Pastor John Nixon II | The New Normal | (Day 1) "God Uses Hardship"

[Music] this week i read that it takes a person on average about 66 days to create a new habit that's a little over two months to create a new reality in your life whether it be giving up smoking exercising more often or joining a new church family most of the time it will not happen overnight as of today we have now been in quarantine for about 141 days that's more than twice the span of the time that it takes to create a new habit so you know what that means we are firmly fixed right now in our new normal and really there's no end in sight and what i would like to do for the next month for the month of august is to explore the opportunities that we have for advancing the gospel of jesus christ during this new normal so we've used that title for this virtual revival the new normal and i hope you'll stick with us every saturday at 11 30 and every wednesday night at 7 pm for the month of august you can find us on youtube in our youtube channel just by searching tacoma park sda church or on facebook by searching the same or you can go to the website and go to worship.thetpchurch.org and we'll be right here every time we hope you'll stick with us may god bless us through this entire time today i want to begin by looking at the book of acts chapter 8 to be exact starting in verse 1 and reading to verse 4 in the niv the bible says this and saul was there giving approval to his death talking about stephen the church's first martyr it continues on that day a great persecution broke out against the church at jerusalem and all except the apostles were scattered throughout judea and samaria godly men buried stephen and mourned deeply for him but saul began to destroy the church going from house to house and he dragged off men and women and put them in prison those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went for the next few moments i'd like to use this title god uses hardship let's pray heavenly father i'd like to thank you for the opportunity you've given us today to be able to search your word and to understand it and on this inaugural sermon for this month's revival i ask that you would set the tone by speaking to us helping us to understand how you're trying to use situations to help us to advance the gospel in these last days may we be uplifted if we see jesus christ and may we be changed into his likeness in his name we pray amen the devil would love to get rid of god's church satan hates jesus and he's been jealous of him since they were in heaven together and he has tried many times to get rid of god's people but still to this day he has not succeeded and according to god's word he will never succeed for god's people will triumph in the end and the devil and his angels will be destroyed hallelujah and he knows it full well by the way he's tried his best to extinguish the fire that burns in the heart of the christian church but he has always failed and one such time happened in acts chapter 8 where we just read our scripture it began with the stoning of stephen which marked a turning point in the trajectory of the christian church saul the one we know as paul he wrote most of the new testament was not yet converted and made it his life's work to stamp out the christian church in the first century he presided over stephen's stoning and set into motion a series of events that would cause an exodus of sorts from jerusalem acts chapter 8 and verse 1 the second part in the niv says on that day a great persecution broke out against the church at jerusalem and all except the apostles were scattered throughout judea and samaria the church has just borne witness to its first ever martyr martyr someone who voluntarily suffers death rather than deny his or her religion by words or deeds it was a striking scene that would affect the church forever starting with saul ramping up his onslaught against the church and on any christian that he could find acts chapter 8 verse 3 in the niv but saul began to destroy the church going from house to house he dragged off men and women and put them in prison and yet we read that the church grew by leaps and bounds on the face of this bitter persecution how is that possible a better still how does it seem that god often uses unconventional means to get his gospel to the world and what is it about hardship that is so effective in helping to motivate us to carry said gospel i would love to hear the answer to those questions because it seems like we're going through a tough time right now in our world and maybe the devil would love to use this as another opportunity to discourage the people of god and if history repeats itself and i believe it does maybe god will use this same opportunity to bring us closer to himself today i'd like to suggest three reasons why god uses hardship the first is found in acts chapter 1 verses 7 through 9 the bible says he said to them it is not for you to know the times or dates the father has set by his own authority but you will receive power when the holy spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses in jerusalem and in judea and samaria and to the ends of the earth after he said this he was taken up before their very eyes and a cloud hid him from their sight god uses hardship the first thing we learn to spread his gospel because our comfort breeds forgetfulness you may remember that our opening passage said that after the persecution broke out in jerusalem they were scattered throughout judea and samaria and now we see that jesus mentions those exact cities as ministry stopping points on their way to spreading the gospel to the rest of the world but the disciples quickly forgot about the words of jesus that came in acts chapter one in fact it's almost as if