PRESENTING: The Lord's House

church. The boy said, “Sure. It’s to make sure they wake up before they drive home.”

I would hate to think of this congregation ever getting in that shape because if you were not focused on the word of God in the sermon, you wouldn’t be focused on anything of God in the church.

Each of you were led to this church for a very special purpose, and each of you are a very special blessing to this church. As your pastor, I will do all I can to keep you informed as to not only what direction we need to travel, but what God wants from each of us as we go there.

Here is a thought that very few people ever consider. If we go to a church on a regular basis, do we owe that church anything?

I have always felt that if we go to a church regularly, we owe it several things. We owe the church to try and build it strong for the Lord’s work, and that means we have to focus on God’s vision for the church, not what we might personally want in the church. And what is God’s vision for CrossRoads Church?

God simply wants us to focus on Him to the extent that we can bring others into the fold and disciple them into being mature and productive Christians. There are many ways we can do that in, but first, we must choose to do Godly things.

We must …


2. FOCUS ON HAVING UNITY IN THE CHURCH

What does unity mean? It does not mean just being near to each other every Sunday. It means being dear to each other, too. You can be unified without having unity. There is an old story that illustrates this very well. If you two cats tails together and throw them over a clothesline, they will be unified, but they will fight until one is dead. That is being unified without having unity.

The congregation of this church can be unified, but that will not accomplish God’s tasks for His church. In addition to being unified, we must be in unity. That means to care for one another so much that you gladly give up something you want so they can have something they need. There are some people who appear to be perfect Christians … until somebody comes in and sits where they usually sit.

Different people may have different duties within the church. I know that, as humans, we tend to take on something called “ownership,” but in a church setting, that can be as divisive as outright selfishness. If you are doing anything in the church and someone else offers a suggestion, here is what you should think:

‘Which way would exalt God more, my way or theirs?’

Just as I relied upon other weather forecasters, and still rely upon other pastors, God expects you to rely upon each other as you do things for His glory. Of course, if you have a suggestion to make to someone, God expects you to offer it in the kindest and most loving way possible, so as not to offend.

Words often hurt more than any other kind of weapon. There is a story of a father telling his young son to take an eye-dropper and fill a glass with water with it. He did, and then his father told him to pour it down the kitchen sink, which he did. Then his father told him to get that water back. The boy said he couldn’t.

And the father said that our words are the same way. Once we pour them out, we cannot get them back.

We have to be ever-watchful when it comes to the words we choose to say - especially if we have a natural barbed-tongue or if we