Everyone Welcome

Sabbath School and Church

Church In Person or On-Line

Everyone is welcome to attend the worship hour. It starts at 10:45 a.m.  

We broadcast Church live on youtube.com. Church will start at 10:45 AM.  Go to youtube.com and search for "greeley sda".  Click on the circle with the church picture.  You may need to choose the "Live" tab.

OR click on the "Sermons" link in the menu selections above to access the services. (On a phone or tablet the menu selections will be in a button that looks like three bars at the top of the screen.) Select "Live" in the tabs.

Weekly Church Meetings

Wednesday - 1:30 p.m.  Midweek study 

Sabbath 4:00 - p.m.  End Time Events with Shawn Korgan

Food for Thought

Connection: -- Part 2 “Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear.” Isaiah 65:24

Jerry and I were watching the church service on the Loma Linda channel last Sabbath afternoon when suddenly things just seemed to freeze and stop. Our phone had only a busy signal and the computer said “no connection.” I was getting ready to send Cindy a devotional by email for the newsletter. Ironically the title of the devotional was “Connection,” and now I wasn’t sure I could send it because we had “no connection!”

Of course, the spiritual lesson I am going to draw from this is quite obvious. When we go to Jesus in prayer, we never get a busy signal, and we never hear “no connection.” Jesus says simply, “Call to me and I will answer you.” Jeremiah 33:3 (NIV)

King Hezekiah was very ill and at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah came to him and told him “to put his house in order because he was going to die.” (2 Kings 20:1)  Hezekiah immediately began to cry bitterly, and he prayed telling God he had walked faithfully with Him and had served Him with whole-hearted devotion. (2 Kings 20: 2, 3)  The Bible says that before Isaiah had left the court God told him to go back to Hezekiah and say, “I have heard your prayer and seen your tears. I will heal you.”  (2 Kings 20:4, 5)  No busy signal or interrupted connection!

The prophet Jonah was running away from the preaching assignment God had given him. He went on board a ship sailing in the opposite direction. A violent storm arose which threatened to break the ship apart. When the sailors discovered Jonah was the cause of the storm, they threw him overboard where he was promptly swallowed by a great fish.

Jonah prayed from inside the fish and God heard. Jonah says, “In my distress I called to the Lord, and He answered me. From the depths of the grave, I called for help and you listened to my cry; . . . When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.” (Jonah 2: 1, 2, & 7)  God heard and answered. “And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry ground.” (Jonah 2:10) No busy signal, no interrupted connection – even from inside a fish!

Paul and Silas had been thrown into prison, but the Bible says about midnight they “were praying and singing hymns to God.” (Acts 16:25)  God heard and answered their prayers by sending a violent earthquake which opened all the prison doors. Again no busy signal, no interrupted connection – even from a prison cell!

Psalm 86 is a beautiful prayer of David. Verse 7 says, “In the day of my trouble I will call to you; for you will answer me.” How thankful we can be God is never too busy and never disconnected!

Sharon Oster

Connection -  Part 1 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit: for without Me you can do nothing.” John 15:5 

The other evening our son-in-law called to talk with us on his way home. He likes to stay connected to us and we enjoy that. A few months previous he had purchased a Tesla so I asked him how he was liking that vehicle. “Oh,” he said, “I love it. It is great!” He then proceeded to talk about how his phone is connected to the car. As long as he has his phone, he can “make” the car do all kinds of things. Since I hardly understood the rest of the conversation, I won’t attempt to go into detail. The main thing I picked up on was the connection. When he is connected with his phone, and it is connected to the Tesla, amazing things happen.

Jesus and His disciples were headed to the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus knew the time with His disciples on this earth would soon end, and He apparently had one very important thing to impress on their minds. Again, Jesus used a parable – one of His favorite teaching methods. As they were walking, they passed a grapevine and Jesus began to teach. He wanted to show His disciples one last time the relationship they were to maintain with Him. Jesus said He was the vine, they were the branches. One of the key words in this parable is the word “abide” which means simply “to stay.” The branches needed to stay with the vine in order to thrive. In the same way, we need to abide or stay with Jesus.

If the branch is not connected with the vine, it will never produce fruit. In the same way, we need to abide or stay connected with Jesus, and the fruit will be natural and spontaneous. Mrs. White says, “The Saviour does not bid the disciples labor to bear fruit. He tells them to abide in Him.” (Desire of Ages, p. 677)  “So the effort,” Morris Venden says, “ is always toward the abiding, never toward the fruit.” (Grapes, p. 29) “Fruits are never produced by the person . . . They are the fruit of the Spirit, and they come spontaneously as a result of being connected to the vine.” (Grapes, p. 35)

We need to remember two more things. It takes time to grow fruit – both in the natural world and the spiritual world. Venden also reminds us it is the Gardener who pulls the weeds. That sin or character fault in our lives will be taken care of by Gardener Jesus if we continue to abide in Him.

One more thing about our son-in-law and his Tesla – it won’t run without frequent trips to the charging station. Without daily trips to Jesus (our Charging Station), we can do nothing. (John 15:5)

Sharon Oster