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Village SDA Church

Ron Kelly

Facetime

Father, I ask now that as we contemplate Your healing touch on our person and our relationships, that You could do what no 1 else could do, that Your Spirit would be here to teach and to transform.

I pray, Lord, for the hope that only You can give, and I pray for the strength to make the journey that You lead in.

And I ask now, Lord, that as a group, the fragrance of your spirit among us would become more and more evident as we leave this place.

We've just begun a sermon series on healing entitled The Healing Presence of Jesus.

And this morning I want to make a journey into the emotional and relational ability of Jesus to touch and transform, to grow us.

You know, the very essence of who we are is shaped by how we see ourselves.

It's shaped by who loves us and by what we love and who we love.

But love is exactly what's under attack in our modern-day society, the experience, the definition, and the living out of it.

If you have your Bibles, open them up to the book of 2 Timothy, chapter 3.

When we come to signs of the end of the age, it's interesting that Paul will write to the young pastor and tell him what the social diseases of the end of time will be.

We're not immune from these diseases, and we ought to be able to let the Spirit diagnose according to his willingness to kindly point out where we might be trending or maybe where the rootage of our life might be gaining its sustenance.

2nd Timothy chapter 3 says, but realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.

For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious, gossips without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.

And perhaps the crowning evil is, verse 5, holding to a form of godliness, although they denied its power.

I'm going to read a paragraph or 2 out of a book entitled A Place for Truth.

It says 40 to 50% of people, our people in the church, in this case he writes every Sunday morning, 80% according to Gallup when he surveys consider themselves Christians.

But for so many people attending church doesn't seem to make much of a difference Whether or not they're keeping their marriage vows, seeking justice for the poor, caring for the environment, struggling against racism.

How on earth is the most Christian nation among the most violent, has the largest per capita prison population, the highest divorce rate in human history.

We're doing to our children what no society in human history has ever done to its kids.

Social dysfunction is in an escalating pattern which even the secular cannot deny.

Talk to the employer, talk to the teacher, talk to the policeman, talk to the social worker, talk to the counselor, talk to the therapist.

We are living in an age in which there is a dreaded blight on our very person and our relationships.

So I begin this message with this quote from Gospel Workers.

She writes, a formal religion is to be dreaded.

The last thing I want is for our Seventh-day Adventist people to be included in Gallup's poll in the last chapter of A Place for Truth where it appears that a profession of connectiveness is all that's there.

No power, no transformation, no liberation, no security, no security, no sanctuary, no functionality.

Coming to church is a religious activity.

It has the ability to bridge the gap between distance and connection, but it does not have the power by itself to liberate you from the things that are wanting to be unleashed inside of you by this age of liberty, license, and self-destruction.

We're living in an age where nothing's wrong except telling somebody something's wrong.

And if you think we're immune from that as people because we meet inside these walls, it's time to stop and take a serious recalibration of what the gospel actually does.

The gospel actually transforms people and creates new communities of liberty and freedom and health.

She answers the question, for it is no savior.

And this is the advice she gives to pastors.

Plain, this is now she's going to describe how you talk to people.

Preaching, plain, close, searching, practical discourses were given by Christ.

His ambassadors should follow in His example in every discourse.

Some enter the ministry, now she's gonna diagnose the problem, some enter the ministry without deep love to God or their fellow man.

Selfishness and self-indulgence will be manifested in the lives of such, and while these unconsecrated, unfaithful watchmen are serving themselves instead of feeding the flock and attending to their pastoral duties, the people perish for want of proper instruction." We came to church here today to encounter the living God.

We came to church here today to encounter the living God.

We came to church here today to find encouragement from each other.

We came in church here today to find encouragement from God.

We came to church here today because we know it's right.

But is coming here to church today the largest sum of our identity dynamics with Christ.

I was listening to the radio yesterday, interesting piece came on.

Alicia Chang was talking with Ashley Williams, a behavioral scientist at Harvard's Business School.

And the question they were wondering is why many people who care deeply about the climate don't really adopt climate-friendly behaviors.

And so they studied an airport that had nearly 80, 000 employees.

And What they wanted to do is they wanted to get people to carpool, to ride to work together.

The problem was the airport offered free parking, And it appeared that almost every intervention they made was powerless to overcome the people's desire to go to work in their own car by themselves, park in their own place, etc.

We made carpooling really easy by matching people with other employees who lived really close to them.

And what we found is that none of these interventions had any meaningful impact.

So it's a failed experiment, you could say, but they had a very interesting observation.

They started talking about social science.

We're also trying to move away from this social focus on carpooling.

Most carpooling apps in an organization are like, hey, carpooling is a way to get to know your fellow colleagues.

And this next sentence is why I was attracted to the piece so much, because this is what Williams, the British, or I should say the Harvard social scientist says.

Really, What we're actually finding is the last thing you want to do at 7.45 in the morning on your way to work is have a colleague talk to you.

The less you share in common, well, I should say it this way, being friendly and social takes more work than it used to take.

It takes more work to come to church than it used to take.

Because the less we share as a common thought or truth or cause, the less we share as a common experience, the less common love we have for a central figure in our life, in this case Christ, the more work it is to socialize.

And you might be able to sneak in and sneak out.

But every way the devil can find to divide us and take away our common cause and our common belief system makes socializing more like play acting and who wants to play act around anybody it's very uncomfortable.

But pressing through the desert of disconnect requires a common love, a common mission, a common cause to get through the common discomfort of going from being strangers to friends.

Who wants to talk to your colleague at 7.45 in the morning?

Especially if you just barely rolled out of bed in time to wake up and make yourself look presentable and you used a cup of coffee to get you going.

Yeah, You don't feel like being friendly with anybody.

But you know, if you could go to bed on time with Jesus and dread that formal religion, and he could be the centerpiece of your life, and you could wake up and be with Jesus and not need the artificial stimulants and not stayed up so late watching the late night show and laughing at things that aren't funny and medicating yourself with a piece that doesn't last, you might be able to be up in the morning and actually think that writing to work with somebody is an opportunity to build 1 of the most precious things there is to build in life, and that is a friendship, that is a connection for Christ.

The Bible says, how can 2 walk together unless they be agreed, Amos 3.3.

The truth of the matter is, we don't even know what we agree and don't agree on, and the devil's throwing out more to disagree on all the time.

So hanging out with you means I need to be careful what I say and how I act.

Unless the way I act when I'm with you is the way I act when I'm not with you.

And that is I'm being motivated by a love for Christ.

And my behavior is such that this fountain of affection, this fountain of love is flowing through me.

And yes, we all have different temperaments.

Remember, you're talking to somebody whose mother never thought he'd be in this role.

And for some of us being with people is more work.

But is there enough love to overcome that desert of disconnect to where we could actually start to feel comfortable with each other and go beyond that, feel a sense of obligation and care for each other.

The devil's trying to tear us apart, and the more apart we get, the more his agenda can be advanced.

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