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Mills River SDA Church

Cory Reeves

Hope in the Seed Grower

Dearly Father, Lord, technical difficulties, Satan is definitely trying to attack.

And Father, we just pray for your blessing.

Father, I pray for nothing of my thoughts or my words, but your thoughts and your words, Father, that you would be glorified in everything we do.

We love you and praise you, in Jesus' name, amen.

So originally I had planned this sermon, and Satan really tried to attack.

And so this sermon was for that first week, that week that we all missed.

This was gonna be the last week before our evangelistic series, which he didn't want to.

And So that was the point of this sermon, but I think there's a lot more to this.

As I started thinking about, should I hold this sermon for later, I decided to go ahead and preach it.

Does everyone have the study guides for today?

Anybody not have it, raise your hand if you don't have it.

And in Spanish group, if you need headphones, there's actually headphones over there if you need some headphones.

There's a couple headphones and some adapters for you.

Our faith should lay hold upon God, and we should expect success.

The great multitude was fed with a very meager supply.

Let our scattered supply be placed in missionary work and God will multiply it as we shall impart to others so that we may eat and be filled.

We are not to stop our work and measure our advance in the work by the means at hand.

To do this will show a very limited faith.

As God said to Moses, so he says to us, go forward.

We are to diffuse the gospel over the whole earth.

And we, and be our means large or small, we are to plan and work in faith, realizing our responsibility as God's human agents to whom He has given this great work.

Then stop fretting over the evils that you cannot help and do your work in sincerity and faith that your characters may be formed after the divine pattern.

You know, it's interesting, as I was thinking and preparing for our evangelistic series, I've heard over the years, We've tried that, it doesn't work.

Friends, if Jesus calls us to do it, it is a work we should move forward and do.

It says here we shouldn't even measure the outcome.

You see, as we put it on hold, we still have lots of evangelism that we're doing in this church.

We have God's Closet, our school, our medical missionary work, our cooking schools, our literature handouts, And I would add after this hurricane, chainsaw evangelism and water evangelism.

But we need to be careful how we measure success.

As you see today, we are going to be looking, we sometimes look in the wrong places and use our own timelines to measure.

To measure by human hands, it says, shows little faith.

Sometimes when our efforts fail, I've heard people cry out, why God?

You know, I think of 3 years ago when I first got here, we jumped right into, our conference evangelist called and said, let's do an evangelistic series.

He came straight here, And we didn't add 1 person to this church through that series.

And that's what we're going to see today.

There's a story in the Bible where sadness happens.

Jeremiah is actually sometimes referred to, you know what kind of prophet he's referred to?

Jeremiah has preached to the people of Judea for over 41 years without anything to show for it.

Can you imagine preaching and preaching and preaching and nothing to show for it?

There's a few of them out there in the Bible.

He begged them, Jeremiah, to leave their sinful, idolatrous ways.

Can you sense his frustrations in these words?

Jeremiah 25, verse 3, I have spoken persistently to you, but you have not listened." How many feel that way at times with people you've worked with or talked to?

I've spoken persistently to you, but you have not listened.

16, for these things I weep, my eyes flow with tears.

In ministry, has there been times in your life when you felt like Jeremiah crying out?

Have you ever wanted to cry out, why God?

I have worked so hard for you, God, and this is all I have to show.

In just over a decade, this man created approximately 2, 100 pieces of artwork, including 860 oil paintings.

Most of them were in the last 2 years of his life.

To make ends meet, he would trade art for food and painting supplies, or for painting supplies as well.

Before his young death, a very small percentage of his work sold for money.

There's an argument of how many he actually sold for money before he died.

Sadly, he died plagued with depression and mental illness.

I'm going to show you 1 painting at a time and we'll see who can get it first.

Most everyone knows, at least recognizes some of those paintings, right?

Van Gogh's artwork is some of the most expensive painting in the world.

A few of them have sold, at least 2 or 3 have sold for over $100 million.

In 93, 1 of them sold for 53, another 1 for 66 million.

Yet Van Gogh never saw the love for his work, the success of his work.

This was the doctor — if you remember, Van Gogh lost his ear.

This is the doctor who helped him when he lost his ear.

He also moved in with this doctor when his apartment, Van Gogh's apartment, which some of us can feel with, flooded, so he moved in with this doctor.

As a thank you to the doctor, he painted a portrait of the doctor.

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Hope in the Seed Grower

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