Sermon Central
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Love God’s Church & Love God’s Word Series
Contributed by Damien Saylor on Jul 6, 2019 (message contributor)
Summary: Being part of a living, growing, & loving family is amazing. The church is that Family. It is & will forever be, because God is our Father who cares for us, & unites us, by His Word.
Sermon series- 6 qualities for spiritual health part 4
4) I love God’s Church and God’s Word.
- Today I’m picking back up with the fourth part of my series about 6 qualities for
spiritual health.
- With the turmoil we’ve had in recent days. I don’t know how closely everyone else
looks at everyday things around you, but I do.
- From the Sunday I chose to have a meeting our Sunday school lessons taught on
coming together, & then working together.
- Our bulletins reflected a similar message.
- Now today, mind you I had these 6 topics put in order well over a month ago.
Q- What should our fourth quality be?
- Love God’s Church & His Word!
- Let’s open our Bibles to John 13:33-35
- To be a healthy Spiritual person, It begins with a mindset.
33 Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek me: and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come; so now I say to you.
34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
Prayer
> A study was done on sports teams. They found that the more optimistic teams created more positive synergy and performed better than the pessimistic ones.
> Another study showed that pessimistic swimmers who were led to believe they’d done worse than they had were prone to future poor performance. Optimistic swimmers didn’t have this vulnerability.
> Also studied were 34 healthy Hall of Fame baseball players who played between 1900 and 1950, optimists lived significantly longer.
> Other studies have shown that optimistic breast cancer patients had better health outcomes than pessimistic and hopeless patients.
- Immediately from the day God created mankind, He gave us the ability to
better/prosper ourselves or condemn ourselves.
- This is why Jesus literally spells it out to us,
35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
- The Word disciple means follower. This wasn’t clarifying the salvation of these
people.
- It was showing them that to be a true witness of the form of Christ, you must show
the same love that Christ did.
Q-Did Jesus die just for those that loved Him?
- No! He died for those who despised & hated Him.
Q- Do you remember the centurion at the feet of Jesus?
39 And when the centurion, which stood over against him, saw that he so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God.
Q- This is the only mentioning we have of this man, but don’t you think he was soon to
be saved by the same Jesus he was crucifying?
- This same event is happening all across the world.
- People who we would say, torment will freeze over before they ever get saved, are
getting saved.
Q- How are these people being saved?
- By God leading them away from themselves to the foot of the cross.
- What’s more amazing is, He can use His disciples in this leading.
- From Wednesday night to today I have seen God’s hand moving all around me.
- On Thursday, I had been in deep thoughts & conversations with God all night
& had made a completely out of the norm trip to the post office for stamps.
- I ran into a lady who just asked, can I pray for you.
- We talked & prayed some more.
- God was using one of His Disciples to tell me, I’ve got you Son!
- Listen to this,
7 For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness.
8 He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his holy Spirit.
9 But as touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another.
10 And indeed ye do it toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia: but we beseech you, brethren, that ye increase more and more;
11 And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you;
12 That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing.
- Paul says, Now reach out to the stranger. The one who isn’t in Macedonia.
- Let’s be so close to God that we hear His guidance.