they were too comfortable in jerusalem to remember christ's words to them ellen white revealed something interesting she says success had attended the ministry of the word in that place meaning jerusalem and there was danger that the disciples would linger there too long unmindful of the savior's commission to go to all the world that's from acts of the apostles page 105. you see that's how we are in our nature whenever we're successful we are tempted to set up our kingdom right there where it's comfortable and never leave and we forget about the dying world that's around us human nature you remember when peter james and john went to the mountain with jesus and they witnessed his transfiguration you remember that right it happened in matthew chapter 17 1-9 after he was transfigured the bible says that moses and elijah appeared to them and peter's natural reaction was to suggest that they erect three tabernacles on the mountain presumably so that they could stay up there forever that's our natural human inclination this is what we're like we want the good times to last forever and we easily get comfortable with our success but that's not how we get the gospel to the rest of the world and if we're not willing to go the gospel will not spread so god sometimes allows hardship to cause some holy discomfort in our lives so that his gospel message won't become stagnant in one place he wants to save the world so the message must go out god uses hardship because we are too comfortable and that oftentimes breeds forgetfulness the second thing acts chapter 8 and verse 4. the bible says those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went here's the second thing we learn god sometimes uses hardship because it makes us zealous about salvation there are two greek words used here in this verse that help us to see this point more clearly the first is the word for the word preach remember the verse clearly says they preached the word the greek word for preaching here is the word u angolidzo mai and it has a literal translation of to gospelize here we get the picture of the persecuted christians carrying the gospel the good news about jesus christ and his salvation but where did they take it this gospelization where do they take it our next greek word helps us here the word is dierco my and it means to go through it is one of luke's favorite words when he speaks about missionary labor when he uses it elsewhere in the bible it's translated as travel or pierce through or walk through travel everywhere go abroad in other words wherever the persecuted christians went they carried the gospel with them and shared it with others can you see how powerful the reaction to hardship can be in certain situations think about it the disciples of jesus know that they are being persecuted and they're aware that the persecutors are trying to get rid of the church altogether and how do they respond they fight even harder to spread the word about the gospel that's so powerful that there are people that want to get rid of it all together it fills them with a holy zeal for the work of salvation because they now understand its price the servant of god says when they were scattered by persecution they went forth with missionary zeal they realized the responsibility of their mission they knew that they had in their hands the bread of life for a famished acts chapter acts of the apostles page 106 you see wherever whenever things come too easily for us we often take them for granted but if we have to work and sweat through some tough times we get a sense that there is something that this is worth that this may be worth the effort and god sometimes uses hardship because it fills us with a zeal for the work of his kingdom our last point acts chapter 8 verses 5 through 8 the bible says philip went down to a city in samaria and proclaimed the christ there when the crowds heard philip and saw the miraculous signs he did they all paid close attention to what he said with shrieks evil spirits came out of many and many paralytics and cripples were healed so there was a great joy in that city what a wonderful word here's the third thing we learned god sometimes uses hardship to help us to overcome our prejudice i'm not sure if you realize it but we've heard of this place samaria before do you remember the woman at the well in g that that talked to jesus in john chapter four she was a samaritan woman and samaritans and jews were bitter enemies it would also be good to point out that the early christian church was made up of converted jews since the gospel first went to the jewish christians the jewish people jesus was a jew and so were the first 12 disciples of jesus christ on the day of pentecost when 3 000 were added to the church in one day the bible says they were all jews from different parts of the world are you getting it the gospel began with converted jews and may never have gotten to anyone else were it not for that persecution that scattered them about you know why because we're all naturally prejudiced toward our own people group in fact the scattered jews might have been rejected by their sworn enemies the samaritans had jesus not already laid the foundation for their acceptance with his encounter with the samaritan woman here's what ellen white says after listening to his words the woman talking about the samaritan woman had gone to men of the city saying come see a man which told me all the things i ever did is this not the christ they went with her heard jesus and believed on him she continues anxious to hear more they begged him to remain for two days he stays with them and many more believed of his words acts of the apostles page 106 one more time jesus paves the way for the two groups of people to come together in order for his