Inside Story for Friday 8th of December 2023

By Andrew McChesney

Luis Paiva decided to open a fruit stand in Spain. But he moved forward with fear, sensing that God was calling him to serve elsewhere. He also worried that his new business might prevent him from giving his all to God.

Two short weeks after opening the fruit stand, everything seemed to fall apart. His business was failing. His partners were cheating him. He fell ill and no longer could walk. But Luis didn’t want to give up. He asked fellow Seventh-day Adventists for business advice. One of them, knowing that Luis had trained to be a pastor, reprimanded him. “You shouldn’t be engaged in worldly business but in the business of winning souls for the Lord,” he said.

For Luis, the rebuke was like hearing God’s voice. But he felt even more hopeless. How could he serve as a pastor without a church? Luis talked over the matter with his wife, and they decided to return to their native country, Venezuela. Perhaps he could recover his health there.

A short time later, Luis got a call from Gabriel Diaz, a leader of the Adventist Church in Spain. The church was looking for a missionary to work in Lugo, a city in northwestern Spain. Luis was delighted at the prospect of returning to full-time ministry, but he acknowledged that he had serious health and business problems. “I’m not even able to walk,” he said.

The church leader was not dissuaded, and the two men prayed together.

In two weeks, Luis regained his ability to walk, and he opened a house church in Lugo. On the first Sabbath, only two people, both church members, showed up to worship. But in just four months, 22 people were gather­ing in the house church every Sabbath. Among them were three newly baptized members and others preparing for baptism. In addition, Luis had opened a Bible study school and a school of evangelism to teach people how to win souls for God. He was making plans to plant an official church.

“We know that we have to win many souls in order for that to happen,” he says. “But I trust God, and I have confidence in Him that this will happen because we are using Christ’s method alone.”

“Christ’s method alone,” according to Ellen White, “will give true success in reaching the people. The Saviour mingled with men as one who desired their good. He showed His sympathy for them, ministered to their needs, and won their confidence. Then He bade them, ‘Follow Me’ ” (Ministry of Healing, p. 143).

As a pastor in Venezuela and later a missionary in Mexico, Luis never dreamed he would be serving God in Spain. “I’m here because of God’s grace,” he said.

Thank you for your Sabbath School mission offering that helps support missionaries around the world.

(1)

The post Inside Story: Mission Path to Spain ~ Part 4 appeared first on Sabbath School Net.

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/23d-10-inside-story-mission-path-to-spain-part-4/

Daily Lesson for Friday 8th of December 2023

One of the primary takeaways from the story of Paul’s experience at the Areopagus is its on-the-ground study of how to approach an unreached group of unbelievers, which resulted in a small group of believers starting in Athens.

“The words of the apostle, and the description of his attitude and surroundings, as traced by the pen of inspiration, were to be handed down to all coming generations, bearing witness of his unshaken confidence, his courage in loneliness and adversity, and the victory he gained for Christianity in the very heart of paganism.

“Paul’s words contain a treasure of knowledge for the church. He was in a position where he might easily have said that which would have irritated his proud listeners and brought himself into difficulty. Had his oration been a direct attack upon their gods and the great men of the city, he would have been in danger of meeting the fate of Socrates. But with a tact born of divine love, he carefully drew their minds away from heathen deities, by revealing to them the true God, who was to them unknown.”—Ellen G. White, The Acts of the Apostles, pp. 240, 241.

By his direct contact with the people, a study of their culture and religion, and his respect for their devotion to spiritual things, Paul managed something notable in Athens—something that is a treasure of knowledge for the church. He avoided irritating his listeners. This was in and of itself a major, God-inspired accomplishment. This, according to Ellen G. White, is the treasure of knowledge that we as a church need to pay attention to in this story.

Discussion Questions

1. With the story of Paul in Athens as a model, what is the first step for anyone beginning new evangelistic work in a city?
    
2. What sort of behavior is required of a Christian to build bridges with people in the city (and frankly, anywhere else) who do not know God?
    
3. When we are provoked by the modern types of idols, what should we avoid doing, especially right at first, in starting new work among the people who worship those idols?
    
4. Paul could have stopped with just introducing the people to this God who loved them, and they would have been quite pleased. But then he crossed a line that made people think he was deluded when he brought in the Resurrection. Should he have done that? Why, or why not?
    

(0)

The post Friday: Further Thought – Mission to the Unreached: Part 1 appeared first on Sabbath School Net.

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/23d-10-further-thought-mission-to-the-unreached-part-1/

The Mission program of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is an opportunity for us to understand the needs of others and share in supporting them. Please click on the image below to watch the Mission Spotlight presentation for this week:

(0)

The post Mission Spotlight for December 9 appeared first on Sabbath School Net.

