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Lansing SDA Church

Wes Peppers

The Fruit of Discipleship- Hearts Like His

Are you experiencing amazing grace this morning?

Have you been set free today by the living Christ which has risen from the dead and now has promised to dwell in you and I.

So I ask you again today, are you free this morning?

Think this morning of the best thing that happened to you this week.

Just a second to think about that very best thing that happened to you today or this week.

Maybe your greatest blessing was that you got fired this week.

Maybe Your greatest blessing was just that your child came up and gave you a hug.

The very best thing, do you have it in your heart, in your mind?

Now thank the Lord for that this morning.

Now I want you to think about the very worst thing that happened to you this week.

For the Lord causes the sun and the rain to fall in the just and the unjust.

How many of you are thankful this morning?

This morning we're going to talk about the fruit of discipleship.

And this afternoon, we have a Sabbath school council meeting.

And how many of you are thankful this morning for your Sabbath school teachers?

Our children's teachers, our adult teachers, those that fill in and teaching.

How many of you are thankful for those folks this morning?

And be sure to give a special thanks to your Sabbath school teacher.

The Lord blesses them and we grow because of them.

And the Lord is good and he blesses us through our Sabbath school teachers.

I'm wanting to make sure that we show thanks every week for those folks.

How many of you are praying for those whom you're going to invite?

How many of you are asking the Lord, Lord open the door for those who I'm going to invite?

This is going to be a powerful thing friends.

We don't just want 60, 000 people coming to Christ in Rwanda.

Praise the Lord that they're coming to Christ in Rwanda, but we want them coming to Christ here, amen?

We're gonna pray together, and I know it's cold, and I know you're probably stiff this morning, but are you awake and alive today?

Let's pray together and I'll invite you to bow your heads.

Please pray for me as we pray to the Lord together.

Father, this morning we just ask your Holy Spirit to now come and touch our hearts, to move us Lord, and to help us understand your will for our lives.

I pray that this morning the Word of God might be preached, that Jesus might be preached, and that our hearts should be drawn to you.

Lord, this is not just another week to pass by, but Lord let our hearts be moved by the power of your word this morning and by the power of your spirit.

You know, this year I'm hoping that we can have a little garden so that our children can see how things grow and how God blesses them with the rain and the sunshine and we want them to experience spiritual lessons through gardening.

How many of you have experienced spiritual lessons through gardening?

I remember when I was in college, I tried my first hand in gardening.

I didn't grow up, my parents didn't garden, my grandparents did, but I never really learned.

I often would help grandma do things, but I never really learned how to do it.

I remember my very first gardening adventure was when I was in college and I got myself a couple of five-gallon buckets and I filled them with dirt and I tried to drill some holes in the bottom of the buckets and then I planted some tomato plants.

And those tomato plants began to grow and they didn't grow very much, but they grew some.

And after some time, I saw some little buds coming out.

And I was just thrilled to death and I thought to myself, man, I'm going to be eating all kinds of tomatoes this summer.

Well, I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I think I forgot to water them half the time because sometimes I'd go out and the little leaves were all withered up and then other times they'd turn yellow because I probably were, I think I was watering them too much.

But finally some little tomatoes sprouted and they were supposed to be about this big and they ended up being about that big.

And I think out of a whole summer I got about 6 little green tomatoes.

Now how many of you would be discouraged as well if you got 6 little green tomatoes out of a whole course of a summer?

Well, I had an opposite experience when we lived in California.

We had this tree that was planted out in our yard and it kind of was over this little ledge that went down into a bottom yard.

And that tree always seemed to get in the way.

And it was right on the edge of the bank, so you could see some of the roots sticking out.

I thought, I've got to do something about this tree.

And I trimmed them back, and I trimmed it up, and I thought, wow, that tree looks really good.

Within a few weeks, we had lived there a couple of years and it had just been a normal tree.

After a few weeks, we noticed that there were buds coming out on that tree.

And wouldn't you know it that that tree was actually an apricot tree.

And we had the biggest harvest of apricots you've ever seen.

We had bowl after bowl after bowl and man I had cut that tree back pretty good, and it just grew and it just blossomed.

There was these massive, just groups, clusters of apricots.

And I called the landlord and he said, he said, I have not trimmed that tree.

He says, I didn't even know it was there.

He said, I never trimmed that tree and in 20 years I've never seen any fruit on it.

I trimmed it once and there all this fruit came out.

And there was some way up in the top of the tree, and I thought, man, it was hard to get them because of the bank.

And so I shook the tree, and all these apricots fell down, and a bunch of them were rotten, but I did get some.

We had a bear that used to roam around in our neighborhood.

And that bear got a whiff of those apricots.

And he came up, and the next thing I knew, the next day, 1 day there were all these apricots in the tree, And the next day, there was nothing.

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The Fruit of Discipleship- Hearts Like His

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