Iglesia Adventista Del 7mo Dia La Agustina

Sunday July 31 Christ’s Method Alone Ellen G. White, in an often-quoted paragraph, summarizes what Jesus did in order to reach out and bring the people to salvation.  (See also  Matt. 9:35-36 .) “Christ’s method alone 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.’” - Ellen G. White,  The Ministry of Healing , p. 143 . Let’s analyze this a bit. Jesus mingled with people as One who desired their good. (He opened networks.) Jesus sympathized with people. (He formed attachments.) Jesus ministered to their needs. (This also formed attachments.) When He combined the first, second, and third elements, He won people’s confidence. “Then   He bade them, 'Follow Me’” (to become disciples). What we see here is a wholistic model of the gospel. This ministry method will guide us in procl...

Lesson 6 * July 30-August 5 Jesus Mingled With People Sabbath Afternoon Read for This Week’s Study:   Matt. 1:22-23 ;  John 1:14 ;  Luke 15:3-24 ;  Matt. 9:10-13 ;  Ps. 51:17 ;  1 John 2:16 ;  Phil. 2:13-15 . Memory Text:  “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, 'This man welcomes sinners and eats with them’”  ( Luke 15:1-2, NIV ). A deacon in a local church drove a van that took the youth to an old-age home to hold a worship service every month. In the first week, while the youth were leading out, an old man in a wheelchair grabbed the deacon’s hand and held it during the service. This happened month after month. One time, when the youth group came, the man in the wheelchair was not there. The staff said that he would not likely live through the night. The deacon went to his room, and he was lying there, obviously unconscious. Taking the...

Friday July 29 Further Thought:  Read other teachings of Jesus that inform you and your church’s role in the community:  Matthew 7:12 ,  23:23 ,  25:31-46 , Mark 4:1-34 ,  6:1-13 ,  Luke 6:36 ,  11:42 ,  12:13-21 , 14:16-24 ,  16:13 ,  18:18-27 ,  19:1-10 ,  John 10:10 , 12:8 ,  17:13-18 . Read Ellen G. White, “ 'The Least of These My Brethren,’ ”  pp. 637-641, in  The Desire of Ages ; “The Missionary’s Pattern,” in Signs of the Times , March 19, 1894 . “Unless the church is the light of the world, it is darkness.” - Ellen G. White, in  Signs of the Times , September 11, 1893 . That’s a powerful thought. It reminds us of Jesus’ words, “ 'He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad’ ”  ( Matt. 12:30, NKJV ) . Jesus is making it plain: there is no neutral territory in the great controversy. We are on Christ’s side or the devil’s. To have been given great li...

Thursday July 28 Church Planting Read   Matthew 10:5-10 . Why would Jesus send His disciples out into the surrounding towns and villages without any resources? It seems strange that Jesus’ disciples would have direct orders to enter their ministry territory with little to sustain themselves. Apparently, Jesus placed His disciples in this situation to teach them dependence on God and also the importance of creating friendships through service to the local residents. These local residents would then value their service enough to provide support for the ministry. Pastor Frank’s local conference asked him to plant a church in a section of a large city that had virtually no Adventist presence. Initially, he had no budget to do so. He consulted a map and determined the boundaries of that section of the city and studied the demographics of the people there. Then he parked his car in the busiest part of the neighborhood and began going from business to business asking questions ...

Wednesday July 27 On Being a Farmer Read   John 4:35-38 . What is Jesus telling us here about the different steps needed in reaching souls? The work of a farmer is multifaceted. Other types of farming work must be done  before  a harvest can be plentiful  ( Matt. 9:35-38 ) . Not only reapers are needed in the Lord’s harvest field. Can you imagine a farmer at harvesttime saying to his farmhands, “Harvesttime is here, so we must start planting seeds”? Reaping is best done after you have been farming all along. Farming  includes preparing the soil, for not all ground is good ground at first.  (Read  Matt. 13:3-9 .)  What can your church do in your community to soften “hard ground” and remove “rocks” and “thorns”? Workers have done the hard farming work before the harvest, and other workers reap the benefits of their labor. Sometimes evangelistic outreach strategies have emphasized reaping more than they do the preparatory farming. This i...

Monday July 25 Loving Your Neighbor “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself”   ( Luke 10:27 ) . Read   Luke 10:25-37 . What message is given here to us in regard to the whole question of helping those in need? The expert in the law understood that all the commandments revolve around loving God with all you have and loving your neighbor as yourself. The question that remained to be answered was “Who is my neighbor?” Given that the prevailing thought among the people of Israel in Christ’s time was to favor their own kind as neighbors and relegate all others as outsiders, this expert in the law sought to have Jesus clarify the issue. The parable that Jesus tells reveals a totally different perspective. Our neighbor is  anyone  we encounter who is in need. Being a neighbor is meeting the needs of a neighbor. The priest and the Levite were more c...

