by Adventist Naija | Dec 8, 2022 | world Church
Sabbath Celebration
The final Sabbath of Ten Days of Prayer to celebrate God’s goodness and mighty power. Share how you have experienced the power of prayer and the good news of the everlasting gospel during the past ten days. Rejoice in what God has done, is doing, and will do.
The needs of each congregation are unique, so please work with local leaders to develop a specific plan for your church. Here are some possible items to include in your final Sabbath church service.
Theme:
Back to the Altar—Making a Place for God
Theme Verse:
“But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him” ( John 4:23).
Possible Hymns:
Sweet Hour of Prayer
In the Garden
Give Me the Bible
Abide With Me
Give Me Jesus
O Worship the King
Showers of Blessing
Softly and Tenderly
Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus
Sermon Ideas:
Have a pastor, elder, or prayer leader preach a short sermon about the importance of regular personal devotions and family
worship. Scripture passage: John 4:23.
[OR]
Have the Ten Days of Prayer participants take turns offering 1- or 2-minute summaries for each of the 10 daily prayer guides.
Share the title, the main verse, and a key thought. (Plan ahead so the summaries stay within 1-2 minutes. For most people, one minute is 125-150 spoken words.)
[OR]
Enlist three individuals of different age groups to give 5-minute presentations on how they do personal devotions. In addition, have one or two families share ideas of how to facilitate engaging family worship experiences. The youth could also help with music or offer testimonies.
Conclude with an appeal for listeners to make personal devotional time and family worship a priority.
Other Program Ideas:
Member testimonies of answered prayer, small-group prayer time, announcement of future prayer or service activities, children’s story about daily worship and prayer, special music selections, etc
by Adventist Naija | Dec 8, 2022 | world Church
Back to the Altar — Empowered to Finish the Work
DAY 10 — I WILL GO!
“Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me”(Isaiah 6:8).
Worshipers Go
Who is willing to go? That’s the question God asked Isaiah when he caught a life-altering vision of God. The moment was filled with amazing special effects. God was seated on a throne “high and lifted up” (Isaiah 6:1). His robe filled the temple as six-winged angels serenaded Him with a chorus of “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!” (verse 2). As God began to speak, the doorposts of the temple began to shake and smoke filled the house. The whole episode so “undid” Isaiah that he cried, “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (verse 5). Can we blame him? Who can catch a glimpse of God and not be unmasked?
Isaiah was awed by the holiness and majesty of God, but God does not reveal Himself purely for our astonishment. God’s revelation
of Himself is usually followed by a request. This was the case, for instance, when He gave John a revelation of Jesus Christ while exiled
on the island of Patmos. John’s vision of the end of the world and the return of Christ was meant to be shared. Likewise, when God
revealed Himself to Isaiah, He was looking for a messenger willing to spread His message of love and warning. Isaiah’s answer was
one for the ages: “Here am I! Send me” (verse 8)
by Adventist Naija | Dec 8, 2022 | world Church
Back to the Altar — Worship Keeps the Mind
DAY 9 — DON’T LOSE YOUR MIND
“Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life”(Proverbs 4:23).
Heart of the Matter The unregenerate human heart is something to behold. If you watch the news from day to day, you will see human beings acting in ways that make us question their humanity. Wonderful acts of love and kindness happen around the globe each moment of the
day, but there is no doubt that evil is likewise manifested wherever we look. While we rightly obsess about unending wars, political corruption, and senseless violence on a mass scale, we must also acknowledge that wherever dastardly deeds are done, deranged human hearts are at work.
Quite frankly, the Bible does not have much good to say about human hearts that are un-surrendered to Jesus Christ. God states, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). The heart to which God refers
here is not so much the “ticker” in our chest but our “brain heart”—the seat of our thinking, the center of our intellectual and moral being, the fount from whence our desires flow. Jesus made the point even clearer when He observed, “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45)
by Adventist Naija | Dec 8, 2022 | world Church
Back to the Altar — Devotional Life and the End-time Message
DAY 8 — WORSHIP AND THE THREE ANGELS’ MESSAGES
“Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water”(Revelation 14:7).
The First and Second Angels’ Messages
As Seventh-day Adventists, we are called to proclaim an end-time message of so much importance that nothing else should divert our attention (Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 8, p. 302). We preach the message of the first angel“flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth” (Revelation 14:6), urging all to fear God, give Him glory, and “worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water” (verse 7). These verses remind us that humanity’s origin is divine, not evolutionary. We possess the “everlasting gospel”—timely and timeless, essential and eternal,
needful and never-ending!
We also share the message of the second angel found in Revelation 14:8: “Babylon is fallen”! This sacred message calls all true followers of God to reject all humanly originated forms of worship and belief not based on God’s Word. It calls us away from randomly assembled beliefs which are not based in Scripture nor supported by the Spirit of Prophecy. Come out of Babylon that you be not partaker of her sins nor of her plagues, the angel of Revelation 18:4 would later command. This sacred message is a call to stand apart in our true worship of God!
The Third Angel’s Message
But, Friends, if the first two messages were powerful, Ellen White says something quite startling about the message of the third angel. Ellen White writes in her Letter 209: “The power of the proclamation of the first and second angels’ messages is to be concentrated in the third”(1899). How so? Because the third angel’s message captures the everlasting gospel of the first message and its call to worship! It embraces the second angel’s call for separation from false worship. But the proclamation of this third message is unlike the first two in that it delivers a fearsome warning: “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his
mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of his indignation” (Revelation 14:9). This message reveals earth’s marked-up beast-worshipers and heaven’s sealed-up God-worshipers!
“Here is the patience of the saints; here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus” (Revelation 14:12).
Of this message Ellen White further notes, “It is present truth. This message is to go forth with great distinctness and power. It is not
to be clouded by human theories and sophistries” (Letter 20, 1900). As we pray today, let us ask God to empower our worship that
we might powerfully proclaim His end-time message to a perishing world.
Let’s talk to our God
by Adventist Naija | Dec 8, 2022 | world Church
Back to the Altar — Our Most Urgent Need
DAY 7 — A CHURCH THAT WORSHIPS
“Come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker”(Psalm 95:6).
(Un)regular Worship
A 2018 worldwide survey of Seventh-day Adventists found that only 34 percent of Adventist homes are engaging in regular morning and evening worship, and only 52 percent of church members have any personal devotions at all. Can a church with an end-time message centered on worship—the three angels’ messages of Revelation 14:6-12—deliver this solemn message if its members are not faithfully engaged in personal and family worship? In other words, can we proclaim effectively what many of us are not doing daily?
Ellen White comments, “There is nothing more needed in the work [of God] than the practical results of communion with God” (Testimonies for the Church, vol. 6, p. 47). Elsewhere she writes, “Like the patriarchs of old, those who profess to love God should erect an altar to the Lord wherever they pitch their tent. . . . Fathers and mothers should often lift up their hearts to God in humble supplication for themselves and their children. Let the father, as priest of the household, lay upon the altar of God the morning and evening sacrifice, while the wife and children unite in prayer and praise. In such a household Jesus will love to tarry” (Child Guidance, pp. 518, 519)Back to the Altar — Our Most Urgent Need