message to spread throughout the world samaritans giving asylum to jews while they ran for their lives and jesus still has the power to do that same thing today he's bringing people together and he wants to use us to help him to finish the work of the gospel in the earth god permitted persecution to scatter them so that they could work for others sometimes god uses hardship to bring about his ends for his gospel to spread throughout the entire earth who says amen to that today let me close i had the privilege this week of interviewing one of my good friends pastor chad stewart from the spencerville church he has acknowledged our new normal and he's acknowledged it on two fronts the coronavirus and all that that means and the racial unrest that is a present reality in our time and he understands the kinds of opportunities that he has and right now with his church and to be able to write some of the wrongs between the people groups and to heal the body of christ as we try to finish this work i spoke to him about the things he's doing to help the cause for racial equality and i'd like to share those things with you right now um i wanted to just start by thank you for coming thanks for having me um i i i want to and now exactly they're so loud i don't know if it's going to come through but there's a lot of them back here we're in the on the back patio of my house pastor chad decided he would come i asked if he would come and he said yes and there's a lot of uh night creatures out here right now so hopefully it's not coming through but um we're in the last days obviously and there's a lot going on in our world and we're living through uh what some have said are two pandemics you know we've got the pandemic of the coronavirus which is affecting just about everything you and i our churches have both been closed now for uh five months i think it is maybe going on six i don't know it's been a while um i shouldn't say our churches are cold i should say our gatherings are closed yeah we're not closed we're ungathered this is exactly right yes and we gather virtually now yeah um so that's a that's been a big thing and then of course we also have this other pandemic that people have been talking about this pandemic of racism or or racial uh tensions and things like that that have been going on for a long time and we have been um trying to be faithful to our calling as ministers of the gospel and we have both talked about it and felt like we need to be speaking about these things from the pulpit and i want to commend you because i've seen the things that you've been saying i know the courage that you have been speaking with i've read some of your blogs and seen the things that you said there and it takes a lot of courage to be able to speak up and to speak out like you've been doing but i wonder have you been having uh all positive feedback you know has it been uh what what has it been like for those who have been watching your sermons and uh looking at your blogs and all of that just take me through it what have you been doing first of all and then what's your experience been like with people's reaction to it so about three years ago four years ago when there was shoot the incident with trayvon martin uh lando castillo these situations i was convicted that i needed to say something and so i preached a sermon at that time called uh we must do better and then reach out to the brinkles seventh day atmos church and and try to start building better relationships uh enter conference inter uh racially these these things uh but then really i watched the video i hadn't watched the video when ahmad aarberry was shot by those men i had heard about it i had but i just i hadn't watched the video and i watched the video and you can literally see the smoke coming through and then him stagger and fall to the ground and it just like ate me up inside and then i watched the video just a few days later of the lady yelling at the bird watcher guy in the park and accusing and saying i'm going to tell them you're attacking me and like screaming and acting like it and i was just struck by by all this that was going on and so i wrote something at that point in time uh and then soon after that the george floyd thing happened and i thought okay i've got to do more than just write something i've got to say something about this and so i really prayed about it and i did also write something i think at that time but prayed about it and and felt convicted by god that i needed to preach a message on it and i ended up preaching three messages you know on this topic and it was um it was around the theme kind of the good samaritan and and then our role within that yeah and i really preached about it from the standpoint of um that it's about a heart issue and that we have implicit bias we have some of these things in our lives in the church and and and from that standpoint then you and i i said man i need to talk to someone i need to learn so i was like i'm going to ask john if they'll have a conversation with me and we decided to film that yeah i said hey can we put on camera because i think it'd be a blessing others and the response that i got i was talking to a lady today who attends my church she's not an adventist but she worked in george bush's white house oh wow and she actually commented on because she had some questions about some other things this is you know she's learning adventism so she just said can we chat past her and so we zoomed today but at the end of that conversation she said by the way those interviews you did with that other pastor that african-american pastor were amazing and i thought you guys handled it so perfectly wow and so she said thank you for doing that it just really was a blessing yeah so anyways so this is what's been