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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Sebastien Braxton

Busy Here and There

I bring you greetings from Lagos, Nigeria.

I was recently there for what they call a Mission Empowerment Conference.

This particular conference is essentially designed to empower the youth there in Lagos and around different parts of Nigeria to get involved in mission with training and various seminars and so I did a seminar there entitled the 3 angels messages my culture and my worldview I did not choose the title it was given to me I probably wouldn't have chosen that title, but it was a nice thing to be able to go through the 3 Angels messages with them and look at some relevance to today as we look at the trends of technology and things like that and how we can actually use the 3 Angels messages and leverage them through these various forms of media.

But this weekend I wanted to talk to you about something that's very close to my heart.

And having been a young preacher for a long time, I don't know if I'm still considered a young preacher, but I found that over the years, I've also had the privilege of not just preaching the Bible, but I've also had the privilege of teaching the Bible.

And not only I've had the privilege of teaching the Bible, but I've had the privilege of counseling with young people one-on-one, sitting down and listening to their very personal, pointed problems, the things that they probably are not open to even sharing on the same deep level with their friends as they might share with me in a conversation.

And I consider that to be a privilege because when you look in the Bible in the Gospel of John, Jesus values one-on-one encounters.

In fact, Ellen White uses the terms that Jesus had a faithful regard for the 1 soul audience.

She says he reasoned with the woman at the well, even greater as if he was reasoning with kings.

This is how Christ viewed one-on-one encounters.

And the privilege of being able to reach that 1 soul was the avenue to reaching thousands of souls.

And through my years, which are not that many, but they are getting up there, of preaching and counseling, I found that 1 of the issues that always seems to emerge outside of relationships of course and God's will for your life that 1 is eternally present It will always be present until the Lord comes.

But it's been the struggle that people have in knowing God.

Maintaining the true undergirding of the Christian life and what it means to be a Christian.

Well, the reason I ask what a Negro spiritual is, because some people just assume that a Negro spiritual is just a song that was sung by slaves.

But they don't understand why we call it a Negro spiritual.

It could just be a song that was sung by slaves.

But this idea of a Negro spiritual had to do with the fact that these slaves were not Christian when they became slaves.

They did not believe in the God of the Bible.

But as they were slaves, they were always allowed to go to church because of course the slave masters believed that, oh, they're not even Christian, they don't believe in Christ, they don't believe in the Bible and the gospel, and this is my responsibility as a dignified master to bring them the knowledge of the gospel, right?

Why you enslave them and whip them throughout the week.

And so they would let them go to church to listen to the preacher preach.

And as these slaves would go to listen to these preachers preach, and the preacher was white, he was not black, And he'd be preaching these stories that the slaves began to resonate with in their own life.

He'd start preaching a story about Israelite slaves in Egypt, where their burdens were heavy, where they were being beaten by their slave masters.

They began to understand and value Moses.

So you have the Negro spiritual, go down, Moses, or wade in the water.

Because as they were singing these songs, they began to communicate hope to each other as they went through their hard labor.

They began to resonate with Christ, who was also oppressed and beaten, misunderstood.

But you know, 1 of the songs that came as they grew in their faith, and generation would lead to generation, And so they started being raised to believe in God, even though they couldn't even read the Bible.

So they would listen to the stories from their parents.

And eventually, after a couple of generations of this, the song emerged that we now call a Negro spiritual that says, Lord, I want to be a Christian in my heart.

Think about that song, Not sung in the hymnal, but sung by a slave.

Because even though he's not killing his master, right?

Even though he's not physically abusing him for waking up his wife in the middle of the night to rape her.

That's not what the slave is doing, but the slave is recognizing that as he looks at Christianity, it's not enough for me just to pick my cotton, do my labor around the house and just say, well, I didn't put my hands on the master.

We didn't rebel and decide to rape his wife.

But even though we may not have done those actions that doesn't make us a Christian.

In order for us to truly be Christian, even as slaves who are oppressed, suffering the things that we are suffering we must learn to be a Christian in our hearts and it began to be the prayer of the slave Lord I want to be more holy in my heart.

Lord I want to be more loving in my heart.

Lord I want to be like Jesus in my heart.

You know that song is in the consecration section of the hymnal.

Say, when it's time to do devotion, to seek the Lord, This song is really the prayer of devotional time.

We do not seek God so that we can behave well.

And that sense of being begins in the heart.

So I don't wanna talk to you about behavior as much as I wanna talk to you about your heart.

The Bible says that as a man thinks in his heart so is he.

Who you are, who I am is not so much the sum of our activities as much as it is of what goes on in our hearts.

Because if you're not a Christian in your heart, you're not a Christian at all.

To adopt another term, Sister White says in the desire of ages that with Christ it is always hard work.

This is where Jesus focuses on the heart.

And so this weekend I want to spend time talking about the heart.

The Bible warns us that we should keep the heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.

If you and I can allow Christ to maintain control of the heart, we shall win every battle outside.

So my first message is really to address 1 of the things that I feel leads to the neglect of the heart And that is the issue of busyness.

I want to share some interesting facts with you.

You can take your Bibles and go to 1 Kings chapter 20.

I want to share with you 8 facts about busyness in America.

And since we are here in America, you might resonate with some of these.

The first fact about busyness in America is that we are the most stressed out nation and this is what they say.

They said that commuters, these are people who drive in traffic.

Anybody who lives in California knows about traffic.

I learned about traffic the first time I came to LA.

Several years ago I came to preach in Los Angeles And I was picked up by my ride only to discover that as I got into the car in front of LAX airport that we did not leave the airport for the next 2 hours because of the traffic.

You know the hugs and, all right, that was so great to see for 2 hours.

In the car, unable to move, police yelling at individuals.

Now of course you're thinking, Sebastian, you have to speak at 7 p.m.

And you think you arrived at 2 o'clock, plenty of time, only to find you spent the first 2 hours at the airport.

So now the people started getting stressed out.

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Busy Here and There

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