Sunday July 24 Jesus’ Mission Statement Jesus, the young rabbi from Nazareth, had become very popular in the region of Galilee ( Luke 4:15 ) . When He spoke, “the people were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” ( Matt. 7:28-29, NKJV ) . One Sabbath, when handed the scroll of Isaiah, Jesus read the first two verses of Isaiah 61, stopping in midsentence just before the phrase “and the day of vengeance of our God”  ( Isa. 61:2, NIV ) . Read   Luke 4:16-19 . Where have we heard these words before?  (See  Isa. 61:1-2 .)  What was Jesus proclaiming by reading those texts? As we already saw, the phrase “the year of the LORD’s favor” is identified as the year of jubilee (see  Leviticus 25:1-55 ) . In this visit to Nazareth, Jesus quotes a messianic passage from Scripture and assures His hearers that “ 'Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing’ ”  ( Luke 4:21, NIV ) . In this sermon...

of the Church in the Community Lesson 5 * July 23-29 Jesus  on  Community Outreach Sabbath Afternoon Read for This Week’s Study:   Luke 4:16-19 , 10:25-37 ,  Matt. 5:13 ,  Isa. 2:8 ,  John 4:35-38 ,  Matt. 13:3-9 . Memory Text:  “Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people”  ( Matthew 4:23, NKJV ) . Robert Louis Stevenson, best known for his adventure story  Treasure Island,  had been a sickly boy who couldn’t go to school regularly. Finally his parents hired a teacher to teach him and a nanny to help with his personal needs. One night when his nanny came to check on him before he went to bed, he was out of bed, and his hands and nose were pressed against the window. His nanny firmly told him to get back in bed before he got a chill. Robert said to her, “Come to the window, and see what I’...

PÓKEMON: PÓKEMON que significa Monstruos de bolsillo. Su creador un joven japonés SATOCHI TAJIRI, el mayor SATANISTA ANTIbbSOCISAL del niño en Japón; coleccionaba una gran cantidad de insectos y criaturas diminutas. Hoy tiene 35 años y le llaman OTAKU que Significa: SOLO EXISTE VIOLENCIA Y DESTRUCCION DISFRAZADA DE TERNURA. La idea principal, es crear una adicción la cual lo dice en su Slogan: NO IMPORTA COMO, TIENES QUE ATRAPARLOS A TODOS, tarea que no termina porque cada vez saca uno nuevo (Los niños se roban entre si las llamadas pokebolas. El principal monstruo de esta serie es uno aparentemente tierno llamado PICACHU, que en la realidad es una oración oriental para invocar a Satanás, este tiene cola de relámpago la cual significa: rebeldía de Satanás, imita ser parte querubín y parte del dios trueno. (Lc. 10 Jesús les dijo: Si, pues yo vi que Satanás caía del cielo como un rayo). Estos monstruos evolucionan robándole el alma a los demás. En diciembre de 1997, aproximadamen...

Friday July 22 Further Thought:  Read  Jeremiah 22:1-16 ; Ezekiel 16:49 ;  Zechariah 7:9-10 . Read Ellen G. White Comments,  pp. 1165, 1166, in  The SDA Bible Commentary , vol. 4 ; “God’s Design in Our Sanitariums,”  pp. 227, 228, in  Testimonies for the Church , vol. 6 . “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God”  ( Mic. 6:8, NIV ) . How much clearer could the Lord be in regard to what He asks of His people? God has shown us what is “good,” and this “good” is the same word used again and again in Genesis 1:1-31 , referring to the pre-Fall Creation. Thus, implicitly we are pointed back to the ideal, to what God originally had for us and, ultimately, what He will restore to us after Jesus returns. The phrase translated “require of you” could also be (and perhaps more accurately) translated as “seek from you.” That is, what does God “seek fr...

Thursday July 21 The Church-A Change Agent Read   Micah 6:1-16 . What is the Lord speaking out against here? Micah joins the other Old Testament prophets who emphasize that external forms of religion that lack a humble and intentional manifestation of justice and mercy are never acceptable to a just and merciful God. What  is the crucial message of  Micah 6:8 ? “True religion is practical. To be sure, it includes the rites and ceremonies of the church, but . . . it is not so much a matter of abstaining from food as it is of sharing food with the hungry. Practical godliness is the only kind of religion recognized at the judgment bar of God ( Matt. 25:34-46 ).” - Ellen G. White,  The SDA Bible Commentary , vol. 4, p. 306 . Today God continues to reject the apostasy of an external religion that excludes the practical godliness expressed in  Micah 6:8 . Our religious forms are not an end in and of themselves; they are a means to an end, and that end ...

