God calls us to follow Him with all our faults and defects. We see this clearly in the choice of the disciples. If not perfection, then what does God require of us? A simple posture of willingness to answer, “Yes, Lord.”

ACF Institute 2017: Never Alone

<p>God calls us to follow Him with all our faults and defects. We see this clearly in the choice of the disciples. If not perfection, then what does God require of us? A simple posture of willingness to answer, “Yes, Lord.”</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Adventist Christian Fellowship (ACF)

Thando Amankwah

Yes, Lord

Let's go ahead and open with a word of prayer.

Our Father in heaven, we're thankful, dear Lord, for the many ways that you have spoken to us today.

We thank you for the ministry of that message and song and the blessed reminder of the grace and love you've extended to us in choosing us before we could even choose you.

And Father, we pray that you would abide with us this evening as we dig into your word, that you would speak to our hearts and our minds, that the Holy Spirit would be in this room this evening to convict us, to comfort us, to encourage us, and that we would be drawn closer, ever closer to Christ.

This is our prayer, and we ask it in Jesus' name.

I'll Speak with you this evening about 1 of my favorite characters in the Bible, namely John the disciple.

John is part of the reason that I am so drawn to the life and the story of the disciple John is that he is referenced in scripture as the disciple whom Jesus loved.

And I find that just so intriguing and so fascinating to want to know what was it about him that made him the disciple whom Jesus loved.

In Acts of the Apostles, page 539, Ellen White writes that John is distinguished above the other apostles as the disciple whom Jesus loved.

He seems to have enjoyed to a preeminent degree the friendship of Christ and he received many tokens of the Savior's confidence and love.

And he lists some of the ways in which John, some of the ways in which John received tokens of Christ's confidence and love.

He was 1 of the 3 who was permitted to witness Christ's glory upon the Mount of Transfiguration.

You recall the Mount of Transfiguration when Elijah and Moses appeared to Christ before his agony in Gethsemane.

John was 1 of the 3 who was present there to witness Christ's glory at that Mount of Transfiguration.

He also was there with Christ in his agony in Gethsemane.

You recall that as Christ entered Gethsemane, he left the 12 and then took the 3, Peter, James, and John with him, even closer, And then he bade them pray for him, and he went further still and prayed with the father.

John was there, close to Christ, in those closing scenes of his agony and Gethsemane.

John was also the 1 to whom Christ committed the care of his mother.

You recall on the cross just before his death, Christ looking with love upon his mother says to John, son behold thy mother and says to Mary behold thy son and he entrusted to John the care of his mother.

And just some of the examples and the ways in which John's friendship with Christ and the way you see just how deeply John loved Jesus and Jesus loved John.

And so he is called the disciple whom Jesus loved.

And part of the reason that I'm so drawn to his story is that though he is described as the 1 disciple whom Jesus loved, John was not naturally lovely of character.

He did not naturally possess loveliness of character.

And I want to take you through the Bible to see a couple of examples of who the disciple John was before his experience with Christ.

Turn your Bibles with me to Luke chapter 9.

I find this so intriguing because you see clearly how James and John, who I described in the Gospels as the sons of thunder, how personally they took the rejection of the Samaritan village.

Even though it was Christ the village was rejecting.

And so their response immediately is, Lord, do you want us to command fire from heaven to come down and consume this entire village?

And I find that a bit comical, because assuming you can actually do that, like John, assuming you find the same disciples in 1 instance struggling to cast out an ill-spirited because of their lack of faith.

And now they're saying, we can command fire from heaven to come down and consume this village.

So, assuming you could even do that, but the point being that you're seeing in John's character evidence of pride and of anger and a very critical spirit, this spirit of criticism, and This idea of just very being prideful and just looking at this village and being how dare they reject Jesus and pretending to be angry that they have rejected Jesus when in real fact it was self-interest and self-honor that he was trying to preserve.

