Church Strong Love Strong
Church Strong • Sermon • Submitted
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We live in a world where it is very easy to be conformed to the world’s way of thinking. In fact it really is the “natural” thing to do. To be church strong we must be able to not go with the flow but to swim against the tide so to speak. Let’s look at a few of these scriptures so we can do a self evaluation.
1 So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. 2 Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
We Must Stop Conforming!
We Must Stop Conforming!
This version says not to be so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. We’ve all fallen prey to the culture around us. We pick up other people’s offense and get on the “bandwagon” without even seeing what God’s word says about it. We’ve grown accustomed to the lifestyles of entertainers that we applaud them even though they don’t stand for righteousness or don’t live the life we desire to live. Here’s the part that get’s me about me, I don’t even think I just fit in. It’s what they call unconscious living. God want us to live consciously. Paying attention to what He says instead of letting certain things slide because we don’t want to be accused of being prudish. Church strong is being a church that doesn’t just automatically follow the culture but follows God! So what are some things we need to start working on now and basically till Jesus comes back?
12 This is My commandment: that you love one another [just] as I have loved you.
13 No one has greater love [no one has shown stronger affection] than to lay down (give up) his own life for his friends.
14 You are My friends if you keep on doing the things which I command you to do.
Loving the Way Jesus Loves = Sacrifice
Loving the Way Jesus Loves = Sacrifice
We need to love the way Jesus loved us. He laid down His life for us and that is how we need to love others, unconditionally! That equates to sacrifice. Sacrificing our opinions, our expertise, our experience, our life for the sake of others. Now I know we all believe that we are living this way and that we sacrifice a lot doing things for others, and doing outreaches for others, and so on and so on. So here’s a check system I believe God gave me to check myself before I wreck myself. Do I get frustrated with people who say one thing and then they something else? Do I show my frustration and share it with others? Do I think I’m the only one that can do what I do and no one else can do it well like me? Unfortunately, many times the answer to those questions are yes. Does God do that to me when I fail? No because He loves us and that’s the love Jesus is holding us to love like
13 You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. 14 For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.
16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.
Loving the Way Jesus Loves = Serving!
Loving the Way Jesus Loves = Serving!
When we are walking in the Spirit, we become humble servants to everyone. Humble servants don’t criticize. I realized that humble people do talk a lot. Here’s something that I learned it’s the acronym WAIT. Why am I talking! We’ve all heard this, you have one mouth and two ears. Listen twice as much as you talk. When we are really loving and serving others, we don’t need to be heard as much as we need to be known as people who really care!
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
Loving Like Jesus is Church Strong!
Loving Like Jesus is Church Strong!
If we love like God it means we know God and knowing God is the main ingredient to being able to love like Jesus! It is the way Christians live, they love one another just like God and that is what makes the Church stand out especially nowadays with the way the world is going. Lets do this!!!