Wednesday July 20 Jubilee Promises The Old Testament is filled with the idea that those who have been blessed materially and spiritually will reach out to those who have not. Read   Isaiah 61:1-11 . What is God saying to His people here, and how can we apply what’s said here to ourselves and to our calling before the Lord?  See also  Luke 4:18 . Isaiah 61:1-11  begins with a declaration that the Spirit of the Lord works through the Anointed One to preach good news to the poor, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim freedom for the captives, and release from darkness and despair for the prisoners  ( Isa. 61:1 ) . All of the elements of this promise have their fulfillment in the “year of the LORD’s favor.” The “year of the LORD’s favor” is a reference to the year of jubilee, which we already saw was filled with implications for the necessity of ministering to the needs of the poor. Thus, the mourners who are comforted, the grieving ones in Zion who are pr...

Tuesday July 19 The Church: A Source of Life “Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large numbers of fish . . .; where the river flows everything will live” ( Ezek. 47:9, NIV ) . Ezekiel’s prophecy illustrates that where the river that comes from God’s church flows, there is life.  Ezekiel 47:10  adds to the amazement of it all. What a strange sight that would be: a body of water known as being without fish because nothing can live there suddenly becomes a place where fishermen will be casting their nets and catching many fish. The whole point is that through the power of God working in His people, life can exist where before there was none. “Where God is at work there is no hopeless situation, no group of people who are beyond redemption, no heritage from an unhappy past which need condemn us to a future delivered over to despair.”-The Interpreter’s Bible, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1956), vol. 6, p. 328. God’s amazing grac...

Tuesday July 26 The Whole Recipe “ 'You are the salt of the earth’ ”   ( Matt. 5:13, NIV ) . In this passage, Jesus is calling His followers to be “salt,” which is a transforming agent. The church is a “saltshaker,” which contains the “salt of the earth.” With what or whom should we, this “salt,” mix? Only with ourselves, or with ingredients different from us? You can better understand the answer to this question if you fill one loaf pan with only salt and another loaf pan with bread that has salt as one of its ingredients. In the first pan, salt is the whole recipe; it would hardly be tasty, much less edible. In the second pan, salt is part of the recipe and is mixed with ingredients different from itself. And, as such, it transforms a loaf of bread from bland to delicious. Salt does more good when it mixes with elements unlike itself. The same is true of Christians. This won’t happen if we stay comfortably in the church “saltshaker.” Thus, there’s a point here we shou...

Sunday July 17 Alive in Christ The grace of God that brings revival to those who are dead in transgression and sin is graphically revealed in Ezekiel 37. In vision, the prophet Ezekiel is transported by the Spirit to a valley full of dead, dry, and scattered bones. These bones represent the whole house of Israel. God asks, “Son of man, can these bones live?” ( Ezek. 37:3 ) . The answer to this question unfolds as the prophet prophesies to the bones. Read   Ezekiel 37:1-14 . What was God going to do for His people? The results of the message delivered to the dry bones are that (1) they “came to life and stood up on their feet-a vast army”  ( Ezek. 37:10, NIV ) ; (2) God will settle His people in their own land  ( Ezek. 37:14 ) ; (3) and they will know that it was God who did it  ( Ezek. 37:14 ) . But being revived is not enough. God’s people are revived for a mission, for a purpose. Israel was to be a light to the nations. Read   Ephesians 2:10 ....

Sabbath Afternoon Read for This Week’s Study:   Ezek. 37:1-14 ;  Eph. 2:10 ;  Ezek. 47:1-8 ;  Matt. 5:16 ;  Rev. 22:1-2 ;  Isa. 61:1-11 . Memory Text:  “ 'Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large numbers of fish, because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh; so where the river flows everything will live’ ”  ( Ezekiel 47:9, NIV ) . A neighborhood that had flourished in the 1950s and early 1960s had become like a war zone in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The majority of the families moved away, leaving behind a trail of abandoned, run-down, and burned-out tenements. Businesses moved out and drugs and crime moved in, further making the neighborhood very undesirable. In 1986 a Christian family left their comfortable home in suburbia and moved into this depressed urban community. A pastor from another city joined them. They rebuilt two burned-out buildings and made them their homes. ...