You know, I remember my first time at canvassing, my first week of canvassing.

And so I remember my first week of canvassing.

I knocked on this door, And as soon as this man came to the door, he was stone-faced.

You know, some people who you just meet and they are just not interested in being friendly or in talking to you.

And so I begin my canvas and I say to him, you know, my name is Tando and I have these books and I'm trying to canvas him.

And he looks at me quietly, stone-faced, and then he shouts, get off my porch.

And then he begins to say other things that I cannot repeat to you in your audience here.

But he holds insults at me, and he's screaming at me to get off his porch.

I walked to the street and I just broke down in tears and I was weeping on the streets.

And there was this overwhelming sense of how and why, what did I do to deserve to have this Doris Land in my face, even though in hindsight it wasn't me the man was rejecting, it was actually Christ in the books I was presenting.

The Bible says in Matthew 20 verse 20 to 23, the mother of Zebedee's sons, Zebedee's sons being James and John, came to Jesus with her sons kneeling down and asking something from him.

So she said to him, grant that these 2 sons of mine may sit 1 on your right hand and the other on your left in your kingdom.

James and John's mother comes to Jesus to make a request from Jesus that her sons would be given 1 of the highest honors in Christ's kingdom to sit upon his right hand and his left hand.

And you know, I've always thought when I've read this passage that this request came from their mother.

When I was reading deeper in preparing for this, in their commentary on Acts of the Apostles, she actually writes that it was James and John who urged their mother to bring this request to Jesus.

And her being a loving mother and wanting honor for her sons brought their request to Christ.

You know, we're too ashamed to ask for ourselves because We don't want to appear to be that prideful.

And you see in their presentation of this request a hunger for power and for position.

And for trying to find ways to acquire this position by favoritism.

And a lot of us will sort of recognize and relate to this at some level in some way, shape, or other because There's this something in being in human nature that craves power, attention, admiration, position, and wanting to be at the center of attention.

I found this, in reflecting on this, critically important, and she comments on this passage of scripture in commenting upon John's defects and faults and weaknesses, and then she says, in the kingdom of God, position is not gained through favoritism.

This is a direct rebuke to James and John's request.

Position in God's kingdom is not gained by favoritism.

It is not earned either, nor is it received through an arbitrary bestowal.

The people whom God calls to serve in positions of leadership, the people whom God elevates, it is not that God favors them in some sort of special favor.

It is not an arbitrary bestowal, but it is the result of character.

She says so eloquently and so beautifully, the crown and the throne are the tokens of a condition attained.

They are tokens of self-conquest through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And I think if we remembered this, we would save ourselves a lot of heartache.

A lot of times, whether it is in our church or it is an ACF or it is other capacities, when we look at people and begin to think, how come she has this position?

How come she's doing this and that when I could do that better than him or her?

And the Lord reminds us that in God's kingdom and in God's work, it is character that wins.

In Mark chapter 9, the last 1 I'll look at, verse 38 to 41.

And so John, you know, they'd had experience of seeing somebody who was not necessarily 1 of them, 1 of the 12, 1 of the 71 of the immediate followers of Christ, casting our devils in the name of Jesus, and they forbade him because they said he was not 1 of us.

And reporting this to Jesus, John thinks they've done something good.

And Christ rebukes his narrow-minded, exclusive spirit and his jealousy.

And again, he's just seeing elements of who John really actually was.

You know, and this narrowness of mind, this exclusivity is something that is a little bit of an Achilles heel for us and can be a danger for us as well.

I believe with all my heart that God has given this church the last message of warning for a dying world.

I believe with all my heart that we are the remnant church of Bible prophecy.

At the same time though, this truth that God has given us is not something we are to wear as a chip on our shoulder and to look down on others and say we have the truth and you don't.

That is not why God gave us the truth, friends.

He gave it to us that we might be a blessing to the world, not to exclude ourselves and to pride it over others.

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Yes, Lord

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