Love God, Love Others

Pastor Q’s message last Sunday was to love God and to love others. These are my sermon notes, and I hope that you enjoy the sermon as much as I did.

Bible Verses Used

Colossians 3: 12~17

Matthew 7: 1~5

Luke 6: 27~38

Romans 2: 1

James 4: 11~12

Romans 14: 10

We need to put our roots down deep in God. There are surface roots, but if there’s no rain, the plant will wither and die. The first time a storm comes along, you are in deep yoghurt. Put your roots down deep. God looks at our ♥♥♥ ~ you can’t do without God’s love.

Let love guide your life; then the whole church will stay together in perfect harmony. We are the church. There are many people who have their “church persona” and the “rest of their life persona”. We need to have the same persona throughout the whole week.

Jesus commandments are:~

• Love God.
• Love others.

You can’t be a God~lover and not love others. The human tendency is to stand on the sidelines and not to pitch. We are not to judge others, for with the measure with which we judge others is the measure with which we will be judged. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Who are you to judge your neighbour? When you criticise someone else, you are going where you are never meant to go. How many times have I sat in judgement? If a person’s drowning, they will push you under in order to save themselves. There is no excuse for pushing someone down in order to elevate yourself.

We are to pray for our enemies. Criticism is the major instrument that Satan uses to destroy the church. Peace, harmony and unity are what God wants within our church today. Unless your roots are down deep, it is easy to go Satan’s way. There is a narrow way or a broad way ~ the broad way is the easiest way.

Gossiping is passing on information when you are not a part of the problem or a part of the solution. People who will gossip to you will also gossip about you. People who gossip cannot be trusted with your confidences. The greatest wounds come from other sheep, not from the wolves. Gossip is not meant to be a part of our lives. When people gossip, they are destroying harmony and unity within the church. If they are gossiping, confront them with this. We each have talents and abilities, and the church needs each one of us. God blesses churches that are united. God is looking for a church that will build and strengthen believers.

People are looking for acceptance and love when they come to our church, a church where every person can be:~

• Accepted
• Loved
• Valued

Leaders and pastors are not perfect, but they need your support and prayers to build the church that God wants. We want God to be welcome to walk into our church, and we need to work together.

No matter what comes, we shall stand and we shall build the church that God wants.

The Book of Books

There are books in the making and books in the store,

There are books on the table, and books on the floor.

The library and stockroom have books piled up high,

There are more to be written and more I must buy.

Historical novels, biographies too;

Each week brings a dozen exhausting “Who’s who?”,

There is fiction that’s truthful, and fiction that’s trash,

There’s an orderly volume and another mere hash.

There’s a new book of science and a book of the play,

There’s the book of the year and the book of the day,

There are books to refer to and some to ignore,

There are books that will thrill you and others will bore.

But the Book of the Ages, of balance and power

Is the Book called the Bible, the Book of the hour!

Exhaustless  it’s treasure, eternal its store

All the best of the others you’ll find here – and more!

Author Unknown

Praise and Prayer

Praise ye the LORD. O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. Ps 106:1

Praise You, Almighty Father for:

• Keeping us strong while my husband is waiting for a total knee replacement in August. Please keep him pain-free until then, and help the months to fly by.

• Your constant provision over us – providing the food that we eat, money to pay the bills, the home that we live in, comfortable beds, rich creamy goats’ milk to drink and Your Son – our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ who gave His life that we might live in a relationship with you.

• My husband, who continues to soldier on, doing what he can, and I praise you, Father, that he can still milk the goats. That is one job that none of us is especially keen to take on, but it looks as if my son will be milking the goats while my husband is incapacitated.

• Our children, who have shouldered more of the responsibilities of running a hobby farm while my husband waits on a new knee. That, combined with their schoolwork has kept them very busy indeed.

• Friends – especially blogging friends and IRL friends who continue to strengthen us and help us to come into a closer relationship with you. Friends, like Kylie, who almost had me in tears of joy over the poem that she wrote while looking at my blog – beautiful poetry, God-honouring poetry.

• For the beautiful ground-soaking rain that He has sent us. So far we have had 13mm, and it’s still raining – YAY!

• That we live in Australia, where freedom of religion is one of our choices, according to our Constitution, but please keep our politicians in your prayers, for there are moves afoot for:

1. “Equal Opportunity” provisions requiring para church organisations (such as Christian book stores) to employ people that do not practice a Christian lifestyle.
2. Formal directives stating that the discussion of Intelligent Design or Creation is no longer acceptable in science lessons in South Australian Christian schools.
3. Draft changes to fringe benefit laws which will make it difficult for churches and charities to meet payroll costs.

Please pray that the Family First party will continue to fight for freedom of religion in Australia, and that Robert Brokenshire will gain the numbers needed to defeat these motions in Parliament. Our religious freedoms are being eroded at an alarming rate.

Special Gift

The bookmark, above, was given to me by my friend, Gwenda a few years ago, and it is very special, not because of what the bookmark is, nor because of the Bible verse specifically, although Psalm 103 is a beautiful Psalm, but because it was given to me by a special friend who took the time to choose this bookmark and Bible verse specifically. It speaks of the love that it took, and the time that was taken to choose this particular Bible verse just for me.

Of course, the most precious gift of all was the gift that God gave us, in the gift of His precious Son, so that He could restore fellowship with God, the Father. The gracious gift of God is eternal life with Him, and there is nothing that we can do to deserve it, for our righteousness is as filthy rags. [Isaiah 64:6] Christ died for our sins and rose again for our justification. What an awesome gift! [Romans 6:23]

Do you have any gifts that you consider really special from a friend, and why do you consider them special? Are the gifts of sentimental value, or is it the love behind the gift, or perhaps it is simply because it is hand-made?

Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift. 2 Corinthians 9:15

Friendships

Kylie from Blog, Blog, Blog gave me the gift of her playing The Steadfast Love of the Lord Never Ceases on her flute. This was such a delightful gesture on her behalf, and I would sincerely like to thank her from the bottom of my ♥. I have saved it to my computer so that I can listen to it and remember the love of a friend.

After all, it’s not every day that somebody takes the time to do something nice for someone else. We I usually become so engrossed with the everyday life that I forget to do the little things that make friendships special. I find it so difficult to give to people, as I’m definitely not the crafty sort of person, although recently I have been making home-made cards, and this has been a steEP learning curve for me, too.

Yet, we are told in the Bible to “consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works:” [Hebrews 10:24], and yet again in 1 Corinthians 13:13, “And now abideth faith, hope, charity love, these three; but the greatest of these is charity love.”

AND yet again in:

John 13:34

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

I pray that God will teach me how to have a servant ♥ to my friends so that our friendships will continue to blossom and grow, and so that I can also continue to grow in the love of the Lord, reflecting the image of our Lord Jesus Christ through my actions and my daily life.