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/mission-spotlight-for-december-9/

Mary, an elderly lady in the Tampa First Seventh-day Adventist Church, where I served as a Bible Worker years ago, told me how she became a Seventh-day Adventist in the early ’30s in British Honduras, now Belize. She was school age, when her little brother noticed a huge tent going up in town. He told their mother he wanted to go to the circus. His mother told him there was no circus, as nothing was said about a circus in the papers or radio.

Still, little brother would not relent, so mother took the family on a walk to make sure there was no circus in the tent. At the tent, the mother told the boy to go look inside. It only took a moment for him to come back out and inform the family, “We can go home now. They are just having church in there!”

The mother said, “I am too tired to walk any more now. Let’s go inside and rest a while.” The family then heard the gospel message which changed their lives forever. This is how my friend Mary, became a Seventh-day Adventist Christian and married a Seventh-day Adventist pastor. 

In addition to all my small group Bible studies, I also have a golf group that meets every month. I have formed a real camaraderie with the other guys over 18 holes, searching for golf balls in the woods and creek beds. While this group does not study the Bible on the golf course, we do have some in-depth discussions sometimes, waiting for the groups in front of us to tee off. One discussion resulted in some Bible studies after the game, which led to a father and son baptism. One Sunday after a round of golf, I went with one of the guys to lunch. He had been visiting our church and commented that he wished the other guys would have had time to join us for lunch as he is really enjoying getting to know them. Hence, our golf group is bonding us not just to woods and sand traps, but to those who need Jesus. As a result, during our discussions, people are learning more than just how to improve their swing, but also how to improve their walk with God. 

Some people may complain that our approach to evangelism is becoming too worldly. They say we should not try to imitate the world to win people to Jesus. I agree. I have even heard a couple of people say, we need to go back to our roots and those old-fashioned tent meetings. Old-fashioned tent meetings? Those old-fashioned tent meetings looked like the worldly circuses of the day! And because of the circus-like tent meetings, my friend Mary spent over 50 years of ministry as an Adventist pastor’s wife.  She is also a very “traditional,” balanced, well-versed-in-the-Bible lady. 

When people say we need to go back to the old-fashioned forms of evangelism, they often forget that at the time, those were actually pretty “modern” forms of evangelism – to arrest the attention of the people in that era. So today we need to do likewise. 

Let every worker in the Master’s vineyard, study, plan, devise methods, to reach the people where they are. We must do something out of the common course of things. We must arrest the attention. We must be deadly in earnest. We are on the very verge of times of trouble and perplexities that are scarcely dreamed of.–Letter 20, 1893.
From Christ’s methods of labor we may learn many valuable lessons. He did not follow merely one method; in various ways He sought to gain the attention of the multitude; and then He proclaimed to them the truths of the gospel.–Ellen White, Evangelism, Pages 122-123

Sure, there are boundaries to everything, even evangelism, but when you hear someone say that a current form of evangelism is not traditional enough, remember we have been counselled to do “something out of the common course of things.” We have been counseled to be non-traditional! We must try various methods to gain the attention of the multitudes who so desperately need to hear about Jesus. Back in the day, we used “old-fashioned” tent meetings because they looked like “old-fashioned” circuses, which always drew a crowd. Today old-fashioned tents and circuses no longer draw crowds, so we must find new ways to draw people to hear about Jesus in our day, just like the tent people did in their day. 

(1)

The post Being Creative in Reaching the Unreached appeared first on Sabbath School Net.

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/being-creative-in-reaching-the-unreached/

Daily Lesson for Thursday 7th of December 2023

It’s also interesting to note that Paul actually quoted some of their own writers, who, having written something fairly close to biblical truth, gave Paul an opening to take his hearers further along. That is, he used his familiarity with their beliefs to seek common ground with them, only to then take it further. No question: in seeking to reach others, having a familiarity with what they believe and seeking points of common ground can be a powerful method of reaching people.

Notice, too, that Paul uses this common ground with them to go then to where he wanted to go: the resurrection of Jesus and the hope it offered them all. Luke described the reactions to Paul’s closing words about the Resurrection. Some sneered at the idea; others said they wanted to hear Paul again on the matter; and some believed. What is key in this story for our purposes is that all of them had actually listened. And that was Paul’s hope from the beginning.

We know that some people will reject the gospel, but we must do everything possible to ensure that before they reject it, they understand what they are rejecting. Paul, by his method of working among the Athenians and his strategic use of what he had studied and learned of them, ensured that they heard with open minds that a God existed whom they did not know but who had created them. This God loved them and wanted to be known by them. He had been merciful to them in spite of their ignorance. But Judgment Day was coming. And if all of this sounded too unbelievable, there was verifiable evidence for it in the resurrection of Christ.

Now that the people had actually heard and comprehended the message, they had to choose for themselves whether to reject it outright or investigate further. And some did investigate further and became followers of Jesus (Acts 17:34).

(1)

The post Thursday: Crossing a Line appeared first on Sabbath School Net.

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/23d-10-crossing-a-line/