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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Keala Thompson

Hiding From Intimacy

This morning, I'm going to continue the series of this weekend of intimacy and thirsting for intimacy in our relationships.

And this morning, I invite you to turn to me in the opening text in Genesis chapter 3 verse 8.

And the presentation entitled this morning is Hiding from Intimacy.

So last night we talked about facing the pain.

How many times we seem to run away from our pain and our hurt and our struggles and not want to deal with them or medicating the pain by taking different type of medications or behavioral narcotics to numb the pain that we have.

And this morning we'll be looking at hiding from intimacy.

We are called to mingle with others and to win their hearts before we ask them to follow Jesus.

And I realized, as I passed it in Hawaii, I realized that there are a great need for people to get out and to mingle in friendship evangelism.

And a different type of evangelism I've seen that's out there, I realized that what is much needed more so is actually our members to go out and reach the people and come close to the people's hearts and reach their needs.

And so, you know, I had all these different evangelistic programs and bringing in teams of Bible workers and bringing outside help.

But then I realized that wasn't really solving the problem because what it did was it just let the members just pay and all they had to do was pay and watch everyone else who was paid do the work.

And I realized that there was something missing within the church that our people are not experiencing going out and doing evangelism for themselves.

So it doesn't really solve the problem by having a great program.

So I started to think about what is the real cause of the problems within our churches, within my churches as I was pastoring.

And I want to follow what Ellen was saying, that there needs to be a reasoning from cause to effect.

We want more baptisms, pay for people to come in, let them do the work from the outside.

But what happens to these people when this team of workers leave the churches, which I was doing, and what happens to these people who are not connected to the members?

And within 2 years I saw 1 statistic up to 70% of them end up leaving.

So I'm thinking about it's not solving the root cause, you're dealing with the symptoms, you're just dealing and popping up another drug medication to make it look like it's a church that's doing good and bringing another medication in.

And I felt like in my ministry I wanted to discover what is the root causes in everything that I do.

Like what is really going to solve the real problems I see within the churches.

And I felt, okay, the issue is that there needs to be members, they need to go out and they need to have good intimate relationship and that will bring them in.

I started to have classes on how to have intimate relationships with people, how to make friends, right?

We follow the principles of FORT, F-O-R-T, right?

Recreation, testimony, use these different techniques so members can learn how to make good conversations with people and lead them to Christ.

So I did that and then I realized, wait a minute, there's something even deeper than that because many of these people don't even want to have intimate friends with other people.

And then I realized this is an issue of an emotional health issue.

And I realized that our churches is just like the world, people need emotional healing.

And that hit me like, wait a minute, there's something deep in here.

And then it was a quotation that I found from the Spirit of Prophecy that I shared last night.

Nine-tenths of illnesses has its foundation in the what?

OK, the true health message, healing, is not in the physical, because that's only 10%.

But the true health message was actually in the healing of the mind.

In other words, negative emotions, such as bitterness, anger, unforgiveness, grief, depression, anxiety, all these different negative emotions.

This is actually what is hinging from, I felt, my church members from going on because these are unhealed emotions and not have.

This was, I felt, this was the health message that I felt that I've been searching for my whole life.

I graduated from Weimar College, you know, I was very much into the health message 15 years ago, so I understand it.

I was hitting the 10%, but I was missing the 90%.

And so I swung to a different direction, I felt, in my ministry.

This was a chord I hit that I felt was missing in our church.

And as I go to different places, I realize it was not only in Hawaii, but it's everywhere.

And so this morning, we'll be looking at hiding from intimacy.

A young lady came to our church, had call porter programs.

She came to watch our call porter program with our young people.

So she joined in and she was in the program.

I got a call from my call porter leader that came to, that called me, and she said that this young lady who had come to the program, she was creating a lot of problems.

She wasn't getting along with any of the call porters and giving her a hard time and none of them could actually help her.

They all tried to help her out, but she was giving her a hard time.

She was being mean, she was being cruel, she was not being very nice.

And so I came down to see how it was and I realized that this was actually true.

She was being mean, she was being obnoxious to the other students.

And I felt like, wow, I really couldn't help her at that time.

I left and then later on, about a year later, and I got into the healing message I was invited to speak at a church and it happened to be her church.

And so I preached at this church and I was preaching at the end of this service I called for an altar call and healing, emotional healing found in James chapter 5 where you pray and you anoint with oil.

Yes, it's talking about physical but it also says if you have committed sins, let him confess it and be forgiven him.

So I call for an altar call for healing and this young lady who had made a lot of problems within my call program, she came for the altar call.

And so afterwards I gave Biblical advising and I met with her and I talk with her.

And the reason why I don't have any close friends is because I've built up a wall around my heart because I've been hurt so many times in my past.

That's the reason I don't have any close friends.

You know it really confirmed to me that it's so true.

Because she had been hurt so many times in her heart, she built a wall around her heart.

And it's not like the members needed more classes on how to make good friends and how to have intimacy, right?

If that's clear, let me hear you say Amen.

And so that's the direction I believe God is leading and we'll be studying this morning.

Father, as your word is opened, help us to understand.

So going back to Genesis chapter 3 and we'll be looking at this topic of hiding from intimacy and we're going to go back to the story in Genesis chapter 3 and see what's happening here.

So what did Adam and Eve do when God was looking for them?

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

They hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

So whenever God walked within the garden and Adam and Eve was there, what would Adam and Eve do every time they heard that God was in the garden?

But here was in this circumstance, this is the first time it ever happened.

After that sin, in verse 8, the Bible says here that they hid themselves.

In other words, they ran from the presence of God.

In other words, before that they would get so excited to see God in their heart, they would be beating like, I get to spend time with my creator whom I love because they had an intimate relationship with God, right?

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Hiding From Intimacy

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