this is what's been going on putting some things out there yeah the response you know like this lady today has been good uh and overwhelmingly i want to make the point that overwhelmingly the response has been positive uh well i shouldn't say overwhelmingly the majority has been positive majorities are positive okay good but there is some definitely some pushback and some low back and there's not been a week that's gone by since all this began and what we're now i think seven weeks removed six weeks removed from that first sermon i appreciate our first blog that i wrote yeah and uh that i do not receive some sort of usually email communication of some sort that is not appreciative of my perspective yeah why do you think that is do you have any idea about why was there something about the way you presented it do you think you might have been um did you feel like you were being overly critical did you feel like you were um maybe too direct what what what do you think of the reason why people are responding this way or some because it sounds like most aren't you know well i mean and yeah there's there's the people that are that are saying pastor i've never thought about this thank you yes there's the person who an email was sent out to many in our church about me and my sermons and another member spoke up in fact i think several members spoke up and told this person basically don't send this to us ever again you know like type of thing and even calling them out on their bias or their prejudice oh nice so you're saying someone someone was critical of the situation and someone else who obviously appreciated it said i don't appreciate you doing it and not only didn't defend they they didn't what i appreciated most about their thing was that they not only defended me they called them out saying you are showing that this is a message you need to hear by the way your response is showing that it's showing that you should listen to this with an open heart and i pray that god will change your heart wow and this was a white person to a white person so i mean so these are encouraging this is yeah so this was encouraging wow um i think that people i think my first sermon was very strong and direct the funny thing is i quoted ellen white because ellen white says that god gave this good samaritan story in part to confront the prejudice the racial prejudice of the jewish people against the samaritans so i simply said god gave us this story to address confront us on our racial prejudices because if it's been if it was there 2000 years ago then it's here this is a human thing it's been around it's a human problem yeah i never said anything about policing other than i talked about that we could tell what half dead looks like because we saw it with the police officer kneeling on george floyd but for some reason people cued in on that and wanted to do that i said the statement black lives matter people didn't like that so so but i was very direct in that sermon saying that we have had a have a have a have issues and we need to do some things and i think that there were a lot of people who just said you know and the response common response was we have a diverse church we don't have any problems this simply diversity equals that there's no i mean the nixons have been my my friends since since whenever yeah i worked for your uncle right uh who is definitely a much more uh intense on this issue and even when i was there he was intense and he was and and he told me he wasn't sure about me at first you know you know who's this white kid coming in trying to do things with the with the fusion and all that i was trying to start you remember that the integrated worships yeah so so but even in that reality i still and still do now have some things that are my biases and my prejudices so i'm a i'm a diverse i'm a man of diverse friendships and yet i recognize that i still have prejudices i agree with you i don't think that those two things are mutually exclusive it's not like because you don't surround yourself with only the same people group it automatically means you're free from biases i think i think what the studies show in the research shows that we all have them in some kind of way shape or form and sometimes we have biases against our own people group that we just have because of whatever and that just happens to be the reality okay so here's the thing i know you yeah i've known you for a long time you're a direct person so yes i'm pretty certain this is the first time you were directing a sermon i think you're like that all the time yeah yeah and it's not the first time people have been upset with me okay this is the first time this is the first time it's been sustained yeah uh which shows that i feel like while people may think that that is making a statement to me that i need to do differently it actually shows me that you did that jesus wanted me to preach that message you know and that the holy spirit convicted me and i had several people which i this is something i've never had before where i had people i've had three different people tell me that i need to apologize to the congregation for preaching this wow and my thought and and what i've responded each time is i hear i i underst i want to hear you cause these people that are critical of me i still love them they're our church you know these these are people who've got to love them and care about them and yeah and all and all that but but but my response has been i could except for the fact that i prayed about this yeah i felt convicted and i felt convicted that i was supposed to i think that's that sometimes and john you'll understand this yeah people think that we want to pre but we know that we're going to come out of this getting the arrows it's not like i get up