I Will Be a Unifying Church Member
I Am a Church Member • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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What does it mean to be a church member?
By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
A healthy church is recognized by the unifying love that the members have for each other.
A biblical church member is a unifying church member.
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called,
with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,
eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
A unifying church member knows that unity does not happen.
Unity is created and maintained by unifying church members.
A unifying church members knows what destroys unity.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,
because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
Idolatry
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature;
and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Idolatry
Sexual Immorality
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
What could be worse than the sins he has already mentioned?!
They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips,
slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,
foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
Idolatry
Sexual Immorality
Gossip & Slander
And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.
For “Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit;
A unifying church member refuses to speak or hear gossip and other negative talk.
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you,
but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,
bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
A unifying church member forgives.
The Second Pledge: “I will be a unifying church member.”