can rupture and you bleed to death into your own stomach.

If he keeps drinking, he's going to be dead soon.

And all of a sudden, because I had been preaching to them what I've been preaching to you, his sister invited him to church and he starts coming to church.

The question is, why is Fred suddenly coming to church?

Is he coming to church for its message of social justice?

Is he coming to church for wonderful community and fellowship?

He was already getting something like that at the bar, he thought.

Is he coming to church to learn vegetarianism?

So the question is, why is Fred coming to church?

Help to stop the drinking because the counseling, the detox, etc., etc., 25 times he can't stop.

Are you prepared to minister to Fred?" And because of my own experience with slavery to sin, I had something to say, but I couldn't say it right away.

So Fred would come to church, often smelling of beer.

And it's funny, this was a church that was racked with monumental church conflict.

I call it my World War III in Armageddon church in 1 package.

And they were arguing, ironically, over the doctrine of salvation.

For some reason, they didn't get along with each other very well, but they were excellent at handling and accepting evangelistic interests.

They were calling him during the week, you know, staying in touch, praying with him, praying for him.

He's up and down, still trying, you know, up and down, up and down, pretty much down, but coming, they're encouraging him, etc., etc., etc.

I should say, how do we lead them to hope?

I don't think we give them the hope, right?

See a lot of us talk about conversion and sin in the life, but few of us really know what we're doing.

I too grew up in the good Adventist home, a good enough Adventist home that while most of the kids of my church aren't in church anymore, Me and my 2 siblings are active in church.

My brother is an elder, deacon, whatever, in his church in Maryland.

All 3 kids from our family have stayed deeply tied to the Adventist Church and been very active in it because we saw something that worked at home.

But even when you grow up in such an idyllic home, there's a point where you recognize that there's something wrong in your life and you want to fix it.

And no matter how hard you try to fix it, it doesn't want to fix.

And when you're a teenager, the nature of these problems, you don't feel comfortable going to mom and dad, right?

But then there wasn't anybody in my church that I was sure I could go to.

They all seemed to be struggling just like me.

Went away to academy, talked to some week of prayer speakers, right?

They're here today, gone tomorrow, forget who I am, right?

And no matter who I talked to, I pretty much got the same song and dance.

If you just spend enough time with God in prayer and Bible study and so forth, it would just kind of take care of itself.

So I would spend time in Bible study and spend time in prayer and so forth, and it didn't take care of itself.

Now I was groomed for a career in the natural sciences.

So in shorthand, I wanted to be a bird brain, anyway.

And the Lord laid the call to ministry on me in a very unusual way, and I realized I had been arguing since about sixth grade why I ought not to be a pastor.

So I went to Andrews as a freshman to take ornithology, change my major, sent a snail mail home.

We didn't have email in those days of Ellen White and Noah.

And figured that by the time my parents could get a snail mail and mail me back, it would be too far in the semester to be forced to change the program, you know.

Funny thing though is all my bachelor's religion classes and weeks of prayer and whatever else, I still didn't feel effective with my issue.

Gripped by Grace

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