The Inconvenience of Hearing God

A few years ago my wife's father gave us a microwave oven. It is very old, one of the earliest models. It takes up most of the counter! The new ones are much smaller, sleeker; I'm sure they work better too. But after getting that I don't see us rushing back to the way life was without it. It is faster. It is more convenient.

One of the questions most of today's Christianity would find difficult to answer would be, Why, if all the other gifts are more or less manifested in your church--pastors and teachers, missionaries, leaders, etc.--why does your church not have prophets?

I Want to Give my Heart to Jesus part 7: Advent Awakening and Rise of the Seventh-day Advent Movement

Today we reach the seventh installment of our series, "I Want to Give My Heart to Jesus." In a world filled with the cheapest of theological substitutes and carefully honed allurements of false salvation plans, some weeks ago we embarked on a foundational study of what it means to give our hearts to Jesus. Surrounded by a multitude of stray theories and undefined words, we've sought for an increased clarity in our understanding of our human nature after the fall, the nature of Christ, the teaching of the Bible on salvation, and last time, a look into 1700 years that intervened between the end of the Bible time and the rise of our movement in the early and mid 1800s. Today we are going to look more closely at this rise of the Great Advent Movement and Seventh-day Adventism.

I Want to Give My Heart to Jesus, part 6: Salvation After the New Testament

I have to confess: the presentation you are about to hear is really the one that I've been waiting for some time to give. Still, I'm glad to be giving it only now. The way has been opened for the sharing of other crucial points, including the Bibles' teaching about the nature of fallen man, how human Christ was and how obedient we can be, about a broader dynamic to the meaning of salvation than we've usually heard. We've invested three occasions in doing a thumbnail sketch of the Bible's teaching on salvation. We've seen the unity, the powerful connections between deliverance, healing, and salvation. And we've come to today.

Salvation in Acts to Revelation

We want to give our hearts to Jesus. But what does that mean? How is it done? What are our hearts? Who is Jesus? What is the salvation that He gives us? How does it work? In what ways has our relationship with Jesus been obscured by false teaching in humanity's closing epoch? These are some of the questions that we are seeking to answer.

What is Salvation--Notes From Jesus' Old Testament Sourcebook

How is everyone this beautiful Sabbath morning? We began this series on "I Want to Give My Heart to Jesus" with a look at what inspiration says about our nature as fallen men and women. We asked, What Is My Heart That I Would Give? discovering that at the fall we lost strength, but that God intervened assuring us the capacity to choose. We saw that we are not born guilty but with a disposition pulling strongly toward the evil. Through the gospel God purposes to repair us.

Who is Jesus to Whom I Would Give?

Last Sabbath we began this series, and took up a very important topic. As people who want to give our heart to Jesus we stopped to size-up the situation. We asked, What Is My Heart That I Would Give? taking time to seriously develop what inspiration says about the fall's impact on our race.

We observed that God is a holy Being, that He made man for Himself (Colossians 1:16); that He even made humankind for His pleasure (Revelation 4:11) -- the pleasure of a holy Being! We were designed for holiness. God's original plan for us was that we would be happy in holiness; and He would be happy too. Before the fall, at the close of His work in Genesis one, we hear His pronouncement that everything is "very good." But things don't remain that way.

The second chapter of Genesis introduces a small test of man's faithfulness, the third tells the story of the temptation and fall into sin, and promise of redemption through Messiah to come. The fourth chapter shows us that God, knowing how Cain was wired -- as a fallen, selfish being -- urges him to "rule over" sin, but he fails in this and murders his brother Abel.

Today we embark on a multi-part study of salvation. It is a time for watchfulness. Free-floating ideas abound around us, left open, undefined, exploitable by those who would teach a peace-and-safety gospel. But if we will work through the inspired information point by point, there is much more than that for us as we pin things down where inspiration pins them down. Although surrounded by all the confusion, still, the people of God long to give their hearts to Jesus. Still they want to know how to find God, what salvation means, and how their life can be filled with all blessing.

In this, our first presentation, we consider just what is our human nature. What is my heart that I would give to God? What defines the boundaries of the salvation problem?

In the next presentation we turn our attention especially to Jesus. What is He? Alien, human, or God or both or neither? Why would we give our hearts to Him?

In the following presentations we'll chase salvation-understanding through the centuries, and see where that takes us to today.

In the last presentation, we'll be especially interested in application. How and when shall I give my heart to Jesus? We'll consider the answers.

Weigh, my brothers and sisters, these points carefully, that all of us may give to Him what only we have to give; our hearts; and receive what He only has to give; salvation in all of its fullness.