and go i can't wait to preach this difficult sermon i want to preach on black lives matter so that i can have like everybody get get emails and physical letters and phone calls every week for the next seven weeks to have you know no i don't want that so so so so i preached what was convicted on my heart and i told you also that that one of the things was really convicting to me was i have a black pastor on our staff and she told me she sent me a text just saying when i wrote the blog she said thank you so much for saying something i wanted to say something but i didn't want to make you feel like you had to do something so i didn't know if you were going so that you said it on your own means even more to me wow and then she said and she's pregnant she has a little boy and she said you don't understand what it is like to know that i'm bringing a black son into this world yeah and i i get emotional yeah so yeah so i i thought and i read that to my wife and we both just cried yeah you know because wow because that's uh you care about this person yeah yeah and uh yeah and and we as white people don't understand this in the same way and so i just had to say something yeah and so for people to think like i did it just to tick people off it just it doesn't make it asinine yeah right and it's all it's it's out of my heart and where i'm at so any one of us that understands what is laid on you when you have to preach a difficult word knows that it's it's a natural reaction to say i'm not going to do it i don't want to do it and then you feel this this strong sense that if i don't do it i'm not doing what god's asked me to do like jeremiah chapter 20 verse 9 says if i if i will not mention anymore speak in his name his word burns my heart like a fire and that's that's how it is as a preacher when you know that god's convicted you and you refuse to do it it's like literally a burning inside and you know that you've disappointed god yes yes so and you would rather disappoint men men then disappoint god yeah but but but all that said uh yes i am direct and yes uh i was probably very direct especially in the very first sermon but i want to make a clear point yeah um and and i wanted people to understand that we need to just re-examine where we were at as a people i think i think you did the right thing um but i also as i said at the beginning i want to commend you for your courage because it's hard to do that especially as a white pastor of a mostly white church it's it's you're putting yourself clearly in a position where um people might be upset but let's pivot a little bit can you tell me a little bit more about the positive well what what about your what responses have you gotten from people that has encouraged you well the first thing was is you know when when people said like when some people responded that there is no problem what i could lean on whether or not they knew it or not was that within 24 hours of me preaching that first message i had 12 messages from black families within our congregation that said thank you and and that spoke up and some people said you shared what's been on my heart for or one lady wrote me and said i've been praying for someone to preach this type of message i never would have thought this message would be preached from the pulpit of spencerville church ever in my life so i had these types of messages so so to my to my the black congregants my black family members in our church that i'm the shepherd of like maybe for the first time ever i was truly their shepherd in a way that i had not been that's beautiful previously yeah and so and so that um that also chokes me up yeah so that was touching actually that was touching to me yeah so that was that was a positive that came out of that and there's been some dialogue with some of those folk and and them even sharing some things with me that were like wow that's eye-opening um you know many of them don't want me to share with the broader uh church and so i don't but but you wish that you could because then some people that think there isn't any issue would recognize that there that there is yeah um uh another positive that came out of it is like i said some of the the our caucasian members our white members uh just the the overwhelming uh and from older people too i had i had an 80 year old 83 year old lady who wrote me and said pastor you're right we got issues and and and and we needed to say something about this yeah so so so so we have that we have more dialogue happening about some of this and about uh these these topics you know we had a prayer vigil and i was proud of the fact that there was probably i don't know how many people there but it was a 50-50 split it was brinkleo and us you know but i was blessed by the fact that our folk came out yeah and there was things there that i was uncomfortable that were said by uh some of the african-americans that were there and i know that that some of our people were there that were that were uncomfortable with it two but but 99 of them said look that made us uncomfortable but but this is a time for us to listen so that shows me that like whereas in the past they might have been angry about this or they might have written like something about it yeah 99 of them accepted that they could disagree yes and that they could listen yes and these were people that i don't i don't want to say they they won it before but but they're confessing to the fact that they're listening more yes so i see these things happening these are really beautiful things yeah to me that i just i'm i'm i'm excited about our members and then my own kids yes right yeah most of our audience i would say is probably uh members of of tacoma park or members of spencerville and at least are affiliated and understand maybe mostly