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.

What Do We Celebrate when We Celebrate Easter?

This is a card that I made for my friend, Gwenda, and it has symbolism within the design of the card. The red symbolises the blood of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ; the black symbolises our sin prior to His death on the Cross and the white represents the righteousness of the Saints, which is only received through God’s grace and Jesus shed blood on the Cross of Calvary.

Do we celebrate Easter? Well, I know that Easter has long been associated with Ishtar, the goddess of fertility, but we don’t worship her in our home. We worship the one true God, the one who died on the Cross so that we could have everlasting forgiveness of our sins. There was to be no more sacrifice, as the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world.

Easter has been associated with many things – Easter eggs and hot cross buns, but we need to remember the true reason for Easter, and that is the love that God had for us in sending His Son to be the substitutionary sacrifice for us all. It’s not about furry bunnies, Easter eggs or hot cross buns.

Easter is defined by Merriam Webster’s Online Dictionary as:

• A feast that commemorates Christ’s resurrection and is observed with variations of date due to different calendars on the first Sunday after the paschal full moon.

While the Collins Concise Dictionary that we have at home defines Easter as:

• A festival of the Christian church commemorating the Resurrection of Christ: falls on the Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

And World Book Encyclopaedia defines Easter as being:

• The most important Christian festival of the year. Easter celebrates the return to life of Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity, after His Crucifixion.

Jesus came to give us life and that we might have it more abundantly (John10:10), and it is only through our faith in Jesus Christ that we receive this free gift of eternal life. Christ’s death and resurrection is the message that we should be sending to our friends and loved ones, and it should be His death and resurrection that we celebrate, knowing the love that our heavenly Father has for us.

Praise you, heavenly Father

Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.
Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.
For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.
In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.
For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.
Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.
For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.
So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
Return, O LORD, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants.
O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil.
Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children.
And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.
Psalm 90

for…

• pain relief for my husband’s knee – may it continue until August when he has a total knee replacement.

• for the prayers for my husband’s knee and relief from the pain – please know that your prayers are very much appreciated!

• our children’s commitment to helping around the home, making life a whole lot easier for my husband. This is the first commandment with a promise – that it may go well with thee and that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

• that our church building application has been approved – YIPPEE!

• FRIENDS – who make our lives that little more special just by being a part of it – for new friends, old friends and old friends become new again!

• all of the things that You do for us – the things that go largely unnoticed, such as the wonderful change in the weather, keeping our bantam chickens safe, for the food that You provide us with, the money to pay the bills and the people that You place in our lives.

• our church – although we can’t be there today, there will be lots more todays in the future.

• that we get our new tyres fitted on Monday, and hopefully that will be the end of our punctures – the road that leads to our home is blue-metal, and is very sharp – we have had three punctures in the last couple of weeks, and it is becoming increasingly more difficult for my husband to change and mend the tyres. I only travel at 40km/h and we still manage to get punctures.

Did you know that the average person has only about 18,000 days in which he could apply his life to eternal values? It is therefore of vital importance that we be “Redeeming the time”. Ephesians 5:16 (The New Defender’s Study Bible) Time is ticking away rapidly!

• Jennifer, who hosts this Meme each week, so that I remember to give thanks to our Almighty God for all of the things that I forget to give thanks for at other times. Care to join this Meme, visit Jennifer at My Chocolate ♥ .

Praise God…

Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee. Hebrews 2:12

• …for His abundant blessings to us – our new church, wonderful fellowship and a message preached straight from God’s ♥, food on the table, a pool to keep cool in and money to pay for petrol and to pay the bills.

• …for answered prayer about a new church, and the responses from our fellow church friends about our departure. May God preserve the friendships that we have made.

• …that He is always there for us and with us. Sometimes we just need to take the next leap of faith. Sometimes this leap seems more like jumping into an abyss, but we know that God is faithful and is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.

• …for my husband and answered prayer, whose knee went crack during our church service and is now feeling very much better. Thank you to everyone who has been praying for healing for his knee. This week I would like to ask you to pray for the rash on his hands and the splits in his fingers. It’s something about this time of year that his hands don’t like, and we haven’t worked it out, yet.

• …for our children, who have stepped to the fore during the last couple of weeks, while my husband’s knee has been extremely painful – they have been feeding goats, herding goats in to the yard for milking, cooking, ironing and doing extra lots of dishes.

• …for granted travelling mercies when we have needed them, especially as we have run out of tyre patches, and our road is VERY rough, puncturing tyres with monotonous regularity, and we only travel it at 45km/h.

• ….for friends – IRL friends, blogging friends and internet friends who continue to challenge our minds and our understanding of the Word of God.

• …for God’s Word - may we always treasure the freedoms that we have in this beautiful, wide, brown land of ours, for there are countries where ownership of a Bible is strictly prohibited and church meetings are done in secret, under penalty of certain imprisonment, beating or even death.

• …that He doesn’t leave me where I am in my faith, but continually challenges me to grow in Him. May I always seek to walk worthy of the trust that He has placed in me.

Jennifer, from My Chocolate ♥ hosts Praise, and I thank her for hosting this – it helps me to focus on God and his abundant blessings toward us. If you would like to see more “Praise” posts, head on over to My Chocolate Heart , and oh, don’t forget to leave a comment, I’m sure that she’d be pleased to hear from you.

God’s Power

What do these three photos have in common, you might ask? Well, yesterday we had a power blackout – everything was so quiet, and there were no clocks, apart from the wall clocks that run on batteries. My husband is happy though, because my mum gave us a camp stove about six months ago, and he could at least have a cup of coffee, and I could have a cup of green tea. I have only recently discovered Green tea and its health benefits.

What do you do for dinner when you have a blackout? Well, we have wonderful friends nearby who have provided us with a meal, as when the power goes off here, it is usually off for about eighteen hours, and we can’t open the fridge or freezer in order to try and keep things frozen.

This started me thinking about how God provides us with the power to do all things through Him, but if we lose contact with Him through prayer and the reading of His Word, the power that we need to “do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” is gone, and we can never work to our full capacity.

In order for me to “do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me”, I need to spend time in prayer and worship with God, getting to know Him through the reading of His Word, and allowing the light of His precious Son, our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ to shine through me. When I sin and don’t repent of my sin, this is the same as having a power blackout, and God’s power and His love for others doesn’t indwell me.

Through Christ we have grace to do what is good, and it is through Him and in Him that we have our being. It is through Him that we have the promise of our eternal reward, and just as we have all things through Him, we need to do all things to His glory.