Never Too Late | Hope | PART 1

The Old Testament is a story desperate for a conclusion. This introductory message to the book of Chronicles demonstrates that the story finds its fulfillment in Jesus. Series: Never Too Late, Speaker: Pastor Don Dodge, Scripture: 2 Chronicles 36:23, 2 Chronicles 7:13-15, Matthew 1:1, John 1:1, John 1:14, Video: https://www.facebook.com/avalonchurch/videos/1007829879649744/, Sermon page: https://podcast.avalonchurch.org/sermons/never-too-late-hope-part-1/, Sermon Notes: 2020-07-19_never-too-late-part-1_sermon-notes.pdf, Discussion Questions: 2020-07-19_never-too-late-part-1_discussion-questions.pdf, Notes: I’d like to begin today reading the story of Audrey Mahn, Her and her husband Rich have done so much to help us communicate to you during this COVID pandemic. Audrey’s story is powerful, And common throughout the world. Audrey’s Story I was born in a small city in China. Most were Buddhist. There were no Christians around me. Though my family was not Buddhist, we had Buddha statues at home. Sometimes we would pray to them. When I was 9 or 10 years old, I liked going out on our balcony and looking at the sky and other buildings and I would talk to God. I didn’t know how I knew there was a God at that time, but when I had troubles, I prayed to him... or at least made a wish. During this time, my dad also had a friend who claimed to have supernatural power. He called it a “third eye” on his forehead, and said he could see and do supernatural things. This man’s daughter and I played together and pretended to have “third eye” power. When I was around 13, my mom began practicing a new cult religion emphasizing the supernatural. I was innocent and naïve and would join my mom and practice this for fun. However, when I was around 15 years old, I began hearing a voice and had destructive, evil, even suicidal thoughts. I tried to resist, but the voice and the thoughts tortured me. I felt so helpless. I couldn’t sleep at night because my heart beat so fast. I read lots of psychology and philosophy books. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I thought it was a battle of my will... and I was losing. It was much later I learned that this was a spiritual battle between good and evil. When I went to college, I chose English as my major. Part of learning western culture was reading the Bible. I was even invited to a bible study, and that’s where I decided to become a Christian. That summer I was invited to stay with an American friend, Hannah, who was living in China. One night I shared with her my experiences of hearing that voice and fighting against those evil thoughts; how I felt this spiritual oppression and was scared. She noted that “I couldn’t even look her in the eyes.” We prayed in Jesus name that God would free me. Hannah called a friend of ours, Pauline, an American who was a Christian psychologist. Pauline invited me to kneel and confess my sins; to forgive those in my life who hurt me. I prayed and invited the Holy Spirit to come and occupy every area of my heart. We prayed for 2 hours. I was shaking and felt this battle inside me. Pauline asked for the demon’s name and I heard a voice inside say an English name that none of us recognized. We looked it up in the dictionary and the word meant “the third eye,” that supernatural power I practiced as a child. It was then when that power left me. It was an immediate change. I looked at the mirror and saw the light in my eyes return. And I could look straight to my friends’ eyes. I felt so free. God set me free and broke the chains on me. I had been tortured by evil for 7 years. I had no hope, but now God had saved me. He had a great plan for me and I could now live for him and tell his story so others would know God could change their life, too. INTRO We’re starting a new series called “Never Too Late” For the next 5 weeks, we’re going to look at some stories from the book of 2 Chronicles ...where God unexpectedly got a hold of someone’s heart, And their life was changed forever. My hope is that some of your stories will be shared, too. ...We have some great stories in our church-family. Whether you write them out or record a video, I think it would be encouraging for all of us to hear each others stories ...of how God has transformed, ...and is continuing to transform people’s lives. We’ve set up a webpage for you to share your story. AvalonChurch.org/Stories You can write it out, You can share a video. Whatever you want. That way we can all read what God has done, ...and I’d like to share a story each week As we look at various stories in 2 Chronicles. God Background Before jumping in, I need to frame the book of Chronicles, ...Because every story leads to a singular purpose, ...Hope. You may be aware that in our OT, 1-2 Chronicles follows the books of Samuel and Kings, ...and to the frustration of many readers, ...And after 9 chapters of genealogies, It repeats a lot content from both of those books. So often, when people realize they’ve already read some of these stories before, ...they just skip these books. Which is a shame. Because Chronicles is doing something very different than The books of Samuel and Kings. Which is much more obvious to Jewish readers. ...Because the books in our OT Are in a different order than the Hebrew Bible of the Jews. In our Bible, Chronicles is right in the middle of all the historical books. But in the Hebrew Bible, Chronicles is the very last book. The reason is that Chronicles is one of the last of the OT books that were written. The books of 1...