adventists but there are others that may not understand the dynamic when you talk about this church brinkley yeah yeah uh maybe maybe we should get some more information about them so brinkleo southern atmos church is a church that's one mile maybe a mile and a half down the road from spencerville same same street same street same exact road yes uh similar demographic professional government employees general conference employees health care people got it same same kind of demographic in many ways except for one wrinklo when i go there there's one white guy that's married to an african-american lady that's there right otherwise it's all black right and at my church we're predominantly white although we are actually you know uh have a little bit more diversity you know like i mentioned we had like i had like 12 families of black members that just contacted me so yeah so so we have a little bit more but still we would be perceived as a as a and and of course we're different conferences wrinklo is the regional conference we are the state conference and so so there's that aspect and so this is where we have that prayer vigil and the relationship we've been trying to build because when i had preached a sermon that entitled we must do better um uh i was driving home from that sermon and i felt convicted by god it's easy to say it in front of your people so i drove down to brinklow and i walked i parked my car and i knew they would be going because i passed by therefore after i had lunch and then drove and they're still there so you know i knew that they'd still be there so but i walked in and no one said anything to me it was the seventh morning the sabbath morning no one talked to me they looked at me like what's he doing here it was right in the middle of all these shootings and everything and the dallas thing had just happened the thursday night before the dallas shooting of the police officers and all that stuff yeah uh where he was sniping the yes the sniper the sniper so so i just stood in the foyer and waited and then pastor medley finished his sermon and he walked to the back and the music was going at the end and so i walked up to him and i introduced myself he said yeah i know who you are and i said i just want to come by and say i know it's been a hard week for your community and i know that we haven't been good neighbors yeah and i want us to do better i'm sorry yeah and he said hold on he stopped the music and he made me walk up front baby walk up front yeah start the service back up again eddie eddie said hold on everybody sit back down everyone sat back down and then i shared what i shared yes and uh and then i spent about an hour after that just listening to people's stories about some of their history with my church coming here in the 1970s and people telling them to go to a different church yeah down the road you know we didn't have our first black member uh spencerville opened in 1947 we didn't have our first black member until i think 1976. and then we only had one black member until like the 1980s wow so so this was kind of yeah uh that that uh that aspect so i heard some of these stories and and older african-americans saying to me like if you had told me this morning that the senior pastor of spencerville would be in this church apologizing i would have called you a liar wow and would have never even come i would have believed you yeah and and so and you know that just they were crying i was crying yeah and it was a beautiful moment so that's brinkleo yeah and that's kind of started to build some of that relationship and so pastor medley and i have done some things and and then pastor noah washington who we were also in seminary with yeah uh he he's the one that um reached out to me and said hey can we do this prayer vigil together yeah and god bless him i said yeah we'll be a part of it next thing i know though we're on all the publications a little bit because uh because you didn't realize again some of the things that were said were a little bit like outside of the spitzer wheel world and i even was like oh boy but but you know yeah for the sake of the gospel for the sake of building community we go with it i think the people that were there going to look back on that and they're going to say this is a beautiful moment where two churches that are only a mile down the road from each other came together to pray for all of these racial tensions that have been going on i very few people are going to be thinking to themselves 20 years from now about those two or three things that i said that were uncomfortable and i think that was the point of it i think that's great what stirred that was i was so angry i watched that thing in dallas i was watching it on on thing christina already gone to bed she goes to bed all the time at like eight o'clock yeah you know nine o'clock because she's a nurse she's getting a girlfriend she does anesthesia so she was she was doing that and i went up to her i was watching the dallas thing and i knelt down next to bed i said we need to pray right now for our country this thing's a mess like i said i don't know what's going on yeah so i prayed about it the next night i was getting ready for bed and i couldn't rest and i was supposed to do a communion service the next day wow and i never i write my sermons on between monday and wednesday yeah i mean that's that's just who i am right uh and and i could not rest uh and god convicted me and so i again asked christine to pray for me and i went downstairs and i wrote down like a few lines and i got up the next day and i scrapped my entire sermon and i preached this message and yes it got a buzz because carlton buddy bird he called me and said bro i just saw your thing for spencerville yeah yeah and within like a