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Lansing SDA Church

Wes Peppers

The Sacrifice of Surrender

You know, some people, they wonder why we do certain things in the worship service, but each part of the service has a sacred element to it, in which we have the opportunity for our hearts to be drawn out to the Savior.

When we sing his praises, we must sing as if we truly believe that we are standing in his presence.

And if we believe this, the songs will never grow dull.

We must believe that as we return our tithe and we return our offering, that we were giving back in an act of worship that, which all, recognizing that all belongs to Him.

And So therefore our worship through giving is sacred.

The children's story, you remember that Jesus sat upon the seat and brought all the children to himself and he blessed them, amen?

When we have the special music, It's not focused on a entertainment or audience base, but we are recognizing and within our hearts worshipping our heavenly King.

And when we open the bread of life, we recognize that Jesus is in the midst of our presence because Jesus is the Word, amen?

Therefore our worship, when we have faith in Christ explicitly, it becomes the most wondrous highlight of our week, amen?

And it's not about how entertaining it is, it's not about how glamorous it is, or how everything would suit me, but it's how that it would suit Him.

And if we have that in our hearts and in our minds, then the worship experience becomes 1 as if we were standing before Him in heaven.

How many are thankful this morning that we have the privilege to come every Sabbath to worship.

It's not a routine, it's not the same old thing, but every week is new to experience Jesus.

I want to share with you this morning, I want to invite you actually to 2 things real briefly.

Number 1, our revival series that began Wednesday night.

We will have again our revival series today at 4.30.

So if you have that opportunity to come, I invite you to come.

We have some extra books and we had a wonderful crowd on Wednesday and how many of you, if you were there, you were blessed by that.

And how many of you would recommend others to come if they haven't come?

Secondly, I'm going to be conducting a class for the Grow Michigan initiative.

And it's a training class on how to give Bible studies, how to reach out to others, how to witness.

You have an opportunity to sign up on the door of Becky's office.

But I want to encourage you to hear more about that later.

We're going to talk this morning about the sacrifice of surrender.

How many of you ever realized that to surrender all to Jesus is a sacrifice?

And so we're going to look this morning at the life of a gentleman that you all know named Abraham.

And this is a very powerful passage and we're going to pull a lot of it.

I'm not even going to come close to exhausting all that I could say about it.

But I want to just point out some of the key things that I think are very powerful that I think will impact our lives.

So let's have prayer together and ask the Lord Jesus to be with us this morning.

Father in heaven, Lord, we come before your throne eager to open the bread of life, eager to experience your power through the written word.

And we pray this morning, Lord, that your spirit would descend from heaven, that you would fill our hearts with your presence, Lord.

That our hearts, our minds, our ears, and our Bibles would be open this morning to receive your word and your instruction.

And oh Lord, today we pray that you would convict our hearts, That we would not just come with a dull, deaf ear to hear some more information, some more gargling, but Lord that we would hear the power that is in your word, the power of having faith in Jesus this morning.

So we ask for your blessing and we come in Jesus' name.

There's a story of a man who was a minister and he was a brand new minister in the town that he worked in, kind of like myself, and he was at the church late 1 evening and because he had no car he had to take the bus home back and forth every night and so he got he got on the bus and he gave the driver his money and then the driver gave him back his change.

And he gave him his change and When he got back to his seat, he noticed that as he looked at the change, that there was 10 cents, 1 dime, too much money in his hand.

Now, for most of you who have ever gone to Meijer or Walmart and You stood a very long time in the line, and you get out the door, and as you're going out the door, you see the line to the community, or not the community, but the customer service center.

And there's about 40 people in line, correct?

And you look in your hand and there is a 10 cents too much, what is our natural reaction?

I mean, Meyer brings in millions of dollars, probably every week, and here they've given me 10 cents too much.

I don't really want to stand in that line for a long time to return just 10 cents.

Now some of you would think, wait a minute, Pastor, I would have, I would certainly do that, right?

I would certainly go back, I'd be honest.

Well that was the thought of this young man.

His first thought was to put it in his pocket, but then the Holy Spirit began to convict his heart.

And the Holy Spirit said, no, you need to go and you need to give back that dime to that bus driver.

So he sat and he waited until it was his stop.

And as he got off the bus he said to the bus driver, Sir, you gave me 10 cents too much.

He says, Aren't you the new preacher in town?

At that church down there?" Well, yes I am, he said.

And the bus driver said, you know, he said, my wife and I used to go to church many years ago, about 30 years ago.

And He said, but because of the cares of this life and because of various circumstances, we stopped going to church.

And just 1 week ago today, my wife passed away.

And he says, and it was a wake-up call for me, that I need to put God first in everything I do.

And he said, before I came to your church, I wanted to see if you were an honest man.

The young preacher came off the bus and as the bus drove away, his knees literally buckled underneath him and he had to grab the lamppost to keep from falling.

He said, Dear Jesus, Please forgive me, for I almost sold your son for a dime.

The sacrifice of all, the surrender, or the sacrifice of surrender, at all points and in all places of our lives.

This is the will of God for you this morning.

Turn with me in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 22.

Complete surrender at all times and all circumstances.

How many of you believe this morning that it's important?

How many of you believe that it's important enough to let it be the theme of your life this morning?

And now how many of you are letting it be the theme of your life this morning.

Are you being ruled this morning by the sacrifice of surrender?

We're going to take a look this morning at the life of Abraham.

Now there's a number of verses here, I'm going to read through them.

We're going to just read through this story, we're just going to grit our teeth and if we can't read 18 verses of scripture in the church, we're in trouble, right?

I don't put the verses up there for a reason.

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The Sacrifice of Surrender

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