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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

K'dee Elsen Crews

Never Enough

Dear Heavenly Father God, we thank you so much to be here this morning, to be here spending time with you on your special Sabbath day.

And we're here to say yes, yes to spending time with you a day that you set apart to commune with you and to with 1 another.

So God, we're here to listen to your words.

God, I pray that for myself, that you may anoint my lips, that every word that comes from me may be from your very throne.

And I pray that the people here, God, may have open hearts and minds to be able to listen to you and to leave here God with words and encouragement to fulfill those very words.

We ask for your presence now in Jesus' name, amen.

So the title of the sermon is Never Enough, subtitle, Sharing Christ in Times Like These.

Now I was giving a talk not too long ago at a local ASI chapter, and the theme was sharing Christ in times like these.

And as I was preparing, I thought, wow, this is a very common theme, right?

Whether sharing Christ in times like these or work while it is day, Jesus is coming soon, share the gospel, We talk about the third angel's message.

But if you notice, we talk a lot about it, but we struggle still with witnessing.

And we want to continue to go to different seminars and different trainings and maybe we go to AFCO, we go to ARISE, learning more of how to do witnessing.

But I want us to think about what are the barriers, right?

So as a psychologist, I don't have my clients set the same goal over and over again.

That's insanity, trying to do the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

What I do is we pause for a second and we ask, what are the barriers?

What's getting in the way of accomplishing our goals?

And so for a moment today I want us to think about what are the barriers, what gets in the way of sharing Christ, especially when we know we are in Earth's final hours of history, right?

So I want you to take a moment and reflect for yourself.

What gets in the way of me going and sharing?

Whether it's in my work environment, whether it's at school, whether it's when I'm doing Sabbath outreach, what gets in the way of me sharing Christ in times like these?

I'm gonna share 1 main barrier that I see as a clinician, but also in the church.

And so I'm going to use a little bit of psychology because I love to look at things from a mental health perspective.

Some of you may be familiar with cognitive behavioral therapy.

It's 1 of the most evidence-based practices there is for mental health.

And cognitive behavioral therapy teaches us that there are 3 main components of who we are as human beings.

Our thoughts, our feelings, and our behaviors.

Now, I'm not gonna go so much into it, but thinking about this from the perspective of sharing Christ or witnessing, many of us focus on the behaviors.

Our church is very good at focusing on behaviors, what we need to do.

But if we think about this as a holistic picture, we might start to think, well, what gets in the way of even doing those behaviors?

So not just in witnessing, but maybe you have certain health-related goals.

You say, I want to eat healthier, I want to exercise.

And if you just say, just do it, does it work?

Maybe you go to the gym January 1 and then you go a couple of times and then what happens?

You're still paying for the gym membership and you're no longer going to the gym.

So we can focus a lot on behaviors, but I like to think about this like a tree, where we're trimming the branches of the tree, we're making changes, we go to a conference and we feel on fire for Christ, right?

And maybe you come back and you're like, I'm so on fire and I'm volunteering and I'm doing this and I'm handing out glow tracks at my work and then what happens?

We're trimming the branches but the branches continue to grow.

We may pluck the fruits but the fruits come back And that's because we haven't dealt with the roots.

And in CBT, the roots are what we call core beliefs.

Now, core beliefs are beliefs that we hold about ourselves, about others, about the world, and even of God.

And often these are shaped in childhood, of repeated experiences, and then they influence our behaviors, our thoughts, and our feelings.

And so, in thinking about this from a perspective of what is a barrier to sharing Christ in times like these, we can think about what are the core beliefs that get in the way of us doing the behaviors, having the feelings, having the thoughts that we want.

Now, before I share 1 of the main core beliefs that gets in the way, I wanted to think about what was 1 of Satan's first temptations.

We're going to be thinking of this from a mental health perspective.

So if you have your Bibles, I'm going to have you turn with me to Genesis chapter 3.

You can either have in your Bibles or I'm going to have it on the screen.

I like using my Bible, but I have a lot of texts to share.

So I will be referencing a lot on the screen.

Genesis chapter 3, and we're gonna look at verse 1 and verses 4 to 5.

So verse 1 says, now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.

And he said to the woman, has God indeed said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" Which we could come from a perspective of he was trying to disrupt her belief, her core belief about God, right?

But there was something, a core belief that Eve had about herself that gets in the way of her fulfilling God's will.

So that's verse 1 and she responds to Satan, but let's look what he continues to tempt her with.

He says in verse 4, then the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die.

For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

Now, thinking about this, what core belief does Eve have?

And you can see there's an emphasis here in the verse, you will be like God.

Now this is really interesting because if you look at the context in Genesis chapter 2, what we see is in verses 26 and 27, what does it say there in the bold, in the yellow?

So he comes, Satan comes and tempts her to say, you will be like God.

I was made in his image, in his likeness.

And so Eve takes the fruit, not because of the fruit, right?

When we focus on the behaviors, she focuses on Instead, it's coming from her core belief, you're not good enough.

Enough means there's something that you're lacking.

I'm made in the image of God, and yet I'm believing that I'm lacking something.

1 of the biggest barriers to sharing Christ is this core belief, I'm not good enough.

And what's so interesting about this, some of you might say, no I don't think so Katie, that's not what I struggle with.

But what's interesting about this core belief, it often results in 3 main types of people.

And now, not just types of people, but maybe different seasons of life.

And we're going to go through each of these.

And what I encourage you to do is, as I go through each of these, I want you to reflect, do I struggle with this?

And I say that because many times when we are convicted of things, we try to jump to the, oh, that's not me.

But be open to say, God, do I struggle with this?

So we'll talk about each 1, but generally, we don't witness.

You might say, well, isn't that good, Katie?

This is when we're settling for good instead of striving for great.

Could you overdo when it comes to witnessing?

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Never Enough

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