day and a half like 7 000 people had seen it yeah and i was like oh okay what made me so mad was on friday night i made the mistake of checking facebook and and i was at the nad page and i saw some comments by aventis white adventists that made me so angry that made me so um just so uh mad at us yeah that uh that i and look i mean i've i've been a racist in my life i mean i i taught i tell the story in my sermon that i used to or in no i tell a story one of my blogs that i wrote that i just have a confederate flag in my in my in my room so let's let's say yeah i would say this to to everyone watching please also be patient with people because we can change you know i mean uh yeah pray for pray for poke and pray because we can't change holy spirit has the power now holy spirit has a thing to change things and i didn't really i don't think i had it quite as much it was this racist symbol but i kind of i like history and i like right the civil war stuff but yeah but but but it i'm not excusing it it was wrong it was racist but but i'm saying that i had racist tendencies in me but yeah so i so i can understand some of that but but the fact that christians were posting this on the north american division website or facebook page just drew drove me bonkers yeah so so but that kind of is what drove that sermon and so i preached that morning and it was that was a communion sermon and i preached about how communion is partly about us repenting and being united and how can we do this when we have people right down the road that are hurting and and we don't have any and so i just kept saying we must do better that's perfect time to preach that communion sabbath that's that's just the right time yeah and that's the way god worked it out and uh i didn't have a sermon title to it it just i think i said in the sermon like i guess after saying it many times i said if i was going to name the sermon i was like we must do better so that's what it that's what it ended up being and i didn't really preach at brinklow but but what happened was i referenced it at the brinkley church when i said i just preached in my congregation i was driving home and the holy spirit told me don't turn and come down here and and say sorry to pastor medley i said i wasn't planning on getting up in front of all the rest of you right i just came to talk about it and so i was only spoke to them for like three or three minutes or so i didn't even preach at brinklow but what happened was people put that together with my sermon and then it got sent out and then it went yeah bonkers and yeah and so so that's bonkers in a good way yeah bonkers yeah bonkers in a good but in a in a way too like it's it's i have to say that that it's caused discomfort in my life and uh yeah you know and but in a good way also because there's a conscientiousness of that i've spoken out on these things yeah but but now i'm invited to like everything that i'm doing this yes yes wow that was powerful thank you pastor chad for your honesty your openness your transparency with us thank you for letting us look into your life a little bit and we're looking forward to the next one we know that the second half will be shown this upcoming wednesday night at seven o'clock you do not want to miss it and in that interview pastor chad takes us back in history and tells us about what it was like growing up and how he went from having racist tendencies to becoming anti-racist and you do not want to miss that so i hope you'll join us at seven o'clock on wednesday night i'd like to pray with you as we close father i want to thank you for the love and power that you have to be able to bring us together as a people knowing that you are coming soon and lord you want us to be one that's what you have told us in your word that was your prayer that you prayed in the garden of gethsemane before you went to the cross and lord we know that we are your children we know that we are part of the same family but lord we need to be reminded of that every so often and right now we're going to be honest we're not sure what the future holds in terms of what's going to happen tomorrow with this pandemic or what's going on with this new normal but this one thing we do know jesus christ is alive and well and he is the one who wins in the end and as long as we are connected with him we will win too so father help us to be ready for your coming because we know it is soon until then may we live the way you want us to so that we can help others to see jesus christ when he comes as well so that they can be saved also thank you for your love in the name of jesus we pray amen we will see you on wednesday night at seven o'clock in the meantime if you would like to donate to us you can do so by going to our website www.thetpchurch.org forward slash give if you would like to drop off something at the church center tomorrow at 10 o'clock you can do that between ten and one pastor joe will be here to receive you if you would like to pick something up like a quarterly or something like that uh she can give you that as well and so we hope that you'll take advantage of it if you would like to god bless you happy sabbath and we'll see you right here on wednesday night you

Channel: Takoma Park SDA Church

Views: 1,845

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Sabbath Worship, TPC, Takoma Park SDA Church Live Stream, TPC Live Stream, SDA, Seventh Day Adventist, Seventh-Day Advenist, Sabbath, #TPC, Pastor Henry Wright, Pastor Chris Cheatham, Pastor Wesley Knight, Pastor Anwar Ottley, Pastor Daniel Xisto, Pastor John Nixon II, Takoma Park, Takoma Park Church, Takoma Park SDA, Pastor Michael Kelly, Pastor John Nixon

Id: PnvKwiBCwp0

Length: 44min 10sec (2650 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 01 2020